Introduction

Collective defense in the name of national security is almost oxymoronic. States live in a world of legal anarchy and, in the final analysis, depend upon self help for survival. Especially in pluralist democracies, the use of military power for war or for other political purposes energizes the machinery of government and raises the emotional temperature of political debate. Alliances among pluralist democracies for the purpose of war or other security missions bring out all the problems of transnational cooperation that one can imagine – and then some. Alliances engaged in military deployments or other interventions cannot avoid wrestling with the thorny issue of burden sharing.