NATO's Burden-Sharing Debate in the 1990s
Abstract
Since 1949 and the first days of the alliance, NATO has experienced repeated waves of controversy over what the appropriate level of shared costs for cooperative defense should be. Many Atlanticists hope that the current furor over burden sharing will fade as it has so often in the past. But this optimistic attitude fails to appreciate either the magnitude or persistence of the problem for the United States. For many on the American side of the Atlantic, the burden-sharing debate is about the trade imbalance, economic policies, base negotiations, security assistance, the deficit, or the perception that the US defense budget has been excessive for too long while allies have been getting a free ride. Rarely, if ever, have so many forces for change come together across the American political and economic spectrum. Fundamentally, the growth in the relative importance of the burden sharing debate can be credited to three underlying developments. First and most obvious is the relative economic decline of the United States since World War II. In 1948 the United States was able to finance the cost of reviving the European economic order by directly subsidizing Europe's reconstruction, even while guaranteeing its security. This was possible because of the unchallenged global economic and military dominance of postwar America, a dominance that in many ways was artificial and transient; it could not last. In this light, the United States has slipped from its position of unchallenged global hegemonic leadership and may now be unable to carry on as before. Paul Kennedy, in his immensely popular history of global decline, The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, uses the term "imperial overstretch" to describe the resulting imbalance between a nation's global obligations and its ability to economically sustain those obligations. If left uncorrected, this imbalance could destroy the national economic foundation upon which, according to Kennedy, hegemonic power is ultimately based.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Mar 01, 1990
- Accession Number
- ADA527970
Entities
People
- Robert C. White Jr.
Organizations
- United States Army War College