The phrase "defensive alliance" is ambiguous. The rival meanings are not inherently incompatible. But in practise they tend in opposite directions. When the ambiguity is resolved some-one feels cheated.
To see the problem picture four countries, Timidland, Moralland, Weakland, and Aggroland. Timidland is spending more on defence than it wants to because it fears being attacked by Aggroland. Moralland is also spending more than it wants to on defence because it too fears attack by Aggroland. But the internal politics of Moralland are complicated. The moral thing to do is to build a larger army, attack Aggroland and liberate the people of Aggroland from the tyranny of the Chief Aggro. Or is that the moral thing to do? Isn't war bad?
Timidland and Moralland form an alliance. It is a "defensive alliance" meaning that Timidland will come to Moralland's aid if Aggroland attacks Moralland. But the people of Timidland are aware of the complicated internal politics of Moralland and it is explicit that if Moralland attacks Aggroland, then Moralland is on its own. Even instigating voids the alliance.
The problem arises because history isn't that neat. The 1914-1918 war starts with the Austro-Hungarian Empire giving an ultimatum to Serbia, Russia comes to Serbia's aid, Germany comes to Austria's aid, France and Britain have alliances to honour and end up fighting. If we want political theory to relate to the real world, we need to think about Moralland extending guarantees to Weakland.
Aggroland invades Weakland. Moralland supplies weapons to Weakland. And advisers. Eventually troops. Moralland artillery is shelling Aggroland invaders on Weakland soil from positions in Moralland. Counter battery fire from Aggrotroops in Weakland is hitting positions in Moralland. Does this trigger the defensive alliance and suck Timidland into the war?
Some Timidians argue that they never agreed to give guarantees to Weakland. Given the complicated history of the region, they would have refused to get involved if they had been asked. Others are saying that Moralland are the good guys. Of course Timidland must join the war. What use is a defensive alliance is you don't defend your allies? Peaceful Timidians feel that they have been out manoeuvred, and are being forced to honour guarantees to Weakland that they never made.
If Timidland is pulled into the war by the chains of the alliance, we can be more specific than calling it a defensive alliance. It was a "chaining alliance".
But what should we call a non-chaining alliance? I've picked the word "isolating". That is clearly wrong in theory. The terms of the alliance don't forbid Moralland from extending security guarantees to Weakland, they merely classify that as instigating; Moralland cannot call upon Timidland to help honour the guarantee.
But theory and practice disagree. The internal politics of Moralland has its guns-before-butter faction. They saw the alliance as a matter of building military strength, with a view to regime change in Aggroland, to save the world from the danger presented by the Chief Aggro. Moralland also has a butter-before-guns faction, that see the alliance as an opportunity to economise on defence spending, freeing up money for schools, hospitals, road, pensions, police, industrial policy, the climate emergency, tax cuts,... The list is endless. We see the likely outcome in Europe. NATO agrees that all members should spend at least 2% of GDP on defence. Most don't. The other priorities take precedence. In practice the non-chaining alliance leads to Moralland cutting defence spending. They are after all moral and pensioners deserve higher pensions, etc. The guns-before-butter faction are aghast to find that they have been out manoeuvred. They nearly had the army that they needed to protect Weakland from Aggroland. The alliance with Timidland was supposed to add to the army. In practise it subtracted. Moralland's own army has shrunk and Timidland's army is not available. The isolating alliance has left them isolated, unable to offer security guarantees to Weakland.
Obviously my fine distinction has contemporary resonances, but after World War Three reduces Europe and America to radioactive rubble, the run up to World War Four will involve China, India, Brazil, and Indonesia. Will they continue the tradition of talking about defensive alliances? Or will they embrace the distinction between chaining alliances and isolating alliances? I locate this essay in the British tradition of analytic philosophy, looking at words and attempting to resolve their ambiguities. Not all ambiguities; just those with large consequences.
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Notes -
So are you in fact intending to talk about the Ukraine war, or is there a cleaner question you would like to ask hidden in there? In the former case, I think your analogies are all over the place, and to begin with the invocation of the "defensive alliance" line is more than a little inflammatory to us rare anti-NATO readers (as we tend to see it as pure "dare to contradict me if you think you can get away with it" trolling in the vein of workplace neopronouns since the invasion of Serbia at the latest).
I'm trying to talk about humans letting their language do their thinking for them. Language is mostly accident and happenstance. Language matters. Politically active persons have noticed. We no longer discuss "abortion" and "anti-abortion"; we discuss "pro-life" and "pro-choice". But my gut feeling is that deliberate attempts to shape the discourse by changing language are rare (or maybe common but nearly always unsuccessful to the point of vanishing without trace: who now remembers the attempt to re-brand atheists as "brights"?)
Instead our social antennae tell us which words have a positive valence and which words have a negative valence. We go with the words of pre-existing language, and choose the actions described by words with a positive valence. That valence is historical and lacking contemporary relevance. In effect, the valences of our terminology are random, and that randomizes our decision making. When we outsource our thinking to the old accidents that have formed the emotion valences of pre-existing language, we give up our human agency. That is bad.
For example, the phrase "defensive alliance" has a positive emotional valence. So we join together in "defensive alliances" and believe we are doing the right thing. My claim is that "defensive alliance" is not even the name of thing, so we literally don't know what we are doing. There are chaining alliances and isolating alliances. To join a chaining alliance is to live dangerously connected and you end up going to war. To join an isolating alliance is to live dangerously isolated and to fail to nip growing evils in the bud; war eventually comes to you. Perhaps war can be avoided, by one method or another, but we don't think the choices through and surrender our agency to words without meanings.
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