Strategic Culture and Burden Sharing in NATO: False Friends.

摘要

This paper explores a set of hypotheses attempting to explain persistent unequal burden sharing in a persistent alliance like NATO, privileging the testing of the notion that convergence (or divergence) in strategic culture can explain variations in burden sharing among the United States and its European NATO allies over the history of the alliance. A paradox of current thinking on NATO's future is the dual notion that the alliance would be stronger if allies would spend more on defense, and the alliance would be stronger if allies' perceptions of risks, threats, and opportunities (all components of strategic culture) were more similar. This paper argues that variations in strategic culture do not necessarily cause variations in defense expenditures. Because of this observation, it seems likely that NATO's persistence does rely on both the alliance's ability to adapt to retain utility and on shared values among allies, but that adaptability is paramount. As a matter of policy, then, the notions of strategic culture and equal burden sharing should be decoupled in terms of alliance goals, particularly from the perspective of the United States. This argument is based on the following findings: (1) Burden sharing among allies has varied widely over the course of NATO's history, and current burden sharing ratios, although they suggest significant decline in equality since 1990, are in line with historical averages; (2) There is no theoretical reason to assume that shared strategic visions will yield more equal burden sharing; and (3) There does not appear to be a convincing causal relationship between convergence in language used in strategic documents of the United States and NATO, which can be taken as a measure of the extent to which U.S. strategic culture has determined the strategic culture of the alliance as a whole, and convergence in burden sharing. Alliance members should not conflate equality in burden sharing with alliance cohesion or effectiveness.