Sharing the Burden? NATO and Its Second-Tier Powers Toronto by Benjamin Zyla

Reviewed by: Dominika Kunertova, Université de Montréal

From collective action dilemmas to the literature on international crises, scholars have addressed the casse-tête of how to determine an equitable distribution of collective defence costs in the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). In his new book, Benjamin Zyla offers a comprehensive account of the burden-sharing practices of NATO’s second-tier powers, such as Canada, Norway, Spain, and the Netherlands, during the first post-Cold War decade (1989–2001). Set in the framework of the changing regional order in Europe, the book evaluates existing burden-sharing measures and contextualizes the burden-sharing behaviour of second-tier power with an emphasis on Canada.

Zyla advances two central findings. First, contrary to the expectations of collective action theory, NATO second-tier powers generally shouldered “a proportionate share of the Atlantic burden” (8). And second, rather than relying solely on material cost-benefit calculations, Canada acted according to Wolfers’ norm of “external responsibility,” which points to “a felt obligation to promote international economic, social, or political conditions to uphold the values of human rights and security, democracy, freedom, and the rule of law” (10). ¹ To demonstrate his arguments, Zyla broadens burden-sharing criteria to include both military and civilian indicators, and studies domestic preference formation toward NATO and European security governance in Canada. Rooted in liberal international relations (IR) theory, the author conducts an analysis based on “explanatory understanding” (10) and combines the methods of case study, qualitative content analysis, and semi-structured interviews.

Sharing the Burden? is divided into three parts. The first presents the author’s theoretical (chapter 2) and conceptual (chapter 3) frameworks for analyzing burden-sharing. Although these two chapters are rich on scholarly debates, Zyla does not always strike a reasonable balance. After providing a lengthy criticism of realism, followed by a defence of liberal IR theory, he dismisses constructivism in a single paragraph. Surprisingly, the author does not comment on neoclassical realism, which has recently made a contribution to the allied burden-sharing problem in NATO. Furthermore, Zyla squeezes the main neorealist explanation for the absence of free-riding—the abandonment hypothesis—into one footnote (25). Nor is it clear why he omits studies that focus on domestic factors in explaining the contribution dilemma. Taken together, it is odd that at a time when IR scholars have been striving to develop more eclectic research, Zyla glorifies liberal IR theory while making a straw man out of realism.

The second part of the book compares countries’ shares of the military burden. Zyla examines NATO member states’ participation in the Persian Gulf 1990–1991 and Balkan wars throughout the 1990s (chapters 4 and 5), and introduces the book’s most original idea: a relative force share index (117). The author claims that instead of comparing absolute allied force contributions, the comparison should be made in relation to national force strength. Finally, in the third part Zyla develops criteria for sharing the civilian burden among NATO’s allies. He starts with less quantifiable aspects such as the construction of NATO institutional tools to provide consultation and expertise for Central and Eastern European states, and Canadian support for NATO enlargement policy (chapter 6). Zyla then broadens the burden-sharing discussion by introducing two sets of civilian power indicators, soft military and hard civilian, including national contributions to NATO common budgets and UN peacekeeping operations, or foreign aid (chapter 7).

The author could have better explained his choice of military and civilian burden indicators. The division does not appear to follow any identifiable criteria: both military and civilian burdens are illustrated by personnel and financial contributions; both include peacekeeping missions. In addition, Zyla sometimes makes arbitrary decisions regarding burden measurements. For example, why is the European Community Monitoring Mission covered in the military burden, while NATO rapid reaction forces are included as a civilian burden? The activities of the European Union are never mentioned in the civilian burden section. Furthermore, why does the author introduce his relative share force index only in the second of the two chapters on military burdens?

There are, indeed, other problems in the book. First, some concepts are not clearly defined. Second-tier powers are only briefly explained in the book’s second footnote. The reader learns much later in the empirical part that to free ride actually means to contribute “less than NATO’s average” (146). The most problematic concept is, unfortunately, the central one: while Zyla refers to burden in a number of ways throughout the book—“NATO burden,” “Atlantic burden,” or even “burdens” in plural—he provides at least three different definitions of burden-sharing (4, 5, 13).

Second, statistical jugglery with numbers creates different realities. For example, the use of relative force share index in comparing personnel contributions to the NATO-led Stabilization Force (SFOR) allows Zyla to classify the United States as a free rider and Denmark as a superpower (131). Yet, if the author wanted to correct the traditional classification of states’ ranking, it remains unclear how he determines which country ought to be called a major/second/third-tier power. In some tables, the difference between major and second-tier powers is as little as 0.1 percent (123).

As the author demonstrates, second-tier powers are not a homogeneous group and thus the ranking cannot and does not correlate with the instances of free-riding. However, his analysis of preference formation, which is meant to show why Canada did not free ride, stands on shaky grounds. Zyla does not analyze actual processes; the Canadian government’s preferences are only stated, not discussed, and are often derived from statistics on Canada’s burden-sharing performance. In addition, there is no systematic exploration of the links between political elites and the Canadian population; Zyla briefly cites three opinion polls.

Sharing the Burden? remains an ambitious project on both a conceptual and empirical level. The empirical analysis of the absence of second-tier powers’ free-riding is robust, although the above-mentioned clarifications would have made the demonstration more coherent. However, the second part of the argument—on external responsibility via domestic preference formation—is unconvincing. Although it might not have been the author’s intention, the book shows that NATO was not the only venue to assure stability and order in Europe. NATO’s burden was not exclusive to the Atlantic alliance—the practice of sharing by NATO allies necessarily points to other, non-NATO institutional channels. To remedy these inconsistencies, the author could have reframed the argument to reflect the outcome of his analysis more accurately: the sharing of the burden of security provision in Europe through multiple regional and international organizations and bilateral economic aid, as practised by NATO secondary states. Otherwise, the book does present a comprehensive overview of Canadian transatlantic defence and security activities in the 1990s.