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The Congress, for some time, has expressed concern that the United States is bearing an excessive share of the NATO defense burden. Since 1981, the Department of Defense (DoD) has been required to report to the Congress on the contributions of our NATO allies and Japan to the defense effort. These reports have assessed--through a variety of quantitative measures and qualitative factors--the relative contributions of each country to the common defense.

This staff working paper is a preliminary response to a request of the ranking minority member of the Senate Committee on Armed Services for a review of the 1984 DoD report. It explains and critiques the measures used by DoD and, in some cases, extends and refines them. In accordance with CBO's mandate to provide objective and impartial analysis, this study makes no recommendations.

R. William Thomas of CBO's National Security Division prepared this paper under the supervision of Robert F. Hale and John D. Mayer, Jr. Nora Slatkin initiated this study before leaving CBO; while acknowledging her many contributions, the author notes that she bears no responsibility for this paper. Patricia H. Johnston, Robert Kornfeld, V. Lane Pierrot, and J. Edward Shephard of CBO contributed to the preparation of the paper.
 
 

INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY

For some years, the Congress has been concerned that the European allies were not assuming their proper share of the cost of maintaining adequate defense against aggression. This concern has led the Congress to request, in each of the past four years, that the Department of Defense (DoD) issue a report on the contributions made by the United States and its allies in the defense effort.¹ The 1984 report noted: "Based on the major quantifiable measures examined for this report, the US appears to be doing somewhat more than its fair share of the NATO and Japan total."² But the report also concluded, and seemed to emphasize, that "the non-US NATO allies appear to be shouldering roughly their fair share of the NATO and Japan defense burden."³

The ultimate judgment about the fairness of the U.S. and allied burden is a political one that reflects quantitative data but also many difficult qualitative judgments about the U.S. world role, what might induce our allies to spend more, and other factors. This paper does not attempt to judge the fairness of the current U.S. burden or DoD's qualitative judgments. Rather it reviews the large volume of quantitative data and analysis that DoD supplied the Congress in the 1984 report and reaches several conclusions about that data and analysis:

• While the DoD provided representative data to measure the defense effort of each nation, the report tended to highlight military indicators that cast the efforts of our NATO allies in a favorable light.
  
  
• DoD included Japan in the report at the direction of the Congress; however, the method of including Japan obscures the issue of NATO burdensharing and affects the quantitative results.
  
  
• When the quantitative results are recalculated excluding Japan and revising and extending the military indicators, they no longer indicate strongly that the allies are shouldering their fair share of the defense burden.
  
  
• Estimating values for certain "qualitative" factors frequently cited as additional burdens borne by the allies does not substantially alter the quantitative balance.
  
  
• Over time, the U.S. share of the burden has been increasing, while the allies' share has decreased, relative to their ability to contribute. If recent rates of increase in U.S. and allied defense spending continue, an even greater share of the burden will be assumed by the United States in the future.

The remainder of this paper summarizes the arguments and data contained in the DoD report, critiques that evidence, and shows historical data on burdensharing along with estimates of future trends.

This document is available in its entirety in PDF.

1. Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger, "Report on Allied Contributions to the Common Defense" (March 1984).

2. Ibid., p. 20.

3. Idem.