NATO burden-sharing: A comprehensive framework for member evaluation

From almost the inception of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), alliance observers have criticized various members for unequal or delinquent burden-sharing. Though often warranted, these criticisms failed, and continue to fail, to encompass all the ways that alliance members contribute to NATO. Using the Washington Treaty as a guide, this article proposes a framework that draws upon NATO’s enduring principles and roles to select holistic metrics to evaluate burden-sharing. Rather than dispensing with the traditional monetary inputs of defense expenditure and major equipment investment entirely, this article argues that they serve a useful purpose. However, other soft and hard power factors must augment these metrics in order to reflect burden-sharing appropriately.