NATO’s Burden-Sharing Disputes: Past,

Present and Future Prospects Tommi

Koivula
Visit to download the full and correct content document:
https://ebookmass.com/product/natos-burden-sharing-disputes-past-present-and-futur
e-prospects-tommi-koivula/
NATO’s Burden-Sharing
Disputes

Past, Present and Future

Prospects
Tommi Koivula
Heljä Ossa
NATO’s Burden-Sharing Disputes
 Tommi Koivula · Heljä Ossa

NATO’s
Burden-Sharing
Disputes
Past, Present and Future Prospects
Tommi Koivula Heljä Ossa
Finnish National Defence University Finnish National Defence University
Helsinki, Finland Helsinki, Finland

ISBN 978-3-030-93538-2 ISBN 978-3-030-93539-9 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93539-9

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer
Nature Switzerland AG 2022
This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on
microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc.
in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such
names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for
general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and informa-
tion in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither
the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with
respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been
made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps
and institutional affiliations.

This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature
Switzerland AG
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
 Acknowledgments

A work as large as a book does not come about solely due to the efforts
of its authors. It should thus be noted that we are deeply grateful to a
number of colleagues and students, many of whom cannot be mentioned
separately, for providing advice, support, critique and inspiration. In
particular, we would like to express our deepest thanks to the colleagues
at the Finnish National Defence University for many fruitful discussions
and cooperation during the writing process as well as to Joonas Sipilä,
Hanna Ojanen, Hanne Kiiskinen and Pasi Lepistö. In addition, commen-
tators at various ISA, BISA and KATSE conferences have helped us to
clarify our thinking and to improve this volume significantly.
Moreover, the editorial team at Palgrave Macmillan and the anony-
mous reviewers have provided us with invaluable insights. The Finnish
National Defence Support Foundation (Maanpuolustuksen kanna-
tussäätiö ) has, in turn, given us essential financial support. In the end, our
dearest thanks go to our families and spouses, Kirsi and Luis, for all their
understanding and support during this occasionally straining journey.

v
 Contents

1 Introduction 1
2 On Burden-Sharing 13
3 Burden-Sharing During the Cold War 33
4 Burden-Sharing in the Post-Cold War Era 71
5 The Changing Landscape of Burden-Sharing Since
2014 115
6 Historical Dynamics of Burden-Sharing 159
7 Reflections on the Future Prospects of Burden-Sharing
Disputes 175

Index 195

vii
 About the Authors

Dr. Tommi Koivula works as Professor of Strategic and Defence Studies

at the Department of Warfare, the Finnish National Defence University.
He defended his Ph.D. in International Relations at the University of
Tampere in 2004. Previously, he has been a lecturer at the University of
Tampere and a visiting researcher at the University of Kent at Canter-
bury (UK) in 2001. Tommi’s current research areas include NATO,
EU security and defence policy and International Relations theory. His
most recent major publications include The European Union and the Use
of Military Force: Uncovering the Myths (Routledge, 2016) and Arms
Control in Europe: Regimes, Trends and Threats (edited with Katariina
Simonen, Finnish National Defence University, 2017). He is a frequent
commentator in the Finnish broadcast media.

Heljä Ossa is a researcher and doctoral student at the Department of

Warfare in the Finnish National Defence University. In her doctoral
dissertation she focuses on European security and defence politics and
how European strategic autonomy has been perceived by the United
States. She has previous experience from The Royal Institute of Inter-
national Affairs (Chatham House) in London, Finnish Defence Attaché
Office in Berlin and European Parliament in Brussels. She works as
editor at The Ulkopolitist, a Finnish online journal focused on interna-
tional affairs and foreign policy. Her research interests include NATO,
EU Security and Defence Policy and transatlantic relations.

ix
 Abbreviations

BRI Belt and Road Initiative

CFE Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe
CFSP EU Common Foreign and Security Policy
CSCE Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe
CSDP EU Common Security and Defence Policy
E2I European Intervention Initiative
EADRCC Euro-Atlantic Disaster Response Coordination Centre
EC European Communities
ECSC European Coal and Steel Community
EDC European Defence Community
EDI European Deterrence Initiative
EEAS European External Action Service
EEC European Economic Community
EFP Enhanced Forward Presence
ESDI European Security and Defence Identity
ESDP European Security and Defence Policy
ESS European Security Strategy
EU European Union
EUFOR European Union Force
FNC Framework Nations Concept
IRBM Intermediate-Range Ballistic Missile
ISAF International Security Assistance Force
JEF Joint Expeditionary Force
KFOR NATO Kosovo Force
NAC North Atlantic Council
NACC North Atlantic Cooperation Council

xi
xii ABBREVIATIONS

NATO North Atlantic Treaty Organisation

NRF NATO Response Force
NSPA NATO Support and Procurement Agency
OPEC Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries
OSCE Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe
PESCO Permanent Structured Cooperation
PfP Partnership for Peace programme
R&D Research and Development
RAP Readiness Action Plan
UN United Nations
UNPROFOR United Nations Protection Force
VJTF Very High Readiness Joint Task Force
WEU Western European Union
WU Western Union
 List of Figures

Fig. 7.1 Two axes of burden-sharing 182

Fig. 7.2 Four burden-sharing scenarios up until early 2030s 184

xiii
 CHAPTER 1

Introduction

“Continuous and Effective

Self-Help and Mutual Aid”
For over 70 years, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization NATO has
shaped, animated and stabilised the European and transatlantic security
scene. Then again, NATO has also been a forum for occasionally fierce
debate among the member countries to the extent that its relevance has
been questioned every now and then.
One of the most persisting sources for disagreement and disputes
within NATO is the question of burden-sharing—in essence, a constant
need to agree on how NATO’s costs and responsibilities should be
shared and organised among the members. This question has been on
the Alliance’s agenda for as long as it has existed, in fact preceding its
formal establishment.
The basis for the burden-sharing debate is set in Article 3 of the
Washington Treaty (1949), which states as follows:

In order more effectively to achieve the objectives of this Treaty, the

Parties, separately and jointly, by means of continuous and effective self-
help and mutual aid, will maintain and develop their individual and
collective capacity to resist armed attack.

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 1

Switzerland AG 2022
T. Koivula and H. Ossa, NATO’s Burden-Sharing Disputes,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93539-9_1
2 T. KOIVULA AND H. OSSA

The practical meaning of “continuous and effective self-help” and

“mutual aid” as well as the demarcation between the two has been open
to both political and academic discussion and continuous redefinition ever
since the establishment of the Alliance. During its relatively long history,
NATO has seen a number of transformations in its security political envi-
ronment. These changes have been reflected in NATO members’ ability
and willingness to bear responsibilities and to commit to the Alliance and
to the security of other allies. Indeed, there has been no lack of drama
in the Alliance because of burden-sharing, especially as we review devel-
opments in the twenty-first century. Arguments about defence budgets,
investments and fairness of commitment in out-of-area operations have
been a constant feature of the post-Cold War NATO, most recently culmi-
nating in President Trump’s threats to withdraw the US from the Alliance
unless the allies increased their contributions. The debate on burden-
sharing has thus, in one form or another, been a constant characteristic
of the Alliance throughout its history and shows no signs of disappearing
from the political agenda as we progress further the 2020s.
Still, despite various disputes related to burden-sharing among the
allies, NATO has shown a remarkable ability to withstand and overcome
periods of crises caused by these disputes. There are at least three reasons
for that. To begin with, in addition to its main purpose during the Cold
War of creating a credible deterrence against the Soviet Union, NATO
has always had internal ambitions and objectives, too. Initially, it needed
to integrate West Germany so tightly into the European and transatlantic
cooperation structures that it could not pose a threat to the security of
Europe again, nor drift to the “Soviet sphere of influence”, which partic-
ularly the various US administrations were concerned about. Another
internal political function of NATO—that continues until today—is to
calm the conflict-prone relations of some members, such as Turkey and
Greece. Hence, NATO has always had political functions in addition to
its military purpose. From the very beginning it has been a political forum
for its members and for the broader international dialogue (Webber 2013,
pp. 33–35).
Another exceptional quality of NATO, adding to its ability to with-
stand internal disagreements, is its institutional structure. In many
respects, NATO has managed to maintain its unity throughout the
past decades due to its highly institutionalised character, creating incen-
tives for the member countries to maintain the Alliance and shape their
national policies according to NATO guidelines (Cottey 2006, p. 11).
 1 INTRODUCTION 3

It is common that alliances create formal institutional structures but the

ones of NATO are unusually extensive for an alliance: it has well-defined
rules, joint decision-making procedures and a unified military structure.
It is precisely the institutional structures and broad array of functions
that distinguish NATO from other, more loose security communities.
Thirdly, what also distinguishes NATO from most past alliances is that
the strongest member, the United States, has not sought to impose its
vision on others by utilizing its relative power. This stance has enabled a
culture of dialogue within NATO, even during occasional disputes among
members.
Thus, even though the history of NATO provides us with examples
of speculations and “misplaced auguries” whether a particular crisis is
the last straw that breaks the Alliance (Webber 2013, p. 29; see also
e.g. Freedman 1982; Kober 1983; Ratti 2009), the above qualities have
fostered a culture of debate within NATO, helping the organisation to
withstand long-lasting internal disagreements. Indeed, NATO is not just
another military alliance on a long list of alliances that have emerged and
disappeared throughout centuries. NATO has so far managed to over-
come both major changes in the international security environment and
various internal crises. Instead of fading away its membership has in fact
steadily increased during the years. But, this state of things may not last.
As the number of challenges increases and the debate about fair burden-
sharing intensifies, NATO faces increasing pressure that may eventually
affect its ability to function.

Why a Book on NATO’s Burden-Sharing Disputes

Burden-sharing belongs to one of the most studied issues within the
Alliance with distinguishable scholarly traditions and extensive literature.
Still, despite the fact that burden-sharing is mentioned nearly every time
when discussing the internal dynamics of NATO, we argue that not
enough has been said of the matter, or, to be more precise, not enough
has been made to assess the phenomenon as a whole. Therefore, our
objective in this book is to take a more comprehensive look at what
burden-sharing is about and how it has evolved as a concept and a real-life
phenomenon throughout the past decades and what kind of future these
developments may entail.
First, this book promotes the idea that NATO burden-sharing, and the
related disputes, are evolving historical phenomena, the scope of which
4 T. KOIVULA AND H. OSSA

is open to change. The debate may have appeared relatively static during
the Cold War decades, but since then burden-sharing agenda has seen new
dimensions and its scope has expanded. Indeed, the closer we come to our
own time, the more complex and broader the debate evolves, and hence
the more challenging it becomes to isolate burden-sharing issues from
the host of other questions. These controversies can have both imme-
diate and longer-term policy-relevant implications on issues like NATO
enlargement, out-of-area operations, relations to partner countries and
NATO’s ability to act decisively on issues of collective security.
Secondly, we claim that all too often, burden-sharing has been
regarded as an internal NATO issue that is manageable through rational
calculus. We advocate a broader reading of the issue and claim that
burden-sharing should not be isolated from the overall frameworks of
transatlantic dynamism or regional security. In fact, when discussing
NATO burden-sharing, we should discuss the broader state of transat-
lantic relations and regional security, questions such as what is the level of
anxiety caused by internal or external factors, how different threat percep-
tions among NATO members come into play, and what is the level of
goodwill among the allies. In the course of this book, we will give an
overview of the most significant events of NATO’s history. The focus
is on burden-sharing but in order to understand the past, present and
future aspects of the burden-sharing debate, one must also understand
the broader transatlantic security context and the intra-alliance relations
during the 70 years of NATO’s existence. This is a demanding task and we
recognise the impossibility of reviewing every single event that has shaped
the Alliance and its burden-sharing debate. Instead, we focus on major
events and changes, some of which can be regarded as “paradigm shifts”,
and study them through the burden-sharing lenses. We are interested
in tensions among the allies that were caused by disputes over burden-
sharing, and how the allies managed to mitigate these tensions and keep
NATO alive.
Thirdly, we argue that NATO burden-sharing can be better understood
if it is tackled as a phenomenon with elements of historical continuity
and change. While burden-sharing has received substantial attention
during and since the 2016 US presidential elections, it is by no means
a novel question. It seems that the issue emerges and re-emerges on
the transatlantic agenda every now and then, and tends to gain addi-
tional prominence particularly during transitional phases of the Alliance.
 1 INTRODUCTION 5

Events like organizational reforms, enlargements, major changes in domi-

nant military strategic thinking (for example the shifting emphasis on
conventional vs. nuclear weapons in the military doctrine) or new out-
of-area operations have often led to intra-Alliance debates on how the
new costs or additional responsibilities should be divided. We argue that
the inter-member disputes of NATO can fruitfully be assessed in terms of
unidirectional change on the one hand and repetition on the other.
Finally, this volume suggests that the past and present of burden-
sharing help us to assess NATO’s future trajectory. As the famous but
un-attributed phrase goes, history does not repeat itself, but it often
rhymes. Based on historical experience, NATO’s internal disputes may
not end up in its undoing or unravelling—despite occasional claims about
“unfair” burden-sharing, no ally has thus far withdrawn from the club—
but they nevertheless are apt to weaken the Alliance’s internal cohesion
and thereby its ability to meet contemporary and future challenges. In
the long term, such disputes may, along with other factors contribute to
the overall gradual withering of the Alliance. However, the goal here is
not to produce an accurate prediction of a particular future or scenario
of NATO burden-sharing. Instead, the book’s approach focuses more on
identifying trends and indicators related to the future of burden-sharing
within NATO.
As said, the literature on NATO and burden-sharing is extensive, to the
extent that it is difficult to find “gaps” in it that new research could fulfil.
However, in the midst of all these contributions, there have been surpris-
ingly few efforts to assess the issue and the related academic debate as a
whole, with few exceptions, such as of Stanley Sloan’s (2020) compre-
hensive account of transatlanticism in NATO. We don’t primarily seek
to provide new conceptual tools on burden-sharing. Nor do we try to
judge who does and who does not do enough in the Alliance, or to find
an unambiguous method to measure fair burden-sharing—the scholarly
attention on this is already rather extensive (see e.g. Gates and Tera-
sawa 2003; Jakobsen 2018; Kivimäki 2019). Instead, the book’s main
emphasis is in gathering and structuring the history and existing under-
standings of burden-sharing in a clarifying and hopefully innovative way
and to make NATO burden-sharing disputes more understandable as a
historical, contemporary and future phenomenon.
6 T. KOIVULA AND H. OSSA

Political and Academic

Understandings of Burden-Sharing
There are three consistent and essentially rational elements in NATO
burden-sharing that set the framework for its different definitions and also
for the related disputes: the ideas of public goods, costs and bargaining.
Public goods have two inalienable elements: they are non-rivalrous and
non-excludable, meaning that once a public good is provided, it is avail-
able for everyone, such as collective security in NATO’s case. These
qualities of public goods create a potential free-riding problem, in which
certain allies may rely on other allies to provide security that they too
can enjoy while contributing less or nothing for that security. Cost-
sharing, or burden-sharing in more general sense, is a way to measure
and manage this dilemma. In NATO, cost-sharing is achieved, regulated
and occasionally re-assed through bargaining by member countries.
Academic scholarship gives us a plethora of definitions on burden-
sharing, emphasising its different dimensions. Hartley and Sandler (1999,
p. 669) define it as the “actual contribution of each nation to collective
defence and the fairness of each state’s contribution”. Then again, Thiele-
mann (2003, p. 253), sees it as “the question of how costs of common
initiatives or the provision of public goods should be shared between
states”, while Jakobsen and Ringsmose (2017) suggest that is simply “a
game”. Each of these definitions emphasises important qualities of the
issue—fairness of contribution, underlying the normative dimensions at
stake; share of costs, turning the attention to more technical and measur-
able arrangements; and the notion of game emphasizing burden-sharing’s
nature as an interstate bargain; or even as a socially defined language
game, the rules of which may change in the course of time.
The definitions reflect the diverse branches of academic study on
NATO burden-sharing. The literature can be divided roughly into two
epistemological traditions: rationalist and post-positivist. The rationalist
approach (see e.g. Olson and Zeckhauser 1966; Siegel 2009; Becker
2017) is characteristically deductive and relies on testing hypotheses. It
can be regarded, as Zyla (2018, p. 517) puts it, “ontologically static”,
meaning that it treats burden-sharing actors as rational and focuses on
the cost and benefit calculations of the Alliance or its individual members.
Typically, the emphasis is on measurable material facts—such as NATO
allies’ physical resources, material wealth, capabilities or the physical qual-
ities of the current security environment. Often, these material metrics are
 1 INTRODUCTION 7

referred to as the starting point once NATO members discuss an equal

or fair distribution of burden among themselves. Such an approach has
traditionally dominated the academic literature on the topic (Zyla 2018,
p. 520), with the most prominent theoretical approach, the public goods
model, initiated by Olson and Zeckhauser already in 1966.
Then again, it seems that at least the academic debate is gradually
shifting towards more constructivist approaches. The post-positivist tradi-
tion of studying burden-sharing emphasises the socially defined nature of
the issue and pays attention to discursive conventions, silences, ambigui-
ties and deeper undercurrents regarding burden-sharing. Common to all
of these is the essential role of language, as it is seen both as reflecting and
constituting the evolving, even unstable, nature of the issue. In essence,
burden-sharing is not seen here as an objective entity existing indepen-
dently of the beholder but as something constituted and reproduced
through the active use of language (see e.g. Mattelaer 2016; Kunertova
2017).
NATO members and scholarly literature have produced a variety of
ways to measure burden-sharing. These range from traditional indicators
such as the share of GDP spent on defence to a variety of alterna-
tive military measures. Other ways to measure burden-sharing take into
consideration civil indicators, such as contributions to UN humanitarian
operations and foreign aid. More recent interpretations focus on indi-
vidual nations’ efforts to counter-terrorist financing, export controls or
sanctioning non-cooperative countries. Indeed, burden-sharing debates
are affected by a wide range of indicators that give different rankings
and results. In fact, what is regarded as a burden-sharing issue is very
much viewpoint-dependent. As Mattelaer (2016, p. 29) fittingly puts
it, the burden-sharing debate will ultimately be measured against what
the Alliance wants and needs to accomplish. This goal thus remains a
politically defined moving target. Individual countries tend to empha-
sise the indicator(s) that show that they are bearing an “unfairly” high
burden of the collective defence efforts (Hartley and Sandler 1999). To
formulate the idea with Alexander Wendt’s (1992) famous expression,
burden-sharing is what states make of it. Moreover, controversies related
to burden-sharing can also be portrayed as a repetitive transatlantic ritual
(Hallams and Schreer 2012, p. 313). Ritual or not, these controver-
sies reflect real anxieties and grievances between members and can bear
policy-relevant real-life consequences.
8 T. KOIVULA AND H. OSSA

While taking into consideration material measures, such as GDP and

defence spending metrics, we do not regard them as sufficient for a more
comprehensive burden-sharing analysis. This is why it is necessary to
take into account other factors that are more difficult or even impos-
sible to measure, such as how NATO member countries contribute to
crisis management operations. Moreover, we argue in this volume that
the agenda of burden-sharing seems to be expanding, further blurring the
focus on any clear metrics and leading to new possible ways of measuring
allied contributions.
Thus, what characterises our reading of NATO’s burden-sharing is the
essential role of political considerations and the imbedded presence of
political tension. Research has consistently shown that NATO members
do contribute differently to collective defence and that these differences in
spending tend to be long lasting (Becker 2017). However, public disputes
on how to share the burden within NATO are not equally stable or
constant. Instead, they owe their existence to conscious decisions made
by policy-makers in member countries. Whatever the material facts on
the field may be, the imbalances on NATO’s agenda are governed by
political logic. In other words, national decision-makers are in the posi-
tion to choose whether or not to turn public attention to the disparities
or controversies amongst member countries. These considerations are
affected by a set of changing domestic, economic, geopolitical, or tech-
nological developments, and evolving understandings of national interest
in NATO member countries.
This underlines the importance of burden-sharing disputes as the
nucleus of the larger burden-sharing problemacy. The controversies are
elementary in at least two respects: first, disputes related to burden-
sharing can be seen as an indicator of the internal coherence of the
Alliance. Secondly, debates on burden-sharing can disguise more promi-
nent problems such as the willingness of member countries to redefine
rules and principles of its participation in the Alliance, changes in the
way threats are being assessed in a given member country or the overall
willingness of them to remain in NATO in the first place.

Outline of This Volume

This book is an outcome of individual and original research conducted
over the past three years. While some undergraduate students may find it
useful, the book will primarily seek to appeal to practitioners, scholars and
 1 INTRODUCTION 9

advanced students of NATO, transatlantic security, International Rela-

tions and strategic studies. The main focus is on burden-sharing disputes
but the book also gives an overview of the most significant develop-
ments in European and transatlantic security in the past 70 years, which
a broader audience may find insightful, too.
The book is divided into seven chapters. After these introductory
remarks, in Chapter 2, On Burden-Sharing, we create an overview on
how burden-sharing as a concept has developed over the years and how
it has been studied in the academic context, roughly divided into mate-
rialist and non-materialist lines of inquiry. In the chapter, we also clarify
the starting points, hypotheses and assumptions that guide our approach
to the subject matter and the efforts to analyse it. In essence, we define
NATO’s burden-sharing as a historical and political concept by reviewing
the main historical aspects of the burden-sharing debate and previous
research literature on the phenomenon. A key issue here is the goal of
identifying trends, discussion themes and indicators that help to assess the
future development of burden-sharing disputes. In the chapter, we will
also introduce the plan for the empirical chapters of the volume. This will
be done by following consistently five more or less cyclic drivers or tracks
of burden-sharing disputes: (1) geopolitical changes related to Russia, (2)
US retrenchment or renewal, (3) European passivity or activism and, (4)
NATO out-of-area operations, and (5) emerging issues.
The story itself will start in Chapter 3, Burden-Sharing During the
Cold War. In this chapter, we will give an overview of the most signif-
icant events during NATO’s Cold War years in the light of the above
drivers. Our focus is on burden-sharing, but in order to understand the
various aspects of the debate, one must also review the broader transat-
lantic security context and the various crises facing intra-alliance relations
during the early decades of NATO’s existence. We will discuss the most
significant ones in detail. These include the road to establishing NATO
in the 1940s, the effects of Cold War rivalry on NATO and the internal
tensions that took place within the Alliance during those decades. We
argue that the original transatlantic burden-sharing bargain, in a nutshell,
was that the US would take care of European defence and security while
Europe was rebuilding its societies after the devastating World War II.
The American military presence in Europe was supposed to be a tempo-
rary arrangement until Europe was capable of defending itself. We will
discuss various reasons why this burden-sharing arrangement “failed” and
led to a protracted setting.
10 T. KOIVULA AND H. OSSA

Chapter 4, Burden-Sharing in the Post-Cold War Era, continues the

empirical part of the volume by discussing this increasingly multidimen-
sional issue in a totally altered strategic setting of the years 1989–2014,
again with the help of the four drivers. What is characteristic to this
era was the initial collapse and ensuing relative weakness of the Soviet
Union/Russia and the geographical expansion of NATO. A second
major change was the introduction of out-of-area operations to NATO’s
agenda, most tangibly the years-long commitment to ISAF Operation in
Afghanistan but also in the Balkans and Libya, to name a few. Related
to disputes concerning out-of-area operations was also the transatlantic
crisis caused by the refusal of many European allies to join the US
intervention in Iraq in 2003. A third major factor of the era with long-
standing burden-sharing implications was the introduction of European
Security and Defence Policy (later the EU Common Security and Defence
Policy)—an initiative which was, in many respects, established to bolster
European contribution to transatlantic and regional security but which
has since received occasional suspicion across the Atlantic.
Chapter 5, The Changing Landscape of Burden-Sharing Since 2014,
seeks to trace the most recent developments in international relations that
have an effect on burden-sharing in the “post-Crimean” security context.
We assess the way in which Russia’s expansive foreign policy, based on
a wide range of hybrid warfare measures, has impacted NATO’s internal
cohesion and burden-sharing debate. We will then take a look at the US
that, despite President Trump’s harsh rhetoric and apparent retrenchment
tendencies, has remained loyal to its allies especially in NATO’s eastern
flank. Another key issue-area in the chapter is the question of Euro-
pean “strategic autonomy”, driven by the search for stability in Europe’s
southern and eastern neighbourhoods and overall uncertainty regarding
the transatlantic relationship. However, in the chapter the attention turns
also to the emerging drivers affecting burden-sharing dynamics. In partic-
ular, we will assess how the rise of China, pandemics and societal change
within member countries manifest on NATO’s burden-sharing agenda
and how they shape the Alliance discursive environment.
After these three empirical chapters, the attention turns to the driving
dynamics of burden-sharing disputes. Chapter 6, Historical Dynamics of
Burden-Sharing, inquires the elements of continuity and change within
NATO burden-sharing and factors that promote and constrain disputes.
In addition, we assess whether burden-sharing controversies are just polit-
ical talk, a ritual without policy level relevance, or whether they impact
 1 INTRODUCTION 11

NATO’s political or strategic ability to function—in peacetime and during

crisis. We argue that the concept of burden has been understood in
different terms in different times, suggesting that the concept reflects
the dominant threat perceptions and the overall current state of transat-
lantic relations. The burden-sharing disputes are different depending on
their time context, the current security environment and on how the allies
value the Alliance. Then again, there is a substantial amount of constraint,
repetition, and continuity in the disputes as well in members’ strategies
in dealing with disputes on NATO burden. It can thus be argued that
both change and continuity are simultaneously present characteristics of
burden-sharing disputes.
Finally, Chapter 7, Reflections on the Future Prospects of Burden-
Sharing Disputes, sets to draw lessons from the past and project them
into the near future of NATO with a 10-year perspective. This takes
place by addressing three issue areas: first, what will the future burden-
sharing disputes be about; second, what shape will tomorrow’s dispute
take; and third, what is the relevance of the issue at hand, in partic-
ular regarding its impact on NATO’s future existence. We argue that
the debates continue to be driven by Russia’s geopolitical change, US
retrenchment or renewal, European passivity or activism, NATO out-of-
area operations and emerging burden-sharing issues. Moreover, we claim
that the future burden-sharing disputes will be located on two discur-
sive axes of (1) limited versus open-ended burden-sharing agenda and
(2) transatlanticism versus transactionalism. These axes form the basis for
four scenarios of the future character of burden-sharing disputes, titled
in the book as “Incapacitated NATO”, “Transatlantic bargaining”, “Self-
interested member countries” and “Transatlantic solidarity”. Overall, we
argue that while NATO has thus far endured various burden-sharing
disputes, it will become increasingly challenging to maintain the effective-
ness of the Alliance, should the burden-sharing disputes keep expanding
and mixing with other controversies.

References
Becker, Jordan. 2017. The Correlates of Transatlantic Burden Sharing: Revisiting
the Agenda for Theoretical and Policy Analysis. Defence & Security Analysis
33 (2): 131–157.
Cottey, Andrew. 2006. NATO: Globalization or Redundancy? In Where Is NATO
Going?, ed. Martin Smith, 5–22. Abingdon: Routledge.
12 T. KOIVULA AND H. OSSA

Freedman, Lawrence. 1982. The Atlantic Crisis. International Affairs 58 (3):

395–412.
Gates, William, and Katsuaki Terasawa. 2003. Reconsidering Publicness in
Alliance Defence Expenditure: NATO Expansion and Burden Sharing. Defence
and Peace Economics 14 (5): 369–383.
Hallams, Ellen, and Benjamin Schreer. 2012. Towards a ‘Post-American’
Alliance? NATO Burden-Sharing After Libya. International Affairs 88 (2):
313–327.
Hartley, Keith, and Todd Sandler. 1999. NATO Burden-Sharing: Past and
Future. Journal of Peace Research 36 (6): 665–680.
Jakobsen, Jo. 2018. Is European NATO Really Free-Riding? Patterns of Material
and Non-material Burden-Sharing After the Cold War. European Security 27
(4): 490–514.
Jakobsen, Peter Viggo, and Jens Ringsmose. 2017. Burden-Sharing in NATO:
The Trump Effect Won’t Last. Policy Brief 16/2017, Norwegian Institute of
International Affairs.
Kivimäki, Timo. 2019. Power, Contribution and Dependence in NATO Burden
Sharing. European Security 28 (1): 66–84.
Kober, Stanley. 1983. Can NATO Survive? International Affairs 59 (3): 339–
349.
Kunertova, Dominika. 2017. One Measure Cannot Trump It All: Lessons from
NATO’s Early Burden-Sharing Debates. European Security 26 (4): 552–574.
Mattelaer, Alexander. 2016. US Leadership and NATO: Revisiting the Principles
of NATO Burden-Sharing. Parameters 46 (1): 25–33.
Olson, Mancur Jr., and Richard Zeckhauser. 1966. An Economic Theory of
Alliances. Santa Monica: The RAND Corporation.
Ratti, Luca. 2009. Back to the Future? International Relations Theory and
NATO-Russia Relations Since the End of the Cold War. International Journal
64 (2): 399–422.
Siegel, Scott N. 2009. Bearing Their Share of the Burden: Europe in Afghanistan.
European Security 18 (4): 461–482.
Sloan, Stanley. 2020. Defense of the West: Transatlantic Security from Truman to
Trump. Manchester: Manchester University Press.
Thielemann, Eiko R. 2003. Between Interests and Norms: Explaining Burden-
Sharing in the European Union. Journal of Refugee Studies 16 (3): 253–273.
Webber, Mark. 2013. NATO After 9/11: Theoretical Perspectives. In NATO
Beyond 9/11: The Transformation of the Atlantic Alliance, ed. Ellen Hallams,
Luca Ratti, and Benjamin Zyla, 27–53. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.
Wendt, Alexander. 1992. Anarchy Is What States Make of It: The Social
Construction of Power Politics. International Organization 46 (2): 391–425.
Zyla, Benjamin. 2018. Transatlantic Burden Sharing: Suggesting a New Research
Agenda. European Security 27 (4): 515–535.
 CHAPTER 2

On Burden-Sharing

Empirical Considerations: The

Ever-Developing Burden-Sharing Debate
Indicator of NATO’s State
This book argues that the disputes on burden-sharing should be placed in
the context of NATO’s wider historical and political processes. Following
this logic, burden-sharing as a broad topic is as old as NATO itself. In
fact, questions of appropriate burden among western countries precede
the formal establishment of the Alliance. Likewise, the contents of the
debate have evolved throughout the Alliance’s existence. As indicated in
Article 3 of the Washington Treaty (1949) quoted in this book’s introduc-
tory chapter, the Alliance members are expected to take care of their own
national defence capabilities while contributing to the collective defence
of the Alliance. However, the wording of the article leaves room for inter-
pretation about fair contributions. The topics that dominated the debate
in the early years of NATO were very different from the ones of today,
and contemporary issues such as usability targets and national caveats
hardly appeared in the early discussions (Ringsmose 2010, p. 319). In
addition, the vocabulary around burden-sharing has varied in the course
of time. Terms like cost-sharing, risk-sharing and burden-shifting have
appeared in different historical contexts and have all slightly different

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature 13

Switzerland AG 2022
T. Koivula and H. Ossa, NATO’s Burden-Sharing Disputes,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-93539-9_2
14 T. KOIVULA AND H. OSSA

meanings even though they are often used as synonyms in public discus-
sion. A closer review shows that these concepts focus on different aspects
of burden-sharing and may carry different value judgments.
Indeed, the debate over burden-sharing has never been static or
linear (see e.g. Driver 2016). Instead, it is very much periodic, even
cyclical, and only appears in NATO’s political agenda every now and
then, most often when facing crises stemming either from inside the
Alliance or from the changing international security environment. Usually,
burden-sharing disputes tend to co-inside with transitional phases of the
Alliance, such as organizational reforms, enlargement processes, changes
in military strategic thinking or new out-of-area operations. One can
also approach the issue from another angle and argue that burden-
sharing has been raised on NATO’s agenda whenever individual members
have experienced major inequity in contributions (Hartley and Sandler
1999, p. 666). Often, this has been the case when the US has not
been contented with the contributions of its European and/or Cana-
dian allies—in fact, concern of burden-sharing has for decades been
predominantly an American preoccupation (Lunn 1983, p. 3).
Similarly, we can find correlation between certain economic and polit-
ical events in the US and the times when burden-sharing has been raised
on NATO’s political agenda and to the broader discussion (Siegel 2009;
Lunn 1983). Whenever the US foreign policy has gone through periods
of security and foreign policy retrenchment, the country has put more
pressure on its European allies demanding them to bear their fair share
of the military, economic or sometimes political burden. In turn, when
its foreign policy ambitions have been high, the US has highlighted its
commitment to NATO and European security and solidarity towards its
allies. The pattern is similar when it comes to the economic situation
in the US: during economic hardship and declining defence budgets,
the US tends to put more pressure on NATO Europe and vice versa
(Driver 2016, p. 9; Ringsmose 2010, p. 322). We, however, argue that
the changes in US foreign policy are not the only factors that affect the
burden-sharing debate but also other factors should be taken into account
when assessing the historical aspects of burden-sharing.

From Cost-Sharing to Risk-Sharing

Traditionally the focus in the burden-sharing debate has been on finan-
cial aspects, and one of the most used ways of measuring burden-sharing
 2 ON BURDEN-SHARING 15

has been reviewing how large a share of their GDP each member spends
on military expenses. Even though burden-sharing is nowadays under-
stood to comprise a much broader range of tasks than this, financial
contributions and cost-sharing are still very much at the core of the
debate.
The basis for this lies within the logic of NATO’s funding. The daily
functioning of NATO is based on direct and indirect contributions from
the member countries. Direct funding is channelled through NATO’s
military and civilian budgets and follow the common funding principles.
Direct funding is proportional to each members’ Gross National Income1
and is based on agreed cost-sharing formulas (NATO: Funding NATO;
Kivimäki 2019, p. 69; Kunertova 2017, p. 553). However, most of the
NATO operations are funded by national defence spending (indirect
contributions) and only a small amount of funding comes from NATO’s
own budgets, the indirect voluntary contributions by member countries
are considered much more relevant indicators of financial contribution
than direct contributions.
NATO defence ministers agreed in 2006, and restated again in 2014,
that each member should spend at least 2% of their GDP on defence
expenses and 20% out of that on major equipment spending. Even though
the Alliance does not directly benefit from the national spending of its
members, the 2% guideline is considered an indicator of how willing the
members are to contribute to the common tasks of the Alliance and
thus has its effect on NATO’s credibility. As of early 2020s, the Euro-
pean member countries and Canada spent half of what the US spent
on defence, even though their combined GDP was higher than that of
the US (NATO: Funding NATO). However, it is often reminded that
a substantial part of the US defence spending is used in its military
commitments elsewhere than in the NATO area. This is one of the most
persisting sources of discord within the Alliance, and has recently shifted
the burden-sharing debate again towards cost-sharing.
Even when the prospective Alliance members still held negotiations
on the creation of an alliance, they created economic, social and polit-
ical constraints that aimed at passing as much of their burden on other

1 The only exception is the US, who is compensated as a result of its national spending
that is higher than that of any other member country. Taking into account the discount
that the US receives, the largest proportional share of the common funding comes from
Germany (Kivimäki 2019, p. 69; Mattelaer 2016, p. 27).
16 T. KOIVULA AND H. OSSA

allies as possible, thus creating a situation that can be labelled as burden-

shifting (Ringsmose 2010, p. 321; Lunn 1983, p. 12). Burden-shifting
is a constant balancing act where the allies attempt to accommodate
their responsibilities while simultaneously limiting their contributions to
advance national interests and to ration scares resources. Domestic poli-
tics may be a reason why member countries, such as Germany, pose
restrictions for their non-financial actions in alliance operations and thus
shift their burdens to other allies especially when it comes to high-
intensity warfare. This is sometimes labelled as “non-material free-riding”
or “chequebook diplomacy” (Jakobsen 2018, p. 508; Ringsmose 2010,
p. 328). Relying on national restrictions and caveats is a worrying trend
since it can lead to a “two-tiered alliance” situation where some countries
carry the burden of dangerous operational tasks taking remarkable risks
while others only contribute financially. There are also opposite exam-
ples, such as Denmark, that fail to meet their defence budget targets
but contribute to expeditionary operations far more than many other
members that have higher military spending (Mattelaer 2016, p. 29;
Jakobsen and Rynning 2019).
After the end of the Cold War NATO’s growing task list led to a shift
from collective defence to crisis management and cooperative security
(Zyla 2016; Sperling and Webber 2009). The Alliance’s new responsi-
bilities expanded towards out-of-area operations and crisis management
missions, which brought new dimensions to burden-sharing debate that
until then had been fuelled mostly by disagreements on who should
pay and how much. The burden-sharing discussion gained new elements
related to risk-sharing , particularly during the mission in Afghanistan
(2001–2014) (Kunertova 2017, p. 556; Jakobsen 2018, p. 494; Dorman
2012, p. 310). Participating in military missions outside of NATO’s
territorial area became an integral part of contributing to the common
burden, which increased the attention paid on the quality of contribu-
tions—questions such as who sends troops to the most dangerous areas,
who suffers most casualties and who creates national caveats, gained a
great deal of political and scholarly attention (see Kunertova 2017; Sper-
ling and Webber 2009; Jakobsen 2018; Ringsmose 2010; Zyla 2016,
2018). It was no longer enough that members contributed financially if
they failed to participate in actual operative side of the missions.
Another important factor in the expanding burden-sharing debate in
the post-Cold War era has been NATO’s enlargement to Central and
Eastern Europe. The enlargement process extended the range of threat
 2 ON BURDEN-SHARING 17

perceptions within the Alliance and thus further increased the complexity
of burden-sharing debate. Especially the Eastern and Central European
members are more interested in the traditional territorial defence after the
annexation of Crimea in 2014, which is not as high on southern members’
security agenda (Jakobsen 2018, p. 491; Béraud-Sudreau and Giegerich
2018, pp. 55–59). It has thus become increasingly challenging to accom-
modate various security interests in a situation where states have differing
threat perceptions and limited resources. This naturally has had an effect
on the burden-sharing debate.
Since the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, collective defence
has returned on the top of NATO’s priorities. NATO has, however, not
abandoned its role as a crisis management organisation, even though this
core task has received less attention since 2014. Thus, there is a tension
between NATO’s expanding agenda and its scarce resources. This tension
calls for constant bargaining and balancing.

Theoretical Considerations of Burden-Sharing

Rationalist Approaches
Aside to its existence in the political realm, burden-sharing has been
covered with a sizable and vibrant academic literature throughout the
decades. This literature can be divided roughly into two epistemological
traditions: rationalist and post-positivist. The emphasis of the rationalist
approach has typically been on measurable material facts, such as allies’
physical resources, material wealth, capabilities or the physical quali-
ties of the current security environment. Then again, the post-positivist
approaches have widened the scope of the burden-sharing research from
economic and public good theories to comprise more social and political
perspectives such as risk-sharing and public norms on war.
As argued in the introductory chapter, NATO burden-sharing entails
three consistent and rational elements that set the framework for its
different definitions and also for the related disputes: the ideas of public
goods, costs and bargaining. Public goods have two inalienable elements:
they are non-rivalrous and non-excludable, meaning that once a public
good is provided, it is available for everyone, such as collective security
in NATO’s case. These qualities of public goods create a potential free-
riding problem, in which certain allies may rely on other allies to provide
security that they too can enjoy while contributing less or nothing for
18 T. KOIVULA AND H. OSSA

that security. Cost-sharing, or burden-sharing in more general sense are

ways to measure and manage this dilemma. In NATO, cost-sharing is
achieved, regulated and occasionally re-assessed through bargaining by
Alliance members.
The rationalist approaches have traditionally dominated the academic
literature on burden-sharing and many contributions to the literature
have assumed ontologically and epistemologically positivist approaches
(see e.g. Becker 2017; Olson and Zeckhauser 1966; Hartley and Sandler
1999; Siegel 2009). Rationalist approaches can be regarded as ontologi-
cally static, meaning that they treat burden-sharing actors as rational and
focus on the cost and benefit calculations of the Alliance or its indi-
vidual members, and seek to explain NATO’s burden-sharing through the
transatlantic power relations and state interests (Zyla 2018, p. 517). The
rationalist approaches are characteristically deductive and rely on testing
hypotheses. Typically, the emphasis has been on measurable material facts
related to the issue, such as NATO members’ physical resources and capa-
bilities, allies’ military expenditure and the costs and benefits of belonging
to the Alliance (see e.g. Sandler and Murdoch 2000; Gates and Terasawa
2003). As argued above, these material metrics are often referred to as the
starting point once NATO members discuss an equal or fair distribution
of burden among themselves.
The burden-sharing literature has been dominated by the so-called
input–output debate for several decades. Inputs refer to the resources with
which each member country contributes to the Alliance, while outputs are
the actual capabilities made possible by these contributions (Lunn 1983,
p. 54). For a long time, the burden-sharing literature was focused on
input measures, and as a consequence ontologically materialistic and theo-
retically rationalist research dominated the scholarly spheres. This kind
of quantitative, materially focused research gives particular attention to
the system and state level variables. When it comes to burden-sharing,
the contributions of NATO members are measured on the basis of how
many troops each country provides or how much they contribute finan-
cially to the Alliance (Zyla 2018, p. 516). The most used and accepted
input measurement, though by no means uncriticised, is member coun-
try’s defence spending as a share of its GDP (Gross Domestic Product)
(Hartley and Sandler 1999, p. 674). Examining the statistics of military
spending, it is possible to some extent predict the balance between invest-
ments and capabilities of the Alliance, but also the burden-sharing among
members. Studies have shown that countries that invest more in defence
 2 ON BURDEN-SHARING 19

and military equipment also bear a larger share of the operational burden
of the Alliance (Becker 2017, p. 135). In other words, their input to the
Alliance is large. In addition to the GDP measurement, NATO defence
planners evaluate how the members fulfil and implement the national
capability targets and how many per cent of their forces are deployable
to out-of-area operations (Mattelaer 2016, pp. 26–27).
Olson and Zeckhauser were the first ones to examine burden-sharing
through collective action theories and suggested already in 1966 that
NATO’s collective defence is a public good (Olson and Zeckhauser 1966;
see also Zyla 2016, pp. 305–306). For a long time, the discussion on
burden-sharing focused on the economic theory of alliances, security and
collective defence as public goods and on the free-riding possibility that
is characteristic of public goods (Ringsmose 2010). Public goods have
two elements: they are non-rivalrous and non-excludable. In NATO’s case
this means that one member country’s consumption of public goods, for
example nuclear deterrence through collective defence, does not prevent
other members from enjoying the same benefit. Once a public good is
provided, they are available for everyone. Private goods, on the contrary,
are rivalrous and excludable, meaning that they can be consumed only
once or at least they get spent over time and only the actor that has
paid the cost of the good can benefit from it. For example, ammunition
produced by a certain NATO member belongs to that member and can
be used by it unless given to others. According to the classic economic
theories of alliances, the non-rivalry and non-excludability of public goods
creates a free-riding problem, which means that certain allies rely on other
allies to provide security that they too can enjoy (Hartley and Sandler
1999 p. 666; Jakobsen 2018, p. 490). Since security and deterrence are
sufficiently available for everyone within the Alliance anyway, why would
a single member country contribute to the common burden?
According to collective action models, the main public good provided
by NATO in the 1950s and 1960s was its nuclear deterrence that
Alliance members with nuclear weapons, mainly the US, made possible.
Other members could enjoy security provided by nuclear states without
contributing to the nuclear arsenal. Nuclear deterrence is thus an example
of a pure public good. Conventional arms, on the other hand, are
not public goods since it is usually a single state that funds and bene-
fits from them, which makes free-riding more difficult. NATO adopted
the flexible response strategy in 1967 after which its strategy moved
from pure nuclear deterrence (public good) towards more conventional
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
negociaciones que se
acostumbran en el mundo.
Amintas.—No digo yo que la
naturaleza lo quiso de manera
que no dexase lugar para que
pudiésemos entender en otras
cosas; pero que parece que esto
nos puso delante como cosa más
principal, y assí lo podréis
entender por lo que agora diré.
Cuando nuestro señor Dios tuvo
por bien de criar el mundo y en él
á nuestros primeros padres á su
imagen y semejanza, fué con
aquella llaneza y simplicidad que
se requería para estar en su
servicio, hasta que comieron del
fruto vedado, por el cual fueron
echados del Paraíso; y como por
el pecado cometido les fuese
dado mandamiento, por
maldición, que comiesen del
sudor de sus manos, hallaron
para sustentarse las hierbas y las
raíces en los campos, las frutas
en los árboles, las aguas en las
fuentes y ríos y las semientes
puestas, así verdes como
maduras, en las mesmas hierbas;
todo esto, después que una vez lo
hallaban, no huía ni se apartaba
dellos; pero los ganados, de cuya
leche y lo que de ella se hace,
también habían de comer, aunque
no comían la carne para
mantenerse, en descuidándose
se iban por unas partes y por
otras, de manera que les era
trabajoso el andarlos buscando, y
assí les fué forzado, juntando
algunos rebaños dellos, hacerse
ellos mesmos guardas y pastores,
obedeciendo á la naturaleza que
parecía mandarles, y aun
forzarles, á que lo hiciesen para
que mejor pudiesen sustentarse.
Y assí en teniendo hijos los
pusieron en el mesmo cuidado;
pues que el oficio de Abel fué
guardar los ganados, y el de Caín
ser labrador de las hierbas y
simientes que entonces producía
la tierra; y conforme á esto se
puede creer que en aquella edad
primera y dorada los mejores
bienes y mayores riquezas que
los hombres tenían eran los
ganados, de que se sustentaban
á sí y á sus hijos y familias,
gozando de los despojos de la
lana, leche y queso y manteca, y
aun haciendo vestidos de los
pelejos dellos, porque entonces
no procuraba la malicia humana
las nuevas invenciones de los
vestidos y atavíos que agora se
usan, ni conocían el oro ni la
plata, sino por unos metales muy
buenos de que se aprovechaban
en las cosas necesarias y no para
hacer moneda, que fué la mayor
perdición que pudo venir al
mundo, no por el dinero, que, por
ser como un fiador de las cosas
vendibles, excusa de muchos
males que habría sin él, mas por
la cobdicia que vino al mundo
junto con el dinero. Y el valor que
tuvo el dinero cuando se hizo fué
porque en él estaba esculpida la
figura de oveja ó cabra ó de otra
res de ganado, ó porque la
primera moneda que hubo fué
hecha y esculpida la señal en el
cuero de los ganados, y por la
una causa ó por la otra en latín se
llamó pecunia, que quiere decir
cosa de ganado, de manera que
los que más y menos valían,
todos debían de ser guardas y
pastores de sus ganados. Y aun
después de aquel universal
diluvio, como parece por aquel
gran patriarca Abraham, que,
siendo un hombre tan poderoso,
su principal patrimonio eran los
rebaños de los ganados, los
cuales él vía y visitaba de contino,
y aun por aventura también
guardaba, como parece cuando
estaba á la puerta de su casa que
se le parecieron tres ángeles en
figura de hombres mancebos que
le denunciaron que Sara, su
mujer, en su senectud pariría, y
queriendo tenerlos por
convidados, él mesmo fue al
ganado y trajo una ternera, con
que les hizo el convite. Y así
mesmo cuando hizo el concierto y
confederación con Abimelec y
Michol, para confirmar la amistad
le dió parte de los ganados que
tenía. También su hijo Isaac,
cuando los de Palestina,
pareciéndoles que se hacía más
rico y poderoso que ellos, le
mandaron salir de la tierra, las
mayores riquezas que llevó
fueron sus ganados, y haciendo
pozos en muchas partes para que
las reses no pereciesen con la
sed, tuvo contienda sobre el agua
con los pastores de Gerare. Y
cuando aquel gran patriarca
Jacob fué á la tierra de Oriente y
allegó á la casa de Labán, su tío,
primero halló á su hija Rachel
que, siendo pastora, apacentaba
los ganados de su padre, por la
cual y por el engaño que le fué
hecho con su hermana Lia, servió
catorce años, y cuando se
despedía de Labán, su suegro,
para volverse á su tierra, siendo
por él molestado que no se
fuesse, hizo concierto con Jacob
que porque tornase á ser pastor y
guarda de sus ganados le daría
todas las ovejas y cabras que de
allí adelante naciesen manchadas
y de diversos colores. Lo mesmo
sabemos todos de los hijos de
Jacob, que también fueron
pastores como su padre, y el
menor dellos, que fué José, les
llevaba de comer al campo donde
andaban con el ganado que
Jacob tenía. Del pacientísimo Job
es bien notorio que, siendo el más
rico hombre de toda la provincia
donde habitaba, sus principales
riquezas eran los ganados de
todas suertes, así como ovejas y
cabras, bueyes, asnos y
camellos, con los cuales andaban
sus criados y sus mesmos hijos,
no se desdeñando de ser guardas
y pastores dellos. Moisés, caudillo
del pueblo de Israel, y por cuyo
consejo fué librado del poder de
Faraón, pastor era y apacentando
andaba el ganado de su suegro
Jetro cuando Dios se le apareció
en la zarza que ardía y no se
quemaba. Saúl, cuando fué
ungido rey, andaba buscando
unos asnos de su padre que se le
habían perdido, lo cual era señal
que él era el que tenía cuidado de
guardarlos. Del real profeta y
grande amigo de Dios, el rey
David, notorio y muy claro es á
todos que siempre andaba en el
campo apacentando el ganado de
su padre, y que de allí lo escogió
Dios para que gobernase y
regiese el pueblo de Israel. Y sin
estos que he dicho, hubo otros
muchos patriarcas y profetas y
varones muy señalados, no
solamente entre los judíos, pero
también entre otras naciones y
maneras de gentes que á mí se
me olvidan y de quien no hacen
mención las escrituras y
corónicas que fueron pastores, no
lo teniendo en menos que
cualquiera otro de los oficios y
manera de vivir que las otras
gentes seguían, porque, como he
dicho, entonces no había las
vanidades, las pompas, las
presunciones, los pensamientos
altivos y soberbios que hay agora,
ni los bollicios y sutilezas de los
ingenios, todos endrezados á
subir y valer más como quiera
que sea, lícita ó ilícitamente,
desdeñándose las gentes de todo
aquello que solían hacer y seguir
los antiguos y personas
señaladas en vida y en dotrina, de
quien están obligados tomar
enxemplo siguiendo sus pisadas,
haciendo lo que ellos hacían.
Leandro.—No tienes razón,
Amintas, en parecerte que essas
razones sean tan bastantes que
obliguen á todas las gentes para
que, desando todos los otros
oficios y maneras de vivir, se
vuelvan á ser labradores ó
pastores, como tú querrías que lo
fuessen.
Amintas.—Menos razón tenéis
vos, señor, en pareceros que no
hace bien ningún hombre que
tenga buen entendimiento, con
otras gracias, en seguir la vida
pastoril, pues con tantas razones
á mí me estábades persuadiendo
para que, pareciéndome tenerla
mal empleada, la desamparase.
Florián.—Por cierto, Amintas, tú
has dicho y alegado, defendiendo
tu opinión, buenas razones y
enxemplos; si hubiese agora
algunos de los pastores de los
que había en aquellos tiempos
que supiesen y entendiesen tan
bien lo que les convenía para con
Dios, para con las gentes; pero
pocos se hallarán de tu manara,
que ya no hay en ellos aquella
simplicidad santa, ni la sabiduría
llena de bondad, ni las obras,
para que merezcan tener aquella
familiaridad con Dios, por la cual
eran dél visitados y ayudados de
su gracia, con que venían á ser
estimados y tenidos en mucho,
como tú lo has dicho.
Amintas.—¿Sabéis qué puedo
responderos á esso? Lo que un
pastor á un obispo, que
reprendiéndole de cierta cosa en
que había pecado, le decía que
los pastores de los tiempos
pasados todos eran santos y
buenos y amigos de Dios, y que
por esso Dios los quería bien y
hacía tantos milagros por ellos, y
así como á santos y amigos
suyos se les aparecieron los
ángeles á denunciarles el
nacimiento de Christo y fueron los
primeros que le adoraron y
ofrecieron dones; y que los
pastores deste tiempo eran muy
mal inclinados y simples, y que
toda su simpleza era inclinada á
mal fin y á hacer con ella malas
obras. Y el pastor le respondió:
También, señor, en este tiempo,
cuando moría algún obispo ó
perlado se tañían las campanas
de suyo, y ahora, cuando las
quieren tañer, no bastan cien
brazos y manos á moverlas.
Mayor obligación tenéis los
obispos y los curas de ánimas, los
cardenales y patriarcas y aun el
papa, de no hacer cosa mala ni
de que poder ser reprendidos,
pues sois más verdaderos
pastores que nosotros y habéis
de dar cuenta á Dios de mayores
y mejores rebaños de ganados,
so pena de pagar con vuestra
ánima lo que por vuestra culpa se
perdiere; que nosotros, si algún
mal ó daño hacemos, á muy
pocos daña, y principalmente es
para nosotros, que pagamos de
nuestras haciendas ó soldadas
las reses que se nos perdieren;
pero los perlados inficionan sus
ovejas con el mal enxemplo de su
vida y excesos; y en fin, todos
somos pastores y todos hacemos
mal lo que somos obligados, y así
tiene agora Dios tan poca cuenta
y familiaridad con los obispos y
con los otros perlados y curas de
ánimas como con los pastores
que andan con el ganado en el
campo. Y la verdadera reprensión
que me habéis de dar es con el
buen enxemplo y dotrina de
vuestra vida, para que yo me
avergüence y confunda cuando
no hiciere lo mismo que vos
hiciéredes.
Leandro.—Avisado pastor era
esse, y bien conozco yo que no
solamente los obispos y los otros
perlados y pontífices son pastores
y tienen la obligación que has
dicho, pero que desa manera
también se pueden llamar
pastores los emperadores, reyes
y príncipes, y los otros grandes
señores y todos aquellos que
tienen vasallos y súbditos con
cargo de gobernarlos.
Amintas.—Pues si todos estos
son pastores como yo soy pastor,
harto mejor vida es la mía que no
la suya; porque los unos han de
tener cuidado de las ánimas y los
otros de los cuerpos de muchas
gentes, gobernándolos con muy
gran rectitud y justicia, y cuando
dexan de hacerlo por voluntad ó
negligencia ó descuido, es
grandíssima la pena que tienen,
que no pagan con menos que con
la condenación de sus ánimas; y
yo, aunque se me pierda un
carnero, ó me lleve el lobo una
oveja, ó me coma un cabrito, con
pagarlo á mi amo le satisfago y
quedo sin pena ninguna; así que
no tengo por buen consejo dexar
de ser pastor de rebaños de
bueyes y vacas, y ovejas y
cabras, en que tan poco se
aventura, y procurar de serlo
(como vosotros me aconsejáis) de
hombres y mujeres, poniendo en
mayor condición la salvación de
mi ánima de la que agora tengo.
Leandro.—Muy bien me parece,
Amintas, lo que dices si bastasse
para hacerme entender del todo
lo que al principio dixiste.
Amintas.—¿Y qué dixe?
Leandro.—Que la vida pastoril
era más conforme á la manera en
que la naturaleza quería que
viviesen las gentes que no
ninguna de las otras.
Amintas.—Ya me acuerdo, y lo
que por medio se ha tratado me
embarazó á seguir la plática
comenzada; pero tornando al
propósito, digo que la naturaleza
hizo y crió todas aquellas cosas
que le pareció que no solamente
bastaban para socorrer á la
necesidad de todos los animales,
pero también á la de los hombres;
y á todas las puso en gran
perfición, que si quisiésemos usar
y aprovecharnos dellas, sin otro
ningún artificio, por ventura las
hallaríamos muy más
provechosas, y serían causa de
alargarnos la salud y la vida
mucho más tiempo; porque
cuando los hombres comían por
pan las frutas de los árboles, las
hierbas, las simientes y raíces y
los otros mantenimientos sin
hacer las mezclas que agoran
hacen, no se les acababa la vida
tan presto, y así veréis que los
ciudadanos y ricos que no viven
con otro cuidado si no de procurar
de poner artificiosamente otro
diferente sabor en los manjares
del que consigo tienen, que no
siguen la orden de naturaleza
como la seguimos los pastores,
los cuales nos contentamos con
comer las cosas que he dicho, y
el pan de centeno tenemos por
curiosidad para nosotros; cuando
hallamos algunas frutas
montesinas ó algunas hierbas
comederas y también algunas
raíces sabrosas, deleitámonos en
comerlas. Si matamos alguna
liebre ó conejo con nuestros
cayados, ó si tomamos con lazos
y redes que armamos algunas
aves, no las estimamos en tanto
que se nos dé mucho por
comerlas, por la costumbre que
tenemos de contentarnos con lo
que ordinariamente comemos,
porque nunca nos falta esto que
digo, con abundancia de leche y
queso y manteca y cuajada que
nos dan las cabras y las ovejas; y
cuando la sed nos acosa,
buscamos las fuentes de las
montañas, y llegándonos á ellas,
miramos cómo salen aquellos
chorros de agua á borbollones por
medio de las venas de la tierra, y
á donde vemos que la arena está
más limpia y dorada, con unas
pedrecillas pequeñas que con la
claridad transparente de la agua
están reluciendo, allí nos
echamos de bruces y nos
hartamos. Y si esto no queremos
hacer, con nuestras manos
encorvadas tomamos el agua y la
traemos á la boca, no tomando
menos gusto en beber por este
vaso natural y de que nos poseyó
naturaleza, que si bebiésemos
por los más ricos de oro y plata
que tuvieron los reyes Creso y
Mida, como se cuenta en las
historias. Cierto, poco cuidado
tenemos de los buenos vinos y
sidras y cervezas y alojas, ni de
los otros brebajes que se hacen,
porque el no verlos ni tratarlos
nos quita la codicia dellos y de los
manjares sabrosos y delicados; y
el gusto, como está hecho á
comer y beber lo que digo,
parécele que no hay cosa que
mejor sabor tenga. Y,
verdaderamente, muchos de
nosotros, comiendo algunas
veces de las cosas que no
acostumbramos, por buenas que
sean, nos revuelven los
estómagos y nos hacen mucho
daño; assí que no sentimos falta
dellas, ni las procuramos, antes
nos reimos y burlamos de ver á
las otras gentes con un error y
cuidado tan grande, y con una
solicitud tan extraña en tener
muchas cosas bien aderezadas y
muchos manjares bien adobados
para hartarse dellos, los cuales,
pasando por tantas manos tan
envueltos y revueltos, no pueden
ir con aquella limpieza que lo que
nosotros comemos, aunque á
todos os parezca al contrario
desto. Y dejando lo que toca al
comer y beber, muy gran ventaja
es la que haga la vida pastoril á la
de todas las otras gentes, en la
quietud y reposo, viviendo con
mayor sosiego, más apartados de
cuidados y de todas las zozobras
que el mundo suele dar á los que
le siguen; las cuales son tan
grandes y tan pesadas cargas,
que si las gentes quisiesen vivir
por la orden natural, habían de
procurar por todas las vías que
pudiesen de huirlas y apartarse
dellas; pero no viven sino contra
todo lo que quiere la naturaleza,
buscando riquezas, procurando
señoríos, adquiriendo haciendas,
usurpando rentas, y todo esto
para vivir desasosegados y con
trabajos, con revueltas y con
grandes persecuciones y fatigas.
Los que somos pastores, el
mayor cuidado que tenemos es
de dormir muy descansadamente;
muy pocas cosas nos hacen
perder el sueño si no estamos en
alguna parte donde tengamos
temor á los lobos. A donde quiera
que vamos hallamos muy buena
cama, que es la tierra, en la cual
nos acostamos sin hallar menos
los colchones y cabezales
blandos, ni las sábanas delgadas
y mantas de lana fina. Ponemos
una piedra ó terrón por cabecera,
y muchas veces se nos passa así
una noche entera sin que
despertemos; y de mí os digo,
que cuando me pongo á pensar
que la tierra es la verdadera cama
en que nuestros cuerpos han de
reposar después que la ánima los
desampare, tan largo tiempo
como será hasta que seamos
llamados para el universal juicio,
que me maravillo cómo por tan
pocos días y tan breve vida
ninguno quiere hacer mudanza ni
tener otra cama. Y si dixéredes
que se hace por el daño que
recebiría la salud con la humedad
de la tierra, la costumbre es la
que quita estos inconvenientes,
que los pastores por la mayor
parte viven muy sanos y con
pocas enfermedades, y si las
tenemos, no tan recias y
trabajosas como los que viven
con regalos y delicadezas. Y
también os sé decir que los
vestidos que traemos, aunque no
son tan costosos, no son de
menos provecho que los de los
ciudadanos, porque después de
andar muy bien arropados,
traemos encima las zamarras y
pellicos en el invierno, con el pelo
adentro, que nos pone mucho
calor, y en verano afuera, porque
la lana nos defiende del sol y el
pellejo es para nosotros
templado; sentimos muy poco los
grandes fríos y los grandes
calores, porque ya el cuerpo está
curtido y acostumbrado á sufrirlos
y passarlos sin trabajo, de
manera que no nos espantan las
nieves ni las heladas, porque
cuando algo nos fatiga, eslabón y
pedernal traemos en los zurrones,
y la leña siempre está cerca, y
cuando hace muy grandes
calores y siestas, nunca falta una
cueva ó choza ó la sombra de
algún árbol que nos defiende de
la fuerza del sol; y en el campo
pocas veces falta algún viento
fresco con que mejor puede
pasarse; y assí, muy contentos y
regocijados, cuando algunos
pastores nos juntamos en uno,
tañiendo nuestras gaitas y
chirumbelas y rabeles nos
holgamos y passamos el tiempo
muy regocijados, dando saltos y
haciendo bailes y danzas y otros
muchos juegos de placer; y
cuando yo quedo solo de día,
ando con gran atención mirando
por mi ganado y procurándole
buenos pastos para la noche, en
la cual sin ningún sobresalto me
echo y duermo, como dicen, á
sueño suelto; y si despierto antes
del día, limpiando los ojos los
levanto al cielo, y mirando
aquellas labores con que los
planetas y estrellas lo pintan,
estoy contemplando muchas
cosas, principalmente en Dios
que los hizo y después en la
gloria que en ellos se espera. Y
con esto acuérdaseme de los
filósofos y astrólogos que quieren
medir los cielos y la grandeza del
sol y el tamaño de la luna, la
propiedad de cada una de las
estrellas, y riome dellos y del
contentamiento que tienen con su
ciencia, pareciéndoles tan cierta
que no pueden errar en ninguna
cosa; porque á mi me parece que
aunque acierten en muchas
dellas, es tanto lo que queda por
saber, que casi es nada lo que
saben, y que mucho de lo que
ellos tienen por cierto y
averiguado, lo debrían tener por
dudoso y aun por falso, y que sólo
aquello se puede tener por muy
verdadero que por la verdad y
certidumbre de nuestra santísima
fe estamos obligados á creer sin
duda alguna. Y de aquí métome
en otras contemplaciones que me
levantan los pensamientos á
mayores cosas que las del
mundo, y que aquellas que
vosotros, señores, me aconsejáis
y querríades que las emplease.
Cuando viene la mañana,
alégrome con la luz; estoy
mirando el lucero que viene como
guia del resplandeciente sol, miro
cómo se está descubriendo poco
á poco, cómo tiende sus claros
rayos sobre la haz de la tierra.
Levántome luego en pie sin tener
trabajo de vestírme, como no lo
tuve de desnudarme, y bendigo y
alabo á Dios con ver que muchas
veces el campo, que á la noche
estaba seco y limpio, á la mañana
comienza á reverdecer saliendo
los gromecitos pequeños de la
hierba, la cual (estándola yo
mirando) va creciendo, y de ahí á
pocos días veo salir las flores y
las rosas de diversos colores y
matices, con una hermosura y
olor tan suave, que parece cosa
celestial. Oyo los cantos de las
aves á las mañanas y á las
tardes, que también con su dulce
harmonía parecen música del
cielo, y, en fin, veo pocas cosas
que me den enojo y pocas que
me desasosieguen; como no veo
lo que pasa en el mundo,
tampoco lo codicio, ni me parece
que me falta nada, y hartas veces
con el sobrado placer ando
alrededor del ganado tañendo con
mi chirumbela, dando saltos, que
quien me viese pensaría que
estoy fuera de juicio, aunque yo
cuando esto hago pienso que
tengo más seso y estoy más
cuerdo que nunca.
Leandro.—Según esso, hermano
Amintas, más amigo eres de la
vida contemplativa que no de la
activa, y no te puedo negar que
no tienes razón en ello, pues por
la boca de Christo se declaró y
averiguó tener mayor perfición;
mas para hacer lo que tú dices, si
yo no me engaño, lo mejor sería
ser flayre.
Amintas.—En esso cada uno
hace lo que Dios le da de gracia,
que yo por agora no quiero perder
la libertad, sino hacer con ella lo
que pudiere, para que Dios sea
servido, que yo confiesso que, no
teniendo respecto sino al servicio
de Dios, es más perfecta vida la
de los flayres; pero si queremos
gozar juntamente de la libertad
del mundo, buena es la de los
pastores, y no es por fuerza que
se han de salvar todos los flayres
ni condenarse los que no lo
fuesen.
Leandro.—No tienen tan buen
aparejo para salvarse los
pastores como ellos, porque cada
día dicen ó ven misa, rezan sus
horas y hacen otras devociones y
sacrificios que vosotros no podéis
hacer.
Amintas.—Yo no comparo la vida
de flayres y pastores para
hacerlas iguales, que bien
conozco la ventaja por las causas
que he dicho, pero tengo la vida
de los pastores por mejor que la
de los otros hombres que siguen
los oficios y tratos del mundo. Y lo
que yo pretendo que entendais de
mis razones no es sino la poca
razón que tenéis en persuadirme
que dexe esta manera de vivir y
que siga cualquiera de las otras
que á vosotros os parece
mejores, no lo siendo.
Florián.—¿Parécete á ti que es
bien oir missa tan de tarde en
tarde, confessaros mal y por mal
cabo, oir tan pocos sermones,
saber tan mal las cosas que tocan
á la fe y tener tan poca noticia de
las cosas y precetos ordenados
por la Iglesia?
Amintas.—Harto peor es saberlo
y no usar dello como conviene,
que aunque dicen que la
iñorancia no excusa el pecado,
como no se puede negar, á lo
menos quita la gravedad del
pecado, porque más gravemente
peca el que comete un pecado
sabiendo que lo es, que no el que
iñorantemente peca sin saber lo
que hace, y el pastor que no
cumpliere con el preceto divino y
de la Iglesia en lo de la
confessión, no le meto yo en la
cuenta de los pastores de quien
he hablado, ni tampoco el que
dexase de oir missa podiendo
hacerlo, aunque los santos
padres del desierto y los
ermitaños con la contemplación
suplían las faltas que hacían en
esto, porque Sanct Antón y San
Pablo y otro muy gran número
dellos estuvieron muchos años y
tiempos donde ni vían missa, ni
oían sermón, ni estaban al rezar
de las horas; pero no por esso
dexaron de salvarse y venir á ser
santos y canonizados; assí que
no por la falta que en lo que he
dicho hecieren los pastores
dexarán de tener por otras
muchas vías aparejo para su
salvación.
Leandro.—Bien me parece lo
que dices, pero no me podrás
negar que no vivís todos los