Think As Historian: THINK AS A HISTORIAN: EXPLAIN THE CONCEPT Of ALLIANCE

Studies have shown that alliances are honored somewhere between 50 and 80 percent of the time. If there is so much room for noncompliance, what exactly is an alliance? Read the following portions of the December 5, 1912, amended version of the Triple Alliance. First, rewrite the articles in your own words, simplifying the language. Then generalize from the specific articles to explain the concept of alliance. “ARTICLE 1. The High Contracting Parties mutually promise peace and friendship, and will enter into no alliance or engagement directed against any one of their States. They engage to proceed to an exchange of ideas on political and economic questions of a general nature which may arise, and they further promise one another mutual support within the limits of their own interests. . . . ARTICLE 4. In case a Great Power non-signatory to the present Treaty should threaten the security of the states of one of the High Contracting Parties, and the threatened Party should find itself forced on that account to make war against it, the two others bind themselves to observe towards their Ally a benevolent neutrality. Each of them reserves to itself, in this case, the right to take part in the war, if it should see fit, to make common cause with its Ally. ARTICLE 5. If the peace of any of the High Contracting Parties should chance to be threatened under the circumstances foreseen by the preceding Articles, the High Contracting Parties shall take counsel together in ample time as to the military measures to be taken with a view to eventual cooperation. They engage henceforward, in all cases of common participation in a war, to conclude neither armistice, nor peace, nor treaty, except by common agreement among themselves.”