The Essence of NATO Crisis: The Problem of Sharing the Collective Burden

Abstract

The issue of burden sharing in collective defense in the past and present has been the fundamental reason of the rivalries in NATO between Americans and Europeans. Fair burden-sharing focused on preventing the Communist expansion throughout the Cold War. After the Cold War focus of discussions shifted toward providing money and troops for the crisis management, security building, peace support operations, and war against terrorism. This article argues that burden sharing problem in NATO has two major dimensions; (1) every member country struggles to shift some of the burden it carries to others, (2) decisions are made according to the extent of the contribution to the alliance. Since the United States is undoubtedly the major contributor by far, American efforts of shifting some burden to other members and European reaction to American hegemony in the decision making processes are two major elements engendering crises in the organization. These two major consequences of burden sharing rivalries are affected by both international and domestic constraints as well as personalities.

Keywords

• NATO, Burden-sharing, Burden-shifting, Decision-making

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