Is European NATO really free-riding? Patterns of material and non-material burden-sharing after the Cold War

ABSTRACT

Does European NATO free-ride on America? This article uses a mixed-methods approach to explore developments after the Cold War. I investigate both “material” measures, such as military expenditure and troop numbers, and a “non-material” indicator that draws on survey data of the public’s willingness to fight for their country. Results and conclusions are not univocal. On the one hand, European NATO members have generally reduced their military spending (relative to GDP), abolished conscription and downsized their military forces. Their citizens’ self-reported willingness to fight has also been quite low after the Cold War, in particular in states that host US military bases. On the other hand, some of these developments can surely be explained by a decrease in threat perceptions in Europe. Trends changed markedly after Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea, which moved many allies – in particular new NATO member states – to increase their defence efforts.

KEYWORDS:

• Free-riding
• burden-sharing
• NATO
• military expenditure
• willingness to fight
• US troops

Acknowledgments

The author benefited greatly from comments given by participants at the NTNU-UCD Workshop on International Political Economy and International Relations at University College Dublin, 13–14 May 2018. The author is also deeply appreciative of the insightful comments made by two anonymous reviewers on the original version of the manuscript. All remaining errors are my responsibility, though.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Jo Jakobsen is a professor in political science at Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU). He obtained his PhD at NTNU in 2007. Since then, Jakobsen has conducted research and teaching on a broad range of issues related to International Relations and international political economy. His work has been published in a number of international journals, including Review of International Studies, Contemporary Security Policy, Chinese Journal of International Politics, International Interactions, Conflict Management and Peace Science, Kyklos, Middle Eastern Studies and Business Horizons. Jakobsen’s current research focuses in particular on international security and geopolitical risks for international business.

Notes

1 See http://www.sipri.org/research/armaments/milex.

2 For a description of the sources and methods used by SIPRI, see https://www.sipri.org/databases/milex/sources-and-methods.

3 For Iceland, a country that had a substantial US military presence from NATO’s inception until 2006–2007, military-spending numbers are generally missing. SIPRI does offer data for 2009–2012, however, which shows that Iceland’s military budgets constituted less than 0.2% of its GDP.

4 See https://data.worldbank.org/.

5 I used, as a base, data from the Military recruitment dataset (Nathan Toronto, Military recruitment data set, codebook, version 2005.1), which provides information up until 2004/2005 (http://nathantoronto.com/research). I used Chartsbin for 2010 and 2011 (see: http://chartsbin.com/view/1887), and normally also for the 5-6 previous years. CIA World Factbook was generally drawn on for the years 2012–2016, see: https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2024.html.

6 See https://data.worldbank.org/.

7 For more information on the World Values Survey (WVS) and its methods and sampling strategy, see http://www.wolrdvaluessurvey.org/wvs.jsp.

8 For the period 1989–2003, data are organised and provided by Tim Kane (2004); see https://www.heritage.org/defense/report/global-us-troop-deployment-1950-2003. Data for 2004–2007 are from Vetfriends, at: https://www.vetfriends.com/US-deployments-overseas/. Data for 2008–2016 are extracted from the US Defense Manpower Data Center, at: https://dmdc.osdc.mil/appj/dwp/dwp_reports.jsp#.

9 According to the US Defense Manpower Data Center, major NATO hosts of US troops include, for 2017, Germany (34,399); Italy (11,806); the United Kigdom (8126); Spain (3178); Turkey (1350); Belgium (884); Netherlands (413); Romania (413); and Greece (392).