Burden Sharing in the Persian Gulf: Lessons Learned and Implications for the Future

摘要

The United States was the dominant member of the coalition formed to counter Iraq's annexation of Kuwait. This led to U.S. concerns that countries benefiting from the coalition were contributing less than their fair share. This paper compares contributions and benefits for the major coalition participants in Operation Desert Storm. The benefits include national sovereignty and oil supply security. The contributions include defense resources and financial and in-kind payments to the U.S. and other countries. The analysis concludes that national sovereignty was the more significant of the two benefits and that the oil supply security benefit may be larger for the U. S. than for countries completely dependent on imported oil (i.e., Japan and Germany). Thus, the Gulf countries may have under contributed to the coalition. Japan and Germany may have over contributed, relative to these benefits, though they may have received other benefits not measured here. Burden Sharing, Operation Desert Storm, Alliances