These differing assessments of both the value and the costs of resistance mean that there is no strictly rational compulsion for states to perceive the situation in exactly the same way and thus no reason to expect them to form common judgments as to how to respond to given moves or provocations by an aspirant such as China. This generates coordination problems, and the more states that must be involved in the coalition and the more those states’ strategic situations differ, the more difficult those problems will be.
