Sharing Risks and Costs of Military Alliance: Burdens of Peace and War

The burden of this chapter is that ideas matter – greatly. Matters of high concept require generalization even as social scientists recognize the inevitable gap between theory and practice – the proverbial devil is always in the details. This chapter defines burden sharing, identifies its major attributes, and explains our approach to analyzing the costs and risks of burden sharing in the case studies that follow. As always in matters of strategy and policy making, not all “costs” and “risks” are quantifiable. Decisions are based on variables as “soft” as perceptions, assumptions, intellectual “frames” of reference, selectively remembered experience, tendentiously edited history, and “dead reckoning.” We compare the attributes, costs and risks of burden sharing, with deliberate emphasis upon the US and NATO, in both Cold War and post – Cold War international systems. As a result, this chapter develops the frames of reference and hypotheses that will guide the more specific investigation of burden sharing in three case studies that follow.