  Confinement in asymptotically free gauge theories is accompanied by the
spontaneous breaking of the global flavor symmetry. If a subgroup of the flavor
symmetry group is coupled weakly to additional gauge fields, the vacuum state
tends to align such that the gauged subgroup is unbroken. Independently, a
lattice discretization of the continuum theory typically reduces the manifest
flavor symmetry, and, in addition, can give rise to new lattice-artifact phases
with spontaneously broken symmetries. Here, we study the interplay of these two
phenomena for Wilson fermions, using chiral lagrangian techniques. We consider
two examples: electromagnetic corrections to QCD, and a prototype
composite-Higgs model.
