Since NATO's establishment in 1949, the cost of providing for the collective protection of the alliance was to "be shared equitably among the member countries." This report provides a historical presentation of defense burden sharing. Determines the status of U.S. burden sharing initiatives proposed to NATO allies since 1980 and the allies' responsiveness to those initiatives, (2) the allies' record in meeting their military commitments, and (3) the effect of future force reductions on defense burden sharing. Charts and tables.

This study establishes that the political, economic and military-technological changes that transform the international system also alter the way in which a state views its and others' responsibilities and burdens for responding to international crises. It assesses the distribution of the costs of raising and supporting arms of service, the risks of deploying them overseas and using them in combat or peace operations, and the extent to which members have a responsibility for maintaining international order in the context of three instances of multinational military intervention: the Multinational Force deployment in Lebanon in 1982-83; the first Persian Gulf War in 1990-91; and the UN and NATO intervention in Bosnia-Herzegovina.

Formed in the aftermath of WWII and in the face of the emerging threat posed by the Soviet Union, the transformation that has taken place in recent years within NATO has been neither natural nor easy for the multi-national organization or the United States. When the Soviet Union ceased to exist it seemed NATO would disappear too. The rationale for a large American military deployment in Europe, described by President Eisenhower as a temporary move, no longer could be supported. This work documents the transition of the United States relationship with NATO from a focus on the defense of Western Europe to an inclusive military and political organization concerned with the security of all of Europe with the real potential for employment of its military power beyond the European continent. Despite budgeting and economic concerns raised by key members of the U.S. Congress, President George H.W. Bush supported the status quo and was caught completely off guard when the Berlin Wall fell. He and Defense Secretary Dick Cheney had not fully understood the changed strategic environment in Europe but the U.S. Congress did and offered many suggestions. NATO was saved. President Bill Clinton continued to promote the validity of NATO, expanded NATO eastwards, reduced the U.S. troop level in Europe to 100,000, and gave NATO a mission beyond warfare with the peacekeeping task in Bosnia. A new Atlantic relationship had been forged for the post-Cold War period.

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.

The Burden-Sharing Dilemma examines the conditions under which the United States is willing and able to pressure its allies to assume more responsibility for their own defense. The United States has a mixed track record of encouraging allied burden-sharing—while it has succeeded or failed in some cases, it has declined to do so at all in others. This variation, Brian D. Blankenship argues, is because the United States tailors its burden-sharing pressure in accordance with two competing priorities: conserving its own resources and preserving influence in its alliances. Although burden-sharing enables great power patrons like the United States to lower alliance costs, it also empowers allies to resist patron influence. Blankenship identifies three factors that determine the severity of this burden-sharing dilemma and how it is managed: the latent military power of allies, the shared external threat environment, and the level of a patron's resource constraints. Through case studies of US alliances formed during the Cold War, he shows that a patron can mitigate the dilemma by combining assurances of protection with threats of abandonment and by exercising discretion in its burden-sharing pressure. Blankenship's findings dismantle assumptions that burden-sharing is always desirable but difficult to obtain. Patrons, as the book reveals, can in fact be reluctant to seek burden-sharing, and attempts to pass defense costs to allies can often be successful. At a time when skepticism of alliance benefits remains high and global power shifts threaten longstanding pacts, The Burden-Sharing Dilemma recalls and reconceives the value of burden-sharing and alliances.