Natos Burden Sharing Disputes

This book states that burden-sharing is one of the most persisting sources for tension and disagreement within NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation). It also belongs to one of the most studied issues within NATO with distinguishable traditions and schools of thought. However, this pertinent question has been rarely discussed extensively by academics. The key idea of the book is to make burden-sharing more understandable as a historical, contemporary and future phenomenon. The authors take a comprehensive look at what is actually meant with burden-sharing and how it has evolved as a concept and a real-life phenomenon through the 70 years of NATO’s existence.

This book states that burden-sharing is one of the most persisting sources for tension and disagreement within NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organisation). It also belongs to one of the most studied issues within NATO with distinguishable traditions and schools of thought. However, this pertinent question has been rarely discussed extensively by academics. The key idea of the book is to make burden-sharing more understandable as a historical, contemporary and future phenomenon. The authors take a comprehensive look at what is actually meant with burden-sharing and how it has evolved as a concept and a real-life phenomenon through the 70 years of NATO's existence. Tommi Koivula is professor of Strategy at the Department of Warfare, the Finnish National Defence University. Heljä Ossa is a researcher and a PhD student at the Department of Warfare at the Finnish National Defence University. .

The NATO Allies agreed at the September 2014 Wales Summit to spend at least two percent of their gross domestic products (GDPs) on defense by 2024. This commitment has become a point of contention among the Allies and a distraction from the imperative of improving the Alliance's burden sharing system. The GDP-based burden sharing policy has not proven to be effective or fair, and its implementation has been subject to national political and economic constraints. NATO as a whole has struggled to sufficiently fund the capabilities necessary for its mission effectiveness, even as individual Allies (above all, the United States) have spent enormous amounts on defense. At the same time, some Allies have made significant security contributions

The paper is an analytical study of an issue which could severely disturb the cohesion of NATO. Burden sharing can be regarded as one of the fundamental principles of an alliance consisting of sovereign states. The members of NATO repeatedly declared their willingness to share the risks, costs, and responsibilities as well as the benefits of the common defense. In the U.S. many people believe that the European Allies share an insufficient part of the common defense burden. In fact, this perception is true if burden sharing would be only a matter of comparing financial contributions. However there are several other factors which are also analyzed and assessed. Despite the current controversy it should be emphasized that the basic common interest of NATO to counter the Warsaw Pact's military threat has not changed. The security and prosperity of Europe and North America still depends--and will depend--on a strong NATO. However, burden sharing is a prerequisite for maintaining solidarity and cohesion within NATO. Therefore, the recommendations offer at least a partial solution of the controversy. (kr).

Seminar paper from the year 2014 in the subject Politics - General and Theories of International Politics, grade: 1,7, Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg (Institut für Politische Wissenschaft), course: Mastercourse: The EU and the US in the evolving multipolar world order, language: English, abstract: NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) experienced an interesting and – speaking of a military alliance – an unparalleled development in recent years. It changed from an alliance of collective defense with a declared enemy to a multifunctional alliance for collective security. Not only was and is it the only contractual basis between the partners on both sides of the Atlantic but – despite all differences – it was to form a community of values among its members. However, it is rather uncertain to predict whether or not both sides of the Atlantic will continue in that mentality. Therefore based on two possible trends regarding NATO, the author of this work is going to examine how the relationship of the alliance changed or is going to change on principle and in some particular cases of “out of area” operations and stabilizing missions. Within this context future possibilities, political wills on both sides of the Atlantic, as well as alternative regional approaches in regard to this type of tasks will be observed here. Subject to this survey are also current developments and fundamental strategic considerations regarding the transatlantic relationship within NATO context and burden sharing.

This book, first published in 1983, analyses the debate around burden-sharing in NATO, where the main issue is the distribution amongst the allies of the burden of maintaining the security arrangement. This raises problems of defining, measuring and comparing the defence efforts of the various countries. This book examines the issues, and argues for the need to address directly the fundamental problems concerning the Cold War security relationship between the United States and Western Europe.

War, as Clausewitz reminds, is the most uncertain of human political and social activities. It also imposes burdens. In an alliance among states for the promotion of collective defense or security, such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), burdens have to be shared. This study looks at the experience of the United States and other member states of NATO in four situations of multinational military intervention - Lebanon, the Persian Gulf, the Balkans, and South Asia - and considers the implications of nuclear arms reductions and nonproliferation for the US and NATO. Each case study represents an important period in the distribution of power, interest, and values, amounting to more than a sequential consideration of incidents of military intervention and/or conflict prevention. These politico-military challenges include a major coalition war, a traditional peacekeeping operation, an exercise in peace enforcement, and a conflict that combines counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism with stability and security operations.

Since NATO was founded in 1949, the issue of burden-sharing has been fiercely debated. Members have argued about what constitutes a fair contribution and who is getting the most benefit. During the early days, America's monopoly on nuclear weapons led to U.S. overcontribution and free riding by the poorer members. After NATO moved to a flexible response military strategy, conventional weapons became more relevant and burden-sharing came to be more balanced. Since the 1992 Oslo declaration committed the alliance to out-of-area crisis response, burden-sharing has changed again. Using the NATO air operations in the Balkans conflict as a case study, I show that burden-sharing has again shifted towards exploitation of wealthier members. Rather than using military expenditures as a contribution measurement, I examine aircraft and sortie contributions to the combat operations. Based on a Spearman rank correlation test using aircraft contributions, I find evidence that the rich carried a disproportional burden in the conflict. The exploitation was more pronounced when I examined the sorties flown by each nation, showing that the richer members flew their aircraft disproportionately more than the poorer ones. Examining contributions of the more complex and expensive support aircraft resulted in even stronger evidence of exploitation. In addition, the U.S. became an extreme outlier when I examined the sorties flown by these support aircraft. No other member was able to provide these critical types of sorties. These results endorse the argument that a capabilities gap exists in NATO. When I compared these defense burdens to benefit measurements, I find a lack of concordance between burdens and benefits during the Kosovo air campaign. Many European members received a larger benefit share relative to their aircraft and sortie contributions to the conflict. This suggests less cohesion in the alliance. Analysis of the contributions of support aircraft and sorties provided the strongest evidence of a three-tiered alliance with burden and benefit shares significantly out of balance. The emergence of the capabilities gap indicates that the alliance will face significant policy challenges moving forward.

Burden sharing is back. Indeed many observers of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Alliance would claim that it never went away. This is because, from its inception in 1949, NATO has never been an alliance of equals. The United States has always made the overwhelmingly larger contribution, not only for the defense of Europe under Article 5 of the NATO Treaty, but also in the numerous operations that the Alliance has carried out beyond Europe since the end of the Cold War. At one stage in the late-1950s, the United States had nearly 400,000 troops and 7,000 nuclear weapons deployed in Western Europe. It also maintained large stocks of pre-positioned equipment and sent thousands of more troops back to Europe every year for reinforcement and exercises.