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Wendt continues:

“Predation will always lead victims to defend themselves, but whether defense will be collective or not depends on the history of interaction within the potential collective as much as on the ambitions of the predator. Will the disappearance of the Soviet threat renew old insecurities among the members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization? Perhaps, but not if they have reasons independent of that threat for identifying their security with one another. Identities and interests are relationship-specific, not intrinsic… ‘Mature’ anarchies are less likely than ‘immature’ ones to be reduced by predation to a Hobbesian condition, and maturity, which is a proxy for structures of identity and interest, is a function of process.”

The member states of NATO do not fight each other, despite their shared history of world war and the absence of some super-national government, because they view themselves as members of a community. No warlord inexorably emerges to conquer all of them.

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