Burden-Sharing Doesn’t Need to Be Burdensome

Mark P. Lagon , Will Moreland

Security, Asia

Burden-sharing is not just the vogue du jour. It has been a longstanding U.S. desire and is much merited. Yet qualitative, beneficial burden-sharing requires leadership.

Both in campaigning and in office, Donald Trump has elevated the subject of burden-sharing among American allies, partnerships and institutions as a question of U.S. foreign policy. The issue is not new; U.S. leaders have grappled with ensuring adequate allied contributions since creating a truly global postwar network. However, by the 2016 election the issue of burden-sharing had come to a head: war fatigue from Iraq and Afghanistan combined with economic woes and growing perceptions of an increasingly unstable world, with some Americans believing that the United States was doing too much without seeing immediate returns.

The president’s critique is not unfounded. American power today differs from its heights in 1945, or even 1990. The United States will need help shouldering the maintenance of a liberal international order that has increased global security, prosperity and freedom these past seven decades. Nevertheless, the manner in which an American administration approaches the burden-sharing issue matters. Trump has pointedly called for NATO allies to pay more for defense and his team at the United Nations has circulated a potential policy to make foreign aid contingent on alignment with U.S. positions, so that aid dollars “only go to America’s friends.”

Though increased action among allies and partners is necessary, to simply demand greater burden-sharing is insufficient. Policymakers confront two central questions if they are to promote effective burden-sharing: first, how to ensure other stakeholders do step forward, rather than leave a vacuum around an issue; and, second, how to protect and advance U.S. interests if burden-sharing cedes the initiative to others.

Demands for increased activities from partners must be coupled with coordination and a measure of U.S. leadership for an effective burden-sharing campaign. A number of cases, therefore, reveal bases for eliciting burden-sharing of the quality and variety the United States should want—as well as the risks of forcing burden-sharing via disengagement. The notion of compelling other nations into taking actions—particularly by arousing skepticism around U.S. credibility—is a recipe for shortchanging American interests.