Do international alliances always make the world safer, or can they sometimes lead to more tension?

Alliances can cause more harm than good

In today’s world I believe Alliances cause more harm than good. An Alliance like NATO uses the fact that it is the strongest military alliance in the world to warn and discourage people from fighting against them and even manipulates these other countries to agree to their trade and policies.

Alliances are built on trust,Alliances take away this aspect as countries are not operating as individuals and prioritising themselves . Alliances often cause countries to get involved in smaller conflicts they wouldn't have originally got inolved in because of the belief that “if they attack 1 one us , they are attacking all of us””. This had led to many small conflicts becoming global wars, a real life example of this is the beginning of WW1 , where it started as a small conflict between Serbia and Austria-Hungary but quickly transitioned into a global war because allies of both countries were called in. Another aspect that is dangerous about alliances is the absolute expectation for the countries within it to follow the rules. Trump was threatening to withdraw from NATO because he did not want to fund an operation of theirs and was questioning if the other countries in the alliance were contributing as much as he was. This created tension within the alliance as alliances are built on trust and the U.S was losing it among the other countries in NATO , and fear for countries that are out of the alliance as if an alliance like NATO broke up , all these powerful countries would be able to and possibly want to fight each other causing a global war.

Alliances have countries constanly living in a state of panic and fear, I believe the postitives of having an alliances are out wieghed by the negatives this is because originally alliances were created to bring fear to other countries , not peace.