NATO’s Burden-Sharing Disputes: Past, Present and Future Prospects 3030935388, 9783030935382

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NATO’s Burden-Sharing Disputes Past, Present and Future Prospects Tommi Koivula Heljä Ossa

NATO’s Burden-Sharing Disputes

Tommi Koivula · Heljä Ossa

NATO’s Burden-Sharing Disputes Past, Present and Future Prospects

Tommi Koivula Finnish National Defence University Helsinki, Finland

Heljä Ossa Finnish National Defence University Helsinki, Finland

ISBN 978-3-030-93538-2 ISBN 978-3-030-93539-9 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93539-9 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Acknowledgments

A work as large as a book does not come about solely due to the efforts of its authors. It should thus be noted that we are deeply grateful to a number of colleagues and students, many of whom cannot be mentioned separately, for providing advice, support, critique and inspiration. In particular, we would like to express our deepest thanks to the colleagues at the Finnish National Defence University for many fruitful discussions and cooperation during the writing process as well as to Joonas Sipilä, Hanna Ojanen, Hanne Kiiskinen and Pasi Lepistö. In addition, commentators at various ISA, BISA and KATSE conferences have helped us to clarify our thinking and to improve this volume significantly. Moreover, the editorial team at Palgrave Macmillan and the anonymous reviewers have provided us with invaluable insights. The Finnish National Defence Support Foundation (Maanpuolustuksen kannatussäätiö ) has, in turn, given us essential financial support. In the end, our dearest thanks go to our families and spouses, Kirsi and Luis, for all their understanding and support during this occasionally straining journey.

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Contents

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Introduction

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On Burden-Sharing

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Burden-Sharing During the Cold War

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Burden-Sharing in the Post-Cold War Era

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The Changing Landscape of Burden-Sharing Since 2014

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Historical Dynamics of Burden-Sharing

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Reflections on the Future Prospects of Burden-Sharing Disputes

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Index

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About the Authors

Dr. Tommi Koivula works as Professor of Strategic and Defence Studies at the Department of Warfare, the Finnish National Defence University. He defended his Ph.D. in International Relations at the University of Tampere in 2004. Previously, he has been a lecturer at the University of Tampere and a visiting researcher at the University of Kent at Canterbury (UK) in 2001. Tommi’s current research areas include NATO, EU security and defence policy and International Relations theory. His most recent major publications include The European Union and the Use of Military Force: Uncovering the Myths (Routledge, 2016) and Arms Control in Europe: Regimes, Trends and Threats (edited with Katariina Simonen, Finnish National Defence University, 2017). He is a frequent commentator in the Finnish broadcast media. Heljä Ossa is a researcher and doctoral student at the Department of Warfare in the Finnish National Defence University. In her doctoral dissertation she focuses on European security and defence politics and how European strategic autonomy has been perceived by the United States. She has previous experience from The Royal Institute of International Affairs (Chatham House) in London, Finnish Defence Attaché Office in Berlin and European Parliament in Brussels. She works as editor at The Ulkopolitist, a Finnish online journal focused on international affairs and foreign policy. Her research interests include NATO, EU Security and Defence Policy and transatlantic relations.

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Abbreviations

BRI CFE CFSP CSCE CSDP E2I EADRCC EC ECSC EDC EDI EEAS EEC EFP ESDI ESDP ESS EU EUFOR FNC IRBM ISAF JEF KFOR NAC NACC

Belt and Road Initiative Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe EU Common Foreign and Security Policy Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe EU Common Security and Defence Policy European Intervention Initiative Euro-Atlantic Disaster Response Coordination Centre European Communities European Coal and Steel Community European Defence Community European Deterrence Initiative European External Action Service European Economic Community Enhanced Forward Presence European Security and Defence Identity European Security and Defence Policy European Security Strategy European Union European Union Force Framework Nations Concept Intermediate-Range Ballistic Missile International Security Assistance Force Joint Expeditionary Force NATO Kosovo Force North Atlantic Council North Atlantic Cooperation Council xi

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ABBREVIATIONS

NATO NRF NSPA OPEC OSCE PESCO PfP R&D RAP UN UNPROFOR VJTF WEU WU

North Atlantic Treaty Organisation NATO Response Force NATO Support and Procurement Agency Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe Permanent Structured Cooperation Partnership for Peace programme Research and Development Readiness Action Plan United Nations United Nations Protection Force Very High Readiness Joint Task Force Western European Union Western Union

List of Figures

Fig. 7.1 Fig. 7.2

Two axes of burden-sharing Four burden-sharing scenarios up until early 2030s

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CHAPTER 1

Introduction

“Continuous and Effective Self-Help and Mutual Aid” For over 70 years, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization NATO has shaped, animated and stabilised the European and transatlantic security scene. Then again, NATO has also been a forum for occasionally fierce debate among the member countries to the extent that its relevance has been questioned every now and then. One of the most persisting sources for disagreement and disputes within NATO is the question of burden-sharing—in essence, a constant need to agree on how NATO’s costs and responsibilities should be shared and organised among the members. This question has been on the Alliance’s agenda for as long as it has existed, in fact preceding its formal establishment. The basis for the burden-sharing debate is set in Article 3 of the Washington Treaty (1949), which states as follows: In order more effectively to achieve the objectives of this Treaty, the Parties, separately and jointly, by means of continuous and effective selfhelp and mutual aid, will maintain and develop their individual and collective capacity to resist armed attack.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 T. Koivula and H. Ossa, NATO’s Burden-Sharing Disputes, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93539-9_1

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The practical meaning of “continuous and effective self-help” and “mutual aid” as well as the demarcation between the two has been open to both political and academic discussion and continuous redefinition ever since the establishment of the Alliance. During its relatively long history, NATO has seen a number of transformations in its security political environment. These changes have been reflected in NATO members’ ability and willingness to bear responsibilities and to commit to the Alliance and to the security of other allies. Indeed, there has been no lack of drama in the Alliance because of burden-sharing, especially as we review developments in the twenty-first century. Arguments about defence budgets, investments and fairness of commitment in out-of-area operations have been a constant feature of the post-Cold War NATO, most recently culminating in President Trump’s threats to withdraw the US from the Alliance unless the allies increased their contributions. The debate on burdensharing has thus, in one form or another, been a constant characteristic of the Alliance throughout its history and shows no signs of disappearing from the political agenda as we progress further the 2020s. Still, despite various disputes related to burden-sharing among the allies, NATO has shown a remarkable ability to withstand and overcome periods of crises caused by these disputes. There are at least three reasons for that. To begin with, in addition to its main purpose during the Cold War of creating a credible deterrence against the Soviet Union, NATO has always had internal ambitions and objectives, too. Initially, it needed to integrate West Germany so tightly into the European and transatlantic cooperation structures that it could not pose a threat to the security of Europe again, nor drift to the “Soviet sphere of influence”, which particularly the various US administrations were concerned about. Another internal political function of NATO—that continues until today—is to calm the conflict-prone relations of some members, such as Turkey and Greece. Hence, NATO has always had political functions in addition to its military purpose. From the very beginning it has been a political forum for its members and for the broader international dialogue (Webber 2013, pp. 33–35). Another exceptional quality of NATO, adding to its ability to withstand internal disagreements, is its institutional structure. In many respects, NATO has managed to maintain its unity throughout the past decades due to its highly institutionalised character, creating incentives for the member countries to maintain the Alliance and shape their national policies according to NATO guidelines (Cottey 2006, p. 11).

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It is common that alliances create formal institutional structures but the ones of NATO are unusually extensive for an alliance: it has well-defined rules, joint decision-making procedures and a unified military structure. It is precisely the institutional structures and broad array of functions that distinguish NATO from other, more loose security communities. Thirdly, what also distinguishes NATO from most past alliances is that the strongest member, the United States, has not sought to impose its vision on others by utilizing its relative power. This stance has enabled a culture of dialogue within NATO, even during occasional disputes among members. Thus, even though the history of NATO provides us with examples of speculations and “misplaced auguries” whether a particular crisis is the last straw that breaks the Alliance (Webber 2013, p. 29; see also e.g. Freedman 1982; Kober 1983; Ratti 2009), the above qualities have fostered a culture of debate within NATO, helping the organisation to withstand long-lasting internal disagreements. Indeed, NATO is not just another military alliance on a long list of alliances that have emerged and disappeared throughout centuries. NATO has so far managed to overcome both major changes in the international security environment and various internal crises. Instead of fading away its membership has in fact steadily increased during the years. But, this state of things may not last. As the number of challenges increases and the debate about fair burdensharing intensifies, NATO faces increasing pressure that may eventually affect its ability to function.

Why a Book on NATO’s Burden-Sharing Disputes Burden-sharing belongs to one of the most studied issues within the Alliance with distinguishable scholarly traditions and extensive literature. Still, despite the fact that burden-sharing is mentioned nearly every time when discussing the internal dynamics of NATO, we argue that not enough has been said of the matter, or, to be more precise, not enough has been made to assess the phenomenon as a whole. Therefore, our objective in this book is to take a more comprehensive look at what burden-sharing is about and how it has evolved as a concept and a real-life phenomenon throughout the past decades and what kind of future these developments may entail. First, this book promotes the idea that NATO burden-sharing, and the related disputes, are evolving historical phenomena, the scope of which

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is open to change. The debate may have appeared relatively static during the Cold War decades, but since then burden-sharing agenda has seen new dimensions and its scope has expanded. Indeed, the closer we come to our own time, the more complex and broader the debate evolves, and hence the more challenging it becomes to isolate burden-sharing issues from the host of other questions. These controversies can have both immediate and longer-term policy-relevant implications on issues like NATO enlargement, out-of-area operations, relations to partner countries and NATO’s ability to act decisively on issues of collective security. Secondly, we claim that all too often, burden-sharing has been regarded as an internal NATO issue that is manageable through rational calculus. We advocate a broader reading of the issue and claim that burden-sharing should not be isolated from the overall frameworks of transatlantic dynamism or regional security. In fact, when discussing NATO burden-sharing, we should discuss the broader state of transatlantic relations and regional security, questions such as what is the level of anxiety caused by internal or external factors, how different threat perceptions among NATO members come into play, and what is the level of goodwill among the allies. In the course of this book, we will give an overview of the most significant events of NATO’s history. The focus is on burden-sharing but in order to understand the past, present and future aspects of the burden-sharing debate, one must also understand the broader transatlantic security context and the intra-alliance relations during the 70 years of NATO’s existence. This is a demanding task and we recognise the impossibility of reviewing every single event that has shaped the Alliance and its burden-sharing debate. Instead, we focus on major events and changes, some of which can be regarded as “paradigm shifts”, and study them through the burden-sharing lenses. We are interested in tensions among the allies that were caused by disputes over burdensharing, and how the allies managed to mitigate these tensions and keep NATO alive. Thirdly, we argue that NATO burden-sharing can be better understood if it is tackled as a phenomenon with elements of historical continuity and change. While burden-sharing has received substantial attention during and since the 2016 US presidential elections, it is by no means a novel question. It seems that the issue emerges and re-emerges on the transatlantic agenda every now and then, and tends to gain additional prominence particularly during transitional phases of the Alliance.

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Events like organizational reforms, enlargements, major changes in dominant military strategic thinking (for example the shifting emphasis on conventional vs. nuclear weapons in the military doctrine) or new outof-area operations have often led to intra-Alliance debates on how the new costs or additional responsibilities should be divided. We argue that the inter-member disputes of NATO can fruitfully be assessed in terms of unidirectional change on the one hand and repetition on the other. Finally, this volume suggests that the past and present of burdensharing help us to assess NATO’s future trajectory. As the famous but un-attributed phrase goes, history does not repeat itself, but it often rhymes. Based on historical experience, NATO’s internal disputes may not end up in its undoing or unravelling—despite occasional claims about “unfair” burden-sharing, no ally has thus far withdrawn from the club— but they nevertheless are apt to weaken the Alliance’s internal cohesion and thereby its ability to meet contemporary and future challenges. In the long term, such disputes may, along with other factors contribute to the overall gradual withering of the Alliance. However, the goal here is not to produce an accurate prediction of a particular future or scenario of NATO burden-sharing. Instead, the book’s approach focuses more on identifying trends and indicators related to the future of burden-sharing within NATO. As said, the literature on NATO and burden-sharing is extensive, to the extent that it is difficult to find “gaps” in it that new research could fulfil. However, in the midst of all these contributions, there have been surprisingly few efforts to assess the issue and the related academic debate as a whole, with few exceptions, such as of Stanley Sloan’s (2020) comprehensive account of transatlanticism in NATO. We don’t primarily seek to provide new conceptual tools on burden-sharing. Nor do we try to judge who does and who does not do enough in the Alliance, or to find an unambiguous method to measure fair burden-sharing—the scholarly attention on this is already rather extensive (see e.g. Gates and Terasawa 2003; Jakobsen 2018; Kivimäki 2019). Instead, the book’s main emphasis is in gathering and structuring the history and existing understandings of burden-sharing in a clarifying and hopefully innovative way and to make NATO burden-sharing disputes more understandable as a historical, contemporary and future phenomenon.

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Political and Academic Understandings of Burden-Sharing There are three consistent and essentially rational elements in NATO burden-sharing that set the framework for its different definitions and also for the related disputes: the ideas of public goods, costs and bargaining. Public goods have two inalienable elements: they are non-rivalrous and non-excludable, meaning that once a public good is provided, it is available for everyone, such as collective security in NATO’s case. These qualities of public goods create a potential free-riding problem, in which certain allies may rely on other allies to provide security that they too can enjoy while contributing less or nothing for that security. Costsharing, or burden-sharing in more general sense, is a way to measure and manage this dilemma. In NATO, cost-sharing is achieved, regulated and occasionally re-assed through bargaining by member countries. Academic scholarship gives us a plethora of definitions on burdensharing, emphasising its different dimensions. Hartley and Sandler (1999, p. 669) define it as the “actual contribution of each nation to collective defence and the fairness of each state’s contribution”. Then again, Thielemann (2003, p. 253), sees it as “the question of how costs of common initiatives or the provision of public goods should be shared between states”, while Jakobsen and Ringsmose (2017) suggest that is simply “a game”. Each of these definitions emphasises important qualities of the issue—fairness of contribution, underlying the normative dimensions at stake; share of costs, turning the attention to more technical and measurable arrangements; and the notion of game emphasizing burden-sharing’s nature as an interstate bargain; or even as a socially defined language game, the rules of which may change in the course of time. The definitions reflect the diverse branches of academic study on NATO burden-sharing. The literature can be divided roughly into two epistemological traditions: rationalist and post-positivist. The rationalist approach (see e.g. Olson and Zeckhauser 1966; Siegel 2009; Becker 2017) is characteristically deductive and relies on testing hypotheses. It can be regarded, as Zyla (2018, p. 517) puts it, “ontologically static”, meaning that it treats burden-sharing actors as rational and focuses on the cost and benefit calculations of the Alliance or its individual members. Typically, the emphasis is on measurable material facts—such as NATO allies’ physical resources, material wealth, capabilities or the physical qualities of the current security environment. Often, these material metrics are

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referred to as the starting point once NATO members discuss an equal or fair distribution of burden among themselves. Such an approach has traditionally dominated the academic literature on the topic (Zyla 2018, p. 520), with the most prominent theoretical approach, the public goods model, initiated by Olson and Zeckhauser already in 1966. Then again, it seems that at least the academic debate is gradually shifting towards more constructivist approaches. The post-positivist tradition of studying burden-sharing emphasises the socially defined nature of the issue and pays attention to discursive conventions, silences, ambiguities and deeper undercurrents regarding burden-sharing. Common to all of these is the essential role of language, as it is seen both as reflecting and constituting the evolving, even unstable, nature of the issue. In essence, burden-sharing is not seen here as an objective entity existing independently of the beholder but as something constituted and reproduced through the active use of language (see e.g. Mattelaer 2016; Kunertova 2017). NATO members and scholarly literature have produced a variety of ways to measure burden-sharing. These range from traditional indicators such as the share of GDP spent on defence to a variety of alternative military measures. Other ways to measure burden-sharing take into consideration civil indicators, such as contributions to UN humanitarian operations and foreign aid. More recent interpretations focus on individual nations’ efforts to counter-terrorist financing, export controls or sanctioning non-cooperative countries. Indeed, burden-sharing debates are affected by a wide range of indicators that give different rankings and results. In fact, what is regarded as a burden-sharing issue is very much viewpoint-dependent. As Mattelaer (2016, p. 29) fittingly puts it, the burden-sharing debate will ultimately be measured against what the Alliance wants and needs to accomplish. This goal thus remains a politically defined moving target. Individual countries tend to emphasise the indicator(s) that show that they are bearing an “unfairly” high burden of the collective defence efforts (Hartley and Sandler 1999). To formulate the idea with Alexander Wendt’s (1992) famous expression, burden-sharing is what states make of it. Moreover, controversies related to burden-sharing can also be portrayed as a repetitive transatlantic ritual (Hallams and Schreer 2012, p. 313). Ritual or not, these controversies reflect real anxieties and grievances between members and can bear policy-relevant real-life consequences.

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While taking into consideration material measures, such as GDP and defence spending metrics, we do not regard them as sufficient for a more comprehensive burden-sharing analysis. This is why it is necessary to take into account other factors that are more difficult or even impossible to measure, such as how NATO member countries contribute to crisis management operations. Moreover, we argue in this volume that the agenda of burden-sharing seems to be expanding, further blurring the focus on any clear metrics and leading to new possible ways of measuring allied contributions. Thus, what characterises our reading of NATO’s burden-sharing is the essential role of political considerations and the imbedded presence of political tension. Research has consistently shown that NATO members do contribute differently to collective defence and that these differences in spending tend to be long lasting (Becker 2017). However, public disputes on how to share the burden within NATO are not equally stable or constant. Instead, they owe their existence to conscious decisions made by policy-makers in member countries. Whatever the material facts on the field may be, the imbalances on NATO’s agenda are governed by political logic. In other words, national decision-makers are in the position to choose whether or not to turn public attention to the disparities or controversies amongst member countries. These considerations are affected by a set of changing domestic, economic, geopolitical, or technological developments, and evolving understandings of national interest in NATO member countries. This underlines the importance of burden-sharing disputes as the nucleus of the larger burden-sharing problemacy. The controversies are elementary in at least two respects: first, disputes related to burdensharing can be seen as an indicator of the internal coherence of the Alliance. Secondly, debates on burden-sharing can disguise more prominent problems such as the willingness of member countries to redefine rules and principles of its participation in the Alliance, changes in the way threats are being assessed in a given member country or the overall willingness of them to remain in NATO in the first place.

Outline of This Volume This book is an outcome of individual and original research conducted over the past three years. While some undergraduate students may find it useful, the book will primarily seek to appeal to practitioners, scholars and

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advanced students of NATO, transatlantic security, International Relations and strategic studies. The main focus is on burden-sharing disputes but the book also gives an overview of the most significant developments in European and transatlantic security in the past 70 years, which a broader audience may find insightful, too. The book is divided into seven chapters. After these introductory remarks, in Chapter 2, On Burden-Sharing, we create an overview on how burden-sharing as a concept has developed over the years and how it has been studied in the academic context, roughly divided into materialist and non-materialist lines of inquiry. In the chapter, we also clarify the starting points, hypotheses and assumptions that guide our approach to the subject matter and the efforts to analyse it. In essence, we define NATO’s burden-sharing as a historical and political concept by reviewing the main historical aspects of the burden-sharing debate and previous research literature on the phenomenon. A key issue here is the goal of identifying trends, discussion themes and indicators that help to assess the future development of burden-sharing disputes. In the chapter, we will also introduce the plan for the empirical chapters of the volume. This will be done by following consistently five more or less cyclic drivers or tracks of burden-sharing disputes: (1) geopolitical changes related to Russia, (2) US retrenchment or renewal, (3) European passivity or activism and, (4) NATO out-of-area operations, and (5) emerging issues. The story itself will start in Chapter 3, Burden-Sharing During the Cold War. In this chapter, we will give an overview of the most significant events during NATO’s Cold War years in the light of the above drivers. Our focus is on burden-sharing, but in order to understand the various aspects of the debate, one must also review the broader transatlantic security context and the various crises facing intra-alliance relations during the early decades of NATO’s existence. We will discuss the most significant ones in detail. These include the road to establishing NATO in the 1940s, the effects of Cold War rivalry on NATO and the internal tensions that took place within the Alliance during those decades. We argue that the original transatlantic burden-sharing bargain, in a nutshell, was that the US would take care of European defence and security while Europe was rebuilding its societies after the devastating World War II. The American military presence in Europe was supposed to be a temporary arrangement until Europe was capable of defending itself. We will discuss various reasons why this burden-sharing arrangement “failed” and led to a protracted setting.

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Chapter 4, Burden-Sharing in the Post-Cold War Era, continues the empirical part of the volume by discussing this increasingly multidimensional issue in a totally altered strategic setting of the years 1989–2014, again with the help of the four drivers. What is characteristic to this era was the initial collapse and ensuing relative weakness of the Soviet Union/Russia and the geographical expansion of NATO. A second major change was the introduction of out-of-area operations to NATO’s agenda, most tangibly the years-long commitment to ISAF Operation in Afghanistan but also in the Balkans and Libya, to name a few. Related to disputes concerning out-of-area operations was also the transatlantic crisis caused by the refusal of many European allies to join the US intervention in Iraq in 2003. A third major factor of the era with longstanding burden-sharing implications was the introduction of European Security and Defence Policy (later the EU Common Security and Defence Policy)—an initiative which was, in many respects, established to bolster European contribution to transatlantic and regional security but which has since received occasional suspicion across the Atlantic. Chapter 5, The Changing Landscape of Burden-Sharing Since 2014, seeks to trace the most recent developments in international relations that have an effect on burden-sharing in the “post-Crimean” security context. We assess the way in which Russia’s expansive foreign policy, based on a wide range of hybrid warfare measures, has impacted NATO’s internal cohesion and burden-sharing debate. We will then take a look at the US that, despite President Trump’s harsh rhetoric and apparent retrenchment tendencies, has remained loyal to its allies especially in NATO’s eastern flank. Another key issue-area in the chapter is the question of European “strategic autonomy”, driven by the search for stability in Europe’s southern and eastern neighbourhoods and overall uncertainty regarding the transatlantic relationship. However, in the chapter the attention turns also to the emerging drivers affecting burden-sharing dynamics. In particular, we will assess how the rise of China, pandemics and societal change within member countries manifest on NATO’s burden-sharing agenda and how they shape the Alliance discursive environment. After these three empirical chapters, the attention turns to the driving dynamics of burden-sharing disputes. Chapter 6, Historical Dynamics of Burden-Sharing, inquires the elements of continuity and change within NATO burden-sharing and factors that promote and constrain disputes. In addition, we assess whether burden-sharing controversies are just political talk, a ritual without policy level relevance, or whether they impact

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NATO’s political or strategic ability to function—in peacetime and during crisis. We argue that the concept of burden has been understood in different terms in different times, suggesting that the concept reflects the dominant threat perceptions and the overall current state of transatlantic relations. The burden-sharing disputes are different depending on their time context, the current security environment and on how the allies value the Alliance. Then again, there is a substantial amount of constraint, repetition, and continuity in the disputes as well in members’ strategies in dealing with disputes on NATO burden. It can thus be argued that both change and continuity are simultaneously present characteristics of burden-sharing disputes. Finally, Chapter 7, Reflections on the Future Prospects of BurdenSharing Disputes, sets to draw lessons from the past and project them into the near future of NATO with a 10-year perspective. This takes place by addressing three issue areas: first, what will the future burdensharing disputes be about; second, what shape will tomorrow’s dispute take; and third, what is the relevance of the issue at hand, in particular regarding its impact on NATO’s future existence. We argue that the debates continue to be driven by Russia’s geopolitical change, US retrenchment or renewal, European passivity or activism, NATO out-ofarea operations and emerging burden-sharing issues. Moreover, we claim that the future burden-sharing disputes will be located on two discursive axes of (1) limited versus open-ended burden-sharing agenda and (2) transatlanticism versus transactionalism. These axes form the basis for four scenarios of the future character of burden-sharing disputes, titled in the book as “Incapacitated NATO”, “Transatlantic bargaining”, “Selfinterested member countries” and “Transatlantic solidarity”. Overall, we argue that while NATO has thus far endured various burden-sharing disputes, it will become increasingly challenging to maintain the effectiveness of the Alliance, should the burden-sharing disputes keep expanding and mixing with other controversies.

References Becker, Jordan. 2017. The Correlates of Transatlantic Burden Sharing: Revisiting the Agenda for Theoretical and Policy Analysis. Defence & Security Analysis 33 (2): 131–157. Cottey, Andrew. 2006. NATO: Globalization or Redundancy? In Where Is NATO Going?, ed. Martin Smith, 5–22. Abingdon: Routledge.

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Freedman, Lawrence. 1982. The Atlantic Crisis. International Affairs 58 (3): 395–412. Gates, William, and Katsuaki Terasawa. 2003. Reconsidering Publicness in Alliance Defence Expenditure: NATO Expansion and Burden Sharing. Defence and Peace Economics 14 (5): 369–383. Hallams, Ellen, and Benjamin Schreer. 2012. Towards a ‘Post-American’ Alliance? NATO Burden-Sharing After Libya. International Affairs 88 (2): 313–327. Hartley, Keith, and Todd Sandler. 1999. NATO Burden-Sharing: Past and Future. Journal of Peace Research 36 (6): 665–680. Jakobsen, Jo. 2018. Is European NATO Really Free-Riding? Patterns of Material and Non-material Burden-Sharing After the Cold War. European Security 27 (4): 490–514. Jakobsen, Peter Viggo, and Jens Ringsmose. 2017. Burden-Sharing in NATO: The Trump Effect Won’t Last. Policy Brief 16/2017, Norwegian Institute of International Affairs. Kivimäki, Timo. 2019. Power, Contribution and Dependence in NATO Burden Sharing. European Security 28 (1): 66–84. Kober, Stanley. 1983. Can NATO Survive? International Affairs 59 (3): 339– 349. Kunertova, Dominika. 2017. One Measure Cannot Trump It All: Lessons from NATO’s Early Burden-Sharing Debates. European Security 26 (4): 552–574. Mattelaer, Alexander. 2016. US Leadership and NATO: Revisiting the Principles of NATO Burden-Sharing. Parameters 46 (1): 25–33. Olson, Mancur Jr., and Richard Zeckhauser. 1966. An Economic Theory of Alliances. Santa Monica: The RAND Corporation. Ratti, Luca. 2009. Back to the Future? International Relations Theory and NATO-Russia Relations Since the End of the Cold War. International Journal 64 (2): 399–422. Siegel, Scott N. 2009. Bearing Their Share of the Burden: Europe in Afghanistan. European Security 18 (4): 461–482. Sloan, Stanley. 2020. Defense of the West: Transatlantic Security from Truman to Trump. Manchester: Manchester University Press. Thielemann, Eiko R. 2003. Between Interests and Norms: Explaining BurdenSharing in the European Union. Journal of Refugee Studies 16 (3): 253–273. Webber, Mark. 2013. NATO After 9/11: Theoretical Perspectives. In NATO Beyond 9/11: The Transformation of the Atlantic Alliance, ed. Ellen Hallams, Luca Ratti, and Benjamin Zyla, 27–53. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Wendt, Alexander. 1992. Anarchy Is What States Make of It: The Social Construction of Power Politics. International Organization 46 (2): 391–425. Zyla, Benjamin. 2018. Transatlantic Burden Sharing: Suggesting a New Research Agenda. European Security 27 (4): 515–535.

CHAPTER 2

On Burden-Sharing

Empirical Considerations: The Ever-Developing Burden-Sharing Debate Indicator of NATO’s State This book argues that the disputes on burden-sharing should be placed in the context of NATO’s wider historical and political processes. Following this logic, burden-sharing as a broad topic is as old as NATO itself. In fact, questions of appropriate burden among western countries precede the formal establishment of the Alliance. Likewise, the contents of the debate have evolved throughout the Alliance’s existence. As indicated in Article 3 of the Washington Treaty (1949) quoted in this book’s introductory chapter, the Alliance members are expected to take care of their own national defence capabilities while contributing to the collective defence of the Alliance. However, the wording of the article leaves room for interpretation about fair contributions. The topics that dominated the debate in the early years of NATO were very different from the ones of today, and contemporary issues such as usability targets and national caveats hardly appeared in the early discussions (Ringsmose 2010, p. 319). In addition, the vocabulary around burden-sharing has varied in the course of time. Terms like cost-sharing, risk-sharing and burden-shifting have appeared in different historical contexts and have all slightly different

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 T. Koivula and H. Ossa, NATO’s Burden-Sharing Disputes, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93539-9_2

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meanings even though they are often used as synonyms in public discussion. A closer review shows that these concepts focus on different aspects of burden-sharing and may carry different value judgments. Indeed, the debate over burden-sharing has never been static or linear (see e.g. Driver 2016). Instead, it is very much periodic, even cyclical, and only appears in NATO’s political agenda every now and then, most often when facing crises stemming either from inside the Alliance or from the changing international security environment. Usually, burden-sharing disputes tend to co-inside with transitional phases of the Alliance, such as organizational reforms, enlargement processes, changes in military strategic thinking or new out-of-area operations. One can also approach the issue from another angle and argue that burdensharing has been raised on NATO’s agenda whenever individual members have experienced major inequity in contributions (Hartley and Sandler 1999, p. 666). Often, this has been the case when the US has not been contented with the contributions of its European and/or Canadian allies—in fact, concern of burden-sharing has for decades been predominantly an American preoccupation (Lunn 1983, p. 3). Similarly, we can find correlation between certain economic and political events in the US and the times when burden-sharing has been raised on NATO’s political agenda and to the broader discussion (Siegel 2009; Lunn 1983). Whenever the US foreign policy has gone through periods of security and foreign policy retrenchment, the country has put more pressure on its European allies demanding them to bear their fair share of the military, economic or sometimes political burden. In turn, when its foreign policy ambitions have been high, the US has highlighted its commitment to NATO and European security and solidarity towards its allies. The pattern is similar when it comes to the economic situation in the US: during economic hardship and declining defence budgets, the US tends to put more pressure on NATO Europe and vice versa (Driver 2016, p. 9; Ringsmose 2010, p. 322). We, however, argue that the changes in US foreign policy are not the only factors that affect the burden-sharing debate but also other factors should be taken into account when assessing the historical aspects of burden-sharing. From Cost-Sharing to Risk-Sharing Traditionally the focus in the burden-sharing debate has been on financial aspects, and one of the most used ways of measuring burden-sharing

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has been reviewing how large a share of their GDP each member spends on military expenses. Even though burden-sharing is nowadays understood to comprise a much broader range of tasks than this, financial contributions and cost-sharing are still very much at the core of the debate. The basis for this lies within the logic of NATO’s funding. The daily functioning of NATO is based on direct and indirect contributions from the member countries. Direct funding is channelled through NATO’s military and civilian budgets and follow the common funding principles. Direct funding is proportional to each members’ Gross National Income1 and is based on agreed cost-sharing formulas (NATO: Funding NATO; Kivimäki 2019, p. 69; Kunertova 2017, p. 553). However, most of the NATO operations are funded by national defence spending (indirect contributions) and only a small amount of funding comes from NATO’s own budgets, the indirect voluntary contributions by member countries are considered much more relevant indicators of financial contribution than direct contributions. NATO defence ministers agreed in 2006, and restated again in 2014, that each member should spend at least 2% of their GDP on defence expenses and 20% out of that on major equipment spending. Even though the Alliance does not directly benefit from the national spending of its members, the 2% guideline is considered an indicator of how willing the members are to contribute to the common tasks of the Alliance and thus has its effect on NATO’s credibility. As of early 2020s, the European member countries and Canada spent half of what the US spent on defence, even though their combined GDP was higher than that of the US (NATO: Funding NATO). However, it is often reminded that a substantial part of the US defence spending is used in its military commitments elsewhere than in the NATO area. This is one of the most persisting sources of discord within the Alliance, and has recently shifted the burden-sharing debate again towards cost-sharing. Even when the prospective Alliance members still held negotiations on the creation of an alliance, they created economic, social and political constraints that aimed at passing as much of their burden on other 1 The only exception is the US, who is compensated as a result of its national spending that is higher than that of any other member country. Taking into account the discount that the US receives, the largest proportional share of the common funding comes from Germany (Kivimäki 2019, p. 69; Mattelaer 2016, p. 27).

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allies as possible, thus creating a situation that can be labelled as burdenshifting (Ringsmose 2010, p. 321; Lunn 1983, p. 12). Burden-shifting is a constant balancing act where the allies attempt to accommodate their responsibilities while simultaneously limiting their contributions to advance national interests and to ration scares resources. Domestic politics may be a reason why member countries, such as Germany, pose restrictions for their non-financial actions in alliance operations and thus shift their burdens to other allies especially when it comes to highintensity warfare. This is sometimes labelled as “non-material free-riding” or “chequebook diplomacy” (Jakobsen 2018, p. 508; Ringsmose 2010, p. 328). Relying on national restrictions and caveats is a worrying trend since it can lead to a “two-tiered alliance” situation where some countries carry the burden of dangerous operational tasks taking remarkable risks while others only contribute financially. There are also opposite examples, such as Denmark, that fail to meet their defence budget targets but contribute to expeditionary operations far more than many other members that have higher military spending (Mattelaer 2016, p. 29; Jakobsen and Rynning 2019). After the end of the Cold War NATO’s growing task list led to a shift from collective defence to crisis management and cooperative security (Zyla 2016; Sperling and Webber 2009). The Alliance’s new responsibilities expanded towards out-of-area operations and crisis management missions, which brought new dimensions to burden-sharing debate that until then had been fuelled mostly by disagreements on who should pay and how much. The burden-sharing discussion gained new elements related to risk-sharing , particularly during the mission in Afghanistan (2001–2014) (Kunertova 2017, p. 556; Jakobsen 2018, p. 494; Dorman 2012, p. 310). Participating in military missions outside of NATO’s territorial area became an integral part of contributing to the common burden, which increased the attention paid on the quality of contributions—questions such as who sends troops to the most dangerous areas, who suffers most casualties and who creates national caveats, gained a great deal of political and scholarly attention (see Kunertova 2017; Sperling and Webber 2009; Jakobsen 2018; Ringsmose 2010; Zyla 2016, 2018). It was no longer enough that members contributed financially if they failed to participate in actual operative side of the missions. Another important factor in the expanding burden-sharing debate in the post-Cold War era has been NATO’s enlargement to Central and Eastern Europe. The enlargement process extended the range of threat

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perceptions within the Alliance and thus further increased the complexity of burden-sharing debate. Especially the Eastern and Central European members are more interested in the traditional territorial defence after the annexation of Crimea in 2014, which is not as high on southern members’ security agenda (Jakobsen 2018, p. 491; Béraud-Sudreau and Giegerich 2018, pp. 55–59). It has thus become increasingly challenging to accommodate various security interests in a situation where states have differing threat perceptions and limited resources. This naturally has had an effect on the burden-sharing debate. Since the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, collective defence has returned on the top of NATO’s priorities. NATO has, however, not abandoned its role as a crisis management organisation, even though this core task has received less attention since 2014. Thus, there is a tension between NATO’s expanding agenda and its scarce resources. This tension calls for constant bargaining and balancing.

Theoretical Considerations of Burden-Sharing Rationalist Approaches Aside to its existence in the political realm, burden-sharing has been covered with a sizable and vibrant academic literature throughout the decades. This literature can be divided roughly into two epistemological traditions: rationalist and post-positivist. The emphasis of the rationalist approach has typically been on measurable material facts, such as allies’ physical resources, material wealth, capabilities or the physical qualities of the current security environment. Then again, the post-positivist approaches have widened the scope of the burden-sharing research from economic and public good theories to comprise more social and political perspectives such as risk-sharing and public norms on war. As argued in the introductory chapter, NATO burden-sharing entails three consistent and rational elements that set the framework for its different definitions and also for the related disputes: the ideas of public goods, costs and bargaining. Public goods have two inalienable elements: they are non-rivalrous and non-excludable, meaning that once a public good is provided, it is available for everyone, such as collective security in NATO’s case. These qualities of public goods create a potential freeriding problem, in which certain allies may rely on other allies to provide security that they too can enjoy while contributing less or nothing for

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that security. Cost-sharing, or burden-sharing in more general sense are ways to measure and manage this dilemma. In NATO, cost-sharing is achieved, regulated and occasionally re-assessed through bargaining by Alliance members. The rationalist approaches have traditionally dominated the academic literature on burden-sharing and many contributions to the literature have assumed ontologically and epistemologically positivist approaches (see e.g. Becker 2017; Olson and Zeckhauser 1966; Hartley and Sandler 1999; Siegel 2009). Rationalist approaches can be regarded as ontologically static, meaning that they treat burden-sharing actors as rational and focus on the cost and benefit calculations of the Alliance or its individual members, and seek to explain NATO’s burden-sharing through the transatlantic power relations and state interests (Zyla 2018, p. 517). The rationalist approaches are characteristically deductive and rely on testing hypotheses. Typically, the emphasis has been on measurable material facts related to the issue, such as NATO members’ physical resources and capabilities, allies’ military expenditure and the costs and benefits of belonging to the Alliance (see e.g. Sandler and Murdoch 2000; Gates and Terasawa 2003). As argued above, these material metrics are often referred to as the starting point once NATO members discuss an equal or fair distribution of burden among themselves. The burden-sharing literature has been dominated by the so-called input–output debate for several decades. Inputs refer to the resources with which each member country contributes to the Alliance, while outputs are the actual capabilities made possible by these contributions (Lunn 1983, p. 54). For a long time, the burden-sharing literature was focused on input measures, and as a consequence ontologically materialistic and theoretically rationalist research dominated the scholarly spheres. This kind of quantitative, materially focused research gives particular attention to the system and state level variables. When it comes to burden-sharing, the contributions of NATO members are measured on the basis of how many troops each country provides or how much they contribute financially to the Alliance (Zyla 2018, p. 516). The most used and accepted input measurement, though by no means uncriticised, is member country’s defence spending as a share of its GDP (Gross Domestic Product) (Hartley and Sandler 1999, p. 674). Examining the statistics of military spending, it is possible to some extent predict the balance between investments and capabilities of the Alliance, but also the burden-sharing among members. Studies have shown that countries that invest more in defence

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and military equipment also bear a larger share of the operational burden of the Alliance (Becker 2017, p. 135). In other words, their input to the Alliance is large. In addition to the GDP measurement, NATO defence planners evaluate how the members fulfil and implement the national capability targets and how many per cent of their forces are deployable to out-of-area operations (Mattelaer 2016, pp. 26–27). Olson and Zeckhauser were the first ones to examine burden-sharing through collective action theories and suggested already in 1966 that NATO’s collective defence is a public good (Olson and Zeckhauser 1966; see also Zyla 2016, pp. 305–306). For a long time, the discussion on burden-sharing focused on the economic theory of alliances, security and collective defence as public goods and on the free-riding possibility that is characteristic of public goods (Ringsmose 2010). Public goods have two elements: they are non-rivalrous and non-excludable. In NATO’s case this means that one member country’s consumption of public goods, for example nuclear deterrence through collective defence, does not prevent other members from enjoying the same benefit. Once a public good is provided, they are available for everyone. Private goods, on the contrary, are rivalrous and excludable, meaning that they can be consumed only once or at least they get spent over time and only the actor that has paid the cost of the good can benefit from it. For example, ammunition produced by a certain NATO member belongs to that member and can be used by it unless given to others. According to the classic economic theories of alliances, the non-rivalry and non-excludability of public goods creates a free-riding problem, which means that certain allies rely on other allies to provide security that they too can enjoy (Hartley and Sandler 1999 p. 666; Jakobsen 2018, p. 490). Since security and deterrence are sufficiently available for everyone within the Alliance anyway, why would a single member country contribute to the common burden? According to collective action models, the main public good provided by NATO in the 1950s and 1960s was its nuclear deterrence that Alliance members with nuclear weapons, mainly the US, made possible. Other members could enjoy security provided by nuclear states without contributing to the nuclear arsenal. Nuclear deterrence is thus an example of a pure public good. Conventional arms, on the other hand, are not public goods since it is usually a single state that funds and benefits from them, which makes free-riding more difficult. NATO adopted the flexible response strategy in 1967 after which its strategy moved from pure nuclear deterrence (public good) towards more conventional

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warfare (private good) during the 1970s, and thus reduced the opportunities for free-riding (Hartley and Sandler 1999, p. 667; Jakobsen 2018, p. 493; Solomon 2004, p. 251). The strategic shift towards combining nuclear and conventional weapons can be explained by joint product model, according to which capabilities that combine nuclear and traditional weaponry are less public, more country-specific and thus less prone to free-riding. This refined version of Olson and Zeckhauser’s public goods theory claims that since member countries receive private benefits, they are more willing to shoulder some of the common burden of the alliance (Zyla 2016, p. 306; Jakobsen and Jakobsen 2019, p. 139; Gates and Terasawa 2003, p. 371; Kunertova 2017, p. 556, Jakobsen 2018, p. 493). Still, despite the flexible response strategy, NATO and especially the European allies, were weak in terms of conventional force throughout the 1970s, which meant that the Alliance’s deterrence was still very much based on the nuclear threat provided by the US (Tonelson 2000, p. 35). In the post-Cold War era free-riding appears to be an issue especially in out-of-area operations. NATO considers the stability and peace brought by its out-of-area operations as public goods that cannot be narrowed down to only those countries that participate in an operation. All member countries, and also non-member countries, can enjoy the positive results of the operation, which makes them non-excludable. The allies thus have little incentive to participate financially or militarily in the operations and instead are tempted to free-ride on others. As a result, only a small number of member countries are investing adequately in forces needed in the peacekeeping missions and small NATO members have a chance to exploit the large ones (Jakobsen 2018, p. 493; Hartley and Sandler 1999, 675; Ringsmose 2010, p. 329), broadening the burden-sharing and risk-sharing debate to areas that were not relevant during the Cold War years. However, the counter argument to the public goods theory states that smaller states are dependant on the security guarantees provided to them by larger states when it comes to their national security. The fear that larger states, mainly the US, would withdraw their support in case of a conflict in their own territorial area usually gives enough incentive for smaller states to contribute to out-of-area operations. Thus, the conventional defence of Europe may actually depend on the European members’ contributions to (US-led) out-of-area operations, which makes it nonrivalrous but not non-excludable (Ringsmose 2010, p. 335; Kivimäki 2019, p. 73). Also, critics of Olson and Zeckhauser’s theory claim that the

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non-excludability requirement of the public goods theory is not possible when considering the internal dynamics of the Alliance in the real-world setting. Even during the Cold War, when free-riding was easier, smaller NATO members that failed to meet the demands of larger members had a risk of being sanctioned, abandoned in the case of a crisis or even excluded from the Alliance. This reasoning leads to the argument that the public goods of NATO are actually not pure non-excludable public goods but club goods. Since club goods are excludable, larger Alliance members have the means to sanction smaller members attempting to freeride. As smaller members are forced to cooperate, the free-riding problem will diminish (Ringsmose 2010, pp. 324–325; Gates and Terasawa 2003, p. 370). Post-positivist Approaches Statistics and economic analyses on inputs are “extremely powerful predictors of future military capabilities and capacity” (Becker 2017, p. 135). They do not, however, tell the whole story about burden-sharing. In particular, the political and social framework of burden-sharing call for attention to other dimensions than just material and financial inputs and purely rationalist research agenda. The end of the Cold War was a turning point that problematized and questioned the rationalist power and interest-based theories’ explanatory power on burden-sharing (Zyla 2018, pp. 522–523). Neorealism, neoliberalism and even constructivism could not predict the collapse of the Soviet Union nor NATO’s future after the end of the Cold War. NATO adapted institutionally, pursued new agendas and increased its membership number but all this happened unattached to any academic predictions. In other words, international relations theories followed the real-world events, not the other way around (Barany and Rachhaus 2011, p. 299). In the new security context, where the importance of collective defence as a public good had diminished, it became increasingly challenging to explain NATO’s purpose by power relations. Assuming new responsibilities, it became clear that NATO could produce more than one type of public goods and that the member countries (the burden-sharing actors) have changing values, preferences and perhaps even identities. These are only a few reasons why scholarly focus on purely material aspects of burden-sharing was no longer enough but required a

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more comprehensive approach that takes also non-material aspects into consideration. Since then the burden-sharing literature has seen a stream of nonmaterialist and post-positivist approaches that consider not only the military and economic contributions of NATO members but also the social, political and historical context in which the Alliance and its members operate. The shift has widened the scope of research and the focus has moved further from economic theories and public good theories to comprise topics such as risk-sharing and public norms on war (Jakobsen 2018, pp. 494, 497). Characteristically, these post-positivist approaches align with the institutionalist approach in viewing NATO as an institution, not merely a military alliance (Wallander 2000). NATO is seen as a transatlantic security community that has shared values and norms and the ability to change members’ preferences. Member countries are thus not only interested in rational cost–benefit calculations but are also driven by normative values and ideas. Hence, constructivist approaches pay attention to the social processes that constitute decision-makers’ beliefs, identities and ideas which again effect the way they understand international relations and more narrow concepts such as burden-sharing (Zyla 2016, p. 315; 2018, p. 523). The constructivist approaches emphasise the socially defined nature of burden-sharing and focus on discursive conventions, silences, ambiguities and deeper undercurrents regarding the topic. Common to all of these is the essential role of language, as it is seen both as reflecting and constituting the evolving, even unstable nature of the issue. In essence, burden-sharing is not seen as an objective entity existing independently of the beholder but as something constituted and reproduced through the active use of language (see e.g. Mattelaer 2016; Kunertova 2017). In addition, constructivist approaches on burden-sharing take state identities and ideas into the centre of scrutiny arguing that they are constructed through social processes and are a consequence of decisionmakers’ beliefs, values and ideas. In the burden-sharing context this means that changes in decision-makers’ beliefs, values and ideas can also change burden-sharing policies and transatlantic relations (Zyla 2018, p. 523; Jakobsen 2018). Constructivist approaches criticise rationalist and materially focused approaches for their focus on calculating the costs and benefits of belonging to an alliance and observing how much member countries contribute financially. Particular criticism has been directed towards any

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fixed metrics of burden-sharing, such as the 2% of GDP on military expenses endorsed at NATO 2014 Summit. There are various reasons for criticism: the 2% benchmark is politically constructed and in many cases unrealistic to achieve, it does not take into consideration how member countries perceive their different security environments, and it is disconnected from the social, political, geographical and historical context (Kunertova 2017; Hartley and Sandler 1999). Many European allies, in particular, prefer spending money on concrete capability improvements “rather than blindly increas[ing] their military spending” (Kunertova 2017, p. 554). In other words, the constructivist argument goes, concentrating solely on numbers does not tell us much about the quality nor the actual improvements in the Alliance capabilities. Moreover, countries’ defence budgets as a share of their GDP tell us nothing about its citizens’ willingness to fight for their own country or for the Alliance as a whole (Jakobsen and Jakobsen 2019). Nor does the share of GDP spent on defence tell us if it has been spent on national military purposes or on the Alliance as a whole. For example, the US has a great deal of military responsibilities in Asia–Pacific that do not consider NATO. In fact, when calculating the direct US expenses on European defence, the amount is only 5.6% of total US defence spending (Béraud-Sudreau 2019). Criticism has also been placed on rationalist approaches’ extensive focus on the quantitative side of burden-sharing which simplifies the complex phenomenon and neglects the normative, historical and practical aspects of burden-sharing (Kunertova 2017). Especially in the post-Cold War era when NATO’s agenda has expanded from traditional collective territorial defence towards out-of-area operations, more attention in the literature has been given to broader perspectives of burden-sharing. For example, should development aid, humanitarian operations and postconflict rebuilding efforts be included in it? Countries that are keen on contributing to the “hard measures” of security, such as military interventions, tend to be less interested in the “soft measures” of security, such as receiving refugees (Kivimäki 2019, p. 70; Boyer 1989). Considering this, even though the military imbalance between the US and Europe is still large, it becomes smaller if we take into account the political and economic contributions of Europe as well. On the other hand, it is worth contemplating whether labelling development aid or rebuilding efforts as part of burden-sharing have actually been part of the reason why the traditional military capabilities of many European armed forces have been neglected in recent decades.

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The Approach of This Volume Combining Positivist and Post-positivist Approaches Some scholars argue that since rationalist models are mostly interested in material variables and cost–benefit analysis, they have a very limited explanatory power over the various burden-sharing dimensions, especially in the post-Cold War context (Zyla 2018, pp. 522, 528). We, however, do not wish to disregard the realist, institutionalist and other rationalist accounts of International Relations and their explanatory power when assessing burden-sharing disputes. Our guiding assumption is that even though alliances and interstate co-operation are sometimes difficult to achieve and to sustain because of relative-gains considerations and concerns about cheating, states nevertheless construct not just short-lived alliances, but also more permanent institutions in order to overcome security challenges they cannot manage alone (Grieco 1988; Mearsheimer 1994; Wallander 2000). Institutions may mitigate disputes amongst participating states, and may also develop a degree of agency. In NATO’s case, the Alliance has an integrated military command, a secretary general, and an international staff comprised of military and civilian personnel. NATO burden-sharing disputes should be seen as a continuous struggle within a commonly agreed framework that keeps on evolving. In this book, our aim is to analyse what the burden-sharing debate tells us about NATO and its evolving security context. We pay attention to the major events in the history of international relations that have raised the burden-sharing debate on the very top of NATO’s agenda, and consider what might be an event of similar scale that could possibly turn out to be fatal for NATO in the future. We do not take burden-sharing debate as a phenomenon that happens separated from other events and developments of international relations but as a cause and consequence that shapes the relations and is also shaped by them. In other words, we approach burden-sharing as a socially constructed inter-subjective phenomenon (Zyla 2018, p. 524), while also considering the underlying power structures, state interests and bargains that affect burden-sharing. Instead of analysing NATO’s burden-sharing purely through IR theories or anchoring our research on one singular theory, we find it more appropriate to conduct historical analysis in the spirit of analytical eclecticism that we use as a comprehensive viewing point to the burden-sharing debate. Theories have an essential role in International Relations: they simplify and generalize the complexity of the world and allow us to make

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abstractions of the reality we live in. They help us to identify relevant facts and factors and to understand causal relations between events. Theories also challenge assumptions that are taken for granted and can change the way we view the world. There is a wide range of different theories within the IR discipline that view the same topic from different perspectives. Different theories—were they explanatory, normative or interpretive—do not even attempt to explain everything or gain the position of an “allexplaining” theory but view the world from a specific perspective. Still, what most theories have in common, is that they attempt to explain as much as possible with as few variables as possible (Hyde-Price 2016, pp. 23–30). However, when studying an organisation as complex as NATO, relying only on one specific theory and analytical perspective is likely to prove to be insufficient. A single theory can explain certain aspects of the complexity but cannot give an all-arching explanation of NATO’s character, role or purpose (Hyde-Price 2016, p. 29). Hence, to understand NATO’s various roles and functions, one must approach it from different theoretical perspectives, and rely on theoretical pluralism and eclecticism. This approach allows us to combine different theoretical approaches with practice, and to examine problems that stem from the real world—a need so characteristic to NATO’s burden-sharing problemacy. In eclecticism the “empirical puzzle” determines the theory and analytical strategies, not the other way around (Hyde-Price 2016, p. 30). The approach is thus problem-driven, not paradigm-driven, which leads to the interest in large and complex problems. In fact, analytical eclecticism goes “beyond paradigms”, meaning that it explores the hidden connections between elements previously bound by paradigmatic restrictions (Sil and Katzenstein 2010b, p. 2). Analytical eclecticism is not interested in testing narrow theories or filling gaps in previous IR research. Instead, it focuses both on quantitative and qualitative variables and this way aims at creating a more holistic point of view than traditional International Relations theories alone can (Zyla 2018, pp. 517–518; Webber 2013, p. 36; see also Sil and Katzenstein 2010a). This is particularly important in studies that have a strong policy-relevance, such as this. Analytical eclecticism is by no means without criticism. Despite his support for eclecticism, Hyde-Price (2016, p. 30) argues that it does not offer an alternative or an end for inter-paradigm debates (such as neorealism versus neoliberalism) for the simple reason that eclecticism lives from these debates and from different paradigmatic approaches.

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Eclectic approaches are—in the words of Hyde-Price—“parasitic intellectual activities” and live from “the efforts of those working in distinct paradigms or theoretical traditions”. He also warns that the “pick ‘n mix” approach of analytical eclecticism may lead to inadequate findings that have little to contribute to the discipline due to the difficulties of increasing knowledge cumulatively. Still, in spite of the shortcomings, we find that theoretical pluralism and eclecticism are needed when studying the complexity of NATO. As any other international institution, NATO is based on both material and ideational factors. Revealing and understanding them requires various theoretical approaches, analytical tools, concepts and principles that a single IR theory may not be able to provide (Hyde-Price 2016, pp. 31–32). Combining both material and ideational factors, analytic eclecticism gives us an opportunity to study burden-sharing both as an outcome of certain constant elements and different contributions (positivist understanding) and as a social process (post-positivist understanding). Relying on analytical eclecticism, we can consider material and structural factors of burden-sharing while combining them with social and ideational factors, such as norms, values and beliefs and also power structures in a broader sense than rationalist theories can (Zyla 2018, pp. 517–519). This enables us to analyse why burden-sharing trends exist and how they have occurred at a particular time. Some may condemn this kind of holistic approach as a diversion from NATO members’ financial responsibilities, but it is particularly necessary when attempting to understand the increasingly complex global security context (Jakobsen 2018). The Arrow and Cycle of Burden-Sharing Disputes in Five Tracks of Inquiry Reflecting these thoughts, we see burden-sharing as a historical, political and social phenomenon and as a constantly evolving process. NATO burden-sharing should not be considered as an independent phenomenon that can be studied separated from the larger transatlantic context. This is why it is essential to conduct the analysis through historical and contemporary events that have shaped the debate and which have been shaped by it. In other words, we approach here the burden-sharing debates as a “two-way road” that both affect international relations but are also affected by them.

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A good theory should help us to reveal patterns. In the burdensharing context this means finding how certain events and developments have changed the Alliance and how the future may look like. When conducting assessment of the future like this, one must bear in mind that social sciences cannot offer deterministic generalisations or definitive outcomes—only probabilities (Webber 2013, p. 46). The methodological literature on strategic forecasting can be divided into two wide approaches or traditions: efforts to forecast the future based on historical experiences and efforts that seek to model past cases systematically with game theoretical or mathematical tools. This volume assumes the starting point of inference on the basis of past events. This takes place by collecting empirical data and making generalizations and conclusions based on that data with the help of inference of past events. As said, our goal is not to produce an accurate forecast of a particular future or scenario. This choice is based on understanding that the more precise an estimate is, the more likely it is to fail. There simply is no way of knowing the future course of events and educated guesses—even though relatively common in the service of administrations in a number of countries—do not fulfil the requirements of a serious scholarly undertaking at least in the domains of politics or international relations. Instead, we can gain a more usable understanding of the future of NATO’s burden-sharing disputes by seeking to identify trends, discussion themes and other indicators that help to assess its future development.2 We conceptualise the driving dynamics of burden-sharing by utilising the notions of time’s arrow and time’s cycle. The notions of arrow and cycle are intellectually old but powerful pair of metaphors. Time’s arrow captures the uniqueness and distinctive character of sequential events. Through the lenses of the arrow metaphor, history is seen as an evolutionary and irreversible process which cannot be turned back. Then again, the metaphor of time’s cycle provides these events with another kind of meaning by evoking lawfulness and predictability. Both perspectives serve as heuristic devices in assessing complex and long-term phenomena, such as NATO burden-sharing disputes, even though we should be suspicious

2 It is important to distinguish estimate from prediction here. The latter explicates what will happen. It is based on the idea that only one outcome will be realised. However, an estimate essentially sees the future as undetermined and beyond our knowledge. It therefore deals more with likelihoods than certainties. For a more detailed discussion, see Lowenthal (2017, pp. 198, 452).

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of any unqualified answer. In addition, they invite us to make inferences about the future on the basis of past events (Gould 1987, pp. 10–11; Jervis 1991/1992, pp. 44–45; Koivula 2021, pp. 148–150). So do NATO burden-sharing disputes have a direction of certain kind—or are they more about repetition or enduring relevance of certain recurring patterns? Western intellectual thinking since the times of the Enlightenment has often emphasised the “arrowness” of history—such as commonplace notions of universal progress or possibly a more modern version as a one-way path to some kind of catastrophe. Yet, the theme of “cyclicality” is also very appealing in many interpretations—political realism’s ideas of the anarchic nature of the state system and the enduring repetition of interstate conflicts being one example of it (Koivula 2021, pp. 148–150). In the following three chapters, we will search indications of arrowness and cyclicality in NATO burden-sharing disputes from its establishment until the early 2020s. This will be done by following Koivula’s (2021, pp. 153–154) discussion of four tracks of burden-sharing disputes consistently in each chapter—(1) geopolitical changes related to Russia, (2) US foreign policy retrenchment or renewal, (3) European passivity or activism, and (4) significant NATO out-of-area operations. Each of these tracks has been a platform for burden-sharing disputes in the course of NATO’s history. They do not appear in turns or in any specific order, but may appear in political space simultaneously so that NATO has often faced several burden-sharing disputes of varying intensities at the same time. Likewise, the frequency of their appearance in the political agenda is random and, as we argue, can be observed as cycles. Moreover, the four tracks should not be seen as co-equal or as an exhaustive typology of burden-sharing disputes—there are also other arenas of intra-NATO disputes into which we will return later. Nevertheless, each of these four tracks has its specific social and political logic in influencing the direction and tone of burden-sharing disputes. First, large-scale geopolitical changes, either contractions or expansionist moves related to Russia have tended to raise challenges related to NATO’s burden-sharing. Historically, changes in Russia’s position have led either to NATO’s expansion or to added need to support exposed member countries. Both are in turn apt to lead to intra-NATO discussions on how to manage and finance such changes. Russia-related developments seem to materialise in the political space of NATO’s burden-sharing disputes in the form of questions on how to accommodate the costs

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related to NATO enlargement or how to share responsibility of exposed NATO members (Koivula 2021, pp. 153–154). Second, the phases of US retrenchment and renewal with respect to its central leadership role in the Alliance seem to correlate with NATO’s burden-sharing tensions. This source of burden-sharing tension dates also to the early phases of the Alliance. Simply put, when Washington has sought a retrenchment from the world, it has traditionally increased pressure on Europe to do more. Then again, during times of increased foreign policy ambition, the US turned first to its traditional leadership role in the Atlantic Alliance (Driver 2016, p. 14). The specific burden-sharing tension related to US involvement relates above all to overall Alliance defence expenditure (Koivula 2021, pp. 153–154). Third, the debate has on a number of occasions circled around the proper level of commitment of non-US, particularly European, NATO members. This cluster of disputes has involved questions of possible growth of European strategic autonomy, above all in the light of the emergence and growth of the EU Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), the relative weight of military vs. non-military contributions to Alliance collective security (Driver 2016, pp. 12–13), or in a wider sense diverging American vs. “European” strategic cultures (see e.g. Gordon 2003, p. 73; Zyla 2015; Hyde-Price 2004). They point to wider cultural divides within the Alliance and suggest a relatively permanent undercurrent in burden-sharing disputes. This problemacy disembarks on intra-NATO question of the relative weight of military vs. non-military contributions to collective security (Koivula 2021, pp. 153–154). Fourth, a correlation seems to exist between burden-sharing disputes and military operations either by NATO or by US-led coalitions. The debate has taken many forms, including questions on who pays, who should participate or how the participation should take place. While the disputes related to out-of-area operations were formally absent from NATO agenda during the Cold War, member country operations or campaigns outside of NATO’s borders did have an effect also on the intra-Alliance relations. However, more directly during the post-Cold War era. The types of burden-sharing disputes aggravated in this context deal above all with questions of who does what in out-of-area operations, who takes risks and who eschews them by employing caveats (Koivula 2021, pp. 153–154). Finally, if these four tracks or drivers characterise the main respects of burden-sharing disputes during NATO’s turbulent history, there are

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also emerging issues reflecting the growth of complexity in NATO’s security environment, which will constitute the fifth track of inquiry later in the book. A number of diverse issues are covered here ranging from geopolitical changes to societal and technological factors. Transactionalist trends, China’s growing political, economic and military influence and even the Covid-19 pandemic have already produced new burdensharing issues within the Alliance and are likely to expand the debate further in the future. As NATO assumes more responsibilities to address the security challenges of the twenty-first century, also the burden-sharing debate gains new dimensions. These emerging issues will be discussed in Chapter 5.

References Barany, Zoltan, and Robert Rachhaus. 2011. Explaining NATO’s Resilience: Is International Relations Theory Useful? Contemporary Security Policy 32 (2): 286–307. Becker, Jordan. 2017. The Correlates of Transatlantic Burden Sharing: Revisiting the Agenda for Theoretical and Policy Analysis. Defence & Security Analysis 33 (2): 131–157. Béraud-Sudreau, Lucie. 2019. On the Up: Western Defence Spending in 2018. IISS Military Balance Blog, 15 February. https://www.iiss.org/blogs/ military-balance/2019/02/european-nato-defence-spending-up. Accessed 11 July 2019. Béraud-Sudreau, Lucie, and Bastian Giegerich. 2018. NATO Defence Spending and European Threat Perceptions. Survival 60 (4): 53–74. Boyer, Mark A. 1989. Trading Public Goods in the Westerns Alliance System. Journal of Conflict Resolution 33 (4): 700–727. Dorman, Andrew M. 2012. NATO’s 2012 Chicago Summit: A Chance to Ignore the Issues Once Again? International Affairs 88 (2): 301–312. Driver, Darrell. 2016. Burden Sharing and the Future of NATO: Wandering Between Two Worlds. Defense & Security Analysis 32 (1): 4–18. Gates, William, and Katsuaki Terasawa. 2003. Reconsidering Publicness in Alliance Defence Expenditure: NATO Expansion and Burden Sharing. Defence and Peace Economics 14 (5): 369–383. Gordon, Philip. 2003. Bridging the Atlantic Divide. Foreign Affairs 82 (1): 70– 83. Gould, Stephen Jay. 1987. Time’s Arrow, Time’s Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geological Time. London: Penguin Books.

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Grieco, Joseph M. 1988. Anarchy and the Limits of Cooperation: A Realist Critique of the Newest Liberal Institutionalism. International Organization 42 (3): 498–500. Hartley, Keith, and Todd Sandler. 1999. NATO Burden-Sharing: Past and Future. Journal of Peace Research 36 (6): 665–680. Hyde-Price, Adrian. 2004. European Security, Strategic Culture, and the Use of Force. European Security 13 (4): 323–343. Hyde-Price, Adrian. 2016. Theorising NATO. In Theorising NATO: New Perspectives on the Atlantic Alliance, ed. Mark Webber and Adrian Hyde-Price, 22–40. Abingdon: Routledge. Jakobsen, Jo. 2018. Is European NATO Really Free-Riding? Patterns of Material and Non-material Burden-Sharing After the Cold War. European Security 27 (4): 490–514. Jakobsen, Jo, and Tor G. Jakobsen. 2019. Tripwires and Free-Riders: Do Forward-Deployed U.S. Troops Reduce the Willingness of Host-Country Citizens to Fight for Their Country. Contemporary Security Policy 40 (2): 135–164. Jakobsen, Peter Viggo, and Sten Rynning. 2019. Denmark: Happy to Fight, Will Travel. International Affairs 95 (4): 877–895. Jervis, Robert. 1991/1992. The Future of World Politics: Will It Resemble the Past? International Security 16 (3): 39–73. Kivimäki, Timo. 2019. Power, Contribution and Dependence in NATO Burden Sharing. European Security 28 (1): 66–84. Koivula, Tommi. 2021. Carry That Weight: Assessing Continuity and Change in NATO’s Burden Sharing Disputes. Defense & Security Analysis 37 (2): 145–163. Kunertova, Dominika. 2017. One measure Cannot Trump It All: Lessons from NATO’s Early Burden-Sharing Debates. European Security 26 (4): 552–574. Lowenthal, Mark M. 2017. Intelligence: From Secrets to Policy. Los Angeles: CQ Press. Lunn, Simon. 1983. Burden-Sharing in NATO. Chatham House Papers. Routledge & Kegan Paul for Royal Institute of International Affairs. Mattelaer, Alexander. 2016. US Leadership and NATO: Revisiting the Principles of NATO Burden-Sharing. Parameters 46 (1): 25–33. Mearsheimer, John J. 1994. The False Promise of International Institutions. International Security 19 (3): 5–49. NATO: Funding NATO. Last updated 22 June 2021. https://www.nato.int/ cps/en/natohq/topics_67655.htm. Accessed 1 July 2021. Olson, Mancur, Jr., and Richard Zeckhauser. 1966. An Economic Theory of Alliances. Santa Monica: The RAND Corporation. Ringsmose, Jens. 2010. NATO Burden-Sharing Redux: Continuity and Change After the Cold War. Contemporary Security Policy 31 (2): 319–338.

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Sandler, Todd, and James C. Murdoch. 2000. On Sharing NATO Defence Burdens in the 1990s and Beyond. Fiscal Studies 21 (3): 297–327. Siegel, Scott N. 2009. Bearing Their Share of the Burden: Europe in Afghanistan. European Security 18 (4): 461–482. Sil, Rudra, and Peter Katzenstein. 2010a. Analytic Eclecticism in the Study of World Politics: Reconfiguring Problems and Mechanisms Across Research Traditions. Perspectives on Politics 8 (2): 411–431. Sil, Rudra, and Peter Katzenstein. 2010b. Beyond Paradigms: Analytic Eclecticism in the Study of World Politics. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Solomon, Binyam. 2004. Nato Burden Sharing Revisited. Defence and Peace Economics 15 (3): 251–258. Sperling, James, and Mark Webber. 2009. NATO: From Kosovo to Kabul. International Affairs 85 (3): 491–511. Tonelson, Alan. 2000. NATO Burden-Sharing: Promises, Promises. The Journal of Strategic Studies 23 (3): 29–58. Wallander, Celeste. 2000. Institutional Assets and Adaptability: NATO After the Cold War. International Organization 54 (4): 705–735. Webber, Mark. 2013. NATO After 9/11: Theoretical Perspectives. In NATO Beyond 9/11: The Transformation of the Atlantic Alliance, ed. Ellen Hallams, Luca Ratti, and Benjamin Zyla, 27–53. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Zyla, Benjamin. 2015. Untying the Knot? Assessing the Compatibility of the American and European Strategic Culture Under President Obama. The European Journal of Social Science Research 28 (2): 104–216. Zyla, Benjamin. 2016. Who Is Keeping the Peace and Who Is Free-Riding? NATO Middle Powers and Burden Sharing 1995–2001. International Politics 53 (3): 303–323. Zyla, Benjamin. 2018. Transatlantic Burden Sharing: Suggesting a New Research Agenda. European Security 27 (4): 515–535.

CHAPTER 3

Burden-Sharing During the Cold War

The Road to NATO The Treaties of Dunkirk and Brussels The seeds of the transatlantic relationship were planted far earlier than in 1949 when NATO was formally established. The creation of NATO was not a self-evident outcome of the Second World War but a consequence of various factors, such as wartime alliances, the division of Germany and post-war power relations. When reviewing the events leading to the establishment of NATO, we need to take a look at transatlantic relations from a broad perspective—namely from the transatlantic bargain perspective. The transatlantic bargain is “the glue that has held the allies more or less together in a large, complex and dynamic bargain” and is “partly an understanding among the Europeans, but mostly a deal between them and the United States of America” (Cleveland 1970). The original transatlantic bargain had both military and economic aspects. It was a deal between the US and Westerns Europe, based on an agreement that the US would contribute to European defence and economic recovery after the World War II. The condition was that Europeans would need to rebuild their militaries and societies for defence against the Soviet threat. The economic side of the bargain consisted mainly of the Marshall Plan (see below) and the military aspects were channelled through NATO (Sloan 2003, pp. 1–3). In other words, the transatlantic bargain was, and

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still is, more than just about NATO, but the Alliance is one of the core features of the bargain and the transatlantic security structure. 1947 was a significant year for the transatlantic bargain. After the end of the World War II (1945), the US and Western Europe were worried about the Soviet and communist threat but also about the possibility of renewed German aggression. The threat of communism became apparent during the Greek civil war (1946–1949) that was fought between the Greek government army supported by the US and Britain, and the military branch of the Communist Party. President Truman addressed the situation in Greece in his speech to the Congress in March 1947 where he laid out his vision, the Truman Doctrine, of how the US must “support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressure” (Truman 1947). In practice this meant US support for anti-communist regimes in order to avoid “communist infiltrations” in Western Europe (Lunn 1983, p. 7). This conviction became the foundation of American foreign policy for years to come. To address the other security issue, “the German challenge”, Britain and France signed the Treaty of Dunkirk in March 1947. The idea behind the Treaty was to give mutual support in the event of resurgent German military power and aggressive behaviour. The Treaty of Dunkirk was a bilateral agreement between France and Britain (hence the other name, Franco-British Alliance), but it soon evolved into the Western Union1 (WU), established in the Treaty of Brussels in March 1948. By signing the Treaty of Brussels the members of the Western Union—Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxemburg—formed the first post-war military organisation in Europe. The Treaty of Brussels was signed only a couple of weeks after the coup d’état in Czechoslovakia (February 1948), which gave Britain and France additional incentive to include the three Benelux countries into the Union and to agree on mutual assistance among the allies in the event of a Soviet threat. Establishing the Western Union was a significant first step towards the creation of the Atlantic Alliance. It did not only prove the Americans that Europe was committed to shoulder its share of the transatlantic burden but it also established the institutionalised defence cooperation among Western European countries (Sloan 2003, p. 14; Kernic 2006, p. 7). The WU also sent a signal to the

1 Also known as the Brussels Treaty Organisation (BTO).

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Soviet leaders that Western Europe was prepared to defend its territory against aggression. The Marshall Plan The Marshall Plan, signed by President Truman in 1948, formed the economic side of the transatlantic bargain. The Marshall Plan, officially the European Recovery Program, provided much needed economic assistance for the recovering countries in Western Europe but it was also a sign of US commitment in Europe. Just like the Treaty of Brussels and later NATO, the Marshall Plan was closely linked to the “German question”. The US realised that by participating financially in the reconstruction of the German society and economy it could address the French worries about German resurgence and include German recovery into the bigger European security design (Sloan 2003, pp. 1, 14; Hanhimäki et al. 2012, p. 17). The Marshall Plan had three main purposes: 1) to provide financial aid to Europe for it to rebuild its societies and economies, 2) to bring the European countries politically together and 3) to spread American values and ideas to the war-ravaged Europe. Even though the US Secretary of State George Marshall emphasized that the Marshall Plan was primarily against “hunger and poverty”, it was also a call for the Europeans to act together. The US promised to provide financial help and in return the Europeans would coordinate the program. Europe also promised to take the first steps in its integration process and create a customs union (Hanhimäki et al. 2012, p. 18).

The Creation of NATO in the Aftermath of the Berlin Blockade There are various understandings of what the quintessential reasons were for establishing a formal transatlantic military alliance after the Second World War. Did the founding members create the Alliance because they shared the same values, history and common purpose (see Hallams and Schreer 2012, p. 315) or was NATO actually based on shared security concerns rather than shared values (see Green Cowles and Egan 2016, p. 78)? The allies had fought together against Germany and its allies during the war, which brought them closely together and created a certain feeling of community and aspiration to prevent any future wars. This aspect should not be undermined. Still, NATO’s original mission to

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keep the Soviets out, the Americans in and the Germans down suggests that the Alliance was above all based on shared threat perceptions: being attacked by the Soviet Union, being abandoned by the Americans and being subject to resurgent Germany. The Berlin Blockade from June 1948 to May 1949 along with the coup in Czechoslovakia in 1948 increased the urgency of establishing a formal military alliance among the Western countries. The negotiations took several months, not least because the future allies had differing threat perceptions and understandings of Europe’s role in the post-war international politics. Right after the war, the US was primarily interested in European economic recovery and only after that in military security since a Soviet attack was not considered immediate. The US had envisaged itself a leading role in the economic relationship with Europe through the Marshall Plan, while leaving the security aspects to the newly established United Nations (Sloan 2003, p. 15; Hanhimäki et al. 2012, pp. 8, 28). The events in Berlin and Czechoslovakia, however, crushed this objective and the US had to assume military responsibilities in Europe. Still, the Americans were determined that despite their “moral obligation” to support the European allies, both economic and military assistance should be temporary and last only until they were able to stand on their own again (Lunn 1983, pp. 7–8). Prior to NATO, alliances were typically short-lived and only lasted until the threat had seized to exist. It is no wonder that Americans (and probably many Europeans as well) saw the new alliance as a temporary arrangement that would become void once Europe had recovered. It is hard to imagine that Washington would have agreed on taking such a big responsibility in European economic and military recovery had they anticipated the decades-lasting results of it. Britain, on the other hand, first considered NATO only to complement the Western Union, not to replace it. The reason behind this was a desire to avoid a European power vacuum and keep the world order multipolar where Europe (and Britain in particular) still had a significant power role. Even though Britain was not interested in participating in the continental defence politics, neither was it keen on the idea of a world order where Europe was merely a pawn in the bilateral game between the US and the Soviet Union. The Americans, in turn, were concerned about the possibility of a European power bloc and preferred a bilateral world order. Eventually, the Europeans had to give up their hopes of creating a European “Third Force” and to recognise that the world had become

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bipolar, dominated by the US and the Soviet Union (Dietl 2006, p. 26; Hanhimäki et al. 2012, p. 7). In April 1949, after several months of negotiations the US, Canada, Portugal, Italy, Norway, Denmark, Iceland and the Western Union countries (Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxemburg) gathered in Washington D.C. to sign the Treaty of North Atlantic Alliance, which established NATO and consolidated the military aspects of the transatlantic bargain. Already during the negotiations leading to the formation of NATO, the negotiating parties aimed at ensuring their power in the new alliance and shifting as much responsibilities as possible to other allies while avoiding additional burdens for themselves (Ringsmose 2010, p. 321). In other words, burden-shifting started before NATO was even formally established. The early burden-sharing and burden-shifting disputes suggest that the allies were mostly concerned about their national security and economic interests rather than common values. By the time the Washington Treaty was signed, the member states had reached an agreement on the approximate division of labour or burden-sharing. The basic division of labour was that each member state should specialise in the forces and weapons that served them best and could also be included in the integrated defence patterns. The US would stay involved in the European security and in exchange Europeans would organise their external defence structures and maintain their internal stability. Another aspect of the early division of labour was to minimize the US commitment in Europe (Lunn 1983, p. 10; Sloan 2003, p. 16). When discussing the division of labour, and transatlantic relations in general, the focus is on the relations between the US and the European allies. As a result, the role of Canada is often overlooked. Canada was, however, actively involved in European security during the Cold War and assumed the role of an “intra-alliance bridge-builder”. Canada also had a central role in the writing the Washington Treaty: Canadians insisted on including a mention of economic cooperation in the Treaty, which in the end was included in Article 2 (Zyla 2007/2008, pp. 131–133, 148). The German Question From the very beginning, NATO allies had disagreements about the most pressing security threats. The sharpest disagreements were between the US

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and France. France was most concerned about the possibility of a German resurgence, and the US about the growing influence of the Soviet Union in Central Europe, which it wanted to address by rearming West Germany. In order to incorporate West Germany to the European defence architecture, the US suggested including it in NATO. The Americans saw the Franco-German cooperation as the key for European continental defence while it, among the British and Canadians, would play a more symbolic role and provide nuclear deterrence. Americans found a common tone with the British who also saw France’s crucial role in deterring both Germany and the Soviet Union. France was thus included in decision-making tables, such as the UN Security Council, which otherwise would not have been possible for it in terms of its actual international post-war position. The US Secretary of State James Byrnes gave a speech (“Speech of Hope”) already in 1946 where he said that the time had come for the Germans to take responsibility of their own affairs. However, he also highlighted that “as long as there is an occupation army in Germany, American armed forces will be part of that occupation army” (James Byrnes, 6 September 1946). The French, who were still concerned about Germany and its possible resurgence, were not happy with Secretary Byrnes’s proposal to bring Germany back to the international stage only a year and half after the end of the war. France was still uneasy about Germany reacquiring independent military capabilities and thus opposed German rearmament. France also opposed Germany’s membership in NATO and ratified the Washington Treaty on the understanding that it would not include rearming Germany. Despite disagreements over West Germany’s position in the transatlantic security structure as a sovereign country, Germany eventually became a member of NATO in May 1955 (Hanhimäki et al. 2012, pp. 11, 14; Sloan 2003, pp. 17–19).

Soviet Contraction and Expansion While the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the West never escalated to a full-scale war, the Cold War years were by no means bloodless. Proxy wars in countries like Greece, Korea, Vietnam and Afghanistan were stages for global struggle that the US and the Soviet Union supported economically, politically and militarily. From NATO’s perspective, despite occasional years of détente and diplomatically more successful periods, the Cold War was about constant sabre-rattling and containment of Soviet

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expansion. Sometimes the expansionist moves were taken far away from NATO’s territory but often very close by in places like Berlin, Budapest or Prague. We will now review some of these events and analyse their impact on the burden-sharing debate among the Alliance. The Korean War as an Embodiment of the East–West Divide Even though the question of Germany’s role in the post-war security context would continue for years, even decades, the most urgent concerns faded away as new major developments emerged in international relations almost immediately after the establishment of NATO. The first successful testing of a Soviet nuclear weapon in August 1949 and the beginning of the Korean War in June 1950 forced Europeans to shift their attention from Germany to the threat stemming from the Soviet Union. In the West, the Korean War was not only seen as a regional conflict but as a broader communist expansion. Despite the geographic distance of the Korean peninsula, the war raised deep concerns in Western European capitals. Many feared not only the Soviet aggression but also that the US focus would shift from Europe to Asia where the Americans were fighting alongside the South Koreans. To address this concern, the US Congress made a decision to send four army divisions to Europe (Dietl 2006, p. 27; Sloan 2003, p. 19). Europe received military support from Canada, too, that sent a brigade to Germany and Air Force squadrons to France in the midst of the Korean War (Donaghy 1997, p. 445). The US was heavily building up its military and increasing its presence in Europe after the beginning of the Korean War and it expected the European allies to contribute as well (Tonelson 2000, p. 31). Britain and France increased their defence spending, too, but the heaviest burden was still carried by the Americans. The US sent more troops to Europe and quadrupled its defence expenditures within three years (Lunn 1983, p. 11; Hanhimäki et al. 2012, p. 28). By 1952, the US share of all the NATO members’ defence spending was 76% (compared to 67% in 1949) (Driver 2016, p. 7). This was in sharp contrast with the original idea that particularly the Congress had had about the US involvement in European defence. When approving the Washington Treaty, the Congress was assured that the US would not have to send many troops to Europe in order to fulfil their commitment to the allies. It is thus no wonder that the Americans demanded their European allies to take more responsibility of their own defence, and put more pressure on them to allow the

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rearmament of West Germany (Hanhimäki et al. 2012, p. 27; Ringsmose 2010, p. 322; see also Sloan 1999, pp. 10–14). Still, it should be noted that only a portion of the enormous US defence spending was directed towards European defence. The Korean War also had an effect on the organisational structures of NATO. When the Alliance was formally created in 1949, the allies had indeed promised each other mutual defence in the form of Article V, but in practice this would not have been possible without proper command structures. Creating the military and organisational structures in 1950 was a practical solution but also a response to the escalation of the East– West divide. When the North Atlantic Council (NAC) recognised the command structure in Lisbon in 1950, NATO became an organisation of permanent nature, not merely a temporary military alliance. The Soviet Union did not just stand by watching NATO assuming more permanent structures. In 1955 it established the Warsaw Pact with Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania and East Germany—a move that was naturally seen as expansive in the West. Furthermore, the Korean War and the increasingly strained relations between the West and the Soviet Union prompted accession of Greece and Turkey into NATO in 1952, the first enlargement of the Alliance. Greece and Turkey had sent troops to Korea already before their formal membership and were willing so solidify their position in the West. Membership in NATO allowed them much needed security guarantees against the military threat posed by the Warsaw Pact in the Balkans but NATO, too, benefited from the regional stability brought by the enlargement (Chourchoulis and Kourkouvelas 2012, p. 498). From NATO’s strategic point of view, the accession of Turkey and Greece was motivated by attempts to prevent a conflict between the two countries and to prevent them from falling under the Soviet sphere of influence. The first enlargement was, however, not only a strategic move by NATO but also an attempt to integrate and socialise new member countries into the Western security sphere (Lindley-French 2020; Greco and von Hlatky 2018, p. 275). From Massive Retaliation to Flexible Response Strategy By the 1950s it became clear that the Soviet Union outrun NATO (and the US) in terms of conventional force despite the Alliance’s attempts

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to increase them with the Lisbon force goals.2 To address the imbalance, NATO assumed the Massive retaliation strategy, which meant that in order for the West to deter the Soviet Union and its conventional forces, it needed the US to back up the conventional warfare with nuclear force. Eventually NATO became dependent on the nuclear force provided by the US and to a lesser degree also by France and Britain. As a consequence of the Massive retaliation strategy, the Americans believed that since its nuclear forces were obviously overwhelming compared to the Soviet conventional forces, it could actually reduce its own conventional forces. Nuclear force was considered a relatively cheap and efficient manner of deterrence and so the US could decrease its financial burden of defending Western Europe. Europeans, however, were not confident that the US and its Massive retaliation strategy could provide enough deterrence and effective defence. France was particularly concerned that the strategy would lead to the US withdrawal from Europe (Lunn 1983, pp. 12–13; Sloan 1999, p. 13). The turning point in the Massive retaliation strategy was the launch of the first Soviet satellite, Sputnik, in October 1957. The launch was a sign that the US supremacy in terms of nuclear power was coming to its end and that the Massive retaliation strategy was losing its relevance (Sloan 2010, p. 55). The launch of Sputnik also created tensions among the allies. As usual, the Eisenhower Administration reassured Europeans that they could count on the US commitment but that they also expected more from the Europeans in terms of burden-sharing especially now that the conventional warfare was becoming more important. To reassure the Europeans in concrete terms, the US placed intermediate-range ballistic missiles (IRBMs) in Europe in 1959. This raised concerns among the civil society but caused also discontent among European leaders who were not pleased with the Americans having the sole control of the nuclear weapons despite them being stationed in sovereign European countries in Great Britain, Turkey and Italy (Hanhimäki et al. 2012, pp. 52–53). The East–West relations were extremely tense in the early 1960s. In August 1961, as a consequence of a constant flux of refugees seeking to settle in the West, the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) started building up a wall in Berlin, cutting off West Berlin from the 2 The Lisbon Force goals were an attempt to increase conventional forces in European defence. The goal for the end of 1952 was 25 ready divisions and 28 and two-thirds reserve divisions ready to be mobilised within 30 days. For more, see Duffield (2000).

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surrounding East Germany. Still, instead of tearing down the wall by force, President Kennedy considered the wall to be a better option than war. Another indicator of the extremely strained great power relations of the time was the Soviet test of the so-called Tsar Bomba (Cap-b´omba) on 30 October 1961—a hydrogen aerial bomb which remains the most powerful nuclear weapon ever created and tested. A year later an actual war between the US and the Soviet Union was closer than ever before as the Soviet Union attempted to place ballistic missiles in Cuba, right in the US neighbourhood. This was considered a severe expansionist move and for nearly two weeks the world was holding its breath. The events in Berlin and Cuba, the extensive Soviet military buildup of both conventional and nuclear capabilities combined with France’s withdrawal from the NATO military structures in 1967 forced NATO to reconsider its strategy and possibilities to plausibly deter the Soviet aggression. In 1967 the Alliance adopted the strategy of Flexible response that replaced the Massive retaliation strategy and was based on the idea of limited nuclear war. The core of the new Flexible response strategy was to gain political and military flexibility in order to defend against the Soviet threat, whether it came in the form of conventional or nuclear attack. Since the Flexible response strategy combined both nuclear and conventional forces, it reduced the European dependence on the US nuclear power and also the possibilities for free-riding (Ratti and Leonardi 2019, pp. 135, 140; Hartley and Sandler 1999, p. 667). The shift from Massive retaliation to Flexible response strategy was not a straightforward process. When President Kennedy suggested the strategic shift, it started a heated debate and created a great deal of tension within the Alliance. First of all, even though the Europeans had originally been sceptical about the Massive retaliation strategy and relying on nuclear force, they were now reluctant to give it up. They saw the new strategy as a means for the US to avoid its obligations towards the Alliance and its allies. The West Germans were particularly concerned and wanted assurances that, if necessary, the NATO forces could rapidly shift from non-nuclear to nuclear force. Second, in order to strengthen the conventional forces, the US had to increase its defence budget, which in turn meant that the Europeans were expected to do more as well. The defence of Europe was still dependent on the US, not least because of weak European conventional forces compared to both the Soviet Union and the US. This heated up the burden-sharing debate that was brought to NATO’s agenda several times during the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations.

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Still, despite the intra-alliance tensions, the strategy of Flexible response can be regarded as a mark of the Alliance’s adaptability and resilience to cope in a changing world (Ratti and Leonardi 2019, p. 141). The adaptability was tested already next year in 1968 when the Soviet Union suppressed demonstrations and demands for political reforms in Czechoslovakia. The mass protests, commonly known as the Prague Spring, was a turning point in NATO’s burden-sharing and intra-alliance relations. Shocked by the bloody results of the protests, the Western Europeans increased their financial contributions in order to maintain the US troops in Europe. Even France, that just two years earlier had left the military command structure, stood side by side with its allies (Hanhimäki et al. 2012, pp. 62, 73; Ratti and Leonardi 2019, p. 140). “The Second Cold War” The years of Nixon’s presidency (1969–1974) are often considered the years of détente (easing of relations) in the East–West relations. Meetings, bilateral agreements and treaties were all attempts to control arms race and ease geopolitical tensions. The period of détente was, however, rather short, ending in the late 1970s as a consequence of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. For the US, the invasion in Afghanistan was a sign of renewed Soviet expansionist foreign policy and of balance of power drifting towards the Soviet side. It made President Carter announce that the years of détente were over and the “Second Cold War” had started. Even though the invasion of Afghanistan was not directed against the West per se, the US interpreted it as a proof that Soviet military build-up would eventually lead to expansionist ambitions (Lunn 1983, p. 19; Hanhimäki et al. 2012, pp. 96, 98). The situation was further complicated by the Islamic Revolution of Iran in 1979 and the prolonged hostage drama in the American embassy in Tehran. These were humiliating experiences to the US that before the revolution was a close ally of Iran. For President Carter’s America the events in Iran and Afghanistan showed that foreign policy based on dialogue and negotiation was not sufficient. As a consequence, the Carter Administration adopted a more aggressive policy towards the Soviet Union and developed various policies to address the assumed Soviet expansionist ambitions. The US increased its military presence in Asia, supported anti-communist movements and announced economic sanctions and embargos. It also introduced new military programmes and weapons systems, such as the

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Pershing II missiles. The US was heavily building up its military presence in Western Europe, too, and called on the Europeans to increase their defence expenditures by 5% annually (Hanhimäki et al. 2012, p. 98; Lunn 1983, pp. 19, 21). The US assumed that its European allies would share its view of the need to renew NATO’s strategy in the light of the recent events in Afghanistan and “hence the allies were informed rather than consulted on the main elements of the alliance response” (Lunn 1983, p. 21). The Americans considered the new strategic challenge to be common for all the allies but Europeans had rather sceptical views of America’s Second Cold War approach. Many saw the US responses as hasty, excessive and detrimental to the stability of the region and harmful for détente and Ostpolitik.3 Even Thatcher’s Britain, the most important ally of the US, was reluctant to take a confrontational stance against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan even though Thatcher strongly condemned the invasion. Britain’s economic actions against the Soviet Union and Iran were weak but this was compensated with fierce diplomatic efforts (Lahey 2013, p. 42). Europeans also questioned why NATO as an alliance should be involved in the events in Afghanistan when this was not the case during the Hungarian Revolution in 1956 or the Prague Spring in 1968 (Hanhimäki et al. 2012, pp. 98–99; Lunn 1983, p. 22). In the US, Europe’s reluctance was seen as inexcusable and harmful to the alliance solidarity. This brought burden-sharing discussion once again to NATO’s agenda. The events in Afghanistan and Iran brought new dimensions to the Western security context, which meant new responsibilities and need for new resources, which European allies simply did not have. Europe acknowledged that the events in the Persian Gulf region indeed had an effect on European security but they could not come to an agreement on what NATO could actually do about the situation. It soon became clear that as the US was assuming more responsibilities in areas outside of Europe, it would not have enough resources and capabilities do defend both Europe and other regions simultaneously. This time the burden-sharing issue was more or less solved by the good old division of labour: the US would be responsible of the security in the Gulf, and Europeans would assume more responsibilities of the security in Europe. It is, 3 Ostpolitik was a West German policy that aimed at normalising the relationship between West Germany and East Germany (and other Eastern European countries as well).

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however, worth noting that the European allies agreed on the arrangement only on the condition that it would not create new expenses. In other words, Europe did not have to increase its defence expenditure nor assume completely new responsibilities in areas outside of Europe (Lunn 1983, pp. 22–25).

US Retrenchment and Renewal The second way to review the Cold War burden-sharing is to look at it from the perspective of American foreign policy retrenchment and renewal. Even though the phases of retrenchment and renewal became more visible in the post-Cold War years, we can detect certain changes in the American Cold War foreign policy that had an effect on NATO’s burden-sharing debate. Economic hardship, military commitments and European reluctance to increase contributions towards NATO were the main factors that made the US to bring burden-sharing on NATO’s agenda and sometimes even threaten with withdrawing its support. Despite occasional steps of retrenchment, the US remained committed to European defence and security throughout the Cold War. Early Burden-Sharing Debates: Trust Issues and Economic Hardship The American goal in the 1950s transatlantic relations was to minimise financial burden as much as possible while maintaining leadership position in the Alliance. To reach this target the US relied on relatively cheap nuclear weaponry to minimise the responsibilities and financial costs of European defence, and spoke for rearming Germany and including it in the European military and political structures. The early military division of labour was rather clear: the US would take care of strategic (nuclear) bombing and in return, the Europeans would assume the responsibility of core ground forces, tactical air support and air defence (Mattelaer 2016, p. 28). Throughout the early 1950s, the allies attempted to find fair and effective cost-sharing formulas and ways to arrange the responsibilities,4 but soon a more profound question was raised in Europe: would the US defend Europe at all when necessary? After the launch of Sputnik in 1957 and the development of Soviet nuclear weapons, the US was 4 See Kunertova (2017) for a more detailed discussion on the early cost-sharing formulas.

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for the first time within the range of a Soviet nuclear attack. Europeans were concerned whether the US would be ready to use its nuclear force against the Soviet Union in defence of Europe and thus take the risk of an escalated nuclear war that could also have devastating effects on the American soil. Europeans were also concerned that the US would turn back to its isolationist foreign policy that it had practised during the interwar period. Secretary of State Dulles tried to assure the allies that the US was committed to the defence of Europe regardless of its focus on the quality of support rather than quantity. Despite Dulles’s reassurances, leading European countries took on the opportunity of developing their own nuclear weapons. While France and Britain went forward with their plans of acquiring nuclear weapons, Germany, that had just regained its full sovereignty, could not realistically plan on having one of its own. Britain had started its own nuclear programme already in 1941 when Prime Minister Churchill authorised the development of a nuclear weapon. In 1943 Churchill and President Roosevelt agreed on merging the American and British nuclear research groups into “a larger joint effort”—the Manhattan Project. The cooperation ended in 1946 after which the UK went on to develop its own nuclear programme and tested its first atomic bomb in 1952 (UK Ministry of Defence). As for France, the development of an independent French nuclear capability, force de frappe, reflected deeper frustration between France and the US, and President De Gaulle’s attempts to make France more independent of NATO. The development of the nuclear programme was slow but in 1960 France successfully tested its first nuclear weapon (Atomic Heritage Foundation 2017). The US had rather not seen Britain or France develop their own nuclear weapons but could not stop them (Sloan 2003, pp. 30, 55). Germany, on the other hand, caused a more complex problem for the US. Even though the US was strongly in favour of German rearmament, it opposed the idea of Germany developing nuclear weapons. As long as the US was against Germany acquiring nuclear force, it had to be in charge of defending Germany from a Soviet attack (Hanhimäki et al. 2012, pp. 51–53). In other words, even though the US would have wanted to decrease its burdens in Europe, it was not possible as long as European deterrence and German defence were based on the Massive retaliation strategy and on US nuclear force. By the end of the 1950s, the European dependence on the US military support was becoming increasingly structural and less of a temporary

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arrangement. The US constantly demanded for more actions from the Europeans but saw very little concrete results. But, as a Soviet attack was now considered more plausible due to the Soviet Union’s rapid development of nuclear force, the US considered keeping Western Europe out of the reach of the Soviet Union more important than fair burden-sharing. Instead of executing the threats of withdrawing military support, President Eisenhower kept assuring that the US was committed to the defence of Europe (Driver 2016, p. 6). The US was thus giving mixed messages to their allies: demanding more, threatening of withdrawing their support but still assuring their commitment and support. As Tonelson (2000; pp. 32, 40) puts it, the Americans were shooting themselves in the foot because of their “determination to preserve NATO at all costs” and “insistence on letting the European allies know that the US commitment to NATO overrode any other considerations” (see also Driver 2016, p. 6). One of the key features of the alliance relations in the 1960s was the troubled economic situation in the US, but also in Britain and West Germany. The American balance-of-payments grew worse in the late 1950s and early 1960s due to its weakening international financial position, growing global competition with European and Asian allies, expensive war in Vietnam and maintaining forces in Europe (Wenger 2004, p. 48; Tonelson 2000, pp. 32–33). In short, the US spent more money in other countries than at home. It became increasingly difficult to justify growing military expenses to the parliaments and citizens both in the US and Europe, as is usually the case during economic hardship. At the same time the international relations showed signs of upcoming détente, which made it even more difficult for the politicians to rationalise expensive US presence in Europe. After the Soviet Union had developed its own nuclear weapons and NATO had assumed the Flexible response strategy, the US was forced to focus on improving its conventional forces again in addition to maintaining the nuclear arsenal. The Kennedy Administration attempted to increase NATO’s conventional capabilities and this way lower the dependence on nuclear force. Due to its balance-of-payments issues the US started to persuade West Germany and other European allies to agree on offset payments and other concessions to cover the costs of maintaining approximately 250 000 troops in West Germany. In practise the offset payments meant that West Germany had to procure military equipment from the US and Britain to compensate the cost of their military presence. Germans agreed to this but argued that the US presence was in the interest of both the US and Europe. Even

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though West Germany purchased military equipment from the Americans, it did not solve the severe deficit issues of the US (Tonelson 2000, pp. 32–33; Lunn 1983, pp. 13–15; Ringsmose 2010, p. 323; Wenger 2004, p. 49). The US practised this kind of quid pro quo policy throughout the Cold War burden-sharing debates (not only in Europe but globally, too), which can be understood as an embodiment of the so-called Nixon Doctrine. Put simply, the Nixon doctrine was a warning to the allies that the US would defend them against aggression but that it would not do all the work for them. The Nixon Doctrine was originally targeted to the allies in Asia, but according to the “European version” of the doctrine, the US would not unilaterally cut down its troops stationed in Europe as long as the allies maintained and enhanced their military capabilities and preparedness (Kimball 2006; Ringsmose 2010, p. 323; Sloan 1999, p. 15). Mansfield Resolutions—The Culmination of Burden-Sharing Debate in the 1960s By the 1960s, Western European countries had recovered economically from the war and were considered wealthy enough to take care of their own defence. The US, on the other hand was experiencing economic hardship, which was made worse by maintaining troops in Europe. The US presence was also considered less relevant in the 1960s as the relations between East and West were easing (Ringsmose 2010, p. 322; Lunn 1983, p. 14). The situation was prone to heated burdensharing discussion that culminated in the several resolutions presented by US Senator Mike Mansfield. In the first “Mansfield Resolution” in August 1966 Senator Mansfield called the Senate to find a solution to the burden-sharing dilemma so that “a substantial reduction of US forces permanently stationed in Europe can be made without adversely affecting our resolve or ability to meet our commitment under the North Atlantic Treaty” (Senator Mansfield on 31 August 1966, quoted in Lunn 1983, p. 14). In other words, Mansfield suggested reducing US troops in Europe without violating its responsibilities as an ally. Mansfield’s resolutions were not only stemming from frustration towards the European allies, particularly the French, but mostly from domestic economic

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troubles. According to Mansfield, “the present policy of maintaining large contingents of US forces and their dependants on the US continent also contribute[d] further to the fiscal and monetary problems of the US” (the preamble of the Mansfield Resolution 1966, quoted in Lunn 1983, p. 84). The Mansfield Resolutions gained a great deal of support in the US Congress but despite several attempts (in 1966, 1967, 1969 and 1970), they never succeeded. The Congress’s reasoning for keeping the troops in Europe was that withdrawing them would not bring any proper savings and that presence in Europe was in the national interests of the US. Despite their failure, the resolutions sent a message to Europe: the US support to Europe could not be taken for granted and could be removed if the allies did not fulfil their responsibilities. Lunn argues that “the basic sentiments to which the Mansfield proposals appealed remained beneath the surface, easily accessible and exploitable whenever tensions appeared within the alliance” (Lunn 1983, pp. 14–15; Ringsmose 2010, p. 323). Thus, even though the Mansfield Resolutions did not pass, the US attitude towards Europe did not change either: Europe was economically strong enough to take responsibility of its own defence. The situation in the 1960s was an example of how economic hardship affects the burdensharing debate: during hard times, the US demands for more concrete actions from its allies. Still, it should be noted that the US never fulfilled its threats, and in the end considered its military and security interests more important than economic savings. The Turbulent 1970s The early 1970s was the golden age of détente, the easing of East–West relations. Détente indeed eased the tensions between East and West but had rather negative side effects among the NATO allies that were drifting apart more than perhaps ever before. For the US, one of the most important benefits of belonging to the Atlantic Alliance was the leadership position in world affairs that came with it. Europeans supported the US leadership in exchange for the security guarantees, particularly in the form of nuclear deterrence. During the successful years of détente Europe no longer needed the US like before and thus valued its leadership less.

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Americans saw this as a severe danger to transatlantic unity and cohesion. At the same time European economic integration was taking steps ahead, which the US interpreted as an act of rivalry (see Kissinger 1973).5 As a result, the possibility of the US withdrawing its troops from Europe became more feasible. The strained relationship culminated in President Nixon’s threat that Europe could not have US security and defence support and at the same time “have confrontation and even hostility on the economic and political front”. He said that no meeting with the heads of government would be scheduled as long as the Europeans were not willing to cooperate with the US on the economic and political issues. Nixon argued that if the US Congress were under the impression that Europe created an economic threat to the US, he would have hard time convincing the Congress to maintain US military presence in Europe to guarantee nuclear deterrence against the Soviet Union (Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States 1974, p. 276). Furthermore, the early 1970s marked a turbulent time for the Alliance in terms of burden-sharing. The US was withdrawing from Vietnam and the East–West relations were warming up thanks to détente policy, which raised the question of the need for maintaining large US troops in Europe. More importantly, due to the severe economic situation exacerbated by the oil crisis, the Congress questioned whether the US could even afford maintaining the troops. European allies’ failure to put the same amount of effort on their defence as they put on their deepening economic cooperation also frustrated the US decision-makers. The troop withdrawal debate started in March 1973 when the Senators of the Democratic Party called on President Nixon to reduce troops stationed in Western Europe and Asia by mid-1974. The Nixon Administration was reluctant to reduce the troops, arguing that in order to get the Warsaw Pact countries to reduce their troops, the US should not reduce its troops unilaterally, thus

5 The speedy economic integration of Western Europe, that had started in the 1960s, led to economic rivalry between the European Communities (EC) and the US, and caused tensions between the allies in the 1970s. The American presidents had previously had a favourable attitude towards European economic recovery and integration, which had been the prerequisite for the presence of US troops in Europe. This attitude changed with the Nixon Administration. The Americans were concerned about the impact the European Economic Community (EEC) and its external tariffs could have on the US economy. The EEC also decreased the European dependency on the US and thus reduced the American influence over Europe, which naturally did not please the Americans (Hanhimäki et al. 2012, pp. 78–79; Green Cowles and Egan 2016, pp. 80–81).

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taking a risk of the Warsaw Pact not reducing its troops at all. There were reports that the Warsaw Pact was improving its existing forces, which was one reason why the US could not reduce its troops in Europe. Instead, Nixon’s Administration attempted to negotiate with other NATO allies on a multilateral burden-sharing arrangement, which resulted in only few results (Duffield 1995, pp. 202–203; Lunn 1983, p. 15). In September 1973 two Senators, Henry Jackson and Samuel Nunn, introduced an amendment to the military procurement bill, requiring the European allies to fully offset the US balance-of-payment expenditures in European defence during the financial year 1974. Should the allies fail to offset the full amount, the US would reduce its troops “by the same percentage that the expenditures were not offset” (Department of State 1975; see also Lunn 1983; p. 15; Duffield 1995, pp. 203–204). Even though the Jackson-Nunn Amendment was not ideal in the eyes of the Nixon Administration, it was a means to avoid unilateral congressional withdrawal of troops. The amendment passed the same month. As before, the primary concern of the US Congress during the whole 1973 debate was not reducing the number of American forces in Europe, but gaining financial relief. The US balance-of-payment improved in 1975 and the same year the offset issue was put to rest. President Ford reported that the deficit had been fully offset, which meant that troop reductions were no longer necessary. After Nixon and Ford, the discussion became less confrontational and more encouraging, aiming at improving European defence forces, more effective use of resources and cooperation among the allies (Duffield 1995, p. 204; Lunn 1983, pp. 15–17; Sloan 1999, p. 15). Even though the offset debate of the 1970s, culminating in the several Mansfield Resolutions and the Jackson-Nunn Amendment, ended without severe escalation of tensions among allies, it nevertheless created fear of abandonment among Europeans. The fear of abandonment is typical in alliances and for European NATO allies it was concretised when the US threatened to reduce its presence in Europe. Also the Americans experienced fear of abandonment in the 1970s, in the form of West Germany’s Ostpolitik (Green Cowles and Egan 2016, p. 80). The US was concerned that if German Chancellor Willy Brandt’s new policy went too far, there might be a risk of Germany abandoning NATO and the Western framework in the hope of German reunification. Even though Ostpolitik did not cause political or military damage to the allies, especially the Americans remained suspicious of the improving East–West relations.

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One reason for this might be that the US did not have a leading role in Brandt’s Ostpolitik. However, within just a few years the US managed to resume its leadership in the East–West talks and major crises among the allies were avoided (Hanhimäki et al. 2012, p. 81), demonstrating how important the leadership role in the Alliance and in the East–West talks was to the US. Henry Kissinger’s “Year of Europe” Henry Kissinger’s “Year of Europe” was an ambitious plan, a blueprint, to improve and rebuild the transatlantic relations that had been strained by economic rivalries. One aspect of the 1973 plan was to increase Europe’s contribution to common defence. In an address where he presented his plan, Kissinger promised that the US would stay committed to its allies, maintain its forces in Europe and not withdraw them unilaterally. In return, the US expected each ally to contribute with a fair share to the common effort. The President has asked me to state that America remains committed to doing its fair share in Atlantic defense. He is adamantly opposed to unilateral withdrawals of U.S. forces from Europe. But we owe to our peoples a rational defense posture, at the safest minimum size and cost, with burdens equitably shared. This is what the President believes must result from the dialogue with our allies in 1973. (Kissinger 1973)

Burden-sharing was a common topic in transatlantic relations throughout the Cold War and hence Kissinger’s address did not cause too much concern in Europe. What did raise discontent among Europeans, was when Kissinger said that “the United States has global interests and responsibilities. Our European allies have regional interests. These are not necessarily in conflict, but in the new era neither are they automatically identical” (Kissinger 1973). The comment was considered condescending, even imperious, in Europe. Even though the Year of Europe plan was not meant as an insult, it was taken as such in European capitals where America’s willingness to establish “special relationships” with European countries as a response to deepening European integration was questioned. This brought Britain, France and Germany closer together than perhaps ever before and created a new sense of European identity (Hanhimäki et al. 2012, pp. 87–88).

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Burden-Sharing in the 1980s: Lots of Talk, Few Results Despite various crises and threats of withdrawal throughout the Cold War, and particularly in the 1970s, the amount of US troops stationed in West Germany remained steady and had no dramatic changes before the 1990s (Hanhimäki et al. 2012, p. 95). In return of the steady presence of US troops and nuclear security guarantee, the Americans naturally expected more actions from the European countries. In 1977, President Carter presented a proposal according to which all NATO members needed to increase their defence expenditure by approximately 3% annually for the next five years (Sloan 1999, p. 15). The aim of Carter’s 3% target was two-fold: to achieve a more efficient Alliance and to force the Europeans to do more for their defence (Lunn 1983, p. 17). Carter’s 3% pledge was a prime example of how GDP remained the main indicator and measurement of burden-sharing throughout the Cold War years. Some European countries pointed out that there are also other means to contribute to the common burden than financial input but because of the difficulties of quantifying other kind of contributions, GDP remained the most used indicator (Ringsmose 2010, pp. 323–324). As Ronald Reagan became president of the US in 1981, the US policy against the Soviet Union became more uncompromising. Reagan’s Administration believed that the détente policy had weakened the US defence capabilities and thus the administration quickly put arms control on hold and started to build-up the US military, starting a period of foreign policy renewal. While the US was building up its military, the European allies were still relying on the US for defence and security and used only little resources to build up, or even maintain, their own defence forces. The agreed defence-spending goal was 3% of the GDP (agreed in 1977), which only a few allies managed to reach. Reagan, however, was not too concerned about this at first and did not put pressure on the allies for not reaching the target (Hanhimäki et al. 2012, pp. 99–100; Driver 2016, p. 7; Lunn 1983, p. 34; Sloan 2010, p. 62). Burden-sharing was not much of a topic during the beginning of Reagan’s presidency. The US was not demanding Europeans to assume more responsibilities or to raise their share of the burden but instead focused on maintaining the burden-sharing status quo. The Reagan Administration’s focus was on anti-communist foreign policy and on new military programmes, such

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as the Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI), also called “the Star Wars”. Additional reasons for ignoring the burden-sharing discussion may have been the weak European economy and intra-alliance disputes over relations with the Soviet Union (Tonelson 2000, pp. 35–36). The allies were already busy with other issues and did not want to wake up the sleeping bear. Again, the US Congress was not satisfied with the vague defence efforts of the Europeans and asked President Reagan to put more pressure on the allies and to seek support from them in return for the US efforts in maintaining troops in Europe (Sloan 1999, pp. 15–16). In 1984, Senator Jackson Nunn, who had already attempted to increase Europe’s share of the common burden in the 1970s, introduced an amendment to the National Defence Authorization Act calling the US to reduce its troops in Europe by 30 000 each year when the allies could not meet the annual 3% defence expenditure increase. In total the US would withdraw 90 000 troops by 1990. The amendment caused heated discussion both in the US and among allies and was condemned as too harsh and harmful to the Alliance. In the end, the Nunn amendment was replaced by another amendment by Senator Cohen that only encouraged the allies to meet the 3% target and did not include any severe consequences should the target not be reached (Driver 2016, pp. 7–8). There were various reports and communiqués on burden-sharing throughout the 1980s and the topic was also raised in the summit of 1988. The declaration of the 1988 NATO Summit in Brussels stated that “taking into account the structure of the Alliance, each of us undertakes to play his part in this joint endeavour in a spirit of solidarity, reaffirming our willingness to share fairly the risks, burdens and responsibilities as well as the benefits of our common efforts” (NATO: Summit Declaration 1988). The concrete results, however, were as vague as the wording of the declaration and very little was changed. As a consequence, the US military contributions to Europe remained more or less the same until the end of the Cold War. Even when the Cold War was coming to its end and the US focus was moving from Europe to the Gulf region and other areas outside of Europe, the American share of NATO’s military spending was still the highest: 64,7% of all the alliance military spending and 36% of NATO’s armed forces (from 1981 to 1990) (Tonelson 2000, pp. 36, 38).

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European Passivity and Activity It is possible to approach the theme of European passivity and activity during the Cold War from two perspectives. First, we can consider times when the European allies increased their defence budgets as active periods, and times when Europeans were reluctant to contribute to the common defence of the Alliance as passive periods. An alternative way to approach the activity versus passivity debate is to review the steps that Europeans took to achieve defence structures independent of the US and its military support, such the European Defence Community. Despite various attempts, which will be reviewed below, the European military integration process did not get enough wind to its sails during the Cold War. The institutional structures and framework that we know today were established after the end of the Cold War, but the preconditions for the post-Cold War era and even the current defence cooperation were established already after the Second World War. For example, the intergovernmental nature of the current defence cooperation is a consequence of the early Cold War years when supranational defence structures were considered too far-reaching. The lack of pan-European institutionalisation in defence matters then again resulted in ineffective defence spending, which still troubles the European allies today and impacts the burden-sharing discussion. The Failure of European Defence Community The early precondition for the US military support and presence in Europe was that the European allies should work together to rebuild their societies, economies and militaries. The US did not want Europe to become a charity project but wanted the allies to create an efficient European pillar in the transatlantic bargain. Creating a European pillar was, however, easier said than done, as the relations between allies were troublesome from the very beginning. The first issues appeared already in the early 1950s. The allies were unable to agree on a burden-sharing formula that would please all the parties. Europeans tried to justify their “insufficient” actions by economic hardship but the US was determined that its presence in Europe would not be possible without the development of Western European defence forces. Both the Pentagon and the Congress agreed that despite increasing Soviet threat the US could not increase its military troops in Europe without parallel efforts from the Europeans.

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From European perspective, the American presence in West Germany was not considered strong enough in the tense international security environment, despite the four new US divisions along with two British divisions. To address the issue, the North Atlantic Council (NAC) agreed on the “Lisbon force goals” in 1952 to build-up conventional forces in Europe. The plans were, however, soon deemed over-ambitious and unrealistic. The failure to increase conventional European forces to the levels agreed in Lisbon created an early burden-sharing issue that would last for decades and made some even speculate with the collapse of the Alliance (Sloan 2003, pp. 19–20, 25–29; Lunn 1983, p. 12). In addition to the fear of US reducing its military presence, Europe was troubled with the German challenge. The question over the German rearmament seemed to be at impasse: France was extremely concerned about the possibility of German rearmament but the US insisted on it in order to create better defence against the Soviet Union. To solve the German question and address the US demands on European defence efforts, the French Prime Minister René Pleven suggested creating the European Defence Community (EDC) in 1950. France was hoping that by creating a European supranational military organisation it could control Germany and at the same time show the Americans that Europe was doing their fair share of the transatlantic bargain. This was considered a better option than pursuing unilateral foreign policies or balancing against Germany by creating an alliance that would exclude it (Sloan 2003, p. 20; Jones 2003, p. 123). According to the so-called Pleven Plan, the EDC was a supranational, pan-European defence structure that would include Germany into European defence structures without allowing it to gain control over its military. The EDC would have thus pleased both the American and French interests even though the Americans were still somewhat sceptical about the French attempts to keep Germany indefinitely unarmed (Sloan 2003, p. 21). The US saw the Pleven Plan and the European Defence Community proposal as a significant first step towards integrated Europe that could defend itself without permanent American presence in the continent. From the American point of view, the EDC was a means to show to the Soviet Union and to their new leader Nikita Khrushchev (1953–1964) that Europe was united, strong and able to defend itself, which was needed in order to start a dialogue between the East and West. Moreover, ensuring the German participation in the defence of Western Europe in the event of Soviet aggression was crucial

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(Hanhimäki et al. 2012, p. 32; Sloan 2003, p. 31). This is why the US was highly in favour of Germany’s rearmament and creating close cooperation between Germany and France. This was one reason why President Eisenhower was particularly keen on the idea of establishing the European Defence Community where Germany would be involved, and got frustrated when the French Parliament could not agree on the ratification of the Treaty. Another reason for Eisenhower’s support for the EDC was that he had a clear idea of Europe’s post-war future in mind when he was sworn in as the president of the US in 1953. He wanted Europe to recover its economy and societies in order to create a third power block between the US and the Soviet Union. The US was ready to help Europe in achieving this goal but Eisenhower hoped that when that happened, the US would no longer have to be responsible for the security and defence of Europe. Instead it could “sit back and relax somewhat” (Eisenhower’s words to the US National Security Council on 21 November 1955, quoted in Trachtenberg 1999). The treaty establishing the EDC was signed by six countries (West Germany, France, Italy and the Benelux-countries6 ) in 1952, thus creating a multinational army that was organised under a unified panEuropean command structure. The ratification process was, however, troublesome mostly because of fierce criticism by the French Parliament. First, the Members of Parliament were particularly concerned about the national sovereignty and independence of France, just like the British were on the other side of the Channel. The EDC would have created a supranational, integrated European army with unified command structure, common budget and conscripts. Second, there was concern in France that the US would withdraw its troops from Europe after the creation of a European army and leave France to deal with the rearmed Germany alone. Third, as long as the US would provide nuclear deterrence against the Soviet Union as a member of NATO, the relevance of conventional European forces was considered low. The French Parliament did not want to lose the independence of its military affairs in a situation where the supranational organisation would not even be relevant. Finally, the international security environment had changed since the death of Stalin in

6 The same six countries were also the founding members of the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), signed in 1951, which later developed into the European Union.

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March 1953 and the end of the Korean War in July 1953. As a consequence, France did not consider the Soviet threat as severe as before and was also critical about the US intentions (Sloan 2003, pp. 29–35; Jones 2003, p. 126). In the end, the French Parliament voted against the ratification of the EDC in August 1954 and the treaty never came into force. Americans watched European inaction frustrated. US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles stated that if the Europeans could not find support for the EDC, the US would need to rethink its foreign policy relationship with Western Europe (Driver 2016, p. 6). Despite enticements, pressure and threats towards the European allies, the French Parliament voted against the treaty and the Americans had to accept that the defence policy relationship between the US and Western Europe would be formed around American leadership, not European. Expressing his frustration, President Eisenhower wrote: I get weary of the European habit of taking our money, resenting any slight hint as to what they should do, and then assuming, in addition, full right to criticize us as bitterly as they may desire. In fact, it sometimes appears that their indulgence in this kind of criticism varies in direct ratio to the amount of help we give them. (Eisenhower’s words quoted in Ambrose 1984, p. 143)

The failure of the EDC and the passivity of Europe in defence matters had long-lasting effects both on the intra-Alliance relations and the European defence cooperation. Since the Europeans were unable to create a common defence organisation, the Eisenhower Administration had to fill the gap in European conventional deterrence. The US put more emphasis on the US nuclear deterrence, which originally raised concerns in Europe but at the same time made Europe dependant on the American nuclear force as the ultimate guarantor of their security. The failure of EDC had also deteriorated the relations between the US and France. The Americans had counted on the French leadership in European defence, since the British were not interested in participating in the continental issues. This rupture in American-French relations would re-appear during the Suez crisis in 1956 and deepen during de Gaulle’s presidency, to later lead to the French withdrawal from the NATO military structure in the 1960s.

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The Western European Union Despite the failure of EDC, the US was determined to end the occupation in Germany and bring the country to the Western defence structures, one way or another. One way to achieve this objective was the creation of the Western European Union (WEU). The WEU succeeded the Western Union (WU) in 1954 when the Treaty of Brussels was amended in Paris (the Treaty came into force in May 1955). The original members of the WU were joined by Italy and West Germany that had been recognised as a full sovereign state. It was also agreed that Germany would become a member of NATO and allow the WEU to monitor its military capabilities (Sloan 2003, p. 37). The WEU was created to boost economic recovery, to offer mutual assistance in case of external aggression and to promote European integration (European External Action Service 2016). The economic, social and political competencies of the WEU were, however, gradually handed over to other bodies, such as the European Communities (EC) and the Council of Europe, which made the WEU rather void. Eventually, the WEU dealt only with issues related to security and defence, although the mutual assistance clause of the amended Brussels Treaty was de facto left to NATO: Recognising the undesirability of duplicating the military staffs of NATO, the Council and its Agency will rely on the appropriate military authorities of NATO for information and advice on military matters. (Article IV of the Modified Brussels Treaty, 1954)

The WEU was very closely linked to NATO and its actual role during the Cold War was rather small (Kernic 2006, p. 9). Still, the WEU was significant for the European defence cooperation since it strengthened the relationships among Europeans who only a decade earlier were fighting each other. The symbolism of overcoming old rivalries and establishing new forms of cooperation was undeniable.

European Passivity Challenges the Cohesion of the Alliance The 1960s can be described as a decade of intra-alliance struggles. There was a great deal of frustration among Europeans allies who felt that they were left out of the negotiation tables and had no real influence on what the US was doing in Europe. The NATO allies had stood side by side during the Berlin Wall and Cuban crises, at least in public, but the crises

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had an impact on the transatlantic relations in the long run. Even though the negotiations between Kennedy and Khrushchev over the Berlin Wall and Cuba were successful, there was a strong sense in Europe that the US had been acting behind their backs. The allies also questioned whether their strategic goals were actually compatible. Still, Europeans preferred going back to “business as usual” rather than further challenging the US and NATO as an alliance—everyone except for France and President Charles de Gaulle, who openly challenged the US. There were several reasons behind the tense relations between France and the US. France had not forgotten how NATO and the US had not supported it in its struggles in Indochina and Africa, and during the Suez crisis in 1956. Also, France wanted to be acknowledged as superior to other European NATO members, and to West Germany in particular. The US, however, saw the European allies as more or less equal partners while the US itself could act as a primus inter pares. In the eyes of the Americans, France was not superior or more privileged than Germany. In fact, for the US, de Gaulle was more of a rival than a friend (Hanhimäki et al. 2012, pp. 66–69; Sloan 2010, pp. 44–45). De Gaulle was not only at odds with the US and NATO but also with the Western European integration project which had been given more and more supranational elements. De Gaulle’s scepticism against supranational Europe concretised in 1961 when he came up with the Fouchet Plan. The Fouchet Plan, which can be considered a concrete sign of European activity in defence matters, was an attempt to create a stronger European pillar in the transatlantic relations and make Europe a third power between the US and the Soviet Union, thus creating a “strategic triangle of world powers” (Kernic 2006, p. 11; Sloan 2010, p. 46). The political cooperation suggested in the Fouchet Plan was strictly intergovernmental and based on the decisions made by nation states. The Plan established explicitly intergovernmental institutions that would coordinate the common foreign and military policies of “the Six”. The Six (France, West Germany, Italy and the Benelux countries) held a series of talks in 1958–1961 where they discussed the possibilities of deepening European political cooperation. Essentially, Europe had to make a decision between supranationalism (supported by the US) and intergovernmentalism (supported particularly by France and Britain). As a result of these discussions came the first draft of the Fouchet Plan in 1961. There were, however, disagreements among the negotiating parties about the role of NATO in particular. France was reluctant to include a clause in

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the draft that would acknowledge the importance of NATO to European security and defence, but Germany, Italy and the Benelux countries were not willing to give up the US presence in Europe or to impact NATO with a new European security institution. They were in favour of the new Union strengthening NATO, not replacing or interfering with it. To put it simply, NATO and the US military support were preferred over common European foreign and military policy (Jones 2003, pp. 133– 135). In the end, the negotiations ended in a stalemate situation in 1962 and a promising sign of European activity to form more structural defence cooperation turned into another failure. The Fouchet Plan was de Gaulle’s response to France’s increasingly strained relationship with NATO. His frustration with the European allies, disputes with the US and discontent with NATO culminated in 1966 when France withdrew from the NATO military structures. De Gaulle had already withdrawn the French Mediterranean fleet in 1959 and the Atlantic fleet in 1963 from NATO command, which had given reason to expect more. Thus, the withdrawal in 1966 did not come as a surprise to the allies but raised a lot of discontent. Especially the Americans felt betrayed by the French and even feared of the collapse of NATO. France, on the other hand, saw the integrated military structure as a symbol of American power over France and as a threat to its independence and sovereignty (Hanhimäki et al. 2012, p. 73; Sloan 2010, p. 46). By withdrawing from the military structure, France took a step towards unilateral foreign policy, which was exactly the opposite direction where its allies where heading. Still, France made a distinction between NATO (i.e. the military structure) and the Alliance (i.e. the political entity) and made it clear to the allies that it was leaving the military aspects of NATO but not the Alliance as a political organisation. It continued to participate in the political decisions of NATO and promised to follow its obligations as an Alliance member (Pesme 2010, p. 47; Sloan 2010, p. 46). On the positive side, without the French opposition, the allies could now agree on the Flexible response strategy and go back to NATO’s business-as-usual as a military organisation (Hanhimäki et al. 2012, p. 73). The Alliance moved its headquarters, facilities and forces from France to Brussels and continued the day-to-day work without reacting too emotionally to de Gaulle’s actions. The withdrawal did not have severe consequences militarily speaking but the political consequences were more significant. The balance in the Alliance changed when one of the strongest European allies with nuclear weapons withdrew from the

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military structure, thus making the rest of the members more dependent on the US. Ironically, the European allies became more dependent on the US at the same time when they were deepening their cooperation, developing nuclear forces and their economies were recovering. Moreover, West Germany’s influence in the alliance decision-making increased as a result of the French withdrawal and it became the most influential European ally (Sloan 2010, pp. 46–47). France had been displeased with the US for not giving it a superior role in the Alliance compared to Germany, but now Germany’s growing role was even more inevitable. After the European Defence Community had been discarded, the Western European Union had become practically void and France was taking steps away from military integration, the European integration process focused primarily on economic integration. Security and defence cooperation still existed on bi- and minilateral levels but institution-level cooperation outside of NATO was practically non-existent. The Cold War years were thus a long period of European passivity in terms of institutional military cooperation and structural development, and the situation changed only after the collapse the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The Cold War years were passive also in terms of European defence spending. Throughout the 1950s and 60s the US defence spending was approximately three times bigger compared to Western Europe, and from the 1970s onwards approximately double of European spending. In the early decades of the Cold War the European economy was growing slower than the American, but in the late 1970s both experienced economic growth of approximately 3.2% annually. Still, the European defence spending was much lower than the American, suggesting that the decision not to invest in defence was a deliberate choice in Europe. By the end of the Cold War in 1989 the US accounted 64.7% of the total spending of NATO (SIPRI Military Expenditure Database; Tonelson 2000, p. 37).

NATO and Ally-Led Military Operations Throughout the Cold War years, NATO was a military alliance focused on defending its allies’ territorial integrity and sovereignty—mainly against any Soviet aggression. NATO had no out-of-area operations as we understand them in the post-Cold War security context. Still, events outside of NATO’s borders had an effect also on the intra-alliance relations even

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though NATO was not involved in any out-of-area military operations before the 1990s. One of these events was the Suez Crisis in 1956 that was a short war between Egypt and the coalition of Britain, France and Israel. The crisis was a consequence of the Egyptian leader Gamal Abdel Nasser nationalising the Suez Canal Company that was owned by Britain and France. After Nasser announced that the Canal would be controlled by Egypt, Israel invaded Egypt and was joined by Britain and France a few days later in an attempt to regain the control of the Canal and oust Nasser. The US did not want to create a perception that the attack against Egypt was a Western attack against the whole Arab World, and also wanted to avoid the expansion of Soviet influence in the region. The US proposed the UN General Assembly to enforce a ceasefire in Egypt, thus forcing Britain and France to abandon their interests and withdraw their troops from Suez. The Anglo-French intervention in Suez in 1956 has been seen in the literature as no less than an open rebellion against the emerging nonEuropean bipolar global order led by the US and the Soviet Union. The endeavour ended in a fiasco as the superpowers to the east and west of the Iron Curtain collaborated to consolidate the blocs of the Cold War (Dietl 2006, pp. 32–33). Interestingly, quite opposite lessons were drawn from this experience by the French and British decision-makers: in Britain, the Suez disaster was seen as demonstration that US support was necessary to all key British security political decisions. In France, the Suez incident was interpreted as a signal that the Cold War superpowers did not regard European powers as their equals that would have the right to defend their interests abroad. Instead, in the French reading it was time to focus on having an independent foreign policy and obtaining greater autonomy from Washington—an idea that was shortly grasped by Charles de Gaulle (Gallois 2002, p. xv; Howard 1995, pp. 709– 710; Koivula 2016). Nevertheless, the Suez crisis seemed to demonstrate how containing the communist threat by the US exceeded the solidarity towards allies. The crisis also showed that Europe could not engage in massive military operations without US support (Hanhimäki et al. 2012, p. 40; Warner 1991; see also Hatzivassiliou 2013). The war in Vietnam was another international crisis that had an effect on the intra-alliance relations and on the burden-sharing debate. Even though NATO as an alliance, nor any of the European allies, was not involved in the Vietnam War, the war had a severe impact on the alliance

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relations. In 1964, when the war had lasted for 10 years, President Johnson urged the European allies to support the US in Vietnam. His determination to show unity against the rising communism in South East Asia was, however, soon watered down. Europeans did not consider the threat of communism as severe as in the early days of the Cold War, and were “hovering somewhere between the worst of the early Cold War divisions and détente” (Kitchen 2010, pp. 41–42). Hence, none of the European allies agreed to contribute financially or with manpower to the war in Vietnam. The question was never officially put into vote in NATO but it nonetheless led to worsening of the already tense relationships between the allies (Hanhimäki et al. 2012, pp. 82–83; Kitchen 2010, p. 43). The war in Vietnam highlighted the different views that the allies had on security: the US was globally focused and considered the battle against communist expansion not only its task but NATO’s task as well, while Europeans saw NATO as a military alliance meant to defend their territorial integrity, not as a global war-waging machine. Another conflict where NATO did not have a role but that caused one of the most severe internal crises since the creation of the Alliance, was the Arab–Israeli War in 1973. There were historical tensions between Europeans and the warring parties, in addition to the current East–West rivalries. Europeans were not happy to see the US assume their historical roles in the region and formed a bloc against the US support for Israel. Nixon expected the NATO allies to support the US during the crisis and to allow the Americans to use their airspace and NATO bases in Europe. Europeans did not agree to this, which naturally infuriated the Americans. Another twist to the already strained relations came in the form of oil crisis. As a response to the US military actions in the Middle East, OPEC announced an oil embargo, which had a severe impact on European economy. This further strained the transatlantic relations, since Europe was much more dependent on the oil coming from the Middle East than the US was. All in all, the Arab–Israeli War and the oil crisis showed, once again, how different views the US and Europe had on global politics (Green Cowles and Egan 2016, p. 81; Hanhimäki et al. 2012, p. 89).

Summary There were two fundamental problems in the intra-alliance relationships and in the burden-sharing debate during the Cold War.

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First of all, the US and Europe saw NATO’s purpose in different ways. Europe considered NATO to exist first and foremost for the defence of Europe. The US, on the other hand, was assuming military responsibilities in other areas as well, such as in Korea, Vietnam and the Persian Gulf, and felt that NATO and its European allies should show more solidarity towards the US by participating in operations in these areas. In fact, many of the Cold War tensions between the US and its allies stemmed from issues and conflicts that were not directly related to NATO, such as the Suez crisis and the war in Vietnam. The problem was that the US saw security from a broader, global perspective, while Europe was mostly interested in defending its own territorial area and the immediate neighbourhood from Soviet aggression. Combining these two perspectives was a challenging task. The US thought Europeans were not doing enough and Europeans felt that they did not need to participate in the American wars outside of Europe. The forum where this debate was taking place was NATO and one of its concrete embodiments was the burden-sharing debate. Even though much of the Cold War burden-sharing debate was centred around financial inputs and defence spending, it was (especially from the American perspective) also about willingness to fight together and to collaborate against a common enemy, even if NATO as an Alliance was not involved. The US was frustrated with its European allies who were not willing to support it in places like Vietnam and raised the issue of unfair burden-sharing, which from the European perspective was unjustified as they had no interest in participating in American wars. The second divisive issue in the Cold War burden-sharing debate were European allies’ insufficient investments in defence capabilities and incapability to take more responsibility of their own defence. The fundamental problem was not that Europe would have been indifferent about the Soviet threat, but that it lacked the political will and capability to fulfil agreed defence spending and investment targets. As Lunn argues, referring to the failed Lisbon Force goals, “the military perception of the threat far outstripped the political willingness of nations to make the necessary resources available, and that nations tended to promise more than they could afford” (Lunn 1983, p. 12). In fact, the most pressing incentives to increase European defence spending and investments did not come from within the Alliance but from outside. The expansionist moves of the Soviet Union, such as the invasion of Czechoslovakia and the Prague Spring in 1968, were considered severe threats happening very close to the Alliance borders, which urged the European allies to take

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more responsibility of their own defence. The biggest incentive was thus not pressure from the US but the Soviet military threat. As a consequence, the transatlantic relations experienced various phases of tension, some worse than others. The fear of NATO’s collapse was constantly present during the Cold War. The collapse would have been fatal—not just militarily speaking but also politically. The Alliance could not look weak or divided in the eyes of the Soviet Union without jeopardising the allies’ security. Somewhat paradoxically, the glue that kept the Alliance from collapsing was the fear of collapse. Europe was far too important to be lost—during the Cold War losing Europe meant losing world dominance—which was why the allies were ready to turn a blind eye to free-riding, insufficient defence investments and frustrations of being left out of important decisions, and instead decided to mind their own business. Also, Europeans knew that the US would not be ready to lose its leadership role in Europe and even globally. In other words, the US did not give enough incentives for Europe to assume more responsibilities, which led to European passivity during the Cold War (Tonelson 2000, p. 38). Still, despite different past troubles, different policy focuses and domestic issues”none of the allies wished to alienate friends on the other side of the Atlantic” but instead decided to focus on their own projects and policies (Hanhimäki et al. 2012, p. 91). NATO survived several internal and external crises during the Cold War years and avoided the fatality of institutional collapse but the most profound crisis was yet to come. By the late 1980s and early 1990s it had become clear that the fall of the Berlin Wall and collapse of the Soviet Union were not only hick-ups but fundamental changes in international relations. For 40 years the Alliance’s biggest threat had been the Soviet Union but now the collapse of the former enemy presented the most pressing threat to NATO’s existence. The allies needed to ask a crucial, existential question: was NATO still relevant and needed in the new world order?

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Hallams, Ellen, and Benjamin Schreer. 2012. Towards a ‘Post-American’ Alliance? NATO Burden-Sharing after Libya. International Affairs 88 (2): 313–327. Hanhimäki, Jussi M., Benedikt Schoenborn, and Barbara Zanchetta. 2012. Transatlantic Relations Since 1945: An Introduction. Abingdon: Routledge. Hartley, Keith, and Todd Sandler. 1999. NATO Burden-Sharing: Past and Future. Journal of Peace Research 36 (6): 665–680. Hatzivassiliou, Evanthis. 2013. Out-of-Area: NATO Perceptions of the Third World, 1957–1967. Cold War History 13 (1): 67–88. Howard, Michael. 1995. 1945–1995: Reflections on a Half a Century of British Security Policy. International Affairs 71 (4): 705–715. Jones, Seth G. 2003. The European Union and the Security Dilemma. Security Studies 12 (3): 114–156. Kernic, Franz. 2006. European Security in Transition: The European Security Architecture Since the End of the Second World War: An Overview. In European Security in Transition, ed. Gunther Hauser, Gunther, and Franz Kernic, 5–22. Ashgate. Kimball, Jeffrey. 2006. The Nixon Doctrine: A Saga of Misunderstandings. Presidential Studies Quarterly 36 (1): 59–74. Kissinger, Henry. 1973. Address Given in New York, 23 April. https://www. cvce.eu/en/collections/unit-content/-/unit/02bb76df-d066-4c08-a58ad4686a3e68ff/fb076555-f038-4413-bd55-7074b358ff47/Resources#dec 472e3-9dff-4c06-ad8d-d3fab7e13f9f_en&overlay. Accessed 28 August 2019. Kitchen, Veronica. 2010. The Globalization of NATO: Intervention, Security and Identity. Abingdon: Routledge. Koivula, Tommi. 2016. The European Union and the Use of Military Force: Uncovering the Myths. Abingdon: Routledge. Kunertova, Dominika. 2017. One Measure Cannot Trump It All: Lessons from NATO’s Early Burden-Sharing Debates. European Security 26 (4): 552–574. Lahey, Daniel James. 2013. The Thatcher Government’s Response to the Soviet Invasion of Afghanistan, 1979–1980. Cold War History 13 (1): 21–42. Lindley-French, Julian. 2020. In Judy Asks: Is NATO Paralyzed Over the GreeceTurkey Conflict? Carnegie Europe, 3 September. https://carnegieeurope.eu/ strategiceurope/82643. Accessed 7 May 2021. Lunn, Simon. 1983. Burden-Sharing in NATO. Chatham House Papers. Routledge & Kegan Paul for Royal Institute of International Affairs. Mattelaer, Alexander. 2016. US Leadership and NATO: Revisiting the Principles of NATO Burden-Sharing. Parameters 46 (1): 25–33. Modified Brussels Treaty. 1954. http://www.weu.int/Treaty.htm. Accessed 20 August 2019. NATO: Summit Declaration, 2–3 March 1988. https://www.nato.int/docu/ comm/49-95/c880303a.htm. Accessed 5 September 2019.

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CHAPTER 4

Burden-Sharing in the Post-Cold War Era

Adapting to the New Security Order By the end of 1991 the Berlin Wall had been torn down, the Warsaw Pact had been dissolved and the Soviet Union had seized to exist. NATO found itself in a situation that few if anyone had truly anticipated and where the fundamental justification for its existence was at least in question if not completely disappeared. The remaining quintessential issue was whether NATO should continue its work in the post-Cold War world or should it simply be dissolved like its counterpart, the Warsaw Pact, in 1991. NATO had experienced various existential crises during the Cold War years and survived them all, as we saw in Chapter 3. According to Rühle and Williams (1997, p. 110), [i]n retrospect, many of the crises were no more than exercises in decisionmaking, where legitimate, rational, and even disputatious debates within the alliance on the implementation of agreed strategy were elevated to the status of fundamental disagreements over the strategy of the alliance and its value in general.

In other words, NATO’s internal Cold War crises were mostly disputes about practicalities and how to implement the Alliance strategy, not about the strategy itself or about the shared values of the Alliance. Despite © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 T. Koivula and H. Ossa, NATO’s Burden-Sharing Disputes, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93539-9_4

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occasionally furious disagreements and debates—on burden-sharing, for example—the value of and need for NATO was not questioned in earnest, as the threat of Soviet Union was considered more severe than the internal disagreements or imbalanced burden-sharing. This is a key reason why NATO was able to overcome its external and internal crises so many times during the Cold War. Yet, different readings of NATO’s strategy became now apparent. The end of the Cold War created a new situation in an unprecedentedly high speed. The threat perceptions changed dramatically as the “new” Russia did not pose a military threat comparable to the one of the Soviet Union, and the decades long German question was more or less solved when Germany was reunited on 3 October 1990. As a consequence, Western Europe was militarily speaking rather stable and NATO found itself in a situation where it needed a clear cut from the past in order to focus on its new grand project within the renewed transatlantic bargain in a security environment dominated not by existential threats but by global risks (Rühle and Williams 1997, p. 111; Kernic 2006, p. 14). At first, there was no clear vision on how the transatlantic security relationship and NATO’s new agenda should look like in the future. Due to the lack of future vision in the early 1990s, many analysts and scholars saw NATO as a relic of the Cold War that would not see the next millennia (see e.g. Mearsheimer 1990; Waltz 1993). Despite scepticism and major changes in the international security landscape, it soon became clear that the case for maintaining a strong transatlantic relationship remained robust. There were still uncertainties and risks that had not disappeared and new ones emerged. As the communist regimes of Central and Eastern Europe were overthrown and the power balance had disappeared, the remaining power vacuum was considered a threat. There were fears among the Western powers of a resurgent Soviet Union and re-unified Germany; moreover, the breakup process of Yugoslavia showed worrying signs (Moore 2007, p. 16). There was thus little incentive to abolish NATO and reshuffle the transatlantic security architecture. Instead, the dramatic changes made NATO member states look for continuity and stability, even predictability in the new security environment. In the new security framework NATO had to find solutions to a number of major issues, such as how to manage the new non-hostile relationship with Russia; how closely to include it and the former Warsaw Pact countries into cooperation with NATO; how to coordinate the rapidly

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evolving European integration process and accommodate it in the transatlantic security structures; how to convince the Americans to remain in Europe that no longer was the main stage of East–West confrontation1 ; and lastly how to better share the burdens of maintaining the Alliance. It became evident that in order to address all the issues on the constantly expanding task list, NATO needed to broaden its agenda. As NATO’s tasks increased and responsibilities expanded, so did the agenda of the burden-sharing debate. Simultaneously, the agenda became more prone to political disputes not directly related to the traditional burden-sharing questions such as defence budgets and troop numbers. Most notably, the focus of the burden-sharing debate shifted gradually from inputs to outputs. The reunified Germany in NATO The US saw the German reunification as an essential matter in the postCold War world and was determined to include the unified Germany in NATO as a whole. The British and French, on the other hand, were still somewhat concerned about the prospect of a German resurgence even though Germany did its best to assure allies of its continued self-restraint. The Soviet Union opposed the idea of the unified Germany being part of NATO and lobbied for a neutralised Germany or alternatively for a dual membership in both NATO and the Warsaw Pact. This was an unimaginable option for the NATO allies. After several meetings and negotiations, the Soviet Union announced that it acknowledged the reunited Germany as a sovereign state that was able to form alliances as it wished—on the condition that neither NATO nor its nuclear weapons would be present in the Eastern part of the reunified Germany. The positive outcome of the negotiations reassured the Western powers in many ways: the British were relieved that Germany would still be a member of NATO and not drift towards the Soviet Union / Russian Federation; the French were satisfied by Germany’s assurances of further European integration (which, then again, was not a preference of the British); and the US was pleased that

1 The number of US troops stationed in Germany was steadily declining in the 1990s.

In 1989 the US had over 243 000 troops stationed in Germany and ten years later a little over 67 000 (Zimmermann 2009, p. 4). Even though the troop numbers diminished, the continued US presence in Europe acted as a further reassurance that Germany would be kept “down”, which emphasised the traditional rationale of transatlantic bargain (Hanhimäki et al. 2012, p. 126).

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it could maintain its dominant role in the transatlantic relations (Moore 2007, p. 15; Hanhimäki et al. 2012, pp. 124, 126; Krieger 2010, p. 173).

The Shift to Crisis Management During the Cold War decades NATO was, for the most part, a military alliance that focused on territorial defence. The Alliance had its internal disputes, such as the burden-sharing debate, but its basic purpose was still providing military guarantees to its members. This changed in the postCold War era as NATO’s role as a political alliance with a military focus gained new weight. NATO’s shift from a territorial defence organisation to a crisis management organisation was however not a self-evident or predetermined development but a gradual political process. Even though the Declaration of the London Summit in 1990 and the NATO Strategic Concept of 1991 are often considered milestones in de-emphasising the traditional collective defence, it is worth noting that they did not abolish collective defence in the name of crisis management (Cornish 1996, p. 758; Ricketts 2017, p. 30; Reichard 2006, pp. 106– 107). In fact, there were yet no references to crisis management in the London Declaration. Instead, the Declaration stated that NATO would continue to defend the territory of its members, highlighting that NATO would never be the first one to use military force (NATO: Declaration on the Transformed North Atlantic Alliance 1990). The use of military force was reserved for self-defence only. It was still considered essential to maintain both conventional and nuclear weapons, albeit at lower levels, in order to respond to risks that might come in diverse forms and from various directions. Even though the Soviet Union was no longer seen as a major military threat, NATO members were aware of the fact that the Soviet Union (and the soon to be established Russian Federation) had much larger conventional forces, in addition to its nuclear capabilities, than any European NATO member. It was clear that NATO still had reservations about Russia, even though its military capabilities were no longer labelled as threats but as “the most significant factor of which the Alliance has to take account in maintaining the strategic balance in Europe” (NATO: The Alliance’s New Strategic Concept 1991).

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One of the most significant changes in the post-Cold War security environment from NATO’s perspective was that the new transatlantic bargain encompassed the whole European continent, not just Western Europe and North America, which is why NATO considered the dialogue and cooperation of all European states essential. The new risks that could affect the security of the Alliance and the whole continent were smaller in scale but more unpredictable than before. It is, however, good to note that in the 1991 Strategic Concept NATO did not envisage itself the leading role in this rather political domain. It considered the CSCE (Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe, succeed in 1994 by the permanent Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe, OSCE) to be more fit to lead while NATO itself was more interested in assuming new peacekeeping and crisis management responsibilities (Zyla 2009, p. 342). NATO gave itself a crisis management role in the 1991 Rome Summit where it included crisis management as a task along with the traditional collective defence task (NATO: Rome Declaration on Peace and Cooperation 1991). As threat perceptions in European capitals changed, so did the perception of using military force. As a result, the military force became increasingly associated with peacekeeping missions and humanitarian operations instead of traditional combat scenarios. The increasingly political nature of NATO created some dispersion among the members who disagreed on how political they considered NATO to be and how much attention should be given, for example, to the democratisation process of the former Warsaw Pact countries. The conception of fair burden-sharing thus depended on the allies’ perceptions on the organisational nature of NATO and how much relevance they gave to the political and military dimensions of the Alliance. Some member countries, like Canada, Norway and Denmark placed a lot of importance on foreign development and conflict management because they emphasised NATO’s role as a political organisation. These countries gave a lot of foreign assistance to the Central and Eastern European countries in the 1990s, and thus shouldered a relatively large, even though non-military burden compared to countries such as the US, the UK and Germany who did not consider NATO to be a political organisation to such a high degree (Zyla 2009, p. 356). It is, however, worth noting that Germany provided a great deal of economic aid to the Soviet Union and its successor states in the early 1990s. It has been estimated that even 55% of all the economic aid to Soviet Union was provided by Germany (Newnham 1999, p. 437).

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Out-of-Area or Out-of-Business As the post-Cold War era progressed, the transatlantic bargain was in many countries seen to be less about defending national territory and more about maintaining forces that were capable of rapid reaction and power projection outside of NATO’s borders. Out-of-area operations became the core of the new transatlantic bargain and gave NATO the opportunity to justify its continued presence in European and global security. But out-of-area operations also posed a threat to NATO’s functionality by revealing intra-alliance disagreements, operational failures and capability shortages that could mean an end to NATO’s existence (Hartley and Sandler 1999, p. 668; Sperling and Webber 2009, p. 494; see also Kaplan 1993). President Clinton addressed the necessity for NATO to assume a new role in global security saying that “yesterday’s NATO guarded our borders against direct military invasion. Tomorrow’s NATO must continue to defend enlarged borders and defend against threats to our security from beyond them – the spread of weapons of mass destruction, ethnic violence and regional conflict” (Clinton 13 May 1997, quoted in Hamilton 2019, p. 350). Clinton’s word echoed those of US Senator Richard Lugar who gave a famous speech in 1993 urging NATO to develop the necessary structures and strategies to be able to operate “out-of-area” or take the risk of being “out-of-business”, in which case the member countries might form a new alliance or work on their own (Lugar 1993). Lugar’s speech is often interpreted as a threat of US withdrawal if Europe does not increase its contribution (see e.g. Jakobsen and Ringsmose 2017, p. 2), but this is not exactly accurate. Lugar did not merely threaten Europeans in the hope of getting them to increase their defence budgets but instead urged NATO’s renewal and strategic redefinition, and invited Europeans to rethink how their military forces and budgets should be organised. NATO’s first major out-of-area missions took place in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s but the 9/11 terrorist attacks in 2001 sealed NATO’s fate as an out-of-area crisis management organisation.2 The 2 Before the operations in the Balkans, NATO conducted smaller military operations.

During the Gulf War NATO conducted Operation Anchor Guard (10 August 1990–9 March 1991) and Operation Ace Guard (3 January 1991–8 March 1991), sending Early Warning aircraft to Turkey and deploying the ACE Mobile Force to monitor the area in case of a possible Iraqi attack. In 1992, as a response to strained relations with Libya, NATO started Operation Agile Genie (1–19 May 1992) and sent AWACS aircraft to the

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attacks were a turning point in NATO’s international position and its political and geographic agenda broadened practically overnight. Immediately after the Cold War, terrorism was a nearly non-existent topic in NATO’s security agenda, and the US and European countries had very different approaches to counter-terrorism. The US approach was much more comprehensive and included methods from assassinations to missile strikes. In Europe, in turn, the focus was mostly on intelligence gathering with limited capabilities to counter terrorism. As a consequence, before 2001 the counter-terrorism cooperation between the US and Europe consisted mostly of intelligence sharing. Especially Germany and France were sceptical of including counter-terrorism in NATO’s Strategic Concepts in the 1990s, arguing that counter-terrorism was a task of civil institutions, not of military organisations. What they feared was that by invoking the Article V of the Washington Treaty as a consequence of a terrorist attack, NATO would end up fighting several small counterterrorist campaigns all over the world. Despite their scepticism, terrorism as a threat was briefly acknowledged in NATO’s Strategic Concepts in the 1990s and was thus not a surprise per se in 2001. What was rather surprising, was that a terrorist attack of such magnitude could come from a non-state actor and be considered a collective defence task changing the international security environment in such a fundamental manner (Brown 2006, p. 26; Yost 2010, p. 494; Hanhimäki et al. 2012, p. 152; Lansford 2002, p. 72).

Russian Contraction and Expansion Russia’s relations with the West, and with NATO in particular, experienced several ups and downs during the post-Cold War years, culminating in acts of solidarity after the 9/11 attacks and on the other end of the spectrum using military power in Georgia and Ukraine some years later. From NATO’s geopolitical perspective the end of the Cold War provided many opportunities. In 1990, the member countries of NATO and the Warsaw Pact signed the Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe (CFE) that set limits on key conventional military equipment from the

Mediterranean to monitor the air routes from Northern Africa. Operation Allied Goodwill I & II (4–9 February and 27 February–24 March 1992), then again, were humanitarian operations where NATO assisted in flying humanitarian experts and medical personnel to Russia in the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union.

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Atlantic to the Ural Mountains in Russia. Both parties had to give up and destroy a great deal of military equipment, and in Russia’s case move it further away to its own territory. Moreover, former Soviet Republics declared themselves independent one after another in the early 1990s, while NATO’s borders extended eastwards by hundreds of kilometres with the joining of several former Warsaw Pact countries and the Baltic states. The economy of the newly established Russian Federation was in ruins, its military might was only a fraction of that of the Soviet Union and even its geography had changed dramatically. As a result, Russia started looking for a place in the new world order and role in regional security. Several forms of cooperation were established between Russia and NATO, and the Russian foreign policy contraction seemed to be bringing former enemies closer together. At the same time, NATO’s enlargement process in Central and Eastern Europe caused tensions between NATO and Russia and between Russia and individual member countries. Understanding the enlargement process is an important part of analysing both the Russia-NATO relations and the internal dynamics of NATO during the post-Cold War years, which is why we will start this chapter by reviewing the main aspects of the process before moving on to analyse the Russian foreign policy contractions and expansions and their impact on NATO’s burden-sharing debate. The Impact of the Enlargement Process on Russia-NATO Relations The London Summit in 1990 was a historical landmark both for NATO and for the broader European security architecture. The most important outcome of the summit was the so-called London Declaration where the Alliance members declared that the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact were no longer considered enemies and did not pose a threat to the security of NATO members. Russia was facing a situation where it needed to consolidate its position and role in the new world order. It needed to determine a new foreign policy direction in order to establish good relations with the West and with the former Soviet states in order to obtain economic assistance that it severely needed, and to get international acceptance as the successor of the Soviet Union. The relations with the West seemed to be developing in a positive direction, and the US and Russia were able to find common ground on many international questions. Russia was even interested in starting discussions about NATO

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membership. The NATO allies were, however, reluctant towards the idea of including Russia in the Alliance, which of course frustrated Russia that was looking for its place in international organisations and groups, such as the G7 (Shiraev and Khudoley 2019, pp. 130–132, 160, 187). The Russian frustration was further increased when NATO took advantage of the new regional security order and reached out to the former Warsaw Pact countries “extending the hand of friendship” and opening its doors to them (NATO Declaration on the Transformed North Atlantic Alliance 1990). At first, NATO offered the newly democratised countries friendship and cooperation in the spirit of the London Declaration, but a full membership was not an outspoken option. Instead, NATO included Central and Eastern European countries to its framework through the newly formed North Atlantic Cooperation Council (NACC, established in 1991) and the Partnership for Peace programme (PfP, established in 1994). The NACC was created as a forum where NATO and the former Warsaw Pact countries could engage in dialogue and cooperation. The Partnership for Peace programme, on the other hand, was created to build strong security relationship between NATO and non-member countries. Both of them were means to engage NATO’s former enemies and adversaries militarily and politically to NATO’s framework and this way also fill the security vacuum in Central and Eastern Europe created by Soviet Union’s disappearance from the world map (Sloan 2010, p. 99; Zyla 2009, p. 342). It is somewhat unclear when the enlargement process emerged as a topic in Western leaders’ discussions. Some argue that enlargement was not really a topic in the early 1990s when most of the Alliance attention was on the German reunification, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, on how the new security environment should be structured and whether NATO should have a future at all in the post-Cold War world (see e.g. Sloan 2010, p. 100). Others claim that the key Western leaders had already then begun to contemplate different scenarios for NATO’s enlargement and NATO’s potential future role in Central and Eastern Europe (see e.g. Sarotte 2010, p. 116). In the 1990s, many European allies viewed enlargement as a means of projecting stability and democracy in Europe, while the US also considered it a way to enforce its own leadership role in Europe and promote NATO’s role in European security. The allies also had differing views on more narrow questions, such as whether the costs of the enlargement would exceed the benefits of it, whether it would cause unnecessary quarrel with Russia, and whether

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the enlargement would actually weaken NATO and its decision-making capability due to a larger membership (Webber et al. 2012, pp. 91–94). The actual enlargement to the Central and Eastern Europe started in 1999 when the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary joined the Alliance, and thus cemented NATO’s role as a post-Cold War security organisation that was still relevant and could attract new members.3 There were also other options, such as the OSCE (the Organisation for Security and Co-operation in Europe) and the EU that could have developed their agendas and roles in the 1990s to provide a pan-European solution to the need of including former Soviet countries into the Western security framework. These organisations “remained in place but were not taken seriously”, which was a sign that European security was still very much linked to the transatlantic relations and to the US presence in Europe (Hanhimäki et al. 2012, p. 143). By approaching the Central and Eastern European countries NATO no longer protected its shared values by protecting its territory. Instead, by expanding its political agenda NATO committed itself to enhancing the democratic development and liberal values in the former Warsaw Pact countries. This was a political and strategic step towards the former adversaries in the hope of integrating them to the Western security framework and constructing new European security architecture. It has even been suggested in the literature that the enlargement process was an out-of-area-mission as it was targeted outside of NATO’s borders (Moore 2007, pp. 18, 28). When considering the costs and benefits of the enlargement process, one should not only focus on the financial aspects. Surely, there have been additional financial costs to the Alliance which have stemmed from the need to modernise the infrastructure and force capabilities of the new member countries, make them interoperable and grant them the military support they are entitled to as members. There are, however, other costs as well, such as the thinning of forces to defend new borders, the added complexity of decision-making and the costs of democratisation and societal development of the new Alliance members. The question is how these additional costs should be allocated and how the new financial, military and also political burdens should be shared. Some costs are non-measurable, such as the political impact of the enlargement process 3 The next enlargement in 2004 saw Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Slovakia, Slovenia and Romania joining the Alliance. Albania and Croatia joined in 2009 and Montenegro in 2017, followed by North Macedonia in 2020.

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on the NATO-Russia relations. These kinds of costs are not only born by NATO as an alliance but also by individual member countries who need to balance their interests. The benefits of enlargement, in turn, include improved collective defence capabilities as the Alliance gains a more comprehensive skills set, greater weapons sale and to a certain extent better burden-sharing as more and more countries contribute to the defence and security of Europe (Hartley and Sandler 1999, p. 677). This was particularly the case during the peak years of crisis management. The years of the Global War on Terror since 2001 demonstrated again that the Allies tended to view the costs and benefits of the enlargement from their own perspective and national interests. For example, after the 9/11 attacks, NATO’s focus was shifting from Europe to global issues and the US was adopting a more unilateralist foreign policy. In this situation European allies were worried of the US abandoning its allies and sought to demonstrate NATO’s continued value in Europe through the enlargement process and by taking part in out-of-area operations. The US, on the other hand, saw the post-9/11 enlargement as a means to enforce the coalition of the willing, their interoperability and capabilities in the fight against terrorism by including new countries to the Alliance (Webber et al. 2012, p. 94). From Contraction to Renewed Expansion As the former Eastern bloc countries were joining NATO, Russia was not left empty handed either. Russia joined the North Atlantic Cooperation Council already in 1991 that was replaced by the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council in 1997. In 1994 Russia joined the Partnership for Peace programme along with other former Warsaw Pact countries. In 1997 NATO and Russia signed the NATO-Russia Founding Act which is a legally non-binding treaty aiming at “overcoming the vestiges of earlier confrontation and competition and of strengthening mutual trust and cooperation” (NATO-Russia Founding Act 1997). In it, NATO committed not to station permanent forces or nuclear weapons in the former Warsaw Pact countries, except in the event of defence against a threat of aggression or missions in support of peace consistent with the United Nations Charter and the OSCE governing principles. In exchange Russia agreed to “exercise similar restraint in its conventional force deployments in Europe” (NATO-Russia Founding Act 1997; see also Deni 2017).

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The relationship between Russia and NATO, and the West more broadly speaking, experienced various ups and downs during the postCold War years. In the late 1990s Russia criticised the American dominant position in world politics and was looking for a more multipolar world order. Also, the war in Kosovo caused tensions in the relations since Russia supported the Serbs whom NATO blamed for the atrocities. The relations improved temporarily after the 9/11 attacks as Russia gave its symbolic support to the US and joined the anti-terrorist coalition. Russia did not send troops to Afghanistan but offered intelligence and logistics support (Shiraev and Khudoley 2019, pp. 163, 188; Cimbala and Forster 2017, pp. 115–116). The counter-terrorism trend fostered the rapprochement of Russia and NATO and in 2002 the NATO-Russia Council was established. Despite occasional promising steps towards closer relationship between NATO and Russia and a feeling of goodwill in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, the relations deteriorated again by the mid-2000s (Wolff 2015, pp. 1108–1109). In the 2000s, while NATO and its members were struggling with shortcomings in crisis management tasks, Russia was slowly taking steps away from the European security structures. The relations were weakened among other things by disagreements over the war in Iraq and the Orange Revolution in Ukraine. As a consequence, Russia started assuming a more assertive foreign policy after years of relatively good relations with NATO. This was accompanied by an increasingly revisionist foreign policy and moves by Russia to withdraw from international cooperation structures. One of first concrete sign of this gradual withdrawal and attitude change was President Putin’s speech in the Munich Security Conference in 2007 where he criticised the European security system and accused NATO of provocation and declination of mutual trust as a result of its enlargement to the former Warsaw Pact countries (Putin 2007). In April 2008 Putin spoke in NATO’s summit in Bucharest, arguing that “we view the appearance of a powerful military bloc on our borders […] as a direct threat to the security of our country. The claim that this process [the “expansion” of NATO] is not directed against Russia will not suffice. National security is not based on promises” (Putin 2008). Four months later in August 2008 Russia used military power against Georgia that had expressed its interest to join NATO, which was a concrete sign that Russia would be ready to use force to prevent NATO’s further eastward enlargement (Wolff 2015, p. 1110). Furthermore, Ukraine had started association negotiations with the EU and was

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considering NATO membership, which created negative responses from Russia. NATO, however did not offer membership to Ukraine nor to Georgia in the late 2000s. In 2012, when Vladimir Putin was re-elected as the President of the Russian Federation, the relations deteriorated even more despite President Obama’s attempts to mend relations with Russia. The tense relations culminated in the annexation of Crimea in 2014, which is often considered a watershed moment in the post-Cold War East–West relations and in intra-alliance dynamics as well. We will analyse the consequences of the annexation in Chapter 5.

US Retrenchment and Renewal NATO’s new post-Cold War purpose came in the form of out-of-area crisis management operations. The US, as the militarily strongest and most capable ally, was an integral actor in the operations. The US willingness or reluctance to get involved in out-of-area operations reflected its foreign policy priorities, which were shifting between retrenchment and renewal. We divide the post-Cold war US foreign policy roughly into three phases here. The first one was a phase of retrenchment that lasted approximately from 1989 until 2001. The second phase consisted of the most active counter-terrorism years and lasted until the presidency of Obama in 2009. From Obama’s presidency onwards the US foreign policy shifted again towards retrenchment and became more isolationist. These phases are characterised by conflicts, such as the wars in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Libya. We will give an overview of the periods of US retrenchment and renewal in the following subchapters but a more detailed analysis of the operations and their impact on the intra-alliance burden-sharing will be given later in this chapter. Phase One: Retrenchment in the Absence of a Major Threat In the aftermath of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US found itself as the undeniable leader of the world and experienced a unipolar moment, as there were no major rivals that could have challenged the US-dominated world order. The new situation allowed the US to take steps of retrenchment in its foreign policy and scale down its responsibilities especially in Europe. As the existential threat stemming from the Soviet Union and communism disappeared, it became popular to cut military spending, both in the US and in Europe, and redirect

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the budgets to other functions, such as education and social benefits. Following this kind of thinking, President George H. W. Bush launched the slogan “peace dividend” which claimed to create economic benefits from reduced defence spending. In practise, reducing defence budgets meant that the US needed to rely more on the support of its allies. The US was strongly in favour of NATO’s shift from collective defence to crisis management tasks because it meant that the US could expect its European allies to take more responsibilities and join the US in out-ofarea operations. A broader coalition behind operations would gain them political legitimacy and justification and also enable fairer burden-sharing (Webber et al. 2012, pp. 65–66). This kind of thinking was one of the earliest signs of the changing nature of the burden-sharing debate. While during the Cold War the main focus had been on financial inputs, in the changing post-Cold War world order the focus was more and more on the allies’ willingness to participate in out-of-area operations. The Clinton Administration even assumed the term “responsibility-sharing” instead of the traditional burden-sharing, which highlighted the importance of the new approach to burden-sharing (Cimbala and Forster 2017, p. 123). If Europe was to assume more responsibility of its own defence and US-led out-of-area operations, its role in the new world order would need to be more significant. Much of the transatlantic disputes during the Cold War had circled around the US dilemma of wanting to share more of the burdens and costs of the transatlantic security without ceding the leadership role in Europe. It seemed that the dilemma had not disappeared in the post-Cold War world. It was recognised in the 1991 Rome Declaration that in order to maintain the transatlantic relationship despite disagreements and to transform NATO to the new era, European role and responsibilities within the Alliance needed to be enhanced. This was a push towards creating a stronger European role within NATO, which had been on NATO’s agenda from the very beginning. It was considered that only strong and prosperous Europe could take over some of the defence burdens from the US (see e.g. Lugar 1993). The ambitious goal of strengthening Europe’s role was however not met with pure content in the US. The Bush Sr. Administration was openly concerned of Europe deepening its military cooperation and gaining power independent of the US. Strategically autonomous Europe would have been seen as a competitor, even as a rival, which is why Bush Sr. showed preference for NATO over purely European security institutions. For example, while the US did

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not consider the Yugoslavian break-up wars its problem, but Europe’s, it did not want its European allies to gain too much power in the region, which is one reason why the US felt compelled to intervene. The Clinton Administration had a slightly different approach. It welcomed more independent European defence, which was in line with the Administration’s focus on the growing Asia. As the US interests were increasingly elsewhere, it was widely assumed that in order keep the US engaged in European security and defence, NATO-Europe would need to participate in mostly US-led operations outside of their borders to earn the continued US support. Yet, Europe’s significance for the US even in the post-Cold War world should not be overlooked. In the 1990s, despite Asia’s growing importance, Europe was still a key strategic region in the US foreign policy. If the US wanted to remain a global power, it also needed to remain a European power. It was thus unlikely that the US would have abandoned European security and defence even if the Europeans had decided not to take part in certain out-of-area operations and carry part of the burden (Webber et al. 2012, p. 65; Tonelson 2000, p. 47; Rühle and Williams 1997, p. 113). Despite efforts to increase European responsibility of the continent’s security and attempts to take steps back from Europe, the US was compelled to take the leadership role in the Balkans in the early 1990s. Initially, the European Community took the lead in Bosnia but its soon become clear that it did not have the needed willingness or capacity to perform efficiently, which eventually led the Americans to intervene in 1993 under the lead of the newly elected President Clinton. In the end the US participation in the Balkans was essential as the actions by NATO and the UN were ineffective. Despite the retrenchment tendencies and Clinton’s foreign policy priorities that lay in Asia, the US intervention reassured the European allies of the continued US commitment to Europe’s security and to NATO as an alliance (Hallams and Schreer 2012, p. 316; Siegel 2009, p. 463; Thies 2009, p. 275; Cimbala and Forster 2017, p. 123; Cottey 2006, p. 7). The lessons from the Balkans encouraged NATO to establish institutional structures within which Europe could take more responsibility of its own defence and strengthen its role in the Alliance. The European Security and Defence Identity (ESDI)4 was established in 1996 within 4 Not to be confused with the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) that was the predecessor of the EU Common Foreign and Security Policy (CSDP).

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NATO’s framework and it was agreed that the Western European Union would be in charge of creating it. The Berlin Process that started from here was significant in a sense that now NATO was able to lend some of its command structures to the WEU should the US not be interested in taking part in an operation with the Europeans. This way the US would not be dragged into operations it had no interest in, such as the Balkans, and the European countries would have the needed resources to engage in missions on their own without duplicating NATO or need to rely on the US (Krieger 2010, p. 172; Tonelson 2000, p. 49; Ricketts 2017, p. 32). Phase Two: 9/11 and the Renewed Foreign Policy Activity As the new millennium was approaching, the transatlantic relations were mostly good, which may have had something to do with the fact that the US economy was doing better than for a long time—it had a large surplus in 2000 and was the largest economy in the world (Wallace 2000; Statista 2020). The Balkan wars had ended and the US was not involved in any conflict at the time. Things were, however, about to change dramatically. The terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001 not only changed the international security order but also the US foreign and security policy focus. In a sense, the attacks ended the first part of the post-Cold War era as it became clear that the world was not experiencing an end of history or victory of liberalism, but new major security threats and challenges were emerging. As the undeniable leader of the world and the target of the 9/11 attacks the US assumed the leading role in the war against terrorism. The role the US took in Afghanistan and Iraq was significantly more proactive compared to the reluctant and reactive role in the Balkans in the 1990s. We describe this period as years of US foreign policy renewal. The war on terrorism changed the US foreign policy but also its attitude towards NATO. Washington began to look at NATO as an instrument in its more unilateral foreign policy and see it as a security organisation among many others—as something that could be useful but could also be ignored should that better suit the US national interests. The Bush Administration made it clear to the allies that the US was not under any obligation to work through NATO. Its preference for ad hoc coalitions over a unified alliance-level response to the 9/11 attacks and the “mission determines the coalition” approach had a severe impact on

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the intra-alliance relations: many allies felt marginalised and that their solidarity was discarded, which had a severe impact on the cohesion of the Alliance (Cottey 2006, p. 9; Webber et al. 2012, p. 66; Biscop 2013, p. 241). It soon became clear that the war on terrorism would be prolonged, exhausting and expensive. The US needed more burden-sharing from its allies but many were reluctant to grant support. Many European countries experienced domestic restrains in regards to contributing the US-led campaign in Afghanistan, such as unpopularity among the general public and legislative constraints, but were still willing to show solidarity towards the US and to prove that Europe was ready to become a global security actor (van Liebergen 2011; Brattberg 2013, p. 22). However, most European countries were not happy with the Bush Administration’s hard line foreign policy that relied on unilateralism, and were reluctant to share the burden with the Americans especially in Iraq. It became clear that other allies would not follow the American lead unconditionally. As a consequence, many allies only agreed to establish a training mission in Iraq but not engage in full-scale warfare side by side with the Americans (Hallams and Schreer 2012, p. 317; Hanhimäki et al. 2012, p. 161). Phase Three: Retrenchment and War-Fatigue The prolonged wars in Afghanistan and Iraq seemed to show no signs of ending, which undermined faith in the American military power and its attractiveness in the eyes of the European allies. The longer the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan went on, the more there were voices in the US demanding a foreign policy reform that would be less assertive, more isolationist and based on unilateralism. Simply put, Americans—both the political elite and general public—were tired of fighting and carrying the heaviest burden of the war on terrorism and wanted the government to assume a foreign policy based on retrenchment. When Barack Obama entered the US presidency in 2009, the hopes of a better era for transatlantic relations and new US foreign policy were high. Americans had hoped that the new president could convince the European allies to increase their contribution especially in Afghanistan where the US was increasing its presence due to the worsening security situation after several years of focus on Iraq (Siegel 2009, p. 461; Hallams and Schreer 2012, p. 318; Richter 2016, p. 298; von Voss and Schimmel 2019, p. 8). In April 2009 President Obama travelled to the

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Strasbourg Summit to “renew our partnership, one in which America listens and learns from our friends and allies, but where our friends and allies bear their share of the burden” (Obama 2009). In his speech Obama urged the European allies to send more civilian and military support to Afghanistan, arguing that the war in Afghanistan was “a mission that tests whether nations can come together in common purpose on behalf of our common security”. Accordingly, Vice-President Biden noted that the new Administration would “set a new tone” and do more but at the same time it would expect more from its allies (Biden 2009). The “Obamamania” that had spread to Europe was however not enough and the US pleas to increase European troops in Afghanistan were not realised. In fact, some countries even reconfirmed their plans to withdraw the remaining troops, which naturally did not please the Americans, who were increasing their troops and hoping for a more balanced share of responsibility and burden (Siegel 2009, p. 461). Through American eyes, the allies failed the test of being capable and willing to fight together for common security. This view is, however, not exactly accurate. In terms of fatalities in Afghanistan, in proportion to the population, the biggest burden was actually shouldered by Denmark, Canada, Britain, Estonia and the United States. Many of these countries have also experienced terrorist attacks and violence by radical Islamists as a result of their participation in the war in Afghanistan (Coll 2010; Aroon 2008). Americans were thus not the only ones tired of war and on top of the war fatigue many European countries were struggling with their economies. European defence budgets were declining and the average defence expenditure of the GDP was well below the 2% guideline (NATO: Defence Expenditure of NATO Countries 2010–2017). American frustrations with Europe became apparent in 2011, when Obama’s Defence Secretary Robert Gates intimidated the allies of “a dim, if not dismal, future for the transatlantic alliance”, if the Europeans did not protect their defence budgets from further cuts, better allocated their already existing resources and in general assumed greater leadership in their own defence affairs (Gates 2011). But even then the European defence budgets kept declining. Moreover, the US foreign policy interests lay less and less in Europe and its neighbourhood while the main US focus kept shifting towards China and the South China Sea. Slow, reluctant and nearly non-reactive responses to the conflicts in Libya (2011), Syria (2011) and Ukraine (2014) were examples of the US post-Cold War foreign policy based on

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retrenchment and decreasing global role. We argue that the US retrenchment grew stronger under the Trump Administration and its “America first” policy but there were also signs of continued American involvement in European security, especially in the Baltics after 2014. We will assess this more in detail in the next chapter.

European Passivity and Activity The end of the Cold War was not only a new beginning for NATO but for the European defence integration process as well, which until then had been nearly non-existent. Until then the European integration project within the EU framework had been predominantly economic and political while defence issues were left for NATO and individual members. The new security environment of the 1990s provided an opportunity to develop common European defence policies and cooperation and to rethink the European and transatlantic security architecture. The European Union adopted new treaties that boosted security and defence cooperation (albeit often on paper instead of practise), which suggests that Europe was going through a phase of activity. On the other hand, the national defence budgets saw a sharp decline after the end of the Cold War, which translated into severe passivity. In other words, Europe was experiencing activity and passivity simultaneously depending on the perspective. European Passivity: Declining Defence Budgets NATO’s new post-Cold war role and security environment changed the internal burden-sharing debate in the 1990s as new burdens appeared in the form of NATO enlargement and new out-of-area operations. At the same time national defence budgets were dramatically declining, and as a consequence NATO had fewer resources but more tasks and responsibilities. From 1990 to 2001, nearly all NATO members downsized their active duty personnel. In the whole Alliance the decline was 23%, the biggest declines being in Belgium (61%), Netherlands (50%) and Spain (49%) (see Zyla 2009, p. 345). Even though the biggest declines were in Europe, it should be noted that in the US the decline was also 32%. In fact, in the immediate post-Cold War years the military downsizing was steeper in the US. In 1990–1995 the US decreased its real defence spending by approximately 4.4% while in other member countries the

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average decline was 2.3% (Khanna and Sandler 1997, p. 102). The postCold War years were also a time of abolition of conscription and higher economic growth rate compared to defence spending rates in a number of allied countries (Jakobsen 2018, p. 508; Zyla 2009, pp. 342–343). The reduced military spending lasted until 2014 when Russia illegally annexed the Crimean Peninsula. The downsizing of national defence forces was not only a decision made by single member countries but it was also mentioned in NATO’s Strategic Concept in 1991. In order to reflect the new security environment, it was considered reasonable to reduce “the overall size of the Allies’ forces, and in many cases their readiness” (NATO: The Alliance’s New Strategic Concept 1991). In the concluding remarks of the Strategic Concept it was stated that making full use of the new opportunities available, the Alliance will maintain security at the lowest possible level of forces consistent with the requirements of defence. In this way, the Alliance is making an essential contribution to promoting a lasting peaceful order. (NATO: The Alliances New Strategic Concept 1991)

This was somewhat contradictory to the aim according to which “the Allies will maintain military strength adequate to convince any potential aggressor” (NATO: The Alliance’s New Strategic Concept 1991). It is naturally contestable what “adequate military strength” means in practice but, none the less, the fact that many European allies allowed their military forces to fall into disrepair after the Cold War suggests that NATO-Europe was not doing enough for their national defence nor for the collective defence against potential aggressors. Reduced defence spending was not necessarily an attempt to free ride on others but simply a strategic move in a security environment that was safer and where the obvious threat no longer existed. Even though the intra-alliance military spending gap narrowed since the end of the Cold War as a consequence of defence budget cuts particularly in the US, the military capability gap became wider (Chalmers 2001, p. 574). The challenges caused by the widening capability gap became obvious during the Yugoslav wars and in the later out-of-area operations that showed how dependent Europe was on the US capabilities. To address the issue, NATO approved various schemes to convert territorial defence forces into expeditionary forces and to strengthen Europe’s

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role in the Alliance. The Defence Capabilities Initiative (1999) and the Prague Capabilities Commitment (2002) were attempts to transform the European armed forces to meet new security threats beyond the continent (Ringsmose 2010, p. 327; see also Terriff 2013, pp. 94, 96). The NATO Response Force (NRF) was designed to develop more rapid European expeditionary capabilities and to generate greater burden-sharing. The Riga Summit in 2006 brought the 2% GDP pledge back to the burdensharing agenda, which the US had intended as a means to slow down the decline in European defence budgets. Relatedly, the concept of Smart Defence was introduced by Secretary General Rasmussen in the Munich Security Conference in 2011. The idea behind Smart Defence was to improve national military capabilities by increasing cooperation among allies and by pooling and sharing capabilities. Smart Defence was considered a practical tool to share the burdens among allies in a more equal way and to narrow the gap between the US and other allies. The initiative was thus directed particularly to the European allies (Hallams and Schreer 2012, p. 313). Similarly, the 2014 pledge for Europeans to spend 20% of their total defence expenditure on research and development can be considered an attempt to narrow the capability gap between Europe and the US. European Activity: Steps Towards Institutionalised Security and Defence Cooperation After the end of the Cold War, NATO assumed new responsibilities in crisis management and took steps away from traditional territorial defence. At the same time, the EU started taking small steps towards military capabilities of its own. These two very different organisations met in the field of crisis management that became an important part of their activities and international presence. The forum where they interacted for a short while was the Cold War era institution Western European Union (WEU). The WEU experienced a “renaissance” in the early 1990s when its tasks and responsibilities were extended from common defence to include new operational tasks laid out in the Petersberg Declaration of the WEU’s Ministerial Council in 1992. These tasks became to be known as the Petersberg Tasks and originally included humanitarian and rescue tasks, and peacekeeping and peacemaking tasks. The Petersberg tasks were incorporated in the Amsterdam Treaty in 1997. By doing this the EU defined the level of its military ambition and the kinds of

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military actions it could undertake in crisis management operations. The tasks were later expanded in the Lisbon Treaty (2009) to include for example post-conflict stabilisation tasks and joint disarmament operations (EUR-Lex: Petersberg Tasks; European External Action Service 2016). It was clear from the very beginning that the WEU would focus on crisis management and not compete with NATO in matters of territorial defence nor with the EU in political and security matters. The WEU was not revived to replace NATO but to complement it, as it did not have the required capabilities to keep Europe stable the way that NATO could. Moreover, the continued US military presence in Europe depended on the existence of NATO, which is why the replacement of NATO by a purely European alternative was not an option. Despite several advantages (see below), the WEU’s renaissance was short-lived and it was eventually declared defunct (Ojanen 2010, p. 183; Bailes 1998, p. 11; Moore 2007, p. 16). The revival of the Western European Union The driving idea behind the WEU’s revival after the end of the Cold War was to provide a pan-European alternative to the UN and NATO by including the EU and also non-EU countries as its members. The WEU’s responsibilities still included common defence but it did not have troops or capabilities of its own. Instead, all of its troops came from member states in addition to the logistical support from NATO. NATO gave its support to the development of defence integration within the EU framework and welcomed the reinforcement of the WEU’s operational role “both as the defence component of the process of European unification and as a means of strengthening the European pillar of the Alliance” (NATO: Rome Declaration on Peace and Cooperation 1991). The WEU thus acted both as the European pillar within NATO and as the defence component of the EU (Krieger 2010, p. 172; Hanhimäki et al. 2012, p. 146; Bailes 1998, p. 11; Ojanen 2010, p. 183). The WEU had several advantages that pleased member states who had very different views on the future of European defence: it provided a ready-made mechanism for the member states, complemented NATO but did not replace it, it was intergovernmental in nature as the European Commission had no role in it, and the defence matters could be kept within the scope of the WEU, not the EU. However, the WEU also faced various difficulties. The memberships of the WEU, EU and NATO were rather different as certain EU countries wanted to opt out of the work of

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the WEU, and some NATO members were not EU or WEU members at all. This complicated the NATO-EU/WEU relations and raised the issue of duplication which is still one of the most difficult questions in European defence cooperation (Whitman 2006, pp. 46–47). The WEU became practically redundant already in 1997 when the Amsterdam Treaty was signed and the EU assumed the Petersberg Tasks. Peter Ricketts, one of the UK delegates involved in the drafting of the Maastricht Treaty, notes that everyone “knew at the time that using the WEU as a middleman between NATO and the EU was at best a temporary expedient” (Ricketts 2017, p. 31). But as organisations tend to do their best to survive, also the WEU was reluctant to subordinate to the EU’s rule. Throughout the 1990s, the WEU was linked so closely to the EU through the Maastricht and Amsterdam Treaties that gradually all its remaining structures and operational units were transferred to the EU (Ojanen 2010, p. 184; Krieger 2010, pp. 172–173). The WEU was declared defunct in 2011.

The next significant step in European defence integration was the Maastricht Treaty in 1992 (into force 1993). It established the European Union’s Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) and thus the security and military issues were for the first time discussed within the EU’s framework. The process was yet anything but straightforward as the views on what kind of roles the CFSP and the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) (later the Common Security and Defence Policy, CSDP) should have were fundamentally different among member states. For the British the CFSP and ESDP were complementary to NATO and means to strengthen transatlantic relations and European contributions to NATO. The French, on the other hand, had their eyes on Europe instead of the Atlantic and wanted to diminish European reliance on US military support. These different views were not surprising as they followed the rules learned already during the Cold War years. The differing views made it certain that despite a rather promising start of the Maastricht Treaty, the CFSP would remain more of an aspiration than reality for many years to come, and would be a continuous balancing act between the “Atlanticists” and “Europeanists”. The EU’s actual security and defence political transformation did not start until the Treaty of Amsterdam in 1997 (into force in 1999). The Amsterdam Treaty did not create common defence policy per se but instead focused on peacekeeping and other tasks set out in the Petersberg tasks, which could also include certain military aspects.

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Nonetheless, for many the long-term goal was still establishing a common defence policy (Whitman 2006, p. 46; Kernic 2006, p. 15). The next step in the European Security and Defence Policy was taken in 1998 when the leaders of Britain and France met in the annual Franco-British Summit in Saint Malo, in northern France, to discuss the future of European defence cooperation and to turn the provisions of the Amsterdam Treaty into reality. The new crisis management tasks and the war in Bosnia had provoked debate about whether Europe had the capacity to manage interventions and crisis management tasks when needed without the support of the US. The need for more independent European capabilities was thus motivated both by Europe’s own interests but also by the burden-sharing debate within the transatlantic framework (Bailes 1998, p. 11). To put the significance of the Saint Malo Declaration into perspective, one must take into consideration the difficult starting point for the discussions. For the French, the Maastricht Treaty had been a welcome step towards more autonomous European defence capabilities that would be independent from NATO and particularly from the US. The UK, on the other hand, did not want the EU to develop its own defence capabilities separate from NATO in any circumstances. Instead, the British emphasised the role of the WEU to strengthen the European pillar within NATO, not to replace NATO (Ricketts 2017, pp. 30–31). Considering these nearly opposite starting points, it was almost miraculous that President Chirac and Prime Minister Blair found common ground in Saint Malo. They agreed that the EU “must have the capacity for autonomous action, backed up by credible military forces, the means to decide to use them, and a readiness to do so, in order to respond to international crises”, while NATO would remain the “foundation of the collective defence of its members” (Saint Malo Declaration 1998; see also Krieger 2010, p. 169). In a sense, the Saint Malo Declaration was a starting point for the European Security and Defence Policy but it had a different purpose, too. The main intention of the Declaration was to create tight limits to the CFSP and ESDP, instead of building up a base for common EU military capabilities (Krieger 2010, p. 169). It was made crystal clear that the EU defence capabilities would only be used in crisis management operations outside of EU countries, supporting NATO, and all decisions should be made on intergovernmental level. Even though the agreement brokered in Saint Malo created rather high hopes for the future European peacekeeping missions, it did not change anything in territorial defence.

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The EU would not have any role in its members’ territorial defence, as they were still responsible for their own defence through NATO or other means. Despite a rather promising start, the spirit of Saint Malo was more or less forgotten by the early 2000s as the international security environment changed dramatically in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks, and the international attention turned to the war against terrorism (Ricketts 2017). As a consequence, the development of EU defence policy entered a state of hibernation. Apart from adopting the European Security Strategy in 2003 and establishing the European Defence Agency in 2004, there were no major developments in the field of defence before the Treaty of Lisbon came into force in 2009, which can be seen as a starting point for the new phase of defence integration within the EU’s framework. The Lisbon Treaty introduced the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) and the Mutual Defence Clause, the EU’s “own Article V”. Many of these reforms were rather ambitious but existed only on paper for many years to come. There were several reasons for the development of EU defence policy in the late 2000s. First, especially during the years 2003–2008 Europeans had a great deal of disagreements with the US, mostly about the war in Iraq, which led to the need to strengthen cooperation among Europeans. Second, there was sense among Europeans that stronger European military cooperation and unity would force the US to take Europe more seriously in security and defence matters. Third, the US had reduced its troops and closed its bases in Europe, which increased the need to create European alternatives to the US presence (Ojanen 2010, p. 181). As NATO is a transatlantic organisation, its dependence on the US willingness to act has always been substantial (Germond 2010, p. 214). Considering this, it is no wonder that even though NATO was still the main security organisation in many European capitals, there was also a renewed interest in developing EU military capabilities as well. This became even more relevant during the Trump presidency as the President put more and more pressure on the Europeans and threatened with the US withdrawal if Europeans did not assume more responsibilities and increase their defence budgets. European defence integration and the search for strategic autonomy is thus a constant balancing act between Europe and the US, among Europeans themselves and also between the EU and NATO. The fact that it took the EU and NATO several decades to formalise their cooperation

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in 2003 reveals rather a lot about their dynamics and difficulties as two different organisations operating in the same geographical area and to an increasing extent on similar policy areas.5 Moreover, there is no shared view among the EU member states on what kind of role the Union should have in security and defence politics. France, for example, sees the EU as a power that strengthens NATO’s European pillar and creates possibilities for Europeans take more responsibility of their own defence. Countries like Estonia and Poland, then again, remain concerned that the EU duplicates NATO, makes it redundant and threatens to fundamentally alter the decades-old transatlantic relations (Germond 2010, p. 213; Strauß and Lux 2019; Szymanski ´ 2020). The duplication of tasks and institutional assimilation has indeed become one of the major concerns for those sceptical of European strategic autonomy. We will continue reviewing the concept of strategic autonomy in the next chapter.

NATO and Ally-Led Military Operations NATO’s shift from purely collective defence organisation to one focused on crisis management tasks outside of its borders had a more significant impact on the post-Cold War burden-sharing debate than perhaps any other factor. Burden-sharing was no longer only about financial burdensharing but to an increasing extent about willingness to fight and take responsibility. Participating in out-of-area operations became one of the most important ways to contribute and share some of the common burdens of the Alliance. Moreover, conflicts outside of NATO’s borders proved that NATO’s presence as an alliance was not a prerequisite for the burden-sharing demands to appear. Conflicts both in and outside of Europe had a severe impact on NATO’s internal dynamics and cohesion, sometimes even bringing the Alliance on the verge of a crisis. NATO’s enlargement process and the out-of-area operations were interconnected during the early post-Cold War years. NATO’s newly 5 The EU-NATO relationship and practical cooperation was formalised in 2003 with the signature of the so-called Berlin Plus agreement, which was comprised of several agreements between the EU and NATO. The most important outcome of the Berlin Plus package was that the EU got access to NATO capabilities and could use them in its own military operations on the condition that NATO refuses to intervene first (the principle of right of first refusal). As of 2021, the EU has taken on only two missions with the support of NATO capabilities (EUFOR Concordia in FYR Macedonia in 2003 and EUFOR Althea in Bosnia-Herzegovina in 2004).

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established partner countries were eager to participate in out-of-area operations and prove their willingness to become full members in the future. For example, Poland, Hungary and the Czech Republic participated in the Gulf War with NATO members already in 1991. Even though their role in the war was mostly symbolic, it was one of the earliest signs of how Central and Eastern European countries attempted to show their willingness to create close relationships with NATO (Zyla 2015, p. 114). The same pattern continued in Afghanistan and Iraq. Cimbala and Forster argue that “the willingness to participate in outof-area actions has almost become a rite of passage for new Alliance states and those seeking membership” (Cimbala and Forster 2017, p. 127). This kind of behaviour is not particularly new or only relevant in the post-Cold War era as already in the early 1950s, Turkey took part in the Korean War to prove its willingness to join the Alliance. Becoming a NATO member naturally requires more than participation in out-out-area operations, but showing willingness to contribute and carry some of the common burden can arguably be a positive step towards membership. Burden-sharing was thus not only a matter that concerned NATO member countries but also partner countries. The Yugoslav Wars: NATO in Bosnia and Kosovo NATO’s determination to use military power only in self-defence, as concluded in the London Declaration in 1990, was challenged in the Balkans where a series of ethnic conflicts and independence wars took place between 1991 and 2001 as a consequence of the break-up of Yugoslavia (1990–1992). The UN was busy during the 1990s with conflicts around the world, such as the ones in Somalia and Rwanda, and did not have the resources to manage them all simultaneously. As a consequence, the UN decided to “outsource” some of its peacekeeping tasks to regional organisations, such as NATO, that already had the capabilities to run long-term military operations. NATO, that was currently trying to find a new purpose and justification for its existence, was politically willing to take over the tasks from the UN. The problem, however, was that NATO’s experience in peacekeeping was very limited because until then NATO had primarily been a territorial defence organisation (Zyla 2009, p. 347; Zyla 2015, p. 114). UNPROFOR (United Nations Protection Force) was an UNauthorised peacekeeping force in Croatia and Bosnia-Herzegovina from

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1992 to 1995. At first, NATO as an organisation was not directly involved in UNPROFOR but most of its member countries participated in the conflict by giving troops or equipment (Zyla 2009, pp. 337–338). The fact that NATO did not intervene from the very beginning was mostly a consequence of the US reluctance to have a role in the conflict. The American reluctance to take part in the conflict was not the only issue facing the allies in Bosnia. There were differing views among Europeans, and also between Europe and the US, on whose side they should take, whether the newly formed Balkan countries should be recognised as independent countries, whether there should be a militarily intervention and what was the right amount of force needed to end the conflict. The UN and the EU highlighted political neutrality, arms embargos and economic sanctions. The US, on the contrary, lobbied for the “lift and strike” policy that meant lifting embargos and conducting targeted air strikes, while Europeans saw the lift and strike policy only as escalating the already complex and violent situation6 (Hanhimäki et al. 2012, p. 135; Cottey 2006, p. 7; Tonelson 2000, p. 46). Step by step, NATO was pushed towards the conflict in Bosnia.7 In 1994 NATO took over UNPROFOR and thus enhanced its new postCold War role as a crisis management organisation (Zyla 2009, p. 338). The engagement in the conflict in Bosnia in a manner re-justified NATO’s existence at first, but as the conflict only seemed to get worse NATO’s critics questioned the Alliance’s role and relevance in the conflict. One of the reasons for criticism was that NATO lacked a clear leadership role as its agenda was set by the UN under whose authority NATO operated. Its role was thus reactive rather than proactive. The defenders, on the other hand, argued that despite disagreements and tensions among 6 Germany, in particular, found itself in a difficult position. Until 1994, the German constitution prohibited the country from taking part in any military action apart from defending its own territorial area. This is why Germany could not participate militarily in the Gulf War in the early 1990s but instead contributed financially. In the case of Yugoslavia, it was more difficult for Germany to opt out as the conflict was in Europe. In 1994, Germany’s constitutional court ruled that the country could take part in outof-area conflicts provided that the missions were UN-authorised and the majority of the Parliament supported the mission. 7 In 1993 NATO started the Operation Deny Flight designed to enforce the UN no-fly zone in Bosnia-Herzegovina. The most aggressive part of the NATO participation in the war was in 1995, as a consequence of the massacre in Srebrenica, when NATO started the Operation Deliberate Force, an air strike campaign which turned out to be the largest military operation the Alliance had had so far.

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the allies, NATO itself functioned well and managed the tasks given to it and participated in the UNPROFOR in an unprecedented manner: it was assuming new conflict prevention tasks, enforced the no-fly zone and concluded air strikes against Serbian forces (Sperling and Webber 2009, p. 493; Thies 2009, p. 281). The next challenge for NATO in the Balkans was the war in Kosovo (1998–1999), whose outcome, many argued, would define NATO’s future. As the allies could not afford repeating the mistakes made in Bosnia, the Kosovo conflict was a chance to fix the past errors. This time NATO needed to have a clear agenda on how to engage, how to justify military action and how to choose sides in the conflict (Sperling and Webber 2009, p. 495). There were, however, again differing views among the allies on the severity of the crisis and the necessary response. Wallander notes that because members have different priorities that guide their cost– benefit calculations, it is not easy for NATO to form a cohesive response to non-Article V conflicts (Wallander 2018, p. 72). In the Balkans, the US did not see the war in Kosovo (nor in Bosnia for that matter) as severe a threat as the crisis in the Gulf, despite its proximity to its European allies. The way the Clinton Administration saw the war was that at worst it would diminish NATO’s credibility but the most important matter, the US national security, was not under any direct threat in Kosovo. Europeans, understandably, saw the matter differently, which put NATO’s political capacity and cohesion under test. Finally, as a response to the Raˇcak massacre where the Serbian security forces killed 45 Albanians, the allies found common ground in their commitment to protecting human rights (Wallander 2018, pp. 73–74). The NATO bombing campaign in Kosovo started in March 1999. The bombing campaign prompted doubts whether using military force was the best way to solve the conflict but, eventually, in June 1999 the Serbs withdrew. The NATO-led Kosovo peacekeeping operation KFOR (Kosovo Force) began in June 1999 and continues as of 2021. During the Cold War years, the burden-sharing imbalance was often brought to NATO’s agenda, but it was always tolerated, one way or another, since the common threat stemming from the Soviet Union was considered more grave than unfair burden-sharing. In the post-Cold War years this changed, and the imbalance became even more apparent during the Balkan wars where Europe was highly dependent on the US. It became obvious that NATO and its European members could not function without the military support of the US. Europeans simply did

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not have the required capabilities to join the battles with the Americans as equal partners, making capability gap a reality in NATO’s political discourse (Hallams and Schreer 2012, p. 316; see also Sperling and Webber 2009, p. 493). The wars in Bosnia and Kosovo proved how dependant Europe was on the American military force both during the actual battle but also maintaining post-conflict peace militarily. It has been argued retrospectively that since the impact of the wars was much higher on Europe than on the US, European actions should have been significantly higher. Even though the European allies contributed a great deal of troops in Kosovo, their military capabilities proved to be inadequate and lacking behind the US capabilities and the troop readiness was poor (Siegel 2009, p. 464; Tonelson 2000, p. 50; Sperling and Webber 2009, p. 498). On the other hand, even though the US took care of most of air campaign, Europeans took a great deal of responsibility of the post-conflict stabilisation operations and reconstruction. The US performed approximately 70% of the all the air strikes in Kosovo and paid approximately 80% of them but when the bombing campaign ended and the post-conflict mission8 started, Europeans provided 72% of all the troops (Chalmers 2001, pp. 575–576; Siegel 2009, p. 464). The War in Afghanistan One of the existential crises that NATO faced in the early 2000s was the declining importance of its new role that it had developed and assumed in the 1990s (Cottey 2006, p. 9). The most immediate phases of the peacekeeping missions in the Balkans were over, the enlargement process was well under way and the relations with Russia were, if not warm, but at least stable. It was rather unclear where NATO should head next. In a sense, the shocking 9/11 attacks in 2001 gave a new purpose for NATO by starting the next phase in its crisis management role, dominated by counter-terrorism. Now the main security threats stemmed from outside of Europe, not from within, as was the case during the Cold War, the Balkan Wars and regime changes in Central and Eastern Europe.

8 In 2004 the EU (EU Force) took over the peacekeeping tasks in Bosnia through the Operation Althea. NATO was not directly involved in this European mission but its assets were used in the task (Siegel 2009, p. 464).

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The operation in Afghanistan was a consequence of the Article V of the Washington Treaty being invoked one day after the attacks on the WTC twin towers and Pentagon on 11 September 2001 (9/11 attacks). The Operation Enduring Freedom started in October 2001. The US-led coalition’s mission was to eradicate terrorist organisation al-Qaeda that was behind the attacks, and to overthrow the Taliban regime that was allegedly providing a safe heaven for al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. Despite the invocation of the Article V, NATO’s role in the operation was minimal at the beginning. The US did not want to repeat the “mistakes of Kosovo” and allow the allies to use their veto rights to hold down the US-led mission or allow the North Atlantic Council to interfere in the decisionmaking. Neither did the US want to be tied to national caveats of the allies or tolerate their capability deficits. In other words, the Bush administration was concerned about one of the basic risks of alliance politics, entrapment, which is why it resorted to the coalition of the willing and bypassed NATO. As a consequence, most of the early NATO contributions consisted of replacing US military assets, such as flying AWACS in the US airspace to replace the planes that were sent to Afghanistan. The US decision to realise the operation in Afghanistan unilaterally, with rather small contributions by the coalition, raised concerns of the US becoming more nationalistic and unilateralist. While many Europeans would have wanted to contain the growing US power, the US wanted to maximise its freedom to manoeuvre in Afghanistan on its own. As a result, the transatlantic relations were at their lowest (Sperling and Webber 2009, p. 501; Bird 2013, p. 123; Siegel 2009, pp. 464–465; Hallams and Schreer 2012, p. 316). Despite the reluctance to include NATO in the intervention in Afghanistan, the US did not have the resources to be in charge of both the combat mission and the post-conflict reconstruction, giving room for further growth of burden-sharing discussion within the Alliance. Especially when it came to the post-war decision-making, the US needed to share some of the powers with the allies. NATO as an organisation joined the operation in Afghanistan in 2003 when it took the lead of the International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) that had started in January 2002. Gradually the whole Afghanistan came under NATO’s control. More NATO members started to send their soldiers and support staff to Afghanistan, especially when the security situation grew worse despite of the peacekeeping efforts. By including NATO (and the UN) to the mission in Afghanistan, the US in a sense secured its back by making the

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operation more multilateral and pushing more responsibility to the international community as a whole. From burden-sharing perspective, the US thus had to balance between maintaining the leadership role and admitting that it needed support from its allies. Furthermore, NATO taking over the command of ISAF made the mission more attractive to countries that at first had been reserved. Countries like Canada and Germany saw NATO’s growing role in Afghanistan as a positive thing as it gave them more political freedom at home to participate in the mission. Especially in Germany ISAF was considered a justified, UN-led peacekeeping and reconstruction mission while the Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF) was considered a “bad” mission led by the Americans. It was important to highlight that the OEF and ISAF were two separate missions with their own command structures, albeit working under the same umbrella (Cimbala and Forster 2017, p. 127; Siegel 2009, p. 465; Bird 2013, pp. 127–128; Sloan 2010, pp. 188, 191, 207). ISAF was a real test for NATO’s command competency as it was its first out-of-area operation outside of Europe. The tasks ranged from nationbuilding to actual combat tasks as the security situation in Afghanistan deteriorated. It thus became increasingly difficult to measure the contributions of each member country since everyone contributed to different kinds of tasks (Cimbala and Forster 2010, p. 156). It has been widely debated what the actual European and Canadian contributions were in Afghanistan and whether burden-sharing was equal. Some have argued that non-US allies indeed participated in the mission with a fair share and that the “claims of transatlantic gap are subject to exaggeration” (Sperling and Webber 2009, p. 510; see also Zyla 2013). Others, on the other hand, are more sceptical and claim that Europe’s fair contribution was questionable since the European contribution in the first years of war was minimal. Then again, it should not be forgotten that it was exactly the US that “preemptively excluded[ed] Europeans from most of the actual military combat in the early years of the war” (Siegel 2009, p. 465). In 2009, the US had nearly 30 000 troops in ISAF (in addition to the 38 000 troops in OEF), which was over three times more than the next highest contributing member, Britain (9000). Third came Germany (4050), fourth France (3160) and fifth Canada (2800) (Cimbala and Forster 2010, p. 158). Together, all the non-US member countries contributed slightly under 32 000 troops. Considering the individual contributions, the US commitment appears a great deal higher and suggests that the US carried the heaviest burden in Afghanistan. But if we

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consider the 32 000 European and Canadian troops as a cohort balancing the US contribution, the number of troops seems rather fair and equal. The number of troops, however, reveals us only a small fraction of all the contributions that should be considered in burden-sharing. It is equally important to contemplate issues such as national caveats, risksharing and expeditionary capabilities, which played a significant role in Afghanistan. ISAF showed how NATO was developing into a “tiered alliance” where the US (with a couple of European member countries and Canada) shouldered the heaviest burden while most of the members declared national caveats and had very few necessary expeditionary capabilities. In 2009, almost half of all the ISAF troops in Afghanistan had restrictions on how and where their operational capacities could be used (Sloan 2010, p. 203; Hallams and Schreer 2012, p. 317; Cimbala and Forster 2010, p. 157). This enforced the burden-sharing and risk-sharing debate within the Alliance. Retrospectively, the US concern of finding itself in Afghanistan entrapped in an alliance that cannot find a common tone was rather accurate. It was particularly the national caveats that “have prevented NATO from acting effectively on the ground, leading to the US government’s dissatisfaction and disillusionment” (Smolar 2011, p. 133). Still, it is nowadays a rather commonly accepted view that even though Afghanistan created tensions among the allies and NATO was bypassed at the beginning, the war did not fundamentally change the Alliance or create unsolvable dilemmas (see e.g. Bird 2013). The Invasion in Iraq The beginning of the war in Iraq (2003–2011) created one of the biggest internal crises NATO had experienced so far even though, again, as an alliance it did not take part in the war.9 The Alliance was deeply divided ahead of the decision to invade Iraq in 2003: the US and the UK were the most eager ones to engage in the invasion while other European countries, primarily France and Germany, opposed to it and were sceptical about President Bush’s claims about Iraq developing nuclear weapons (see e.g. Dalgaard-Nielsen 2003). The Bush Administration tried to gain support in the UN and proposed a resolution that would authorise the 9 NATO as an alliance only provided training support within the framework of the NATO Training Mission-Iraq (NTM-I) from 2004 until 2011 when the last troops left Iraq.

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invasion. The resolution was supported by Britain, Poland, Italy, Denmark and Spain, in addition to non-NATO countries Australia and Japan. They, however, gave up the effort as it became clear that France and Russia, permanent members of the UN Security Council, would veto the resolution (Hoge 2003). The mission in Iraq thus gained no UN authorisation. In the end, the initial invasion and bombing of Iraq was carried out by the US, Britain, Poland, Denmark and Australia. Many other countries, such as Spain, Portugal and the Netherlands, showed political support and later sent troops to Iraq. France and Germany in particular saw the decision to intervene in Iraq as another example of a unilateral US foreign policy and Bush Administration’s desire for loose ad hoc coalitions of the willing, and were not interested in taking part in the campaign (Cottey 2006, p. 5; Hallams and Schreer 2012, p. 317). Furthermore, the Alliance relations were tested prior to the invasion when NATO ally Turkey asked for support on its border with Iraq. France, Germany and Belgium used their veto right over this as a protest against the invasion. Common defence against a threatened member country is considered nearly sacred and the refusal to show support in this matter pushed NATO on the verge of a major crisis (Bird 2013, p. 126). The crisis was eventually solved on technical level but the political damage had already happened. The war in Iraq had a negative effect on the transatlantic relations that remained tense until the end of the Bush presidency. A concrete consequence of the declining transatlantic relations was the first European Security Strategy (ESS) that the European Council adopted in December 2003. The ESS set out objectives and principles aiming at advancing Europe’s security interests that were based on the core values of the EU. The EU became to be seen as a normative actor focusing on issues such as human rights and rule of law, in contrast to the quarrelling NATO that was led by the US. Thus, the war in Iraq did not only have an impact on the intra-NATO relations but also an indirect effect on the development of the EU-level security and defence policies and EU’s role in global politics. Another important outcome of the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, from burden-sharing perspective, was that the US realised it could not run massive wars simultaneously without the support of its European allies. From 2003 onwards the war in Iraq was priority number one for the US and it could not handle both the conflicts in Iraq and in Afghanistan on its own. It is remarkable that even though the war in Iraq caused deep

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rifts among the allies they still agreed to shoulder the largest burden of ISAF in Afghanistan so that the US could focus on Iraq (Sloan 2010, p. 2000). This can be seen as an example of NATO’s ability to overcome inner battles and disagreements and move on. The Libyan Civil War The Libyan Civil War (2011) was a conflict between the forces supporting Muammar Gaddafi and the forces wanting to overthrow his regime. The conflict started in February 2011 and is often considered one of the many conflicts of the so-called Arab Spring. NATO joined the conflict in March 2011 after the UN Resolutions 1970 and 1973. NATO sent AWACS to control and observe the Libyan airspace in order to implement a no-fly zone, and ships to the Mediterranean to secure the arms embargo. There are various understandings of how the war in Libya actually affected the transatlantic relations and the burden-sharing debate. Some argue that the operation was a defining moment for the future burden-sharing models because of its success (see e.g. Hanhimäki et al. 2012), while others are more sceptical and do not see how the operation could provide a new template for burden-sharing models as there were many troubles, even failures, during the Operation Unified Protector (see e.g. Hallams and Schreer 2012; Zambakari 2016). The problem in Libya was not that the member countries could not find a common ground. In fact, every one of them voted in favour of the air strikes but only 8 out of 28 were willing or able to contribute to the strikes (the US, the UK, France, Belgium Canada, Denmark, Norway and Italy). Many countries had made cuts to their defence budgets as a consequence of the financial crisis in 2008 and felt severely the rising costs of the war in Afghanistan (Michaels 2013, p. 199). Many were thus unable to participate in the operation military or financially and instead only gave their political and symbolic support. Particularly Germany’s reluctance caused tensions among the allies. Germany abstained from voting in the UN Security Council, along with Russia and China, which did not please the allies, especially France and Britain who were the leading forces behind the air strikes. France and Britain did, however, cause disputes within the international coalition, too, as they practically started the operation without involving NATO or the EU. The war in Libya proved the trend of a multi-tier alliance where member countries participate in selected missions based on their national

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restrictions, interests and views on the strategic priorities of the Alliance (Hallams and Schreer 2012, p. 322; Smolar 2011, p. 133). The US Secretary of Defence Robert Gates addressed this fragmenting trend: In the past, I’ve worried openly about NATO turning into a two-tiered alliance: Between members who specialize in ’soft’ humanitarian, development, peacekeeping, and talking tasks, and those conducting the ‘hard’ combat missions. Between those willing and able to pay the price and bear the burdens of alliance commitments, and those who enjoy the benefits of NATO membership – be they security guarantees or headquarters billets – but don’t want to share the risks and the costs. This is no longer a hypothetical worry. We are there today. And it is unacceptable. (Gates 2011)

When talking about burden-sharing in Libya, it is often claimed that for the first time Europe was willing to take the lead and more responsibility while the Americans could, for a change, relax on the back seat. From one perspective, the European contribution in Libya was unprecedented in a sense that the operation was indeed led by Europeans. The operation was thus in line with the new American burden-sharing strategy according to which it would let the allies take greater responsibility and lead operationsa role which traditionally had belonged to the US. From another perspective, the burden-sharing of the operation failed since approximately 60% of the military activities were carried out by the US (Smolar 2011, p. 134; Hanhimäki et al. 2012, pp. 172–173, 227; Michaels 2013, p. 210). Material shortcomings became soon a reality in Libya as the European members ran dangerously low in their ammunitions and were forced to rely on the support of the US (Mattelaer 2016, p. 29). The US Secretary of Defence criticised the capability shortcomings and lack of willingness that became apparent in the Libyan operation and warned that they “have the potential to jeopardize the alliance’s ability to conduct an integrated, effective and sustained air-sea campaign” (Gates 2011). Given Libya’s close proximity to Europe, the mission’s wide political support and the fact the operation was based on air strikes, not on troops on the ground, Gates found it unacceptable that only a third of the NATO countries had the willingness or the capabilities to contribute. The Libyan operation demonstrated that burden-sharing in the twenty-first century was about to be more and more about capabilities, political willingness

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and loyalty to the Alliance, not only about increasing defence budgets and contributing financially.

Summary As NATO’s core tasks shifted from collective defence to crisis management operations after the end of the Cold War, also the focus of the burden-sharing debate expanded from financial inputs to outputs. In practise this meant that the debate circled more around allies’ willingness to take economic, political and military responsibility in places like Afghanistan, in addition to their own security and defence. Especially the US considered contributions to the war on terrorism a crucial part of sharing some of the common burdens. As a consequence, a great deal of attention was paid on questions such as who take the biggest risks in outof-area operations and deploy troops in the most dangerous areas instead of simply relying on “chequebook diplomacy”. Demands for increased defence spending and financial contributions had not disappeared but concrete solidarity in the form of active participation in out-of-area operations was becoming an integral part of fair burden-sharing. Despite the changing nature of burden-sharing, the traditional inputfocused debate was not forgotten. Especially the widening capability gap caused concerns. Even though the spending gap between the US and Europe narrowed during the post-Cold War years, the capability gap became even more apparent during various out-of-area operations. European allies simply did not have the military capabilities that they needed to fight alongside the Americans as equal partners. This was not only embarrasing for Europeans and frustrating for Americans, but also a major efficiency issue for NATO as an alliance. If its members were not capable to operate missions that were now the core of the Alliance’s agenda, what use could NATO’s presence have in conflict areas? To address the issue NATO established various initiatives, such as the Defence Capabilities Initiative, NATO Response Force and the Smart Defence Concept. Despite efforts like this, European defence spending kept declining, which then again meant fewer investments and capabilities. Compared to the Cold War years when Europe was dependant on the US military support, and its nuclear umbrella in particular, in the postCold War situation the US had less leverage over Europe. The relations with Russia were stable and new forms of cooperation were established in the 1990s and early 2000s. The US still had troops stationed in

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Europe but their role in European security was a great deal less significant than during the Cold War. Threats of withdrawing military support from Europe, should Europe not follow the US demands of increasing defence spending and investments, were no longer plausible. Still, Europe was by no means autonomous or independent of the US military support. This became clear in out-of-area operations in the Balkans, Afghanistan and Libya. Europe still lacked military capabilities, economic resources and most importantly political will and cohesion to successfully lead military operations without the US. The US was reluctant to participate especially in the Balkans and in Libya but was forced to take part as it became apparent that Europe was not able to manage them alone, despite their geographic proximity. But on the other hand, neither was the US able to operate alone in Iraq and Afghanistan but instead needed support from the allies. Europeans, however, were reluctant to give support and increase their presence. One reason for the reluctance was America’s increasing reliance on unilateralism and ad hoc coalitions. The US had marginalised NATO in its response to the 9/11 attacks, which left the allies feeling side lined and disrespected as allies. The post-Cold War security landscape made the allies more dependent on each other on many levels. But at the same time, it pushed them further away from each other in terms of military capabilities and also politically, showing the differences in their approach to the changing security context dominated by global terrorism and regional conflicts. The trend would only grow stronger in the 2010s when the security environment would, once again, experience fundamental changes.

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CHAPTER 5

The Changing Landscape of Burden-Sharing Since 2014

The Watershed Year of 2014 As little as ten years ago the security threats that NATO members faced were challenging but rather clear. The Alliance’s main focus was on crisis management, and on the fight against terrorism and repressive regimes in places like Afghanistan and Libya. As the ISAF Operation was disbanded in the late 2014, NATO faced yet another challenge to its role in global security. ISAF had not only proved NATO’s continued relevance in the twenty-first century but had acted as a platform for the allies to maintain and work on their interoperability capabilities. Hence, the ending of ISAF was seen as a challenge to “maintaining this unprecedented level of operational and tactical interoperability”—especially in the light of the recent annexation of Crimea by Russia (Deni 2014). While NATO’s focus was in out-of-area crisis management operations, Russian foreign policy assumed more assertive features, culminating in the controversial referendum and annexation of Crimean Peninsula in 2014 and Russian occupation of the Donbas region in Eastern Ukraine. The annexation has been viewed widely as a tipping point in European security, creating a deep rift between Russia and the West and upending the security order that had been built for more than 20 years. The crisis in Ukraine, combined with the ending of ISAF, changed the fundamental understandings of what wars look like in the twenty-first century and brought territorial defence and deterrence back on the top of NATO’s © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 T. Koivula and H. Ossa, NATO’s Burden-Sharing Disputes, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93539-9_5

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agenda. Before 2014 the allies had got used to the idea that they could choose rather freely which crisis management operations they were willing to participate in and to what extent. This kind of ad hoc “pick and mix” approach changed in 2014 as the allies realised that a high-intensity combat was still possible in Europe, even in their own territory (Mattelaer 2016, p. 32; Wolff 2015, p. 1103). The turn from crisis management tasks back to NATO’s original purpose, collective defence, was taken in the Wales Summit in 2014 which also marked the return of input focused burden-sharing debate that had been somewhat ignored during the years of crisis management. Burden-sharing was once again viewed through financial lenses as NATO re-emphasised the aim to reach the 2% GDP guideline and the European allies made a promise to spend 20% of all the defence expenditures on research and development. The allies also agreed to halt further defence budget cuts and to reverse the trend of declining investments (Fryc 2016, pp. 49–50; Arnold 2016, p. 77). Countries like Germany and Canada, whose defence spending is low considering the size of the countries, have criticized the 2% GDP target for being arbitrary and ignoring the quality of defence forces and loyalty of allies—in other words, the outputs. Still, the member countries’ defence spending started to grow again after the events in 2014 (Richter 2016, p. 307; Jakobsen 2018, p. 502; BéraudSudreau and Giegerich 2018, p. 54). Especially the Central and Eastern European NATO members increased their defence budgets. Reasons behind increased defence spending were not only limited to the changed threat perceptions—namely the expansive Russia and the instability in the Middle East and Northern Africa. They were also a consequence of improved economic situation in Europe after the financial crisis and years of austerity measures, and aimed at reversing capability shortcomings which were the result of earlier defence budget cuts and neglect of national defence readiness for several years, even decades (Béraud-Sudreau and Giegerich 2018, pp. 53, 55; see also Deni 2017, pp. 73–74). The post-2014 era is sometimes labelled as the Second Cold War. However, the term is somewhat misleading, suggesting that the dynamics of the current “cold war” are similar to the previous Cold War. It is indeed true that the main rivalry takes place again between Russia and the West, but the security environment and the actors operating in it are dramatically different. The threats are much more complex and unpredictable and there is a vast amount of new state and non-state actors

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in the international stage that did not have a significant role during the Cold War. China poses new challenges, transnational terrorism is one of the most pressing global threats and multinational companies are gaining unprecedented powers in the era of technology. The speed of technological change in today’s world is astounding and organisations such as NATO need to invest a lot of time, energy and resources just to keep up and stay ahead of the challenges. The cyber dimension of warfare is growing in a remarkable speed and new hybrid threats are constantly emerging, changing the way we understand security, defence and warfare, and blurring the traditional division between internal and external security. The world is increasingly interconnected but at the same time there are forces that aim at tearing old alliances and cooperation relations apart. This has led to a situation where NATO members do not have only one clear enemy from whom to defend themselves collectively but a wide range of competitors, challengers and even enemies that can be hard to identify—let alone to address the challenges they pose. Countries always prioritise threats from their own premises and national interests. This leads to differences in defence spending and capabilities, which then again, fuels the burden-sharing debate and challenges the transatlantic cohesion.

Russian Contraction and Expansion NATO-Russia relations experienced various ups and downs during the post-Cold War years but from the late 2000s onwards Russia assumed increasingly more assertive foreign policy measures, culminating in the annexation of Crimea in 2014 and the destabilisation campaigns in the rest of Ukraine. These policies by Russia resulted in the suspension of the NATO-Russia cooperation in 2014. From NATO’s perspective “Russia has breached its commitments, as well as violated international law, breaking the trust at the core of its cooperation with NATO” (NATO: Relations with Russia). The communication channels remained open but NATO made it clear that there was no return to “business as usual” as long as Russia occupied areas in Ukraine and did not comply with international law and obligations. The tension was elevated by the fact that Russia’s aggressive foreign policy reached far beyond the Ukrainian borders. Using hybrid warfare measures Russia aimed at destabilising the Euro-Atlantic security environment, seeking to make it less predictable and coherent—with some success.

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Hybrid Tools in Russia’s Foreign Policy Russian assertiveness, or expansionism as it is interpreted in NATO, is formed of both military and non-military measures. Combining military and non-military warfare results in a sophisticated mix of measures that is widely called hybrid warfare. What is typical for modern hybrid warfare is that by using various military and non-military means the aggressor has the ability to achieve its goals, the targets of war, without actual fighting and sometimes even without breaking any laws (Shea 2019, pp. 20–21). Russia is by no means the only actor that uses hybrid tactics against its rivals but hybrid warfare has been associated particularly with Russia. Tools in Russia’s hybrid warfare include conducting massive, often unannounced military exercises, simulated military attacks, violating the waters and airspace of neighbouring countries, building up military and weapons systems and even using chemical weapons against individuals as was the case in Salisbury in 2018. Using non-uniformed military personnel, so-called “little green men”, is a key element in Russian hybrid warfare strategy (Selden 2018). As the troops are not wearing uniforms, Russia can deny its military engagement in Ukraine, Syria and elsewhere. Furthermore, Russia uses private military companies and paramilitary organisations, like the Wagner Group, that are closely connected to the Russian state and military (Rácz 2020). When it comes to non-military or political warfare, Russia’s ultimate goal is to shape the strategic environment by gaining political influence, weakening trust in democratic institutions and undermining values and social cohesion. The non-military measures include spreading fake news, conducting disinformation campaigns and hampering elections. Another tool in Russia’s hybrid warfare toolbox is financing European political parties that have extreme anti-EU or anti-NATO policies and often also anti-Semitist and xenophobic attitudes. By financing these parties and groups Russia contributes to hostile political discussions aiming at destructing European cohesion, polarising values and weakening institutions. At the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic Russia pursued to create an image of itself as the sole benefactor sending medical equipment and staff to Italy to tackle the spread of the virus, highlighting the contrast to the EU that was criticised for being powerless in the face of the crisis (Wither 2020, pp. 1–3; Pesu 2020, p. 4; Hagelstam 2018; Valášek 2019, p. 2; Shea 2019, pp. 20–21).

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Thus, collective defence in the post-2014 world is a highly complex set of tasks ranging from conventional territorial defence to defending crucial infrastructure and democracy against cyber attacks. The ever-developing technology and artificial intelligence have resulted in a situation where NATO countries may find themselves fighting a war that cannot be defined in terms of Article V. There may be no actual physical threat against the territory of a member country but national infrastructure and safety of citizens can still be threatened. The battle may be taking place in the cyber space, perhaps even outer space, without a single shot being fired and soldiers never meeting each other. As Shea (2019, p. 21) puts it, this kind of “preparation for war has become the war itself”. From NATO’s perspective the most challenging task is to find the sufficient resources to tackle cyber threats and prevent a digital divide within the allies as most of them are not prepared nor equipped to fight high intensity cyber wars. Burden-sharing is thus “spilling” into the cyber dimension as well. Despite all the cooperation among NATO allies, and between NATO and the EU as well, each country needs to have their own understanding of what kind of hybrid threats can be directed against them (Hagelstam 2018). Hybrid threats are not same for everyone but specifically targeted against each country’s vulnerabilities. On the other hand, as the world is increasingly interconnected, cyber attack or another kind of hybrid attack on one country can have a significant impact on others as well, which increases the solidarity aspect of the burden-sharing debate. NATO’s demanding task is to ensure that the Alliance and the individual allies have the necessary resources, capabilities and willingness to defend themselves and others against hybrid and cyber threats. Perhaps most importantly, the allies need to share the fundamental understandings of these threats and accept that in today’s world the Article V may be invoked due to a non-kinetic, non-traditional attack. Thus, whilst the “classical” debate on military expenditure is likely to remain, or even dominate NATO agenda, the transatlantic discourse on burden-sharing is increasingly likely to cover non-military domains such as comprehensive security and resilience (Koivula 2021, p. 157.) Different Threat Perceptions Among the Allies Russian expansionist foreign policy and the annexation of Crimea caused concerns particularly in the Eastern member countries. To alleviate the

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concerns in the aftermath of the events in Ukraine President Obama travelled to Estonia in 2014 where he reassured not only Estonians, but all the allies, saying: [w]e will defend our NATO Allies, and that means every Ally. In this Alliance, there are no old members or new members, no junior partners or senior partners -- there are just Allies, pure and simple. And we will defend the territorial integrity of every single Ally. (…) Because the defense of Tallinn and Riga and Vilnius is just as important as the defense of Berlin and Paris and London. (Obama 2014)

Obama’s promises of defending all the allies were not only symbolic but the Alliance agreed on various schemes to reassure the member countries most shaken by the events in Ukraine. In the Wales summit in 2014 the allies agreed on the Readiness Action Plan (RAP)1 that comprised a series of initiatives aiming at reinforcing NATO’s military presence and activity in the Eastern member countries. The RAP can be divided into assurance and adaptation measures. The assurance measures include sea, land and air activities in Central and Eastern European member countries, aiming at reinforcing their defence capabilities and to increase deterrence “against potential aggression” (NATO: Readiness Action Plan)—namely against Russia. The activities include air-policing, maritime patrolling and military exercises. The adaptation measures of the Readiness Action Plan are longer-term changes to the Alliance structures and functions. The measures agreed in 2014 include enhancing and restructuring the NATO Response Force2 (NRF) and increasing its personnel from approximately 13,000 to 40,000; establishing the Very High Readiness Joint Task Force (VJTF), also called the “spearhead force” that are deployable within two to three days; and creating the NATO Force Integration Units comprised of eight small multinational headquarters created to facilitate the deployment of VJTFs (NATO: Readiness Action Plan; Ratti and Leonardi 2019, p. 144). 1 The US played a key role in creating the RAP but all the member countries can take part on the activities on rotational basis (Jakobsen and Ringsmose 2017, p. 2). More on the RAP, see e.g. Fryc (2016) and Arnold (2016). 2 The NATO Response Force was established in 2002 for crisis management purposes mainly in Afghanistan. Since then it has also been used for disaster relief purposes and other security operations. In 2014 it was restructured for regional security (Ratti and Leonardi 2019, p. 144).

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Another major step towards deepening collective defence and responding to the more hostile security environment, was establishing a new military deployment model named Enhanced Forward Presence (EFP) in the Warsaw Summit in 2016. The EFP consists of four battalionsize battle groups that operate on rotational basis in Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland. The battle groups are led by four framework nations (the US, the UK, Canada and Germany) that operate and train with the host nations’ militaries. Other members can contribute on a voluntary basis (NATO: Boosting NATO’s presence in the east and southeast). As for the late 2020, there were 17 member countries in addition to the four framework nations and four host nations participating in the EFP. Exercising, operating and even living together enables the troops of the participating NATO countries to improve their competencies, capabilities and cooperation skills and ensures a better division of labour (Lanoszka et al. 2020, p. 4). It is noteworthy that even though both Germany and Canada have been criticised of financial free-riding, they have taken the lead as framework nations in the Eastern flank, and this way shown loyalty and willingness to take responsibility of other allies’ security, which in the current (non-US) burden-sharing debate is considered at least as important as contributing financially. Responding to the growing Russian assertiveness and aggression was a demanding task for NATO because the allies did not have a unanimous understanding of the threat that Russia poses. The security threats outlined in NATO members’ national strategy documents are rather aligned: Russia’s aggressive foreign policy, China’s emergence as an economic and military actor, transnational terrorism, migration, hybrid threats and the possibility of an armed conflict in Europe are all considered plausible security threats. Even though allies recognise more or less similar threats, they prioritise them rather differently. Southern and western allies prioritise terrorism, migration and other transnational challenges as the most pressing security threats and do not consider Russia as a direct threat to their security. They have been reluctant to formally oppose Russian actions or impose sanctions and have instead focused on their own domestic and economic interests in relation to Russia. Central and Eastern European (and to certain extent also the Nordic countries), on the other hand, consider Russia the biggest security threat in Europe due to its military build-up and aggressive behaviour in Eastern Europe and in the Baltic Sea region. They are concerned about the Russian influence on their societies, security and defence, and have demanded for more

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concrete support from the allies. Particularly the Baltic countries and Poland have had to enhance their national defence capabilities and to ask for additional support from other allies (Béraud-Sudreau and Giegerich 2018, pp. 56–59; Fryc 2016, p. 48). Due to different threat perceptions, European allies prioritised different aspects in their security and defence policies. Governments in Central and Eastern Europe highlighted the need to defend against Russian aggression; France, and particularly President Macron, acted as a motor for closer EU Common Security and Defence Policy, while countries like Britain and Denmark remained outside of the EU security and defence structures or left them altogether. Between these to opposites was Germany that balanced between domestic restrains and reluctance, and external pressure to assume more responsibility in European security and defence. The Mediterranean region, then again, faced various struggles ranging from tense relations between Turkey and Greece to immigration and refugee flows. Compared to European threat perceptions and security priorities, the American priorities seemed more global and reflected the understanding of the security environment as an arena of power competition. The biggest challengers from the American point of view were China and Russia but, as it became clear in the Munich Security Conference in February 2020, the US priorities started to emphasise more and more China. Other major security threats in the 2018 US National Defence Strategy were North Korea, Iran and terrorist groups such as ISIS (US Department of Defence 2018, p. 1; see also Esper 2020; Pompeo 2020). The differing threat perceptions among allies led to disputes about fair burden-sharing but also made the eastern allies question whether they can rely on the support of the US and other allies to defend them against Russian aggression. Hence, the traditional dynamics around the burdensharing debate changed as the debate was no longer solely led by the US demanding for fairer financial burden-sharing. Now the relatively new eastern members, too, reminded others of their responsibilities and commitment to defend all the allies. The differences in threat perceptions were linked to the differences in defence spending. The threats that Central and Eastern allies experienced required traditional territorial defence and modern armed forces, while counter-terrorism, for example, required investments that may not fall into the defence budgets, but on other budgets such as intelligence

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and homeland security. As a consequence, it seems that the Eastern and Central European allies reacted faster to the events in Ukraine by increasing their defence spending two times faster than the western and southern allies.They were also faster to increase their defence investments as a proportion to the overall defence spending and modernising their militaries. In 2017 southern and western allies increased their defence spending by 2.5% while central and northern allies increased theirs by 5.5%. However, when reviewing these figures, it should be noted that many of the former Soviet countries have a lot of catching up to do before reaching the level of military capabilities that the western and southern allies already possess. Another reason behind the spending gap between eastern and western allies is history: the eastern allies still have the Soviet occupation fresh in memory, while the western allies have got used to the American support and thus do not see the value of defence spending the same way as the eastern allies (Béraud-Sudreau and Giegerich 2018, pp. 60–63; see also Richter 2016, pp. 299–300).

US Retrenchment and Renewal As we saw in the previous chapter, the US foreign policy experienced phases of both retrenchment and renewal during the post-Cold War years. As the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, initiated by the Bush Administration, dragged on, demands for a more isolationist foreign policy gained wide support. The US foreign policy under the leadership of President Obama was focused on retrenchment—that is pulling back from foreign missions and responsibilities, reducing military spending and demanding for more burden-sharing from the allies. The same trend continued and intensified during the Trump presidency. However, as Europe’s neighbourhood became increasingly unstable as a consequence of expansive Russian foreign policy and Crimean annexation in 2014, the US interest in Europe was strengthened. Despite growing isolationist foreign policy tendencies on political and rhetorical level, the US increased its presence in Europe, which suggested a certain degree of US renewal in the continent. We will now take a closer look at the signs of US foreign policy retrenchment and renewal, and their implications on the burden-sharing debate.

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Sustained Commitment Despite Retrenchment Tendencies According to Cohen, a new consensus is emerging in American political discourse that the United States should accept a more modest role in world affairs. He argues that while the Trump Administration accelerated such a worldview, it had been in the making for a long time, already since President Obama’s “leading from behind” concept (Cohen 2019, p. 143). The shift from interventionist foreign policy to one based on retrenchment and isolation was a consequence of the prolonged wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and fatigue of global leadership. As Steven Sestanovich (quoted in Goldberg 2016) puts it, Obama was a classic retrenchment president, resembling Eisenhower and Nixon, for his focus on pulling back from foreign missions, spending less on defence, shifting burdens to the allies and attempts to lead from behind, as was the case in Libya. Obama’s retrenchment was not just about following the public opinion after many tiresome years of war. It was also a strong personal and ideological belief that too much of resources had been spent on foreign policy and fighting prolonged wars. In 2016 President Obama said in an interview with the Atlantic that free-riders “aggravate” him and it was now time for the allies to share some of the burdens (Goldberg 2016). Obama’s mission was to encourage allies to assume more responsibilities and to take action for themselves instead of waiting for the US to lead. Obama’s successor, President Trump’s demands for Europe to increase their defence spending and “fulfil their obligations” to the US were thus not unheard-of (see e.g. Fisher 2016). But what was unprecedented was the Trump Administration’s suggestion that the US military support might be dependent on the allies’ defence spending. By denying unconditional solidarity, calling NATO “obsolete”, criticising Europeans of free-riding and threatening of leaving the Alliance, Trump caused serious trust issues within the Alliance, which resulted in a fundamental question in European capitals: can Europe rely on America’s help on the most critical moments, regardless of their defence expenditure? The question resembled the sentiments of the Cold War Europe, which highlights the permanency and cyclical nature of the basic burden-sharing arguments and concerns. The way the Trump Administration saw Europe was instrumental, its foreign policy emphasised unilateralism and the approach towards NATO and the allies became more transactional (Schreer 2019, p. 10). This kind of quid pro quo policy was familiar from the Cold War years and the Nixon

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Doctrine in particular: the US would honour its commitments to the allies and defend them if necessary but not without reciprocity. The US seemed to expect the allies to “earn” the US support by reaching defence investment targets and following the US to their out-of-area quests. In summer 2020 the Trump Administration announced that the US would reduce its presence in Germany by 12,000 troops. Defence Secretary Esper said that the withdrawal was part of Pentagon’s long-term strategic planning but President Trump’s comments on the matter suggested that the move was more about punishing Germany for its insufficient defence spending (see e.g. Carey and Cappacio 2020; Connolly 2020). The plan to withdraw troops from Germany was later halted by US lawmakers (Deutsche Welle 2020), which suggests a deep divide between the Administration and the Congress in security and defence matters. Not all transatlantic trust issues were centred around European defence but were to an increasing extent related to security issues in other regions where the allies had interests, such as the Middle East and Africa. Most of Trump’s criticism towards NATO was about defence spending levels and financial inputs but about greater cooperation in counter-terrorism efforts, too (Jakobsen and Ringsmose 2017, p. 3). For example, Trump asked NATO to increase its presence in the Middle East in the aftermath of the sabre-rattling between the US and Iran in the early 2020. To Trump’s dismay, Europeans did not line up behind their most powerful ally. Europeans simply had a hard time trusting President Trump and understanding his motives and actions in the region, such as withdrawing most of its troops from Northern Syria in 2019 in order to allow Turkey to form a “safe zone” in the region (see e.g. Karnitschnig 2020). The allies were also concerned of possible troop reductions in Somalia and West Africa suggested by the Trump Administration. Even though the US took no concrete measures to withdraw troops, the possibility of this incited particularly France, the leading Western force in the fight against terrorism and radical Islamism in Africa, to seek other forms of cooperation among Europeans, such as the European Intervention Initiative, to maintain presence in the region (see e.g. Momtaz 2020; de Hoop Scheffer and Quencez 2019). Despite the US foreign policy priorities shifting towards Asia–Pacific, free-riding accusations, harsh rhetoric and perplexity around possible troop withdrawals, the US has remained loyal to its allies and committed to the Article V of the North Atlantic Treaty. The US has in fact enforced its engagement in European defence after the Crimean annexation and

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demonstrated its commitment by deploying troops and prepositioning equipment in Europe and participating in military exercises and initiatives such as the Enhanced Forward Presence (Schreer 2019, p. 13; Lute and Burns 2019, p. 14; see also Selden 2018; The Heritage Foundation 2019). Another concrete example of continued US commitment to European defence was the European Deterrence Initiative (EDI, known as European Reassurance Initiative until 2018) that was announced by President Obama in 2014 as a response to the Russian aggression in Ukraine and Eastern Europe. EDI, one of the core elements of American support to European defence in the post-2014 security environment, aimed at increasing the US presence in Eastern Europe, enabling military exercises with allies and partners, improving equipment, capabilities and infrastructure and prepositioning equipment and material in European countries (Shevin-Coetzee 2019). Despite budgets cuts since 2020,3 the commitment of supporting European defence through EDI remained strong. Also, congressional support for NATO and European defence was resolute: in 2017 the Senate and House passed resolutions reaffirming US commitment to NATO, and in 2018 and 2019 bipartisan groups introduced bills preventing the President from withdrawing from the Alliance without the Senate’s consent (see e.g. Lute and Burns 2019, p. 14). Still, the gradual US retrenchment is a long-term trend that Europe needs to address. Even in the face of Russia’s aggressive foreign policy towards Central and Eastern NATO members, the US did not turn back from its Asia focus under the Trump Administration but, in fact, considered China the main challenger “in an era of Great Power Competition” (Esper 2020). The Biden Administration, too, considers China the most serious competitor but has repeatedly underlined that allies are the greatest assets of the US (Biden 2021a). Despite the change of American leadership and return to more traditional way of conducting foreign policy, the question of burden-sharing is likely to remain in the transatlantic agenda. In the long term the US is waiting for Europe to take the lead of its own defence, while the US itself will focus on the rivalry with 3 In fiscal year (FY) 2015 the budget for EDI was $985 million and $789 million in FY2016, but in 2017 the budget saw a rapid rise to $3.4 billion. During Trump’s presidency in FY2018 the budget was further increased to more than $4.7 billion and to $6.5 billion in FY2019. The decline in the budgets started in FY2020 when the budget was $5.9 billion. Pentagon’s request for FY2021 would cut the funding by $1.5 billion dollars, the budget thus being $4.5 billion (Shevin-Coetzee 2019, pp. 4–5; Department of Defense Budget 2019).

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China. What this means in practice for Europe is that it needs to find a way to fill the leadership vacuum that the US is gradually leaving behind. Also, as the world is increasingly unpredictable, the traditional alliance bonds and solidarity between allies are not as certain or self-evident as in the earlier years. This has forced particularly the Eastern European countries to improve their military forces independent of external factors, such as the goodwill of the US (Driver 2016, p. 10; Béraud-Sudreau and Giegerich 2018, p. 53). The Impact of Estranged Transatlantic Relations on Burden-Sharing In the late 2010s and early 2020s the transatlantic relations were tenser than for a long time. The erratic behaviour of President Trump, his harsh rhetoric and threats of withdrawing the US support from Europe had severely damaged the Euro-Atlantic relations and diminished European trust in its most long-term ally. The trust issues are naturally not unilateral. While Europeans, Central and Eastern Europeans in particular, find it difficult to believe that the US would come for their help, the US does not trust that Europeans are doing their best to increase responsibility of their own defence and to carry a fair share of the burden. Still, even though the US has criticised many European countries and Canadians of free-riding and neglecting their defence budgets, it is unlikely that the free-riding dispute would signify the end of NATO altogether. One reason for this is that the US is not only committed to the security of Europe but to an increasing extent to the security of Asia–Pacific as well, which means that the free-riding and burden-sharing debate extends far beyond the debate among NATO members. Many Asian countries, such as Japan, South Korea and Taiwan rely on their alliances with the US, and would lose their faith in the American support if the US would in earnest plan on withdrawing from NATO. Maintaining a credible alliance system in Asia and especially in the South China Sea is crucial for the US to support the region against potential confrontation with China and to maintain a global leadership position. Even though President Trump openly questioned NATO’s relevance and continued to shift US foreign policy focus from Europe, the US could not abandon European security completely unless it wanted to alarm its Asian allies at the same time. Trump’s threats of withdrawing from the Alliance were

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thus not credible. As a consequence, as long as Europe has no imperative incentive to end free-riding, it will continue to do so in the future (Jakobsen and Ringsmose 2017, pp. 3–4). Defence spending and unfair burden-sharing were some of President Trump’s favourite topics since the presidential election campaign in 2016. He by turns accused the allies of free-riding and insufficient defence spending and then again took credit of the increased European defence spending (see Trump 2019). But, as we have seen earlier, one of the reasons behind the increased defence spending was addressing new threats in an economically more stable environment, not just pleasing the US and President Trump (Béraud-Sudreau and Giegerich 2018, pp. 54–55). Furthermore, as we will see later in this chapter, European allies took several steps to enhance defence cooperation during the Trump presidency, which was interpreted as ungratefulness and even as an act of rivalry in the US. For example, in 2019 undersecretaries of the US Department of Defence, Ellen Lord and Andrea Thompson, sent a letter to the EU High Representative Federica Mogherini, where they expressed the concern that European initiatives such as the Permanent Structured Cooperation and European Defence Fund would “create unnecessary competition between NATO and the EU” and put their cooperation in peril (Lord and Thompson 2019). Despite strained transatlantic relations and trust issues during the Trump presidency, Europe still continued to be dependant on the US. Military shortcomings and political weakness reinforced the need for US presence in Eastern Europe as it became evident that Europeans were not able to defend the Eastern allies without a significant support from the US (Fryc 2016, p. 48). On the other hand, the US also needed its European allies especially in the Middle East in the fight against terrorism. This brings us to an important point: even though the political NATO is in crisis and the allies (the politicians) have severe trust issues, the military NATO has managed to continue it work rather seamlessly. The Enhanced Forward Presence in Poland and the Baltics, as well as the numerous NATO exercises in its eastern member countries, are excellent examples of the differences between the political and military NATO. Even though the political NATO seemed to be in crisis and even “brain dead” as the French President Emmanuel Macron suggested in 2019, the military side of the Alliance continued its day-to-day work without major disruptions.

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European Passivity and Activity One of the most central aspects of the burden-sharing discussion in the twenty-first century is the question of European “strategic autonomy” and how militarily stronger Europe would affect the transatlantic relations. Europe, and the EU as its primary forum, experienced an active phase in its defence and security cooperation after the Crimean annexation and the election of President Trump. The EU introduced various strategy documents and concrete measures to strengthen European defence capabilities in order for Europe to be less dependent on the US military support and to be able to address various security challenges more effectively. Despite the renewed activity in European defence, there is still a long way to go before we can talk of genuine strategic autonomy or military independence. We will now take a look at what the strategic autonomy means, what obstacles Europe needs to overcome to reach it and how the discussion has affected the transatlantic relations and the burden-sharing debate. European “Strategic Autonomy” Military stronger and more capable Europe became a widely accepted goal after the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula and the rise of ISIS in the Middle East in 2014. The discussion was further heated by the results of Britain’s Brexit referendum and the election of Donald Trump in 2016, which raised concerns of the US leaving NATO altogether. Trump’s presidency, along with the major changes in international security environment, was a wake-up call for many Europeans. President Macron of France was active in calling for a European security and defence policy that would be less dependent on the US whose military support, according to him, Europe could no longer rely on (Chrisafis 2018). The German chancellor Angela Merkel raised the same issue in 2018 saying: It’s simply true that the times when we could fully rely on others have ended. This means nothing other than that, if we Europeans want to survive as a community, we must make a greater effort to take our destiny into our own hands. (Merkel 2018)

In the same speech she argued for working towards “the vision of one day establishing a proper European army” that would complement NATO

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and make cooperation with Europe easier (Merkel 2018). Despite a European army being a distant dream, other more down-to-earth steps were taken relatively rapidly after 2016. In June 2016 the EU published its Global Strategy (A Global Strategy for the European Union’s Foreign and Security Policy), which can be seen as a starting point for a significantly more active phase in European security and defence politics. Since then the EU took more steps in a few years than in the last decades together, and adopted new plans and initiatives, including the European Defence Action Plan (2016), the Bratislava Road Map (2016), European Defence Fund (2017) and the Reflection Paper on the Future of European Defence (2017). The Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) was activated in 2017 and gained a great deal of public attention. PESCO was set up to enhance the EU’s military capabilities in operations that are independent of NATO—in other words, operations that NATO does not consider major enough to interfere in. Claims of PESCO eventually evolving into a European Army were, however, unrealistic. In 2020 the EU started working on a new initiative, “the Strategic Compass”, aimed at creating a common threat analysis, formulating shared strategic objectives for the EU and strengthening its role as a security and defence actor (Mölling and Schütz 2020). Despite the increased activity, genuine European strategic autonomy is still not realistic. Cooperation has indeed deepened and strengthened but European defence is still very much rooted in national defence efforts and deterrence provided by NATO. There are several fundamental issues on the way before Europe is available to stand totally independent of the US military support. First of all, the EU member states do not have a shared view of what is meant with strategic autonomy and whether it is necessary in the first place. In fact, many seem to be sceptical towards the term “strategic autonomy” and would instead describe the European defence efforts as “burden-sharing” or simply “taking more responsibility”. Furthermore, especially for countries that have close relations with the US and see NATO as the cornerstone of European security, European army and European strategic autonomy are dangerous ideas as they might undermine the importance of NATO without offering credible European alternatives. Poland and Romania, for example, have been concerned of what European strategic autonomy would mean for European suppliers’ access to the US defence market. Similar concerns have been raised in the Netherlands, Denmark and Sweden whose defence industries are tightly connected to the American industry. France and Italy, then again, are

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more willing to distance themselves from American defence industry and take steps towards stronger European defence industry and deeper European defence integration (Brattberg and Valášek 2019, pp. 8, 13; see also Helwig 2020). Another obstacle is the lack of ambition. Throughout the past decades, especially Western Europe has got used to the idea of the US supporting Europe militarily if needed. Changing this kind of thinking takes time, and even if the European allies could achieve the needed level of ambition, the post-Cold War years of insufficient investments in defence will keep Europe dependent on NATO and the US. This has raised the question among critics whether the only way to make Europe to spend and invest more in defence would be a permanent US retrenchment from Europe. As Howorth notes, “so long as US policy suggests that Uncle Sam will always be on hand to ensure European security if a serious crisis develops, there will inevitably be clear limits to the ambition of the purely European project” (Howorth 2017, p. 456). On the other hand, the US seems to be having a hard time scaling back its international presence and assuming the role of a backbencher while allowing others more responsibility, even though this is what both Presidents Obama and Trump aimed for (Driver 2016, p. 10; Richter 2016, p. 298). The third obstacle on the way to European strategic autonomy is the lack of shared strategic culture.4 There are as many strategic cultures in Europe as there are countries, and many arms systems, which makes interoperability and joint procurement processes difficult. Despites initiatives such as the European Intervention Initiative, combining all the national strategic cultures into one big European culture, is a demanding, if not an impossible task—not least because of the reluctance of many EU member states. Finally—and perhaps most importantly—an obstacle on the way of achieving European strategic autonomy and fairer burden-sharing is rather paradoxically the existence of NATO. Even though several steps have been taken forward in European defence cooperation, the debate itself is stuck in the same arguments that have been repeated time after time. In a sense the debate has split into two paths that are extremely difficult to connect. On the one hand, there is the “strategic autonomy path”, the goal of which is to achieve a more self-sufficient, ultimately militarily independent Europe. The second path emphasises the complementary 4 On strategic culture, see e.g. Forsberg and Herd (2006, p. 29), Gray (1981), Rynning (2003), Snyder (1977).

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nature of the CSDP and other European defence initiatives to NATO. The problem is that these two paths are incompatible: there cannot be a completely autonomous European defence, as long it has to be complementary to NATO whose deterrence is still very much based on the US military power and particularly on its nuclear deterrence. And, on the other hand, there cannot be a more balanced burden-sharing arrangement if Europeans do not cooperate on institutional levels. A step—albeit a small one—towards closing the gap between these two paths, was the EU’s decision to invite third countries to join PESCO in the late 2020. The US, Canada and Norway joined the military mobility project in 2021. A great deal of European defence cooperation happens in the EU framework and within its institutional limits. What happens in the EU does not only affect European politics, but also the transatlantic relations. Deepening European defence cooperation is problematic to certain European countries but also to the US. The US has demanded other allies to take more responsibility of their defence for decades but for the US this seems to mean mainly larger defence budgets. Many European members, on the other hand, put emphasis on the efficient use of the defence budgets instead of simply increasing them and argue that “blind” national defence spending without cooperation does not serve anyone and that the only way to use scarce resources efficiently is to cooperate within the EU and to form bi- and multilateral defence initiatives. Still, the US often sees the EU-level defence cooperation undermining NATO and the support the US has given to Europe. This again may be linked to the fear of the US losing its leadership role in NATO. Nevertheless, it can be argued that European allies will reach the spending and investment targets only if they demand it of each other in order to increase solidarity among NATO and also among the EU countries. The US cannot expect Europe to increase their defence spending only to please the US and consider it “as the price of continuing US protection” (Shea 2019, p. 23). The US is also concerned about the negative impact that more autonomous European defence would have on the US defence industry. This is not an unjustified fear, as certain scholars have argued that for France in particular, strategic autonomy is primarily “a vehicle to boost its defence industry rather than to strengthen Europe’s defence” (Schreer 2019, p. 15; see also Shea 2019, pp. 19–20). Still, there is a rather widely shared opinion among scholars that the US should support any European defence initiative which aims at increasing European defence capabilities both in the own continent but also in the neighbouring regions, such

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as Africa, and dismiss concerns that they would some way undermine NATO, create duplicate capabilities or challenge the US leadership (see e.g. Shea 2019; de Hoop Scheffer and Quencez 2019; Biscop 2019). Is Germany Ready to Lead? Much of the future burden-sharing depends on the willingness of the US to give up some of its leadership in NATO and on Europe’s willingness and ability to assume more of that leadership and to fill the leadership vacuum. But who is ready to lead in Europe? Germany has always been at the centre of NATO’s burden-sharing debate but this time the central question is not how to share the burden of keeping Germany down but instead how to get it more involved in the leadership of European defence. When discussing Germany’s prospective leadership role in European defence, there are two major questions: how to make Germany to spend more on defence and how to make the country politically more involved in European defence? Germany is Europe’s largest economy but its defence budgets do not reflect the size of the economy. Moreover, as the largest economy in Europe, Germany has most to lose in the face of destabilising threats, such as Russian aggression, unstable North Africa and the Middle East and international terrorism (Driver 2016, p. 12). In 2019 Germany spent only 1.38% of its GDP on defence (NATO guideline 2%) and 16.6% of this on equipment expenditure (NATO guideline 20%, NATO Press Release 29 November 2019). In 2020 the figures were 1.57 and 16.8%, correspondingly (NATO Press Release 21 October 2020). Then Federal President of Germany, Joachim Gauck, used his speech in the Munich Security Conference in 2014 to speak in favour of a bigger German role in world politics. His views were echoed the following year by Defence Minister Ursula von der Leyen who argued that Germany was ready to assume a leadership role and to “lead from the centre” (see Gauck 2014; von der Leyen 2015). There are, however, various steps to be taken before we can talk about actual German leadership in European defence, let alone Germany being the leading power in global security politics. First, the majority of the German public is highly sceptical of Germany’s growing international military role (see Driver 2016, p. 14), due to the scars of history and the deep-rooted belief in pacifism. Instead of leadership, cooperation with other countries and institutions are the key terms in German security policy discussion and in official documents (see e.g. The Federal Government of Germany 2016). Second, the state

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of German armed forces has been alarmingly bad for most of the postCold War era. There are major equipment deficiencies and mechanical problems that forbid Germany from using its capabilities in the most efficient manner (for a more detailed analysis on the state of German armed forces, see e.g. Driver 2016). Third, even though Germany has taken the leading role in NATO’s Smart Defence and Framework Nations Concept, it seems that the leading country in European defence is not Germany but France. Still, despite France’s and especially President Macron’s enthusiasm to develop common European defence architecture, Germany cannot just step back and let France steer the wheel alone. The European integration project is based on Germany and France’s ability to cooperate—no plan or initiative moves ahead unless the two countries can find common ground, especially when it comes to security and defence politics. France seems to be significantly more eager to reform European defence than Germany is, which makes creating more independent European defence structures a challenging task. Thus, the burden-sharing discussion and demands for Europe to take more responsibility expands to the Franco-German relations, and also to individual member countries’ willingness to lead. European Defence Initiatives The burden-sharing debate and demands for more independent European defence have sparked the interest of creating European defence initiatives, such as the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF) led by the UK and the Framework Nations Concept (FNC) led by Germany. The most recent defence initiative based on cooperation led by a framework nation is France’s European Intervention Initiative (EI2). EI2 is independent from the EU and NATO structures and is thus not a standby force for neither of them. Instead, it aims at bringing together likeminded countries that are able and willing to engage in common activities, eventually creating a shared strategic culture which is a rather ambitious goal. Of course, France is not only interested in creating a common European strategic culture, which for a considerable time will most likely remain a symbolic target. Most importantly, the EI2 offers France an opportunity to engage European allies more in Africa, which is a significant interest for France especially when it comes the counter-terrorism. Should the US reduce its presence in Africa in the future, France would need to engage more European countries in order to be able to operate in the region.

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In 2003 during NATO’s internal crisis over the war in Iraq, many scholars suggested that coalitions of the willing could become the new normal and replace the traditional thinking of all allies uniting to defend an ally under attack. In extreme, this would have meant replacing NATO altogether. The scenario, however, never become a reality for two reasons. First, even though the US was frustrated with the inaction of most of its allies, scrapping NATO and replacing it with coalitions of the willing would have created costs that would have exceeded the benefits. Second, smaller allies would have experienced major costs if they had had to start forming constantly changing coalitions as an alternative to the US-led NATO (Schreer 2019, p. 12). This brings us to an important question regarding the framework nation concepts and other smaller alliance-like initiatives either within or outside of the already existing institutional frameworks. Even though their purpose is to complement NATO, and to certain extent the EU as well, will they eventually face the same problem as the coalitions of the willing outlined by the US? Are they able to reduce the costs and increase efficiency or will the growing number of initiatives and their similar memberships prove, in fact, counterproductive in the long term?

NATO and Ally-Led Military Operations The post-Crimean NATO is a mixture of Cold War and post-Cold War priorities and tasks, combining collective defence and deterrence with outof-area operations and crisis management tasks (Halas 2019, p. 432). Between these two priorities, the balance is shifting towards collective defence and deterrence, which can be seen in the number and intensity of the crisis management tasks that NATO is involved in. NATO is no longer engaged in any major combat missions but is in a sense finishing the work in places like Afghanistan and Iraq. The Resolute Support mission in Afghanistan was NATO’s main out-of-area operation that provided training and assistance to the Afghan security forces. The Resolute Support was a non-combat follow-on mission to ISAF. Another larger scale mission was the training, non-combat mission in Iraq. The aim of the mission was to prevent the re-emergence of ISIS and other extremist movements in the region through training and capacity building with the Iraqi forces. NATO also continued its presence in Kosovo (NATO Kosovo Force, KFOR), in the Mediterranean (operation

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Sea Guardian) and cooperated with the African Union giving it air and sealift support and training support (NATO: Operations and missions: past and present). What was typical for these out-of-area missions was that NATO’s role in them was supportive and focused on training the host countries’ forces instead of engaging in high-intensity combat. The operations were not interventionist but supportive, and as Secretary General Stoltenberg put it when asked about the NATO presence in Iraq, “NATO is in Iraq on the invitation of the Iraqi Government” and “will only stay in Iraq as long [they] are welcome” (Stoltenberg 2020a). The decreasing number of out-of-area crisis management missions was a consequence of NATO’s shifting focus from crisis management tasks to collective defence in the aftermath of the Crimean annexation and Russian aggressive foreign policy. Global crisis management was still considered important especially in the fight against terrorism but due to limited resources NATO could not afford to focus simultaneously on collective defence in its territory and on out-of-area operations. But it may have also been a consequence of a deeper structural change in the international relations. The West was increasingly reluctant to engage and intervene in violent conflicts—a problem which was labelled as “westlessness” in the Munich Security Report (2020). Still, even though the trend in the West seemed to be not to engage in conflicts, it did not mean that they could not happen or have an impact on Western security as well. NATO’s (and other western institutions’) inability or reluctance to act has prompted criticism towards the Alliance, of which President Macron’s comments about NATO’s “brain death” were one example. Another reason for the decreasing number of crisis management missions may be the negative experiences and fatigue caused by previous missions. The war in Afghanistan lasted for nearly 20 years and the reconstruction of Iraq after years of war and ISIS dominance will take decades. It was thus no wonder that Europe was reluctant to take more responsibilities in the Middle East. New out-of-area missions would also bring the unpleasant burden-sharing topic back on the table, as was the case in Libya. Most likely Europe would not be able to (nor interested in) engage in high-intensity combat missions without the help of the US. Without proper capabilities and resources to run a mission and to take responsibility of reconstruction and peace-building projects, missions might in fact be counter-productive. Let’s take Libya as an example: the allies conducted an air campaign in 2011 that (despite insufficient European equipment) was considered successful as it succeeded in its mission at

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ousting Muammar Gaddafi. But the crisis in Libya still continues as of 2021 and has a severe impact on European security. Would NATO and the allies be ready, willing and capable of conducting another mission like this? More recently, the withdrawal from Afghanistan in August 2021 showed how years of crisis management operations could not prevent the resurrection of the Taliban. These experiences may impact allies’ willingness to participate in future international crisis management operations due to the unpredictability of their outcome.

Emerging Drivers: The Increasing Complexity of NATO’s Security Environment While the book has thus far followed the historical and contemporary development of NATO burden-sharing disputes on four tracks, a number of other factors affecting burden-sharing disputes have been omitted. Some of them may have been lingering in the shadows of more contentious debates during the past decades while others seem to owe their existence to more recent geopolitical or social developments. We will analyse transactionalism in the transatlantic relations, China’s increasing military influence and the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on NATO and the burden-sharing debate. These developments do not fit into the four “main tracks” as such but have nonetheless a significant impact on the burden-sharing debate in the twenty-first century. This is why we find it necessary to analyse them under the category of emerging drivers even though we recognise that they do not exhaustively describe the continuously more complex burden-sharing agenda. A historical example of low-key but lingering burden-sharing issues is weapons technology. As Hartley and Sandler (1999) point out, the advent of new weapons technology may also have burden-sharing effects and this probably has been the case throughout NATO’s history. For instance, to develop high-technology defences requires massive research and development budgets and large investments in weapon systems, but all NATO countries are not equal in terms of resources to do so. On the other hand, once a technological breakthrough is achieved in a given domain of technology, the discovery can be applied to enhance the weaponry of other allies, thus providing non-rival, but excludable benefits—stealth technology, drones or artificial intelligence being examples. However, whilst the development of technology may have often had burden-sharing effects, its role seems to be too subtle, and possibly infrequent, in order to

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rise directly to NATO’s mainstream political space. After all, technology is a domain that is relatively unfamiliar to most politicians and government officials and thereby more difficult a topic to be argued about. That may be a reason why technological development tends to be raised to political attention only superficially and on very general level. An exception is missile defence and the use of nuclear force in more general terms, which dominated the burden-sharing discussion during the Cold War but whose relevance has not diminished even in the twenty-first century. Transactionalism in Transatlantic Relations The first “unsettling” issue-area which may transform the burden-sharing agenda is the rise of transactionalism. While multilateralism requires states to establish complex relations and to involve various actors that share the same values and principles, transactionalism is a foreign policy approach that treats international issues on a case-by-case basis and gives primacy to bilateral relations instead of seeking multilateral solutions. Multilateral solutions bind states into costly long-term commitments but the states can also expect long-term profits and benefits. Bilateral relations, on the other hand, are far less complex, making them easier to achieve and maintain—and also easier to benefit from in short-term. Transactional relations are not based on common values or principles, which is why transactionalism has a negative view on alliances and other international institutions that often have a shared value basis. Transactionalism does not accept policy-making that is based on values, as this kind of foreign policy approach is considered harmful to national interests that should always be at the core of foreign policy decision-making (Ikenberry 2017; Bashirov and Yilmaz 2019, pp. 1–3). Transactionalism sees the world politics as a zero-sum game where all gains are relative and the survival of state is the most important target. In order to achieve short-term wins, a state can form bilateral relations and partnerships, but they may be dissolved as quickly as they are established. The partnerships are based on quick wins and established only for a specific foreign policy purpose. They have no deeper institutional structure or ideological purpose, which makes them fragile and easy to abandon when they are no longer useful. The scope of the relations can thus be rather broad but also shallow. Rejection of long-term strategic commitments and multilateral politico-military solutions results

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in a lack of a grand foreign policy strategy, which leads to incoherent and unpredictable foreign policies (Bashirov and Yilmaz 2019, pp. 1–4). Unpredictable, case-by-case foreign policies can, then again, destabilise the international order. In the current international context, transactional foreign policy tendencies challenge the liberal world order that has been built since the end of the Second World War and that is based on cooperation between like-minded states. One of the most prominent forms of this liberal world order have been the transatlantic relations that are currently challenged by increasingly transactional foreign policies. Transatlantic relations have traditionally been based on shared values and principles, such as democracy, rule of law and open trade relations. It would be exaggerating to say that the basis of transatlantic relations is crumbling, but there are indicators of increasing transactionalism in the transatlantic relations. Transactional tendencies are not a new phenomenon in transatlantic relations, as for example the Bush Administration’s Iraq policies can be seen as transactional and belittling the traditional alliance relations. Transactionalism, however, became to characterise the US foreign policies during Donald Trump’s presidency, which in practise meant walking out of trade deals, international organisations and treaties, undermining traditional alliances and partnerships and making unilateral decisions without consulting allies (see e.g. Schreer 2019; Lissner and Rapp-Hopper 2018; Bashirov and Yilmaz 2019). The Trump Administration’s transactional foreign policy meant seeking material gains, pursuing short-term national goals and small victories over rivals—and even over partners—instead of seeking to set a broad strategic agenda shared with valuable partners and allies (Brattberg and Whineray 2020, p. 3). In practise, this meant attempts to reduce trade deficits, imposing tariffs and in the context of NATO, blaming allies of insufficient military spending and threatening of withdrawing from the Alliance should the European allies not meet the 2% GDP target. The US is, however, by no means the only NATO ally that has assumed transactionalist policies. Historically, President de Gaulle’s decision to withdraw France from NATO’s military command can be seen as a transactionalist act (see Chapter 3). More recently, we can detect transactionalist tendencies in Turkey’s relations both with the EU and with other NATO allies under the AKP rule. In 2016 the EU and Turkey signed a deal according to which Turkey would prevent Syrian refugees from entering the EU and in exchange the EU would give Turkey six billion

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euros and ease the visa application process for Turkish people (Bashirov and Yilmaz 2019). Another example of Turkey’s transactionalism was its refusal to approve NATO’s new defence plan in 2020 unless other NATO members recognised the PKK party as a terrorist organisation (Emmot and Irish 2020). These kinds of transactional acts towards the allies and NATO as a whole risks belittling the decades-long partnership, diminishing mutual trust among the allies and also stagnating the burden-sharing discussion. The burden-sharing debate has gained new aspects since the end of the Cold War and has become to comprise also non-financial aspects, which broadens the scope of the debate. What this means to the state of transatlantic relations in more broad terms is that the relations are good enough to address individual, single issues but the possibilities for a broad, overarching transformation of relations are not realistic (Inayeh 2017). Focusing on minor wins at the expense of major strategic lines, such as forming a coherent China policy or updating NATO’s strategic concept, can cause risks for both the US and Europe. During Trump’s presidency much of the US transactionalism was about the President’s personal manner of conducting foreign policy that was based on his reactions to daily developments in international relations and his rather impulsive behaviour (Bashirov and Yilmaz 2019, p. 3). It is thus possible that President Biden and other future presidents change the direction of the US foreign policy but a complete rejection of transactionalism does not seem likely. It should be noted that transactionalist tendencies do not only take place within the transatlantic framework but are becoming an increasingly common phenomenon in global politics, which is why it is unlikely that the future transatlantic relations would not have any transactional features. For example, some Central and Eastern European countries have a very transactional approach towards the US but also towards the EU. Instead of focusing on major transatlantic objectives, their focus is on short-term minor political, military and economic transactions. As a consequence, the transatlantic cooperation continues especially in the field of security and defence but cooperation is no longer based on common values and ideas but on national interests and survival in a challenging security environment (Inayeh 2017). The rise of populism and illiberal democracies in some member countries further escalate the transactional tendencies and for their part increase the difficulty of sustaining NATO’s basic values, and its “value narrative”.

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The Rise of China in NATO’s Burden-Sharing Discussion Another emerging factor in NATO’s burden-sharing agenda is China. The pressure that the West, and the US in particular, experience from China’s direction is no longer limited to its economic power and technological supremacy, but stems from China’s growing strategic ambitions and more assertive foreign and defence policies. 2013 was a momentous year, even a watershed moment, when it comes to China’s foreign and defence policy. President Xi Jinping came to power in 2013, has since then consolidated his power and is now allowed to remain in power for life after the two-term limit was scrapped in 2018. Xi’s power consolidation has even been labelled as the “third revolution of China”5 (Kroening 2020, p. 176). Xi’s China has assumed more assertive foreign and defence policies and increased its military spending, making China since 2018 the second biggest military spender in the world with defence spending of approximately 261 billion dollars (US military expenditure in 2019 was 732 billion dollars) (Statista 2020). Under the leadership of Xi, China has shown that it is not only a rising power but actually a “risen power” that no longer isolates but engages in the international community and is not afraid to show its power (Murray 2012, p. 48; Wang 2016, p. 461; Oertel 2019, p. 67). China’s military presence in NATO’s operational area is still very limited but the country’s increasing influence has genuine consequences for the Alliance. China’s growing role in international security has brought forward NATO’s internal dilemmas and turned certain foreign policy priorities towards China. The US foreign policy and economic interests have been shifting towards Asia and China since the 1990s and the trend is only increasing in the twenty-first century. Especially during Trump’s presidency the US assumed a more assertive stance against China and its growing influence in the South China Sea in particular. The US set tariffs and other trade barriers against China and warned allies and partner countries of allowing the Chinese technology company Huawei to build 5G networks in their countries. As of early 2021, Britain, Poland, Romania, Sweden, Luxembourg, Australia, Japan and Taiwan had banned Huawei’s 5G networks and several others were likely to do the same or at least impose restrictions (Sacks 2021). Still, many European countries 5 The first revolution was Mao’s communist revolution in 1949 and the second Deng Xiopings’s reformist revolution in 1978 (Kroening 2020, p. 176).

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are more focused on Russia, Middle East and North Africa that pose more direct and immediate security challenges. The allies have thus very different views on how much attention should be given to China in security and defence matters. If the Alliance’s internal lack of unity continues, it will be difficult for NATO to come up with a coherent strategy towards China, which it severely needs. It has even been argued that “the failure to craft a solid strategy toward China could be the nail in NATO’s coffin” (Holslag 2019, p. 138). In the London Summit in 2019 NATO declared that “China’s growing influence and international policies present both opportunities and challenges” (NATO: London Declaration 2019). Despite a rather vague wording, the fact that China was mentioned for the first time as a challenger was a significant step. Secretary General Stoltenberg said that even though NATO’s security remit is limited to Europe and Northern America, China’s influence especially in Africa and in the Arctic should not be ignored by the Alliance (Deutsche Welle 2019). China can be considered a rival or a challenger to NATO that tests the Alliance’s ability to stand by the US whose political, economic and military interests are challenged in the Asia–Pacific region. Moreover, China tests Europe and NATO’s determination to defend their position in the world and their ability to think strategically. In other words, the “Chinese challenge” is a challenge to the international liberal order and a test of unity to the allies, which is particularly demanding due to the economic power that China has. Western countries have made investments in China for more than 20 years and much of their own economic health depends on China. If a country officially considers China a security threat, it risks both the political and economic relationships with China. The allies thus have to balance between their own political and economic interests on the one hand, and alliance solidarity and unity, on the other (Holslag 2019, pp. 137–138; von Voss and Schimmel 2019; Mehta 2019). Despite the geographical distance, the stability of the Asia–Pacific region can have an indirect impact on NATO’s burden-sharing debate, too. The US has several allies in the Asia–Pacific region6 who rely on the US military support in case of regional conflicts. Should conflicts emerge in the region, the US would need to dedicate more resources to support its allies to stabilise the situation, leaving Europe to take more 6 US allies in the Asia–Pacific include Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, the Philippines, India, Vietnam, Thailand, Australia and New Zealand (Smolar 2011, p. 132).

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responsibility of its own security, as well as the security of its immediate neighbourhood (Yost 2010, p. 515). When it comes to NATO’s possible role in a conflict in the Asia–Pacific, much would depend on the European allies’ determination to act (Smolar 2011, p. 138). In the post-2014 security environment where NATO is busy guaranteeing the security of its allies in their own territorial area, it is highly unlikely that the allies would have the political will, nor resources, to engage in an out-of-area conflict in the Asia–Pacific. NATO’s global relevance especially in the eyes of the US would thus be questioned. As the geographic scope of the burden-sharing debate is expanding to regions far away from NATO’s territory, the complexity of the debate increases. Even without major military conflicts, the US focus on Asia suggests that the country is expecting Europe to take more responsibility of its own defence. The increasing attention that the US pays on China might also diminish its willingness to raise the burden-sharing issues on NATO’s agenda and use limited resources to pick a quarrel with allies. There have been signs of this in recent years. In the 2017 Munich Security Conference the American representatives, Vice-President Pence and Secretary of Defence Mattis, delivered President Trump’s message of unfair burden-sharing, saying that the newly elected President expected the allies to fulfil their commitment to increase their defence spending to reach the 2% GDP target. Pence argued that the allies’ inability to share defence burdens “erodes the very foundation of [the] alliance” (Pence 2017). Only three years later in the same conference the US Secretary of State Pompeo and Secretary of Defence Esper did not mention burdensharing even once in their addresses. Instead they both focused on China. Nor did newly elected President Biden raise the topic of burden-sharing in the virtual Munich Security Conference in 2021 (see Biden 2021b). The burden-sharing debate may thus need to give way to the Chinese challenge, and at least temporarily slow down one of the most vexed questions of the Alliance. China is not only interested in projecting power regionally but in the longer term its strategic ambitions are global. To achieve this goal, China has accelerated its military modernisation since 2012, it has established a new military base in Djibouti and developed new more sophisticated intercontinental ballistic missiles. Furthermore, China’s role and presence in NATO’s operational area has increased significantly and it has held military exercises in the Mediterranean, the Baltic Sea and the Arctic, often with Russia. The Sino-Russia military relations have deepened partly as a

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consequence of the events in Ukraine in 2014. The Russia-West relations deteriorated significantly after the annexation of Crimea, which encouraged Russia to turn its eyes towards China. Even though there is no formal alliance treaty between Russia and China, they are de facto allies whose relations are not limited to diplomacy and economy but have a strong operational dimension. Their cooperation is a serious concern for NATO as it strengthens Russia’s military capabilities, which can have a direct impact on NATO and its member countries’ security. The joint exercises in NATO’s operational area thus not only indicate China’s expanding foreign policy interests and global ambitions but they also shift the power balance in NATO’s area (Pothier 2019; Holslag 2019, pp. 137–140; Oertel 2019, pp. 67–69, 74–76; Murray 2012, pp. 52– 53; Puranen and Kukkola 2021). A more subtle way of strengthening global influence than holding military exercises and building bases abroad is China’s grand project, the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), introduced by President Xi in 2013. Formally BRI is an economic plan for China to make investments especially in Central Asia, South East Asia and Middle East, but in Eastern and Southern Europe, too. However, the BRI is also a grand geopolitical strategy to increase power and influence in countries that are dependant on China’s vast financial investments. In essence, China uses its economic power to gain strategic manoeuvring space and form alliances, even if informal, along the old Silk Road (Kroening 2020, pp. 176–177, 190; Wang 2016, pp. 455–461). Strong transatlantic relations are the key in addressing China. The relations are, however, tested both from the inside and outside of the Alliance. The on-going burden-sharing debate is one of the underlying reasons for alliance incoherence and lack of political unity, which prevents the Alliance from forming a working strategy towards China. The institutional weakness is worsened by the allies’ greatly differing views on what kind of challenges China poses and how the challenges should be addressed (Holslag 2019, p. 142). Recognising China’s growing influence in the London Summit in 2019 was an important first step but NATO still lacks a long-term vision and coherent strategy towards China. Without a proper strategy the engagement with China will be evaluated “by the sheer number of exchanges and projects without really considering their outcomes with regard to NATO’s interests” (Holslag 2019, p. 138). Forming a coherent China strategy is essential for NATO to maintain its relevance in the eyes of its allies and to be able to respond to

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the challenges caused by China’s economic, political and military rise and cooperation with Russia (Oertel 2019, p. 67; Holslag 2019, p. 138). The Emergence of Societal Resilience to Burden-Sharing Agenda The Covid-19 pandemic was a prime example of how NATO simultaneously faces growing demands to focus on more effective collective defence but also demands to broaden its agenda to tasks such as societal resilience, counter-terrorism, crisis management and to responding to human emergencies (Tardy 2020b, p. 3). This has an impact on the burden-sharing debate as the member countries need to consider how to share the increasing amount of tasks and responsibilities in an economically challenging time. Responding to pandemics and other human emergencies does not belong to NATO’s core tasks but the Covid-19 forced the Alliance to act with its existing response mechanisms and to consider the consequences of the pandemic on geopolitics and international relations in more broad terms.7 Secretary General Stoltenberg highlighted that NATO’s core task during the pandemic was to keep providing deterrence and defence and to “make sure that this health crisis doesn’t develop into a security crisis” (Stoltenberg 2020b). We can detect both short and long terms effects of the Covid-19 pandemic on NATO. At the early stages of the pandemic Stoltenberg stressed that NATO’s operational readiness was not impacted by the pandemic and that its “ability to conduct operations ha[d] not been undermined” (Stoltenberg 2020c). Even though the on-going operations remained more or less intact during the pandemic, it was the military exercises that took the biggest short-term hit. NATO had to cancel several exercises, the most remarkable one being the Defender2020 that was supposed to be the largest military exercise in Europe since the Cold War. 7 The allies’ national armed forces supported civilian efforts to tackle the virus but NATO as an institution showed concrete support, too. NATO’s role at the beginning the pandemic was mostly limited to supporting civilian efforts, such as sharing medical expertise and helping to set up field hospitals. Perhaps the most visible effort was providing military airlift—NATO flew hundreds of flights to transport medical personnel and equipment (NATO: NATO’s Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic 2020). In addition, NATO had several tools and mechanisms to use during the pandemic, such as the Euro-Atlantic Disaster Response Coordination Centre (EADRCC) and NATO Support and Procurement Agency (NSPA).

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The Defender2020 exercise was seen as a concrete sign of US commitment in European defence amidst the Trump Administration’s growing pressure towards European allies to increase their defence efforts and budgets. Cancelling the exercise should not be interpreted as an act of US retrenchment from Europe since it was the only reasonable and responsible thing to do at the time. However, in the long run cancelling national and international military exercises can have a damaging impact on allies and partners’ cooperation capabilities. A longer-term impact of the pandemic on burden-sharing may come in the form of defence budget cuts. The Secretary General urged the allies not to cut their budgets and highlighted that even during the pandemic the armed forces have a crucial role in maintaining logistics, border security and providing medical support. But, as is often the case during economic hardship, the defence sector is the one that needs to bare cuts so that governments can allocate resources on more urgent sectors. Cuts to national defence budgets—that had only recently started to recover from the previous financial crisis and show positive signs again—could significantly damage allies’ national defence capabilities and inflame the burden-sharing debate. Another possible scenario is that if national defence expenditures remain more or less at the same level while the economies and GDPs keep shrinking, the defence expenditures may rise in proportion to the GDP. So, paradoxically many NATO allies may advance the 2% defence spending target without actually increasing their defence budgets (Emmott and Siebold 2020). Hence, it is possible that the defence spending figures may look better on paper, but in reality are far from positive. The pandemic may complicate the Alliance’s unified response to China. Thanks to China’s skilful propaganda at the beginning of the pandemic, fewer and fewer European allies are ready to tightened NATO’s China strategy, which can have a severe impact on the Alliance in a long term. The European allies’ reluctance to challenge China may further damage the relations with the US, whose relations with China became even tenser during the pandemic. All these aspects will have a long-lasting impact on the transatlantic and intra-alliance relations. The challenge is to maintain unity and solidarity despite defence budget cuts, disinformation campaigns and other external attempts to challenge the Alliance. It is natural that during major crises such as the Covid-19 pandemic, countries

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turn their backs to the outside world and focus on their own survival. It is however crucial that international cooperation is not abandoned because the challenges that existed before the pandemic have not disappeared but actually intensified. What also remains to be seen, is whether the pandemic will be regarded as another watershed moment in the future, comparable to other major events such as the end of the Cold War, the 9/11 attacks and the annexation of Crimea in 2014. The difference of the current pandemic to these events is, of course, that the pandemic is not humanmade and had no political motivations. Still, it had major impact on both national and international politics and demonstrated that NATO as an institution needs to keep adapting to the continuously more complex and interconnected security environment (Tardy 2020a, p. 20), thereby adding potentially new layers to burden-sharing agenda as well.

Summary To put it simply, the Cold War burden-sharing debate was mainly about inputs—financial contributions and the share of GDP spent on defence were the most important burden-sharing measurements. During the postCold War years the debate was more focused on outputs, i.e. what could actually be done with the defence capabilities. The post-2014 debate is something in between these two. On the one hand, defence spending and the GDP shares are under close scrutiny especially by the US but, on the other hand, more and more attention is also given on how the allies contribute to common defence and crisis management, and how willing they are to cooperate and fight together. According to Deni, “burdensharing is not simply a question of fairness—rather, it has real implications for operations and hence strategy and policy” (Deni 2017, p. 74). When talking about burden-sharing in today’s world the question is not only how the burden should be shared, but what the burden actually means. Defence spending, and the input focused burden-sharing debate, was brought back on NATO’s agenda in the Wales Summit in 2014 held in the aftermath of the Crimean annexation. In the same summit NATO re-assumed its traditional role as a collective defence organisation and downgraded its role as a global crisis management organisation. In a sense, NATO returned to its Cold War role and also the burden-sharing debate started to resemble the input-focused debate of the Cold War.

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Defence spending was once again considered one of the main indicators of commitment to the Alliance and especially the US paid close attention on which allies reached the 2% GDP threshold. The US was, however, not the only ally to criticise others of free-riding and of insufficient defence spending. The UK and France in particular criticised others of insufficient capabilities and lack of political will to fund armed forces. In 2014 only three allies (the US, the UK and Greece) were able to reach the 2% GDP target. In 2019 eight allies reached the target. In total Europe and Canada raised their defence spending from 1.47 to 1.57% (of the GDP). Another target agreed in Wales was to spend 20% of total military expenditure on research and development. In 2019 16 allies reached the target while in 2014 the figure was six. These figures suggest that the capability gap is narrowing but it will take a long time before defence investments materialise into actual capabilities. There is still a vast capability gap among European allies who have sophisticated capabilities and resources to execute various kinds of missions, and those who do not. At the moment only the UK, France and the US are capable of this, while most of the allies would fall into the role of supporting nations—even Germany that has one of the strongest economies in Europe (Richter 2016, pp. 299–300). NATO thus faces the risk of becoming a two-tiered alliance, which does not only threaten the efficiency and interoperability of the Alliance but adds fuel to the burden-sharing debate, too. At worst, the responses to security challenges are delayed and ineffective due to insufficient capabilities and lack of intra-alliance coherence. As only a handful of European allies are capable of conducting sophisticated highintensity operations, Europe will not be independent of the US support in the near future. This is why the financially focused burden-sharing debate is likely to continue despite the positive developments in defence spending (Mattelaer 2016, p. 29). Even though financial contributions have been in the centre of the US-led burden-sharing debate after 2014, burden-sharing in the postCrimea context is to an increasing extent about fundamental questions on how to interpret security threats, and how to address them in an appropriate manner. The burden-sharing debate is no longer only about financial targets but about “developing credible defence plans and determining which military tasks individual allies should commit to” (Mattelaer 2016, p. 31).

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Simply increasing defence budgets is not a sufficient way to achieve fairer burden-sharing. Instead, the post-Crimean burden-sharing debate is expanding to include aspects such as allies’ ability to cooperate and commitment to fight together. This is what especially the Baltic countries and Poland have brought up in the burden-sharing discussions. From their perspective, burden-sharing also means allies’ commitment to stand by their side in a militarily hostile environment. In addition, what is typical in the post-Crimean security context is the expansion of burden-sharing as a political topic. Growing transactional tendencies and the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on international relations demonstrate that it is increasingly challenging to define burden-sharing as a phenomenon or to determine any precise boundaries to it. The debate simply seems to be expanding to issue areas and geographical domains that traditionally have had very little, if anything to do with the “traditional” understanding of burden-sharing. Let us next turn to the question of what to make of these developments.

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CHAPTER 6

Historical Dynamics of Burden-Sharing

How Did We End Up Here? Summary of the Evolution of Burden-Sharing Disputes In the last three chapters, we have observed the historical and contemporary development of NATO burden-sharing disputes through four tracks: (1) geopolitical change related to Russia, (2) US retrenchment or renewal, (3) European passivity or activism and (4) significant NATO out-of-area operations. In the volume, these tracks have structured an overview of the most important events in NATO’s past and the implications they have had on the burden-sharing debate, NATO’s internal cohesion and evolvement as an organisation. In Chapter 5, this typology was supplemented with a fifth track of emerging drivers, such as the rise of China, technological inventions, societal change within member countries and pandemics, all of which have the potential to affect burden-sharing dynamics. The Cold War From NATO’s perspective the Cold War years were a time of expansionist Soviet foreign policy, which constituted a direct threat to the security of the allies but, on the other hand, also justified NATO’s existence as a defence organisation. The perceived Soviet threat materialised in various ways through the decades: obtaining nuclear weapons, building the Berlin © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 T. Koivula and H. Ossa, NATO’s Burden-Sharing Disputes, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93539-9_6

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Wall, attempts to position nuclear weapons in Cuba, suppression of mass protests in Budapest and Prague, and the invasion of Afghanistan among others. Throughout these challenges the US remained loyal to its European and Canadian allies and committed to its Article V obligations, despite periods of retrenchment and criticism towards the allies. The US Congress often debated about the American presence in Europe and individual politicians proposed rather harsh measures to tackle Europeans’ reluctance to assume more responsibility of their defence. However, initiatives such as the Mansfield Resolutions and Jackson-Nunn Amendments did not result in any significant changes in the transatlantic bargain and European reliance on the US military support continued for decades— even until today. Still, despite understandable frustrations, the US did not reduce its presence in Europe and did not withdraw its political and military support, which in practise would have signified the collapse of NATO. The allies could not afford to look weak in the eyes of the Soviet Union because during the Cold War losing Europe meant losing its hegemonic position within the non-socialist world. In other words, even in times of foreign policy retrenchment, the US remained committed to the security of the allies because it deemed the Soviet aggression more fatal than unfair burden-sharing. When it comes to European activity and passivity in defence politics, it suffices to say that good intentions did not materialise in good deeds. European allies showed activity in integration matters when they attempted to create the supranational European Defence Union in the 1950s and to increase their security and defence cooperation through the Fouchet Plan in the 1960s, which would have resulted in intergovernmental defence cooperation in Europe. The fundamental intention throughout the Cold War was to reduce European dependence on the US and to increase European defence spending as well as responsibility of their own security and defence. These attempts, however, failed and European integration process was predominantly limited to economic aspects. There were also other obstacles on the way towards militarily capable Europe, such as differing interests and targets among the allies, which concretised in France’s withdrawal from NATO’s military structures in 1967. As a consequence of European passivity—or failure to be active— European defence spending was lacking behind the US and the capability gap was widening between the allies. Europe was becoming more and more accustomed to the idea of the US standing by their side in times

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of crisis, but at the same time the US was involved in conflicts in other regions and could not give its full attention to the European allies. Another fundamental problem in the Cold War burden-sharing debate—and to a certain extent still in today’s debate—is that the Americans and Europeans understood security, and hence NATO’s role, differently. The US saw security from a broad global perspective, while most European members considered security to be more narrowly tight to its own territorial area and perhaps to its closest neighbourhood. While the Soviet Union and the spread of communism was seen as the main threat for everyone, it was viewed from different perspectives. Simply put, European members considered NATO to be there first and foremost for European defence while the US expected support from its allies as it engaged in conflicts in places like Vietnam and the Persian Gulf. The US felt that Europe was not contributing enough while Europeans felt that they did not need to participate in American wars outside of Europe. As a consequence, many of the Cold War intra-alliance tensions stemmed from issues and crises that were not directly related to NATO. The US was involved in global standoff against the communist bloc and it expected its allies to show solidarity and offer financial and military support. However, Europeans were typically reluctant to share the burdens of conflicts they did not consider to be in their interests due to geographical remoteness, among other reasons. But every time something happened close enough, such as the Prague Spring in 1968, the European NATO members increased their defence budgets and shares of the collective burden, and also demanded solidarity from the US. The implicit original burden-sharing deal of NATO, in a nutshell, was that the US would take care of European defence and security while Europe was rebuilding its societies after the devastating war. The American military presence in Europe was supposed to be a temporary arrangement until Europe was capable of defending itself. There are various reasons why this initially temporary nature of burden-sharing arrangement did not realise. On the one hand, the US never gave enough incentives for Europeans to assume more responsibilities of their defence (Tonelson 2000, p. 38). The US wanted to minimise the costs of defending Europe but still maintain its leadership position. To achieve this, it threatened Europe of withdrawing its troops and other military support but never fulfilled the threats. Europeans soon learned that the political price for the US to pay for withdrawing its troops from Europe was too high. At the same time, Europe was economically weak after the

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Second World War and needed to put a lot of resources on reconstruction efforts. Spending on defence and military was not a priority, which made Europeans dependent on the US support and on its nuclear power in particular. This undercut the message that the US wanted to send to Europe about taking more responsibility. Still, it should be noted that even though in terms of military spending and capabilities Europe was far behind the US, European allies contributed in other ways to the common cause. Europeans provided host nation support to the US allowing it to use military bases in Europe, and donated a great deal to foreign aid, which had an indirect impact on the security of the allies (Tonelson 2000, pp. 39–40). The Post-Cold War Years After the end of the Cold War Russia, as the successor of the Soviet Union, took steps towards the West and attempted to create new forms of cooperation with its former enemies. NATO-Russia Founding Act was signed and NATO-Russia Council established, which brought the former enemies closer to each other than ever before. Moreover, the symbolic support that Russia gave to the US, and to the West in general, after the 9/11 attacks was considered a significant improvement in the relations. As the West–East relations were warming up and old suspicions were mostly cast away, NATO recognised the momentum to invite Eastern and Central European countries, former Soviet satellite states, to join the Partnership for Peace Programme and later the Alliance as full members. The enlargement process brought new dimensions to the burdensharing debate: on the one hand, there were now more allies to share the burden, but on the other hand the old allies also had to put a lot of effort in modernising the armed forces of the new allies that were lacking behind in terms of military capability and efficiency. Russia was naturally not pleased with the enlargement process in Central and Eastern Europe but could not stop it. The turning point in NATO-Russia relations is often considered to be then Prime Minister Putin’s speech at the Munich Security Conference in 2007 when he accused NATO of breaking mutual trust by enlarging to Central and Eastern Europe. It seemed that Russia’s patience was running out and it was not ready to stand by and watch NATO enlarge further. Russia’s altered tone became more visible when in 2008 it used military force against Georgia that had shown interest

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in joining NATO. From the late 2000s onwards, the Russia-NATO relations became colder and were eventually put on hold in 2014 with the annexation of the Crimean Peninsula and military actions in Ukraine. The end of the Cold War and the disappearance of the Soviet threat changed the need for US presence in Europe, which was one of the fundamental aspects of the Cold War transatlantic bargain. After a brief “unipolar moment” in the early 1990s, the mainstream of post-Cold War US foreign policy can be described as a time of retrenchment: the US reduced the number of troops stationed in Europe and turned its focus towards Asia instead. Still, even though retrenchment was a defining feature of the American post-Cold War foreign policy, the US was not willing to give up its leadership position in European security and was also sceptical about the intensifying European integration process that had started in the early 1990s. This resulted in a dilemma that continues today: the US expected European allies to become more independent in terms of security and defence, but was doubtful about the EU Common Security and Defence Policy and other forms of European defence cooperation. When it comes to renewal or activity in US foreign policy during the post-Cold War, the renewal was more or less limited to the war on terrorism. The 9/11 attacks in 2001 and the subsequent war on terrorism in Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere led by the Bush Administration, changed the way the US viewed NATO and its allies. NATO was no longer a “vital alliance in itself, worth making significant sacrifices to preserve” but “an institution that may be used to pursue US goals but can equally be ignored or side-lined” (Cottey 2006, p. 9). This kind of attitude-change became obvious when the US was looking for a coalition of the willing for these campaigns instead of including NATO as an alliance, even though NATO’s role in anti-Taleban operations and Afghanistan peace-building became eventually important. Rather paradoxically, the post-Cold War years were both an era of activity and passivity in European defence. On the one hand, many countries abolished conscription, cut their defence spending and essentially let their armed forces to degenerate. The consequences of this are still visible and have caused major burden-sharing disputes and fostered claims of free-riding. On the other hand, the end of the Cold War enabled many European countries to deepen the integration process and also to widen it towards security and defence, which until the 1990s had been mostly non-existent on the EU level. The treaties of Maastricht, Amsterdam and Lisbon, along with bilateral treaties and declarations such as the

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Saint Malo Declaration between France and the UK, were concrete steps forward in this realm. Most of the development, however, only existed on paper and had very little impact on the reality of defence and security cooperation before the 2010s. The post-Cold War era meant both endings and beginnings. The Soviet threat had vanished and the relevance of and need for NATO was questioned in earnest. NATO’s original core task, collective defence, was not needed the way it was during the tense Cold War years, and thus it had to give way to the new core task, crisis management. NATO engaged in operations outside of its borders for the first time in the Balkans. The 9/11 attacks brought a new dimension to peacekeeping and crisis management tasks as NATO assumed its new role in the war against terrorism. Even though NATO invoked the Article V of the Washington Treaty for the first time in the Alliance history after the 9/11 attacks, the Bush Administration did not want to include NATO in the war in Afghanistan at first but chose to resort to the help of British special forces. NATO later joined the mission through ISAF but the fact that the Alliance was first side-lined by the US caused severe internal tensions. Americans recognised that the participation of Europeans in the missions in Afghanistan and Iraq would justify the missions but, on the other hand, they felt that they could not rely on the Europeans and their military capabilities (Smolar 2011, p. 129). What was typical in the transatlantic relations in the post-Cold War era was that Europe and the US had rather similar threat perceptions but the strategies on how to approach the threats were essentially different. This became clear especially in out-of-area operations. While the US relied on hard power, Europe (and the EU as its main political institution) remained very much a soft power actor—perhaps in some respects out of necessity and as a result of military weakness. However, there is no denying that a major lesson of the world wars for many Europeans was a deep-felt sense of scepticism of military tools. Consequently, ideas of the EU as project of peace, a civilian power, a normative power and a soft power were deeply embedded in the thinking and documents guiding European integration. This soft power identity was accompanied by a more comprehensive understanding of security and threats, and a more versatile, even though militarily less capable, toolbox in responding to the threats on various policy levels (Germond 2010, pp. 206, 212; Koivula 2016, pp. 33–50). The broader European understanding of security also had on impact on the nature and scope of the burden-sharing debate:

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while the US kept its focus in military spending and capabilities in the traditional spirit of the transatlantic burden-sharing bargain, many European Alliance members enlarged the scope and diversity of burden-sharing by emphasising other issues as well, such as investments in infrastructure, development aid and taking refugees from crisis areas. The Post-Crimean Security Environment Along with the termination of Operation ISAF, Russia’s annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014 can be seen as a major turning point in NATO’s post-Cold War history. Until then NATO’s post-Cold War role had been dominated by crisis management tasks and occasionally more fundamental debate on the Alliance’s overall relevance. Year 2014 brought power politics back to the stage of international relations: NATO reassumed its traditional role as a collective defence organisation and reduced its role in out-of-area crisis management operations. This allowed the Alliance to focus its efforts on the Eastern flank and show support and solidarity towards allies most worried about Russia’s revisionist foreign policy. The confrontation with Russia is however not only military or taking only a physical form on the borders of the Alliance. To an increasing extent, it takes place in the cyber dimension and has a hybrid nature. The threats stemming from Russia are complex and diverse, which is further complicated by the allies’ different threat perceptions. Central and Eastern European allies are most concerned about Russia while Southern and Western allies do not consider Russia as big a threat as the unstable South, transnational terrorism and the consequences of mass immigration. Despite growing retrenchment tendencies, the US has shown solidarity and also offered concrete military support to countries such as Poland and the Baltic states on the frontline of the revisionist Russia. Concrete measures include the Enhanced Forward Presence in Poland and the Baltics and military exercises in Eastern Europe. As we have noted earlier, despite free-riding accusations, clear frustrations with the European allies and President Trump’s threats of withdrawing from the Alliance, the US is still active in European defence and the retrenchment tendencies have remained in the political and rhetorical spheres of the Alliance, but not in the military sphere. Europe, too, has shown more activity. The 2014 annexation and the rapid rise of Islamist terrorism in the Middle East forced Europeans to rethink their security and defence capabilities and

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the relationship with the US that was taking steps away from Europe and other international forums. Since 2016, when the EU published its Global Strategy, the Union has introduced various security and defence related strategies and taken—at least on paper—a significantly more active role in the defence of its own territorial area. The idea of European strategic autonomy has gained new prominence but there are still various obstacles on the way before we can talk about actual military independence from the US (or NATO). One of these obstacles is the state of European armed forces, which were effectively let to crumble in many countries after the end of the Cold War. Even though European defence spending increased after events of 2014, the capability gap between the US and Europe remains wide for the foreseeable future. When it comes to out-of-area operations, it seems that NATO is taking steps back, at least for the time being. The last major operation NATO took part was in Libya in 2011. The operation was deemed successful in the sense that it reached its goal (ousting Muammar Gaddafi) but also showed how dependant Europe still was on the US. Feeling the need to scale down its foreign engagements, the Obama Administration had planned itself a role of backbencher. Yet, in the end the US had to carry a remarkable burden of the mission, as the Europeans simply did not have the needed resources and capabilities. Since then NATO has focused on out-of-area training and support missions. Burden-sharing as a political topic has expanded in the post-Crimean security context which makes it increasingly difficult to define it or determine its boundaries. The debate is closely linked to issues that, according to the traditional definition, would not be discussed as part of the burden-sharing debate, such as comprehensive understanding of security or transactionalism. In addition, the geographical dimension of burdensharing is expanding especially due to China’s rise as a global military actor. China does not pose a direct threat to NATO but it has increased its activity in NATO’s operational area, which forces the allies to form a united response to the growing “Chinese challenge”. Also, China’s assertiveness in the South China Sea destabilises the area and may force the US to intervene militarily due its several alliances in the region. As a consequence, the US may—once again—need to reallocate some of its resources and troops and leave the European allies to assume greater responsibility of their own security and that of the closest neighbourhood.

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Arrow and Cycle of Burden-Sharing Disputes When assessing the overall history of NATO burden-sharing up until our times, the preceding summary gives us clues that the content, style and the nature of burden-sharing disputes change over time, at least in some respects. Then again, in other respects, a more stable and continuous dynamic seems to be more fitting description of the past course of events. Which of these interpretations is a more appropriate one—or do both the ideas have an element of truth? Let us now scrutinize the elements of change and continuity in NATO’s burden-sharing disputes in more detail. Arrow of Disputes As discussed in Chapter 2, the notion of time’s arrow in NATO burdensharing disputes refers to the idea that the disputes constitute an evolutionary and irreversible historical process that has a direction of certain kind. Based on the previous chapters, this arrow of NATO’s burdensharing disputes seems to be shaped by three interplaying elements: geopolitical changes in the Alliance’s security landscape, altering understandings of security between members and societal change within individual NATO countries. To begin with the most obvious development, NATO’s burden-sharing agenda is experiencing a path of expansion due to geopolitical changes in security environment. Each historical era of NATO has provided its particular key issues, even battlefields over sharing the burden. During the Cold War, the debate circled around conventional and nuclear deterrence, the post-Cold War debate was about costs of enlargement and new member countries but also about the global war on terror and costs of out-of-area operations. In the post-Crimean context, the focus is on the US pivot to Asia and the impact of this on the defence of Europe as well as number of emerging issues. The evolution of measurable “burden” from one decade to another is manifested in NATO’s input versus output dynamism. Throughout the Cold War years, NATO burden-sharing was predominantly measured in terms of cost-sharing, that is percentage of GDP spent on defence. Here, the focus was on the input side of the defence, or how much each NATO country contributed. The end of the Cold War led to changes in NATO’s burden-sharing agenda both externally and internally. NATO’s external security environment became more permissive due to the collapse of the

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Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union. Later on, the emergence of the European Union Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) added its own twist to the transatlantic agenda. One tangible element was the new postCold War focus on the political will and ability to project military power far away for extended periods of time. Spearheaded by the United States, NATO approved various schemes to convert territorial defence forces into expeditionary forces: the Defence Capabilities Initiative from 1999 and the Prague Capabilities Commitment agreed to at NATO’s summit in Prague in November 2002, are both examples of attempts to transform the European armed forces to meet new security threats beyond the continent (Ringsmose 2010, p. 327). Accompanied with these developments was a vigorous discussion on the relative weight of input and output measures in the Alliance context: was burden-sharing about quantitative defence spending or should NATO emphasise more the effectiveness of spending, risk-sharing, superiority of training and equipment (Kunertova 2017, p. 554; Ringsmose 2016, p. 202)? These new understandings on burden-sharing were demonstrated in NATO summits in Istanbul (2004) and Riga (2006). The developments since the occupation of Crimea in 2014 have led to a reaffirmed emphasis of traditional input-oriented burden-sharing discourse within NATO. The Wales Summit declaration in 2014 manifested the goal to spend two per cent of GDP on defence, which since then has been a continuous source of discontent within the allies. Still, while the Ukrainian crisis demonstrated that inputs still matter, NATO’s shift to qualitative indicators has not lost its significance (Ringsmose 2016, p. 207). These developments suggest a second shaper of burden-sharing disputes, the altering and diversifying understandings of security among NATO countries. Burden-sharing, both in the post-Cold War and in the post-Crimea context, is increasingly about fundamental questions on how security, threats and the appropriate ways to address these threats are interpreted in member countries. Today, as the findings of this volume manifest, the debate on burden-sharing covers diverse questions. These include, but are not limited to issues such as what is entailed in being a “good” Alliance member or how a “burden-shifter” should be defined; what should be the weight of other factors and forms of contribution than defence spending, like willingness to risk one’s own troops and to accept casualties for common good during operations; what should be the weight of the availability of deployable forces for NATO missions; or how

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one should assess a constructive approach in Alliance decision-making bodies in NATO context or generally reputational resources (see Schmitt 2018, p. 9) of given member countries. In the words of Ringsmose (2010, p. 319), the parameters and the vocabulary of the burden-sharing debate have transmogrified as NATO has transformed in the course of time. While the “classical” debate on military expenditure is likely to remain on NATO’s agenda and even dominate it, the transatlantic discourse on burden-sharing is increasingly likely to cover non-military domains of comprehensive security, resilience, security cooperation and diplomacy, too. As a political-military alliance, NATO depends on commonly agreed threats, and groups around them in the form of strategic concepts, summit declarations and other expressions of internal unity. Yet, the direction of disputes of our time however seems to suggest that the allies have diverging threat priorities. In the course of time, this development poses serious challenges to addressing them appropriately. Thirdly, these developments are accompanied by more subtle societal changes within NATO countries. It can be argued that burden-sharing has become almost a synonym to number of non-related issues debated in the transatlantic community and to signify different kinds of intraAlliance, even intra-member country grievances. Indeed, domestic politics within members are likely to count more as the driving force of burdensharing disputes. In most NATO countries, questions of security policy have traditionally been left outside of day-to-day domestic political quibbles. However, the rise of populism, non-liberal political forces in several NATO countries and possibly the increasingly transactional approach to international relations are likely to shape the domestic willingness in several member countries to engage in multilateral security cooperation. Instead of closed-door interstate bargaining, the political space of NATO seems to be more and more dominated by bidding race both on NATO and domestic fora of what is one’s contribution to common good. It is noteworthy that in addition to members, NATO partner countries, too, are likely to be dragged into these disputes and into the discourse of burden-sharing. Be it defence cooperation, joint exercises or participation in peace operations, partners are likely to face an environment emphasizing demands of good partnership, reputational resources, constructive approach and other forms of contribution from the involved

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countries.1 This may in particular involve partner countries closest to the Alliance, such as countries involved in NATO’s enhanced opportunities program—Australia, Finland, Georgia, Jordan, Sweden and Ukraine—as well as nations seeking NATO membership. Together, these three elements add up to a new level of complexity in the burden-sharing debate within NATO. While appropriate burdensharing has never been a simple or straightforward question, it is becoming part of an increasingly entangled and layered arena influenced by complex set of political, geopolitical and societal factors. This arrow of the expansion and increasing complexity and diversity of burdensharing disputes should not be seen as a direct path or line, however, as the disputes are all under the same burden-sharing umbrella but take constantly new forms. Cycle of Disputes In the context of this volume, the notion of time’s cycle refers to lawfulness and predictability in NATO’s burden-sharing disputes—in a larger sense, to the idea that looked as a historical process, the disputes are continuous or repetitive in nature instead of developing in some direction. We find that cyclicity manifests in burden-sharing debates in at least two ways: the repetitive nature of issues disputed and the repetitive strategies of member countries in disputes. Both of these ideas can, in some respects, be seen as counterarguments to the arguments presented above. First, we should begin by asking ourselves to what extent the issues discussed in the previous section really represent genuinely new themes. During the past 70 years, NATO has proved its ability to withstand external crises and internal strains. The collapse of the Soviet Union naturally represented an existential crisis for NATO but other ruptures such as France’s withdrawal from NATO’s military structure in the 1960s, disputes over the war in Vietnam, occasional conflicts between Turkey and Greece, the deployment of nuclear missiles in Europe in the early 1980s, the Balkan wars, the 9/11 attacks or wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, to

1 NATO maintains a vast program of political-military partnerships with countries across the globe. Just in the Euro-Atlantic area it maintains partnerships with 21 separate countries through the Euro-Atlantic Partnership Council and the Partnership for Peace. Some of these alliance partnerships, such as those with Sweden and Finland, have led to extraordinarily close cooperation and coordination.

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name a few, also shook NATO’s security environment and the relations among its members. Moreover, other subtler changes such as NATO’s enlargement in Eastern Europe and the EU’s growing role as a security organisation had their impact on NATO and its internal stability as well (Cottey 2006, p. 6; Dorman 2012, p. 302; Webber 2016, p. 2). NATO has thus experienced very little routine or a “Golden Era”, and instead moved from one change, or even crisis, to another in the course of its history. However, we tend to overemphasise the significance of contemporary developments and challenges. Whatever “crisis” NATO happens to be undergoing, it is easily interpreted as the most serious challenge the Alliance has ever experienced. The way we look at our own time is drastically different from how we look at the past, which is why comparing our time to the past is interesting, but not necessarily very objective. Secondly, we witness a surprising extent of continuity in member countries’ strategies in dealing with disputes on NATO burden, thereby maintaining its organisational continuity. Time and again, NATO’s disputes and crises has been limited to the political domain of NATO, most often in the form of political rhetoric. When it comes to military NATO—issues of military planning, security of supply, command structure and other forms of cooperation—the functioning of the Alliance has been virtually intact by burden-sharing disputes. In other words, burden-sharing disputes have above all been a political and discursive phenomenon, separated from NATO’s military ability to function. This has been most evident during times of crises in NATO’s history, be it periods of increased international tension during the Cold War, the invocation of Article V after the 9/11 attacks or the several Article IV consultations taking place at the initiative of individual members. During these times, other more cohesive considerations have gained the upper hand in collective decisionmaking. Despite several internal and external crises, NATO has thus managed to maintain its unity, which in turn has enabled incentives for the member countries to maintain the Alliance and shape their national policies according to NATO guidelines (Cottey 2006, p. 11). One could argue that the other side of the Janus face of occasional nagging between member countries is NATO’s culture of dialogue. Indeed, in many respects the Alliance faces change and progress through argument, and debate may well be one of NATO’s defining characteristics. Argument and debate are also necessary in order to define and redefine the strategic purposes of the Alliance. In this regard, disputes

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related to burden-sharing can also be seen as a manifestation of the Alliance’s ability to withstand and accommodate internal disagreements, sometimes for protracted periods of time (Koivula 2021). Following Hallams and Schreer (2012, p. 313), controversies related to burden sharing can be portrayed as a repetitive transatlantic ritual. The idea of ritual also provides a context to verbal indicators of the 2010s, such as key member countries’ leaders’ harsh language and petty behaviour among the members. “Nasty language” among the members is not a new phenomenon but has continued since the very early years of the Alliance. The fact that the member countries argue and challenge each other does not mean that they do consider NATO insignificant but are ready to use resources to argue for a better functioning Alliance. Hence, from a historical point of view the occasional comments of NATO being “obsolete”, “brain dead” or “in the worst crisis ever” should not be taken too seriously. Neither there is nothing new in the guns versus butter predicament in particular in the American political parlance.2 The claims that NATO is in crisis are subjective in nature as there is simply no way to make unambiguous claims of when a crisis starts and ends (Thies 2009, p. 8). In fact, NATO’s whole existence is based on threats and crises—as long as they stem from the outside and not from within the Alliance itself. There are thus grounds to establish that member countries’ interests, NATO’s culture, and its core functions limit the havoc or institutional stress caused by burden-sharing disputes and bring continuity to the debates. This kind of recurrence, repetition and continuity of topics on the political agenda speaks in favour of cyclic logic of disputes.

Summary The above discussion on the change and continuity of burden-sharing disputes does not give us any easy answers. Nevertheless, it provides us with clues as to what are the enabling and constraining factors behind the past and present burden-sharing disputes. On the one hand, the agenda of NATO burden-sharing is evolving and expanding continuously. It reflects a growing list of things, most notably 2 In the words of President John F. Kennedy (1963): “We cannot continue to pay for the military protection of Europe while the NATO states are not paying for their fair share and living off the ‘fat of the land.’”

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allies’ threat perceptions, policy preferences and occasionally also societal pressures within Alliance members. In this respect, disputes related to burden-sharing seem to reflect the increasing complexity in NATO’s, and in Western countries’ security environment. In addition, the debate is gaining new dimensions that have played little, if any, role in the past burden-sharing disputes, possibly in an accelerating manner. Then again, we witness a substantial amount of constraint, repetition, and continuity in the disputes as well in member countries’ strategies in dealing with disputes on NATO burden. The Alliance has a strong history of successful accommodation and adaptation, thanks to the apparently permanent strategic value that member have placed on NATO, helped by its institutional experience and routine to withstand internal disputes. Debating and arguing seem to be a crucial and stabilising parts of NATO. It can thus be argued that both the notions of time’s arrow and time’s cycle are present in burden-sharing disputes with the latter framing and constraining the former. As Bird (2013, p. 118) puts it: “the factors and issues which shape the way the alliance behaves, its periodic crises and its future preoccupations are long-standing and endemic. Policy and theoretical research need to focus, therefore, not on change within the alliance, but rather on deeply embedded continuity”.

References Bird, Tim. 2013. ‘Perennial Dilemmas’: NATO’s Post-9/11 Afghanistan ‘Crisis’. In NATO Beyond 9/11: The Transformation of the Atlantic Alliance, ed. Ellen Hallams, Luca Ratti, and Benjamin Zyla, 118–139. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan. Cottey, Andrew. 2006. NATO: Globalization or Redundancy? In Where Is NATO Going?, ed. Martin Smith, 5–22. Abingdon: Routledge. Dorman, Andrew M. 2012. International Affairs 88 (2): 301–312. Germond, Basil. 2010. Venus Has Learned Geopolitics: The European Union’s Frontier and Transatlantic Relations. In The Routledge Handbook of Transatlantic Security, ed. Jussi Hanhimäki, Georges-Henri. Soutou, and Basil Germond, 206–217. Abingdon: Routledge. Hallams, Ellen, and Benjamin Schreer. 2012. Towards a ‘Post-American’ Alliance? NATO Burden-Sharing After Libya. International Affairs 88 (2): 313–327. Kennedy, John F. 1963. Remarks to the National Security Council Meeting, 22 January 1963. https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus196163v13/d168. Accessed 19 January 2021.

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Koivula, Tommi. 2016. The European Union and the Use of Military Force: Uncovering the Myths. Abingdon: Routledge. Koivula, Tommi. 2021. Carry That Weight: Assessing Continuity and Change in NATO’s Burden Sharing Disputes. Defense & Security Analysis 37 (2): 145–163. Kunertova, Dominika. 2017. One Measure Cannot Trump It All: Lessons from NATO’s Early Burden-Sharing Debates. European Security 26 (4): 552–574. Ringsmose, Jens. 2010. NATO Burden-Sharing Redux: Continuity and Change After the Cold War. Contemporary Security Policy 31 (2): 319–338. Ringsmose, Jens. 2016. NATO: A Public Goods Provider. In Theorising NATO: New Perspectives on the Atlantic Alliance, ed. Mark Webber and Adrian HydePrice, 201–222. Abingdon: Routledge. Schmitt, Olivier. 2018. More Allies, Weaker Missions? How Junior Partners Contribute to Multinational Military Operations. Contemporary Security Policy 40 (1): 1–15. Smolar, Eugeniusz. 2011. Transatlantic Relations and NATO. European View 10: 127–135. Thies, Wallace. 2009. Why NATO Endures? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Tonelson, Alan. 2000. NATO Burden-Sharing: Promises, Promises. The Journal of Strategic Studies 23 (3): 29–58. Webber, Mark. 2016. Introduction: Is NATO a Theory-Free Zone? In Theorising NATO: New Perspectives on the Atlantic Alliance, ed. Mark Webber and Adrian Hyde-Price, 1–21. Abingdon: Routledge.

CHAPTER 7

Reflections on the Future Prospects of Burden-Sharing Disputes

Mapping NATO’s Future Burden-Sharing Agenda Arrowness and Cyclicality of Disputes Even though the questions of appropriate burden have never escalated severely enough to cause permanent damage to the Alliance cohesion, they have as Lunn (1983, p. 4) puts it, remained a “convenient foundation of criticism on which other disputes can flourish”. Indeed, the above pages have demonstrated that burden-sharing disputes should, above all, be seen as a platform or a reflection of other issues. These “other issues” include but are not limited to grand scale geopolitical pressures faced by the Alliance, doctrinal reforms or military technological breakthroughs, the launch and conduct of out-of-area operations or a host of various dayto-day intra-Alliance and even intra-member country grievances. NATO burden-sharing, in effect, has become part of an increasingly entangled and layered set of political, geopolitical, economic and societal factors. In Chapter 6, we suggested that NATO’s burden-sharing agenda has evolved historically and will likely come in diverse forms and shapes also in the future, which is why we think seeking any precise estimate or forecast on its future is a futile effort. Already as of the early 2020s the disputes have demonstrated a contingent set of possible issue-areas under debate and the creativity of member countries and political leaders in using NATO as a platform for diverse grievances.

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We argue that the concepts of time’s cycle and time’s arrow serve as analytical tools that help to conceptualise the historical patterns of burden-sharing disputes. The burden-sharing disputes seem to follow an arrow-like logic in the sense that the agenda of possible topics of debate has expanded over time. However, as the potential domain of disputes expands to new directions and policy-areas, the burden-sharing “arrow” should not be regarded as a direct line but rather as a plant-like growth, that spreads into different new directions. The controversies are all under the same broad burden-sharing umbrella but are apt to take new forms. For example, the addition of the out-of-area operations to NATO’s task list after the end of the Cold War can be seen as one of these “divergences” that added new elements and additional complexity to the burden-sharing debate, such as responsibility sharing, national caveats, and member countries’ capability and willingness to participate in operations. A more recent addition or divergence to the “burden-sharing arrow” is the global rise of China and its growing presence on NATO’s operational area, which is likely to breed new burden-sharing disputes in the future—maybe on how to share the burden of containing China, or how to jointly address Chinese challenges in trade and investment policies. This finding is complemented by another finding of ours: the disputes are rarely, if ever, solved for good but appear on NATO’s political agenda every now and then. The recurrence, repetition and continuity of topics on the political agenda speaks in favour of cyclic logic of disputes. These cyclicalities are also interlinked. For example, when the US foreign policy is going through periods of retrenchment or Russia assumes expansionist policies, European activity in defence policy tends to rise. Or, the reinvigorated US seems to tolerate unequal burden-sharing well. This way, the cyclicality of one issue-area also affects the cyclicality of another. In sum, NATO’s burden-sharing disputes seem to be simultaneously characterised by direction or path of increasing diversity and complexity and repetition. What Will Tomorrow’s Burden-Sharing Disputes Be About? While it is indeed hard, even meaningless to seek to provide precise forecasts on the future burden-sharing disputes up until 2030s, we argue for a substantial amount of continuity in it. Accordingly, we judge that categorizing burden-sharing disputes into four historical intra-NATO

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sources or fora provides elements for assessing the future outlook of the burden-sharing debate. First, it is hard to imagine that Russia—either as an expansionist, status quo or as a contracting power—would disappear from NATO’s agenda. While intra-Alliance differences in terms of threat perceptions continue to challenge Russia’s dominance in NATO’s agenda, its institutional history, pressures from Eastern European members and simply organisational and physical structures are likely to guarantee a central role for Russia in NATO’s eyes with a 10-year perspective. In practical terms, Russiarelated developments seem to materialise in the political space of NATO’s burden-sharing disputes in the form of questions on how to accommodate the costs related to NATO’s enlargement or how to share responsibility of exposed NATO members. However, there are indicators of change within this stability. It seems that future burden-sharing disputes around Russia are likely to become more complex as the perceived threat stemming from Russia is not only limited to traditional geopolitical issues. While allies especially in Eastern Europe are concerned of Russia’s traditional military threat in their territorial area, the allies also need to contemplate how to share the burden of responding to other threats, such as cyber attacks, election interferences and elaborate disinformation campaigns. Responding to these kinds of threats is not in the responsibility of national armed forces alone but other sectors of government and even civil society have an important role to play, too. This is one reason why focusing solely on national military budgets is not enough when discussing burdensharing in the future. Moreover, NATO’s ability to respond to Russian security threats is challenged from within the Alliance if more member countries allow their domestic politics to slide into illiberalism and assume non-democratic tendencies. Illiberal societies are vulnerable when facing information warfare and other forms of influence. As Wallander (2018, pp. 78–79) puts it “unlike during the Cold War, NATO’s illiberal weak links now align with the Kremlin’s tactics”. At worst, member countries’ flirting with illiberalism and transactionalism challenges the very basis on which the Alliance has been built, corrodes decision-making ability and questions the unity and coherence of the Alliance. NATO is a military alliance but also a political organisation and hence its internal coherence not only depends on the allies’ commitment to collective defence but also on their commitment to commonly agreed values, such as human rights and democracy (Lute and Burns 2019, pp. 20–21).

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The second issue-area with long-term relevance for NATO is the question of US retrenchment or renewal. The continuation of a gradual US withdrawal from Europe—a process that has in many respects characterised the transatlantic relationship since the end of the Cold War—is likely to be the key determinant of the intensity of the transatlantic debate in the future. Historically, this “devaluation” of Europe in the American foreign policy calculus has led to increased demands from the US for Europe to do more and take more responsibility of their security and defence. In a sense, these decades-old grievances culminated in President Trump’s foreign policy that in Europe was interpreted as undermining the transatlantic relations. The Biden Administration’s more traditional, engaging foreign policy approach is likely to ease the sharpest tensions among the transatlantic partners, but will not change the more profound issues within the Alliance or the bigger trends in world politics. Even Europe-friendly US Administrations of the future will need the European allies to increase their defence investments in order to convince the Congress and the American public to support continued American engagement in European security—and Europe still needs to show that it is “politically and morally worthy of a continued US security investment” and willing to reciprocate the American support (Techau 2015, p. 10). Furthermore, the US foreign policy will probably focus on China and Asia–Pacific to an increasing extent, and as a consequence the role of Europe in the US foreign policy is likely to reduce in the next ten years. A complete US withdrawal from NATO does not seem likely, but it is reasonable to assume that the US will expect European allies to take more responsibility of NATO’s activities while it itself will settle for a role in the back seat. The third issue-area, European passivity or activism, is closely linked to the global American strategic orientation. The EU took steps towards more autonomous defence capabilities during Jean-Claude Juncker’s EU Commission presidency (2014–2019), such as implementing the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) and establishing the European Defence Fund. President Juncker justified the deepening of EU defence cooperation as a necessary, and long overdue, means to promote European influence globally, to improve operational capabilities and to preserve national sovereignty. Also, assuming more burdens and stepping up defence efforts, “the Member States of the Union will strengthen the ties that bind the Allies within NATO”. Juncker thus saw stronger European defence and fairer burden-sharing as means to improve NATO allies’

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relations—perhaps most importantly the relations between the Europeans and the Americans who “consider that they are shouldering too much of the burden for their wealthy European Allies” (Juncker 2017). The Commission led by President Ursula von der Leyen (since 2019) was labelled “geopolitical Commission” but defence questions have not been a priority for the Commission—not least because of the Covid-19 pandemic. In her 2020 State of the Union speech von der Leyen did not mention defence or security at all (von der Leyen 2020). The EU’s activity in developing the Common Security and Defence Policy thus seems somewhat inconsistent, and there is no shared vision among the member states of what kind of role the EU should have in security and defence questions—if any at all. At the same time, the amount of bi-, tri- and minilateral defence solutions is expanding in Europe but it seems that the motivation behind them is not to have more balanced burdensharing vis-à-vis the US but rather to create partnerships of like-minded European nations that have political will and capabilities to cooperate. The drawback of this is the increasing level of fragmentation and lack of an all-encompassing defence solution. Fourthly, out-of-area operations constituted the main body of NATO’s work in the post-Cold War security setting. Hence, operations led by NATO or Western countries were also a key generator of burden-sharing disputes particularly during the Global War on Terror and before that in the Balkans, too. Yet, they have been in a markedly minor role since the end of the ISAF mission in 2014. The burden-sharing disputes aggravated in this context deal with questions such as who does what in out-ofarea operations, who takes risks, and who eschews them by employing caveats (i.e. restricted command authorities granted to NATO commanders). Moreover, it seems that these kinds of questions are no longer raised only during crisis management operations but also more broadly in NATO’s various activities. For example, when it comes to providing troops to the Enhanced Forward Presence posture in Poland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, there are countries that have “punched above their weight” (such as the UK, Canada, Germany, Denmark, Spain and the Netherlands along with the US) but also countries that have taken only a minor role in the operation or none at all (see NATO: NATO’s Enhanced Forward Presence). It looks like allies use caveats and other restrictions to an increasing extent as leverage and as a way to block or at least slow down Alliance activities and developments. This is not a new phenomenon, as for example Germany caused discontent among the allies when it opposed

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to the war in Iraq in the UN Security Council in 2003. More recently, in the early 2020 Turkey refused for a long time to approve NATO’s defence plan in Poland and the Baltic countries unless the allies recognised the PKK party as a terrorist organisation (Emmot and Irish 2020). Furthermore, future burden-sharing involves known unknowns. It is reasonable to expect that new issue-areas—that may not yet even exist— will play a role in burden-sharing agenda up until early 2030s. For instance, the more China sets to challenge the US globally, the more likely it is to play a bigger role on NATO’s burden-sharing agenda. In addition to dragging US military presence to the Pacific, this may also be manifested in the intensifying Chinese presence in NATO’s neighbourhood in Central Asia or the Arctic. Much like Russia, China does not pose only geopolitical challenges to NATO and individual member countries but the challenges, even threats, are mostly economic, political, and technological and increasingly many of them take place in the cyber space, which makes it difficult to detect and define them. In addition, the allies have divergent understanding of the threat that China poses: the US is the most vocal opponent of the rising China while many of the allies in Eastern Europe, for example, benefit from China’s Belt and Road Initiative and see China as a useful economic partner, not as a security threat. This is likely to create divisions among the allies, especially if the security situation in the South China Sea escalates and US military presence is required in the area. The US would probably expect support from its European allies who would most likely be reluctant to provide it. Moreover, there is no reason to count out the political repercussions of possible technological breakthroughs, be it military or civilian. As we have seen in the past, technological developments can have a major impact on the Alliance strategies and hence on the burden-sharing debate, too (for instance, see the discussion on massive retaliation and flexible response strategies in Chapter 3). Major technological breakthroughs require massive resources for research and development that very few countries have. The burden of developing new technologies thus lies on the shoulders of only a handful of member countries—or less— while other allies, and partner countries too, can benefit from them either directly or indirectly. This is a classic free-riding dilemma, which is not new to NATO (see for example Hartley and Sandler 1999). However, considering the pace of technological development, there is reason to expect that more attention will be given to the amount of resources

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that allies allocate to research and development. Discussing the contributions towards research and development is particularly important for NATO in the future as countries like China present constantly new and more capable technologies. The ever-developing technology continues to pose various challenges to the Alliance cohesion. According to Bazin and Kunertova (2018, p. 86), communication technology facilitates the spread of propaganda, misinformation and information warfare targeted at NATO allies in an attempt to increase miscommunication and misunderstandings among them. NATO’s cohesion is also under threat due to the increasing competition of the technology sector, both within the NATO and the private sector but also within the allies who may be reluctant to share their newest technological innovations. This can have a severe impact on the readiness and interoperability of individual member countries and NATO as an alliance. Four Future Scenarios of Burden-Sharing Disputes In addition to the specific issue-areas of burden-sharing, we need to pay attention to the overall impact that burden-sharing disputes have on NATO’s future. By now it probably has become evident that the issue-area at stake is quite a complex one and has many possible factors involved, some of which are still in the process of emerging. Yet, we find it justified to simplify the setting along two decisive axes, focusing horizontally on the level of NATO’s internal unity and solidarity, and vertically on the scope and integrity of the future burden-sharing agenda. The poles at the extremes of each axis—transactionalism and transatlanticism on the unity/solidarity axis, and limited and open-ended burden-sharing agenda on the scope/integrity axis—are always in some respects in the eye of the beholder. While the future course of events will most likely settle somewhere between the poles, the axes should nevertheless help to map out the nature of future debates and to assess their impact on NATO’s ability to function (Fig. 7.1). Our horizontal axis is motivated by the thought that as of early 2020s, we seem to be on a track in which domestic politics within member countries count more and more in the development and intensity of burden-sharing disputes. This dimension is by no means new in NATO. Still, what has been remarkable is that in most NATO countries questions of security policy have traditionally been left outside of day-to-day domestic political quibbles and have belonged to the domain of closed-door interstate

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Transaconalism

Transatlancism

Limited burden-sharing agenda

Fig. 7.1 Two axes of burden-sharing

bargaining. However, the rise of populism, non-liberal political forces in several NATO countries, and the increasingly transactional approach to international relations, are likely to shape the domestic willingness in several member countries to engage in multilateral security co-operation. We see the current trend of transactionalism linked to the increased pressure for smaller members and NATO’s partner countries to take sides and to align with larger countries on intra-alliance disputes. This bears a particular significance for non-allied partners. The perspective of burden or the discourse of burden-sharing is likely to seep into areas of defence co-operation, such as joint exercises, acquisitions or participation in international operations. In addition, partners working in NATO context are likely to face an environment emphasising demands of good partnership, reputational resources, constructive approach, and other forms of contribution from the involved countries. Expecting active contribution from partners is not new either, but it will be further emphasised as countries assume a more and more transactional approach in international relations. Our vertical axis, based on the review of NATO’s history up until the early 2020s, suggests a unidirectional path of expansion in regards to the number and diversity of burden-sharing disputes. In addition to burden-sharing disputes’ tendency to expand to new issue areas, NATO’s history demonstrates that burden-sharing disputes tend to be persistent

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and capable of re-emerging on the political agenda even after relatively long phases of hibernation. NATO’s political space is thus populated by both decades-old disputes and newer issues-areas, which complicates the burden-sharing agenda and creates interdependencies between different disputes. In closer analysis, the current burden-sharing debate seems to have two separate but interrelated “paths”: one that is focused on financial questions and other that gives attention to non-financial aspects. Within these groups or trends, there are several smaller-scale and issue-specific disputes that expand and also complicate the debate. These disputes have gotten “mixed” with each other and it is increasingly difficult to distinguish one burden-sharing dispute from another. For example, during his presidency, President Trump’s criticism towards NATO was for the most part about financial burden-sharing, but by criticizing the allies Trump stirred much deeper debates, such as what is NATO’s relevance in today’s world and whether the allies can rely on each other. In other words, a dispute that is presented as a criticism against unfair distribution of financial responsibility can in fact encompass much deeper and fundamental questions about NATO’s role in regional and global security. Burden-sharing has in many respects become a convenient platform that the allies use to debate some of the most fundamental questions about the Alliance. The vertical axis is closely linked to the diverging threat perceptions among the allies. There are reasons to expect that the US will pay increasingly close attention to the perceived threat from China, while the European threat perceptions are divided between Russia on the one hand, and the instable southern neighbourhood on the other. As long as the allies cannot agree on prioritising security threats, it is difficult to agree on a balanced burden-sharing arrangement. Also perceptions of security matter: while the “classical” debate on military expenditure, promoted by the US in particular, is likely to remain strongly on NATO’s agenda, the non-military domains of comprehensive security, resilience, security cooperation and diplomacy seem to have become permanent elements of transatlantic discourse on burden-sharing, too. In the words of the Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in 2018 referring to defence spending, “the fundamental question is: Is what you’re doing actually making a difference?” (quoted in Brewster 2018). German Foreign Minister Heiko Maas echoed this in his April 2019 remark saying that “burden-sharing is more than defence expenditure. Anyone asking about burden-sharing must look at the entire spectrum

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of resources, capabilities, contribution to NATO operations and Alliance defence” (quoted in Karnitsching 2019). While this question, too, is ageold in the NATO framework, it increasingly aligns with diverse security threats of Alliance members, the broad versus narrow understanding of security and the prospects of autonomous European security policy. In particular, the lessening US commitment to Europe seems to align with lessening US influence on burden-sharing agenda and with more diverse understandings of burden. In practical terms, these two axes help us identify four possible burden-sharing scenarios of NATO up until early 2030’s. Here, they will be called as “Incapacitated NATO”, “Transatlantic bargaining”, “Selfinterested member countries” and “Transatlantic solidarity”, as shown below (Fig. 7.2): In the top left corner, the scenario “Incapacitated Alliance” characterises the setting in which the burden-sharing agenda expands under the conditions of transactionalism. In this scenario the number of burdensharing issues increases, but the member countries are not willing to address them or to find multilateral, long-term solutions to them. Instead, Alliance members essentially weight short-term national interests over the preservation of NATO to the extent that incapacitated NATO would loom as the logical consequence of intra-Alliance disputes. In this rather Open-ended burden-sharing agenda

“incapacitated NATO“ • • •

Usefulness and relevance of NATO quesoned by MS Naonal (short-term) agendas outweigh preservaon of NATO Burden-sharing and other disputes likely to incapacitate NATO

”Transatlanc bargaining” • • •

NATO as a forum among other soluons for MS security Willingness of member states to cooperate if condions sasfactory Burden-sharing disputes likely to expand to new issue-areas

Transaconalism

Transatlancism ”Self-interested member countries” • • •

NATO as the last resort for MS Minimum necessary level of cooperaon among MS Burden-sharing disputes likely to focus on naonal caveats, precise share of costs and responsibilies

”Transatlanc solidarity” • • •

NATO as the main security community for MS Willingness of member states to cooperate and look for mullateral security soluons Burden-sharing disputes likely to be disregarded but unlikely solved for good

Limited burden-sharing agenda

Fig. 7.2 Four burden-sharing scenarios up until early 2030s

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gloomy scenario, NATO eventually becomes an irrelevant security actor that may still exist on paper but does not have a meaningful role in the transatlantic security. As such, this scenario looks unlikely as of early 2020s. However, recent NATO history provides us with examples of potentially incapacitating rifts taking place between some members— particularly the US under Trump and Turkey under Erdo˘g an—and the rest of the Alliance. Likewise, the scenario in the top right corner, “Transatlantic bargaining” assumes that the burden-sharing agenda continues to expand. Yet, this time it takes place under conditions where member countries are committed to the preservation of the Alliance and are willing to cooperate within it. This resembles best the state of play within NATO in the post-Trump era, as well as many earlier periods of time in the Alliance’s history. Burden-sharing entails problems for the Alliance but they remain manageable due to member countries’ political willingness to preserve NATO and to tolerate occasional imbalances. NATO is, however, not the only security organisation in which the member countries operate. As the burden-sharing agenda and NATO’s tasks keep expanding, it becomes topical for the members to explore other cooperation possibilities, too, such as coalitions of the willing or the prospects provided by the EU or various bi-, tri- or minilateral defence initiatives. Moreover, NATO’s cooperation with other international organisations, mainly with the EU and the UN, becomes more and more relevant. Moving to the lower left part of the table, the scenario of “Selfinterested member countries” refers to the setting in which the transactionalist orientation of the NATO members prevails and decreases transatlantic solidarity but burden-sharing agenda remains limited in scope. In this scenario, members cooperate within NATO only when necessary and even then seek to minimise their responsibilities. Hence, the burden-sharing debate is dominated by burden-shifting accusations and demands for fairer financial cost-sharing. As the member countries assume more transactional tendencies, they are reluctant to take part in costly and often prolonged (out-of-area) operations—and when they do, they employ national caveats. This scenario has historical similarities to the times when NATO has faced internal crises, in particular tensions between the US and European members regarding military spending and capability gaps but also Europeans’ reluctance and incapability to play a significant role in out-of-area operations.

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Finally, the scenario of “Transatlantic solidarity” represents the most beneficial future for NATO as an organization. In it, the member countries are committed to NATO as the key, or the only security community, and are willing and capable to cooperate within it. The allies favour multilateral approaches to security, and security challenges are addressed based on comprehensive transatlantic consultation. In this scenario the gap between the US and Europe—be it capability, spending, cultural or political—becomes narrower. Consequently, the questions of burden-sharing remain limited in scope. Still, we argue that even in this setting, member countries will not be able to solve burden-sharing debates for good but they would nevertheless represent the least challenging question for the Alliance.

Can Burden-Sharing Disputes Terminate NATO? “ Because orders tend to end with a whimper rather than a bang, the process of deterioration is often not evident to decision-makers until it has advanced considerably”. These words by Richard Haass (2019) capture the often-insidious nature of the fall of international orders. Should we regard the expanding scope of burden-sharing disputes as a sign of gradual deterioration in the meaning suggested by Haass? When and how do discursive disputes start to have an effect on the Alliance’s political and military ability to function? In her analysis on the death of international organizations, EilstrupSangiovanni (2020) in turn discusses the reasons leading to the termination of international governmental organizations (IGOs). Her analysis fails to point to a single dominant cause of IGO failure or survival and instead suggests that different combinations of factors may produce a similar outcome. In other words, there may be several distinct “causal pathways” to IGO failure. We will discuss three of them here in more detail. First, even though there are notable exceptions, IGO terminations tend to increase during periods of geopolitical instability. Some IGOs, however, survive these exogenous shocks. One possible reason suggested by Eilstrup-Sangiovanni’s empirical analysis is that some IGOs survive because they are, by design, stronger or more adaptable. NATO’s high adaptability skills are closely linked to the Alliance’s institutional structure that is formed of both general and specific assets (for a more detailed

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discussion, see Wallander 2000). In the light of this volume, the combination of these assets has been a significant reason behind NATO’s ability to adapt to new security challenges and broaden its agenda from traditional territorial defence to crisis management and other tasks deemed more necessary in the new security setting after the end of the Cold War. Another element of strength, as suggested by Eilstrup-Sangiovanni, is the large and diverse membership of a given organization. Diverse membership may render collective action more difficult, but when it comes to organizational endurance (rather than ease of collective action per se) it may be beneficial—possibly because of greater bureaucratic resources available to larger organizations, as suggested by Debre and Dijkstra (2020). Then again, the heterogeneous membership of an IGO may help it to diversify its activities more easily than those with narrow membership base or narrow geographical focus. In NATO’s case, the growing membership number has brought both advantages and disadvantages. New Alliance members have indeed diversified the skills set and broadened the scope of operational possibilities, but at the same time it has become more challenging for NATO to incorporate allies’ diverse security threats, find the required resources to defend the expanding borders and to agree on fair burden-sharing which does not only comprise economic, but also military, political and social aspects. As suggested by Warren (2010), diverging interests and allies’ failure to abide by agreements are some of the most common reasons behind alliance disbanding. Considering this, combining the interests, priorities and threat perceptions of 30 countries may in fact be one of the most severe internal risks that NATO has to face in the future. Another distinct finding from Eilstrup-Sangiovanni’s analysis (2020, p. 354) is that mandate matters for organizational survivability. IGOs that focus on technical or scientific issues are significantly less prone to termination than organizations focused on security or economic cooperation. IGOs focused on security (and to a lesser degree on economic cooperation) often focus on “high-stake” issues which are subject to political conflict and may require frequent re-negotiation. By contrast, technical IGOs focus on issues of low political salience and with clear welfare enhancing benefits. During the Cold War years, defence against the Soviet Union was the most important task of NATO—keeping “Germany down and America in” was secondary to keeping “the Soviet Union out”. Keeping this in mind, Eilstrup-Sangiovanni’s argument that security IGOs are more prone to face political conflicts and hence less likely to survive, is

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flawed. Internal issues, such as burden-sharing disputes, did indeed cause serious discontent among the allies during the Cold War but the stakes were simply too high to address the disputes in earnest and to take the risk of disbanding the Alliance altogether. The US was often disgruntled with the European allies’ small contributions towards the Alliance, but the Soviet threat was considered so high that other disputes had to be pushed to the margins. The fight against terrorism and the return to collective defence due to the deteriorated security situation in Eastern Europe are not considered perhaps as severe as the Soviet threat during the Cold War, but they have proven the need for a continued NATO presence in Europe. Internal disputes or even conflicts—the burden-sharing debate being the most prominent one—continuously challenge NATO, but judging from the past developments the disputes will not became severe enough to challenge the whole existence of NATO. Turning lastly to the effects of age, according to Eilstrup-Sangiovanni the older IGOs have lower hazard-rates, which points out to several possible benefits of organizational aging (Eilstrup-Sangiovanni 2020, p. 363). First, age is likely to be associated with greater accumulated expertise and better-adapted practices, implying that older IGOs tend to produce greater benefits for states. Second, the longer an IGO has been around, the greater the probability that stakeholders at both the domestic and international level will have invested in institution-specific knowledge and/or made other asset-specific investments (such as adapting their own practices and routines), which leads them to favour the IGO’s perpetuation. Third, from a sociological viewpoint, age may be a good proxy for “environmental embeddedness”. Newly created organizations often lack stable social roles and routines, broad public endorsement, or secure exchange relationships. At the same time, new organizations may lack the legitimacy and recognition that long service confers on incumbent organizations. An alternative but compatible interpretation of the relationship between organizational age and survival provided by Eilstrup-Sangiovanni is that age is an indicator of rank or “pioneer” status. Theories of business organization posit that the first firms to enter a new market are likely to establish a leading position through monopolizing vital resources, and by shaping consumer preferences while competition is still low (Astley 1985, p. 266). A similar dynamic may apply to IGOs. The first IGOs to facilitate cooperation on a given issue may gain a lasting advantage by

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establishing control over crucial resources (such as state funding or technical expertise) and by defining relevant norms or standards to which later entrants must conform if they wish to work on the same issue(s). Once cooperating within a framework of rules, norms and standards formulated by incumbent IGOs, states may develop high “switching costs”, which make it hard for newcomers to establish themselves as viable competitors. Having formulated the basic rules and standards governing cooperation in their areas, and “socialized” states into specific modes of cooperation, the pioneering organizations may have effectively impeded the rise of viable organizational competitors. NATO has tied its members tightly around its basic rules, principles and standards that countries need to accept in order for them to become members. This way the Alliance socialises prospective members into NATO’s ideological aspects, such as respecting the rule of law, democracy and human rights, even though the efficacy of these efforts can be debated. The members have also made a conscious decision to arrange their security and defence around NATO and adapt their practises and procedures to match the ones of the Alliance and other allies. Still, the allies differ in their dependence and reliance on NATO. Countries like the UK and Poland have a very Atlanticist approach to defence and consider NATO and the US military support as cornerstones of their security. Countries like France, on the other hand, are more interested in promoting the idea of independent European defence and are eager to seek purely European defence solutions, often built around the EU framework. But the EU is still a relatively young security and defence actor—some might even argue that it is not a defence actor at all—and is often regarded as a competitor to the “pioneering” NATO. NATO’s integral role in European security and defence is a consequence of a decades-long political and social process, which the allies are not willing to discard. They are more likely to complement it with other elements, such as the EU Common Security and Defence Policy. NATO’s age and its deeply-rooted role in European defence can thus be seen as strengths and important factors for the Alliance’s endurance. NATO’s ability to incorporate a large number of member countries and to broaden the agenda according to the current security context are some of the Alliance’s most significant advantages and strengths. On the other side of the coin there is, however, the risk of over-expansion of membership and tasks. The growing and diversifying membership along with the ever-growing task list are closely linked to the burden-sharing

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debate as the Alliance needs to allocate scarce resources to accommodate the needs of more allies and to manage tasks that range from territorial defence to human emergencies, such as the Covid-19 pandemic. The ultimate issue is thus not that the allies’ contributions are imbalanced but that the amount of demands for NATO is growing. It is possible, even likely, that the burden-sharing debate will intensify in the future. It is, however, important not to look at the burden-sharing debate from too narrow a perspective, which might lead us into the conclusion that the debate endangers the existence of the whole Alliance. As we have pointed out, burden-sharing should not be considered as a separate discussion but as an economic, political and social phenomenon that is formed of a complex set of interlinked factors. Considering this and the reasons behind organisational termination and survival, it is premature to claim that burden-sharing disputes alone could lead to NATO’s crumbling. The debate is closely linked to other problems, such as trust issues among allies and diverse threat perceptions, which can severely damage NATO’s ability to survive future crisis. On the other hand, NATO’s strengths discussed above balance these weaknesses and speak against the possibility of termination of NATO even when facing severe crisis.

Notes on the Research Process After these findings and arguments, it is necessary to briefly reflect upon the research process itself and to present a few words of doubt, even counterarguments to what has been argued above. Our approach in the book has been problem-driven instead of paradigm-driven. In essence, the approach has been a combination of constructivist understanding with an assumption of a minimally rational environment of burden-sharing, entailing three consistent elements: the ideas of public goods, costs and bargaining. This choice was based on an understanding of burden-sharing disputes as historical, political and social phenomena that owe their existence to conscious decisions by policy-makers in member countries. According to our understanding, the imbalances on NATO’s agenda are governed by political logic. These considerations are affected by a set of changing domestic, economic, geopolitical, or technological developments, and evolving understandings of national interest in NATO member countries. However, this political logic takes place within the rational framework of three consistent elements.

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However, assuming such an approach brings along an empirical challenge in analysing NATO’s burden-sharing disputes, as the “object” under scrutiny becomes fluid and historically contingent. In particular, narrowing down the subject-matter at hand turned out be to a challenging undertaking—as nearly everything seems to have an impact on everything and many of the disputes reviewed here are closely interlinked. The chosen approach has entailed a risk of simply re-telling the history of NATO or NATO burden-sharing, instead of examining the history of NATO burden-sharing disputes. Granted, separating the two from each other has not been easy. However, we have attempted to pay particular attention to incorporating the burden-sharing aspect of various events and crisis in NATO’s history in our analysis. There is no denying that sticking to the public goods approach would have provided us with a clearer analytical framework and a more narrow set of issues to be studied. On the other hand, this kind of narrow perspective would not have allowed us to “dig deeper” into the qualitative elements of the burden-sharing debate, such as member countries’ anxiety or changing language on burden-sharing. While the inherent fluidity of the topic under scrutiny posed challenges, it also allowed a number of different research materials to study it, some of which we chose to include in the book and some not. In this volume, perhaps the most obvious material, the political expressions by NATO member country leaders, such as speeches and summit documents, were largely omitted because of their contingent and selective nature for the purposes of this volume: in their public messaging, politicians tend to focus on the most pressing issues of the day and to repeat their key messages, instead of seeking to sketch a larger picture. In contrast, we favoured scholarly literature, which, as we saw it, helped us more to assess longer-term developments in NATO’s history. Nevertheless, the need for further research persists, as a number of interesting sources, and thereby promising categories of texts, were excluded from this research, such as diverse media sources, the statements of various European political groups or even fiction. Indeed, using and possibly combining diverse materials seems to be a promising avenue for further study of burden-sharing. That being said, operationalizing such diverse materials together in a single analytical framework is likely to be a challenging undertaking requiring a considerable amount of interpretation, perhaps even violence to the nuances of individual texts and their discourses. As could be expected with this kind of approach, certain issues

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were left unclear and a certain amount of subjectivity is evident in drawing any conclusions. This study was conducted from the outside in many respects. As scholars, we do not claim to have first-hand knowledge or professional experience from NATO, neither did we conduct any interviews within the Alliance. This starting point comes along with both weaknesses and benefits. On the weakness side, by not embracing interviews we undoubtedly lost a great deal of “tacit knowledge” not available in public texts, such as accounts of national positions on burden-sharing or NATO’s organisational functioning among other things. Then again, we hope that greater distance from the subject under scrutiny may have allowed us every now and then to have a clearer view of this vast and often charged topic.

(Not) a Final Word This volume has focused on burden-sharing disputes as a historical, social and political phenomenon that is constantly evolving—sometimes tardily, other times in rapid bursts. We have considered specific burden-sharing issues throughout NATO’s existence but also taken into consideration more general burden-sharing tendencies. Throughout this volume, it has become clear that the burden-sharing debate is much more than discussion on fair material and financial contributions or even comprehensive capabilities. The debate is rooted deep in the idea and structures of not only NATO but also the transatlantic relations and the transatlantic bargain in more broad terms. In order to understand burden-sharing, one must address the security relations between the US and Europe that have evolved since the end of the Second World War, but also the relations between European member countries and their internal dynamics, as well as the evolving conceptions of security. What we find challenging for NATO is that the allies and the decision-makers in the member countries seem to have a decreasingly united understanding of what the term burden-sharing actually encapsulates, and as a result they approach the debate from different perspectives. The further this development continues, the harder it is for the allies to find a common ground, not to mention solving the burden-sharing debate. Then again, it is questionable whether it is even possible for NATO to let go of its burden-sharing debate. In a hypothetical situation where all NATO members reached the 2% military spending target, would the

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problem of burden-sharing be declared as solved? This is an unlikely scenario as the debate is such an integral part of internal dynamics between NATO members. After all, in many respects the Alliance indeed faces change and progress though argument, and debate may be necessary in order to define and redefine the strategic purpose of the Alliance. In this regard, disputes related to burden-sharing can, among other things, be seen as a manifestation of the Alliance’s ability to withstand and accommodate internal disagreements, sometimes for protracted periods of time. It is effectively impossible to avoid future crises within NATO, but this volume has sought to demonstrate how NATO has managed to overcome various disputes, adapt to new demands stemming both from the inside and outside of the Alliance and to renew its purpose and relevance after major crises. All in all, even though the story of the past, present and future prospects of NATO burden-sharing provides us just with a side narrative of the broader transatlantic evolution, it may help us to understand the phase this community is in, and possibly to identify signs of future crises. If this is the case, this book has succeeded in fulfilling its goals.

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Haass, Richard. 2019. How a World Order Ends and What Comes in Its Wake. Foreign Affairs 98 (1): 22–30. Hartley, Keith, and Todd Sandler. 1999. NATO Burden-Sharing: Past and Future. Journal of Peace Research 36 (6): 665–680. Juncker, Jean-Claude. 2017. Speech at the Defence and Security Conference Prague: In defence of Europe, 9 June 2017. https://ec.europa.eu/commis sion/presscorner/detail/en/SPEECH_17_1581. Accessed 13 October 2020. Karnitschnig, Matthew. 2019. NATO’s Germany Hatefest. Politico, 5 April 2019. https://www.politico.eu/article/nato-germany-hatefest-defensespending-row-donald-trump/. Accessed 12 July 2019. Lunn, Simon. 1983. Burden-Sharing in NATO. Chatham House Papers. Routledge & Kegan Paul for Royal Institute of International Affairs. Lute, Douglas, and Nicholas Burns. 2019. NATO at Seventy: An Alliance in Crisis. Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard Kennedy School. https://www.belfercenter.org/sites/default/files/files/pub lication/NATOatSeventy.pdf. Accessed 18 February 2020. NATO: NATO’s Enhanced Forward Presence. Factsheet, October 2020. https://www.nato.int/nato_static_fl2014/assets/pdf/2020/10/pdf/201 020-MAP-eFP-eng.pdf. Accessed 21 January 2021. Techau, Jan. 2015. The Politics of 2 Percent: NATO and the Security Vacuum in Europe. Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Carnegie Europe. https://carnegieendowment.org/files/CP_252_Techau_ NATO_Final.pdf. Accessed 1 February 2021. von der Leyen, Ursula. 2020. Building the World We Want to Live In: A Union of Vitality in a World of Fragility. State of the Union Address at the European Parliament Plenary, 16 September 2020. https://ec.europa.eu/commission/ presscorner/detail/en/SPEECH_20_1655. Accessed 13 October 2020. Wallander, Celeste. 2000. Institutional Assets and Adaptability: NATO After the Cold War. International Organization 54 (4): 705–735. Wallander, Celeste. 2018. NATO’s Enemies Within: How Democratic Decline Could Destroy the Alliance. Foreign Affairs 97 (4): 70–81. Warren, Patrick T. 2010. Alliance History and the Future NATO: What the Last 500 Years of Alliance Behavior Tells Us About NATO’s Path Forward. Brookings Institute, 21st Century Defense Initiative Policy Paper, 30 June 2010. https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/06/0630_n ato_alliance_warren.pdf. Accessed 3 February 2021.

Index

A Afghanistan, 10, 16, 38, 43, 44, 82, 83, 86–88, 97, 100–105, 115, 120, 123, 124, 135, 136, 160, 163, 164, 170 analytical eclecticism, 24–26 Asia-Pacific, 23, 125, 127, 142, 143, 178 Atlanticism, 93, 189

B balance-of-payments, 47, 51 Berlin Plus, 96 Berlin Process, 86 Biden, Joseph, 88, 126, 140, 143, 178 Blair, Tony, 94 Brandt, Willy, 51, 52 burden-shifting, 13, 16, 37, 168, 185 Bush, George Jr., 86, 87, 101, 103, 104, 123, 139, 163, 164 Bush, George Sr., 84

C Canada, 15, 37, 39, 75, 88, 102, 103, 105, 116, 121, 132, 179 capability gap, 90, 91, 100, 160, 166, 185 Carter, Jimmy, 43, 53 caveat, 13, 16, 29, 101, 103, 176, 179, 185 Central and Eastern Europe, 16, 72, 75, 78–80, 97, 100, 116, 120–122, 127, 140, 162, 165 China, 10, 30, 88, 105, 117, 121, 122, 126, 127, 137, 140–146, 159, 166, 176, 178, 180, 181, 183 Chirac, Jacques, 94 Churchill, Winston, 46 Clinton, Bill, 76, 84, 85, 99 club goods, 21 Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP), 85, 93, 94 Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP), 10, 29, 93, 95, 122, 132, 163, 168, 179, 189

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2022 T. Koivula and H. Ossa, NATO’s Burden-Sharing Disputes, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93539-9

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196

INDEX

cost-sharing, 6, 13–15, 18, 45, 167, 185 counter-terrorism, 7, 77, 82, 83, 100, 122, 125, 134, 145 Covid-19, 30, 118, 137, 145, 146, 179, 190 crisis management, 8, 16, 17, 74–76, 81–84, 91, 92, 94, 96, 98, 100, 115, 116, 120, 135, 136, 145, 164, 165, 179, 187 Cyber threats, 119 cyclicality, 28, 175, 176 Czechoslovakia, 34, 36, 40, 43 Czech Republic, 80, 97 D de Gaulle, Charles, 46, 58, 60, 61, 63, 139 Denmark, 16, 37, 75, 88, 104, 105, 122, 130, 179 détente, 38, 43, 44, 47, 49, 50, 53, 64 Dulles, John Foster, 46, 58 E Eilstrup-Sangiovanni, Mette, 186–188 Eisenhower, Dwight, 41, 47, 57, 58, 124 Enhanced Forward Presence (EFP), 121, 126, 128, 165, 179 Estonia, 80, 88, 96, 120, 121, 179 European Community, 85 European Defence Community (EDC), 55–58, 62 European Deterrence Initiative (EDI), 126 European Intervention Initiative (EI2), 125, 131, 134 European passivity and activity, 9, 11, 28, 55, 89, 129, 159, 178 European pillar, 55, 60, 94, 96

European Security and Defence Identity (ESDI), 85 European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP). See Common Security and Defence Policy European strategic autonomy, 29, 96, 130, 131, 166 European Union, 57, 89, 93, 130, 168

F financial crisis, 105, 116, 146 Finland, 170 Flexible response strategy, 19, 20, 40, 42, 47, 61, 180 Ford, Gerald, 51 forecasting, 27, 175, 176 Fouchet Plan, 60, 61, 160 Framework Nations Concept (FNC), 134 France, 34, 37–39, 41–43, 46, 56–58, 60–63, 77, 94, 96, 102–105, 122, 125, 129, 130, 132, 134, 139, 160, 164, 170, 189 free-riding, 6, 16, 17, 19–21, 42, 121, 124, 125, 127, 128, 163, 165, 180

G Gates, Robert, 88, 106 Georgia, 77, 82, 83, 162, 170 Germany, 15, 16, 33, 35, 36, 38, 39, 45, 46, 51, 56, 57, 60–62, 72, 73, 75, 77, 98, 102–105, 116, 121, 122, 125, 133, 134, 179, 187 Gould, Stephen Jay, 28 Greece, 2, 34, 38, 40, 122, 170 Gulf War, 76, 97, 98

INDEX

H Hartley, Keith, 6, 7, 14, 18–20, 23, 42, 76, 81, 137, 180 Hungary, 40, 80, 97 hybrid warfare, 10, 117, 118 Hyde-Price, Adrian, 25, 26, 29 I input-output debate, 18 International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), 10, 101–103, 105, 115, 135, 164, 165, 179 Iran, 43, 44, 122, 125 J Jackson, Henry, 51 Jackson-Nunn Amendment, 51, 54, 160 Johnson, Lyndon, 42, 64 Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF), 134 K Kennedy, John, 42, 47, 60, 172 Korean War, 39, 40, 58, 97 Kosovo Force (KFOR), 99, 135 L Libya, 10, 76, 83, 88, 105, 106, 115, 124, 136, 137, 166 Lisbon force goals, 41, 56, 65 M Macron, Emmanuel, 128, 129, 134, 136 Mansfield Resolutions, 48, 49, 51, 160 Marshall Plan, 33, 35, 36 Massive retaliation strategy, 40–42, 46, 180

197

N NATO-Russia Council, 82, 162 9/11, 76, 77, 81, 82, 86, 95, 100, 101, 147, 162–164, 170, 171 Nixon Doctrine, 48, 125 Nixon, Richard, 43, 48, 50, 51, 64, 124 North Atlantic Cooperation Council (NACC), 79, 81 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) Eastern flank, 10, 121, 165 enlargement, 4, 5, 14, 16, 29, 40, 78–82, 89, 96, 100, 162, 167, 171, 177 French withdrawal, 58, 62 funding, 15, 19, 126, 189 operations, 4, 5, 7–11, 14–16, 19, 20, 23, 28, 29, 62, 63, 75, 76, 81, 83–86, 89, 90, 92, 94, 96, 97, 99–102, 105, 106, 115, 116, 120, 130, 135, 136, 141, 143–145, 159, 163–169, 175, 176, 179, 182, 184, 185 partner countries, 4, 97, 141, 169, 170, 180, 182 Readiness Action Plan, 120 Response Force (NRF), 91, 120 Norway, 37, 75, 105, 132 Nunn, Samuel, 51

O Obama, Barack, 83, 87, 88, 120, 123, 124, 126, 131, 166 Olson, Mancur Jr., 6, 7, 18–20 Operation Enduring Freedom (OEF), 101, 102 Ostpolitik, 44, 51, 52 out-of-area operations, 2, 4, 5, 9–11, 14, 16, 19, 20, 23, 28, 29, 62, 63, 76, 81, 83–85, 89, 90,

198

INDEX

96–98, 102, 115, 125, 135, 136, 159, 164–167, 175, 176, 179, 185

P Partnership for Peace programme (PfP), 79, 81, 162 peace dividend, 84 Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO), 95, 128, 130, 132, 178 Persian Gulf, 44, 161 Petersberg tasks, 91–93 Pleven Plan, 56 Pleven, René, 56 Poland, 40, 80, 96, 97, 104, 121, 122, 128, 130, 141, 165, 179, 180, 189 post-positivism, 6, 7, 17, 21, 22, 24, 26 public goods, 6, 7, 17, 19–22, 190, 191 Putin, Vladimir, 82, 83, 162

R rationalism, 6, 17, 18, 21–24, 26 Reagan, Ronald, 53, 54 risk-sharing, 13, 14, 16, 17, 20, 22, 103, 168 Russia, 9–11, 17, 28, 72, 74, 77–79, 81–83, 90, 100, 104, 105, 115–123, 126, 133, 136, 142–145, 159, 162, 165, 176, 177, 180, 183

S Saint Malo, 94, 95, 164 Sandler, Todd, 6, 7, 14, 18–20, 23, 42, 76, 81, 90, 137, 180 Second Cold War, 43, 44, 116

Smart Defence, 91, 134 Soviet Union, 2, 10, 21, 36–44, 46, 47, 50, 53, 54, 56, 57, 60, 62, 63, 71, 72, 74, 75, 77–79, 83, 99, 160–162, 168, 170, 187 spending gap, 90, 123 strategic autonomy, 10, 29, 95, 96, 129–132, 166 Suez crisis, 58, 60, 63 Sweden, 130, 141, 170 Syria, 88, 118, 125, 139 T technology, 8, 30, 117, 119, 137, 138, 141, 159, 175, 180, 181, 190 Thatcher, Margaret, 44 time’s arrow, 27, 167, 176 time’s cycle, 27, 170, 176 transactionalism, 11, 137–140, 166, 177, 181, 182, 184 transatlantic bargain, 11, 33–35, 37, 55, 56, 72, 73, 75, 76, 160, 163, 184, 185, 192 Truman Doctrine, 34 Truman, Harry, 34, 35 Trump, Donald, 2, 10, 89, 95, 123–129, 131, 139–141, 143, 146, 165, 178, 183, 185 Turkey, 2, 40, 41, 76, 97, 104, 122, 125, 139, 140, 170, 180, 185 U Ukraine, 77, 82, 83, 88, 115, 117, 118, 120, 123, 126, 144, 163, 170 unilateralism, 87, 124 United Kingdom (UK), 46, 75, 94, 103, 105, 121, 164, 179, 189 United Nations (UN), 7, 36, 63, 81, 85, 97, 98, 101–105, 180, 185

INDEX

V Vietnam War, 63 W Warsaw Pact, 40, 50, 51, 71–73, 75, 77–82, 168 Washington Treaty, 1, 13, 37–39, 77, 101, 164 Western European Union (WEU), 59, 62, 86, 91, 92, 94

199

Western Union (WU), 34, 36, 37, 59 West Germany, 2, 38, 40, 44, 47, 48, 51, 53, 56, 57, 60, 62 Y Yugoslavia, 72, 85, 97, 98 Z Zeckhauser, Richard, 6, 7, 18–20