One measure cannot trump it all: lessons from NATO’s early burden-sharing debates

This paper calls for a qualitative turn in discussing NATO burden-sharing. The paper takes issue with the numerical burden-sharing narrative in NATO and identifies its two main problems. Despite being simple, the 2% defence spending pledge lacks other basic attributes of any contributory system: fairness and effectiveness. Drawing from concepts of distributive justice, the paper analyses NATO’s first burden-sharing debates and demonstrates that due to their qualitatively different capabilities, the allies agreed on an egalitarian ability-to-pay distributive justice. Furthermore, it shows that the allies refrained from implementing fairness in terms of a one-size-fits-all formula, since this simple numerical approach could not produce fair and effective burden-sharing at the same time. Rather, they developed a dynamic framework for optimal sharing. These formative burden-sharing debates provide valuable lessons learned for the current build-up of NATO’s posture: less focused on formal sharing, more concerned with strategic outputs.     

Who matters for memory: Sources of institutional memory in international organization crisis management

Scholarship on organizational learning has explored how international organizations (IOs) reform but has paid little attention to the origins of institutional memory. For IOs engaged in crisis management operations, acquiring knowledge about strategic errors is necessary for adopting reforms that could save lives. This study seeks to identify the sources that affect whether or not IO elites will contribute knowledge to an IO’s institutional memory in crisis management. The study employs a survey experiment in the field on 120 NATO elites who decide on and plan operations. Findings indicate that when the United States introduces knowledge of a strategic error, NATO elites are significantly less likely to share it. This deterrent effect on knowledge-sharing illustrates an unexpected way in which the US influences international crisis management. The study also finds that an IO’s secretariat can somewhat increase elites’ likelihood of contributing to the IO’s institutional memory.     

Transatlantic burden sharing: suggesting a new research agenda

ABSTRACT

Current studies on NATO burden sharing are only able to show some weak statistical trends between selective variables; they are unable to explain and show why this trend exists and why it occurred at particular times (or not). This is due to the dominant deductive and hypothesis testing research designs that prevent researchers to produce richer causal explanations or intersubjective understandings of how states, for example, construct and assign meaning to burdens or what forms of social representation, values, norms and ideals influence the making of (national) burden sharing decisions. Thus, we charge, the literature needs to adopt an eclecticist approach to studying NATO burden sharing – that is to combine rationalist with sociological approaches and methodologies highlighting the importance of intersubjective meanings and the role of social forces, norms, beliefs, and values. The article lays out what such a research programme might look like and how one could operationalise it.     

US and India: Emerging offshore balancing in Asia

ABSTRACT

The US and India have become closer in recent times. Compared with the last century, the relationship between the two countries is in steady growth. Under both the Bush and Obama administrations, and now the Trump administration too, India is receiving significant importance in US’ strategic policy toward the Indo–Pacific. India’s emergence as a credible power in the Indian Ocean region has brought both countries much closer. The relationship has also steadily progressed as result of China’s emergence as a potential hegemon in Asia. The US faces difficulty in maintaining its preponderant position across the Indo–Pacific and requires strong allies in the region to help share the burden. In this regard, India could be the offshore balancer in Asia to counter China’s emergence as a potential hegemon in the region.     

Buck-passing,Chain-ganging and Alliances in the Multipolar Indo-Asia-Pacific

ABSTRACT

Christensen’s and Snyder’s neorealist-based theory of buck-passing and chain-ganging uses offence-defence balance to predict state security policy choices under multipolarity. This approach is applicable to the US-led alliance system in the multipolar Indo-Asia-Pacific. Given regional Sino-US rivalry, hedging opportunities for US ‘hub-and-spoke’ allies will dissipate, increasing the likelihood of allies choosing to buck-pass or chain-gang in the face of conflict. With defence superior in the region, it is more likely that US allies will buck-pass rather than chain-gang. Beyond Indo-Asia-Pacific states, this has implications for global actors – such as the EU – seeking to raise their security profile in the region, as buck-passing behaviour gives greater time to adjust to potential conflict scenarios than chain-ganging.     

Between NATO and a hard place: defence spending debate in Germany and Czechia

Defence spending has become a primary issue in the context of NATO. The question of fair burden-sharing and development of new capabilities in reaction to the changing security environment led NATO members to aim to spend 2% of GDP on defence by 2024. While some allies have managed to reach the level quickly, others seem not to be able or willing to do so. We know little, however, how the international commitment is reflected and referred to in individual member states. This article shows how size played a role when the 2% pledge was discussed in domestic politics, even if the resulting policy may be very similar. Based on expert and political debates in Germany and Czechia, it demonstrates that external expectations and the question of status play a crucial part in the small state’s reasoning whereas it is mainly internal drivers that shape the big state’s decisions.     

The Big Problem of Small Allies: New Data and Theory on Defiant Local Counterinsurgency Partners in Afghanistan and Iraq

Alliance politics are critical yet understudied in counterinsurgency interventions. Despite the importance of local allies, traditional research on alliances fails to account for the challenges of managing in-country counterinsurgency security partners or explain variation among which types of policy requests from large intervening allies are likely to result in compliance or defiance by local partners. When did US intervening forces have leverage in Iraq and Afghanistan, and when was American influence limited? Utilizing thousands of US government documents to analyze over 250 US demands of allies in Kabul and Baghdad, this paper reexamines established variables in the literature on inter-alliance bargaining—namely allied interests and dependencies—to offer a new model describing the interaction of these variables in asymmetric counterinsurgency partnerships. The theory predicts when large allies are likely to influence local partners and when these intervening forces will likely fail to coerce them.     

Norway and a major international crisis: Suez ‐ the very difficult case

This article reviews Norway's policy during the Suez crisis in 1956, how the policy was formed and how it can be explained. Emphasis is put on the decision‐making process and on the role of the powerful Norwegian Shipowners’ Association. It also discusses Norway's most important interests and considerations in policy formation, and how they were balanced. Norway's Suez policy is seen in connection with the close relations with Israel, which could be viewed as in conflict with the protection of Norway's NATO membership and vital economic interests, represented by the powerful shipowners. In the end, Norway's Suez policy is put in the context of the change in Norwegian foreign and security policy in general, a shift in emphasis from being Britain's close ally and friend to being under the protective umbrella of the US, the new superpower.     

Difficult Europeans: NATO and Tactical/Non-strategic Nuclear Weapons in the Cold War

This analysis examines NATO’s tactical/non-strategic nuclear weapons in the Cold War both for their perceived deterrent value against the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact and as potential war fighting weapons. Within this debate lay questions related to extended deterrence, security guarantees, regional or theatre conflict, and escalatory potential. A central tenet that emerged in Europe was that nuclear weapons needed emplacement on the territory of non-nuclear NATO members to make deterrence more tangible. It raised huge questions of consultation. Once the Soviet Union had intercontinental missiles, the credibility of American readiness to use nuclear weapons in defence of its allies came into question. European alternatives and different consultation mechanisms to facilitate nuclear use became central to intra-NATO relations. Actively debated across NATO, they directly concerned above all the United States, Britain, and France—the nuclear weapons states in the NATO area—and West Germany, the potential main battleground in a Warsaw Pact invasion. Although dormant in NATO since the end of the Cold War, these issues will likely see revisiting in both Europe and other regional trouble spots.     

Causes of Peace: Democracy, Interdependence, and International Organizations, 1885–1992

Previous studies provide strong evidence for the Kantian theory of peace, but a satisfactory evaluation requires establishing the causal influence of the variables. Here we focus on the reciprocal relations between economic interdependence and interstate conflict, 1885–1992. Using distributed-lags analyses, we find that economically important trade does have a substantively important effect in reducing dyadic militarized disputes, even with extensive controls for the influence of past conflict. The benefit of interdependence is particularly great in the case of conflict involving military fatalities. Militarized disputes also cause a reduction in trade, as liberal theory predicts. Democracy and joint membership in intergovernmental organizations, too, have im-portant pacific benefits; but we find only limited support for the role of costly signals in establishing the liberal peace. We find no evidence that democratization increases the incidence of interstate disputes; and contrary to realists' expectations, allies are not less conflict prone than states that are not allied. Democracies and states that share membership in many international organizations have higher levels of trade, but allies do not when these influences are held constant.     

Soldiers,Civilians, and Multilateral Humanitarian Intervention

Approval from the United Nations or NATO appears to have become a necessary condition for US humanitarian military intervention. Conventional explanations emphasizing the pull of legitimacy cannot fully account for this given that US policymakers vary considerably in their attachment to multilateralism. This article argues that America's military leaders, who are consistently skeptical about humanitarian intervention and tend to emphasize its costs, play a central role in making multilateral approval necessary. As long as top-ranking generals express strong reservations about intervention and no clear threat to US national security exists, they can veto the use of force. In such circumstances, even heavyweight “humanitarian hawks” among the civilian leadership, who initially may have wanted to bypass multilateral bodies to maximize US freedom of action, can be expected to recognize the need for UN or NATO approval—if only as a means of mollifying the generals by reassuring them about the prospect of sustained multilateral burden sharing. Two case studies drawing on interviews with senior civilian and military officials illustrate and probe the plausibility of the argument.     

How NATO remembers: explaining institutional memory in NATO crisis management

This article introduces an argument for how institutional memory of crisis management operations develops in North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). Scholars of European security and of international organisations have examined organisational learning, but have yet to explain its precondition: institutional memory. In a context of increasing turnover due to defence budget cuts, it remains unclear how shared knowledge of strategic errors is acquired. This article finds that the NATO secretariat facilitates practitioners’ use of informal processes for contributing to institutional memory in response to the constraints of existing formal learning processes. These formal processes, including a lessons learned centre and a lessons learned database, inadvertently disincentivise practitioners from contributing such knowledge as using them can incur reputational costs. Drawing on NATO documentation and interviews with 27 NATO elite practitioners, the paper provides evidence that practitioners instead share knowledge through three informal processes: interpersonal communications, private documentation and crisis simulations.     

Transatlantic cooperation,alliance politics and extended deterrence: European perceptions of nuclear weapons

This article discusses the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) debate regarding American nonstrategic nuclear weapons (NSNW) in Europe, given the broad spectrum of views on nuclear issues when comparing individual member states. What is striking is the gap between public attitudes – which are broadly hostile to keeping NSNW in Europe – and elite opinion, which privileges the maintenance of NATO commitments to preserve alliance cohesion. To better understand this tension, this article dissects the elements of extended nuclear deterrence in Europe, addressing the difficulties associated with current nuclear-sharing arrangements. For some NATO states, the alliance's nuclear weapons are a political liability, since nuclear sharing clashes with international disarmament and nonproliferation commitments. For other NATO members, maintaining the status quo is preferable, as long as there is no alliance-wide consensus on the question of NSNW. These debates have been put to rest, for now, with NATO's Deterrence and Defense Posture Review, which reaffirmed the purpose of the alliance's nuclear weapons. However, these divisive debates point to more fundamental issues in alliance management, namely the credibility of American commitments, the sustainability of extended nuclear deterrence in Europe and the inevitable political tensions these questions provoke at the domestic level for NATO allies.     

Reluctant disarmer: Italy's ambiguous attitude toward NATO's nuclear weapons policy

Of the five North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) European countries of US nuclear forward deployment, Italy is the least-known and studied case, even though the country hosts the largest number of US nonstrategic nuclear weapons (NSNWs) and still has two bases of deployment. The paper aims at filling this gap by analyzing Italy's current view on the presence, value, and future of NSNWs hosted on its territory. The analysis begins with the examination of the process of profound devaluation that has minimized, starting from the end of the cold war, Italy's original interest in this category of weapons. It then examines the reasons why Rome continues to pursue conservative nuclear weapon policies and distances itself significantly from the progressive camp of NATO members, particularly Germany, that explicitly call for the withdrawal of US NSNWs from Europe. Through the study of the Italian domestic politics and security culture, the article explains Italy's opposition to any radical change in the NATO nuclear status quo, and its reluctance to pursue policies that are consistent with the process of nuclear devaluation that the country has experienced over the past two decades.     

Diplomatic Asylum and Fang Lizhi

In 1968, the newly appointed World Bank president, Robert McNamara, asked former Canadian Prime Minister Lester B. Pearson to chair a Bank Commission on International Development in hopes that he could revive the North’s flagging commitment to foreign aid promised under the banner of the Decade of Development. The Commission and its Report—Partners in Development—have a general reputation as farsighted approaches to problems of official development assistance. In Canada, the Pearson Commission is viewed through the lens of Canada’s commitment to Middle Power multilateralism. This analysis tests both interpretations by examining the Commission and the conception and reception of its work. Whilst the Middle Power concept circumscribed Pearson’s role and effectiveness, the Commission succeeded in helping Canada’s chief ally, the United States, share the burden of development assistance with its European allies. As in the realm of peacekeeping, Pearsonian development diplomacy was as much about shoring up relations with Northern allies as it was with developing new Southern friendships.     

The bush administration's security strategy: Implications for transatlantic relations

There are signs of growing transatlantic estrangement over multiple international issues. An important catalyst for this estrangement is the National Security Strategy (NSS) that the Bush administration promulgated in September 2002, a document that is a detailed imperial blueprint. Despite its pretensions, however, it is not a global strategy, but instead appears to apply primarily to the 'Islamic Arc'--the territory from North Africa to the border of India. The administration's security strategy has important implications for the transatlantic relationship, since the United States is encouraging NATO to become a junior partner for missions throughout the Islamic Arc. Given the growing divergence in US and European interests and policy perspectives, the role that the Bush administration envisages for NATO is probably not sustainable. The 'West' was an artificial geostrategic concept that needed an extraordinarily threatening common adversary (the Soviet Union) to give it substance. The US and its allies will continue to drift apart strategically, and the Bush administration's security strategy may actually hasten that process. It is uncertain, however, whether the European Union will achieve the cohesion necessary to counterbalance US power. The main task facing statesmen on both sides of the Atlantic is to learn how to disagree about specific policies without becoming disagreeable.     

NATO and the Arctic: is the Atlantic alliance a cold war relic in a peaceful region now faced with non-military challenges?

Abstract

This article analyzes which role the Atlantic Alliance plays in the Arctic and whether it can contribute to the security and territorial integrity of its members in the region. In a dramatic change from the cold war era, the Arctic is no longer at the center of a conflict between two hostile superpowers. But what can a basically military organization such as NATO – though with proven political functions – contribute to stabilizing the Arctic region if its major challenges are non-military? With regional challenges resulting mostly from globalization and climate change, it is open to question whether a military alliance such as NATO has the will and the capability to cope with them. We might thus need to look also at individual members’ interests and abilities besides searching for joint alliance action. If we find NATO not up to the challenges, which alternative institutions offer themselves for coping with the political conflicts and controversies in the Polar region?     

Modeling alliance membership in a three‐dimensional space

Both Altfeld (1984) and Morrow (1991) offer theoretical foundations that explain why alliances form. Security concerns and autonomy desires are the driving force for the pursuit of allies. While this response explains why states become allies, it does not address which do. To explain with which potential allies states choose to share alliance membership, I construct a three‐dimensional space in which security, autonomy, and political system structure are each represented as one of the three dimensions of ally choice. Every state that shared alliance membership with any other given state from 1946–1992, on a yearly basis, is assigned a unique, tri‐component point in the three‐dimensional space. The distances in the space between each state and all other states’ tri‐component points are calculated, and this distance is then incorporated into a probit estimation of ally choice. By examining the role that security and autonomy trade‐offs and level of political system structure similarity play in determining ally choice, I conclude that two states are more likely to share alliance membership the more symmetrical they are in security and autonomy considerations and the more similar they are in political system structure.