Burdensharing is an attempt to reallocate defense expenditure within the framework of an alliance. This attempt has become known in NATO as the "burdensharing" debate. Much of the popularity of the burdensharing debate lies in its presentation of various statistics which, allegedly, proved that one partner (the United States) was assuming a disproportionate share of the common defense burden. This book does not aim to prove, or disprove, that one country carries an unfair burden but it does aim to examine critically the methodologies employed in the debate since the early 1950s. Important lessons for alliance management have been identified and these lessons are more often than not applicable to other geographical areas where the United States and her allies are involved. At a time of transition in Atlantic/European relations it is important that the lessons of the burdensharing debate are understood. Whatever revised, or new, security organization emerges as a result of the monumental changes in Europe and elsewhere, the question of who should pay, and how much, will return. The Burdensharing Debate: A Reassessment also provides an important contribution to the history of NATO and presents to the reader, in a clear and lucid fashion, the complexities of a highly divisive debate.

Examines critically the history and assumptions behind the divisive question of allied contributions to the common defence. It looks at the methodology of the burdensharing debate and focuses on political, economic and military ramifications of the debate.

This book, first published in 1983, analyses the debate around burden-sharing in NATO, where the main issue is the distribution amongst the allies of the burden of maintaining the security arrangement. This raises problems of defining, measuring and comparing the defence efforts of the various countries. This book examines the issues, and argues for the need to address directly the fundamental problems concerning the Cold War security relationship between the United States and Western Europe.

Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, NATO’s middle powers have been pressured into shouldering an increasing share of the costs of the transatlantic alliance. In Sharing the Burden? Benjamin Zyla rejects the claim that countries like Canada have shirked their responsibilities within NATO. Using a range of measures that go beyond troop numbers and defense budgets to include peacekeeping commitments, foreign economic assistance, and contributions to NATO’s rapid reaction forces and infrastructure, Zyla argues that, proportionally, Canada’s NATO commitments in the 1990s rivaled those of the alliance’s major powers. At the same time, he demonstrates that Canadian policy was driven by strong normative principles to assist failed and failing states rather than a desire to ride the coattails of the United States, as is often presumed. An important challenge to realist theories, Sharing the Burden? is a significant contribution to the debate on the nature of alliances in international relations.