Abstract
Europe’s post-war history has witnessed massive changes, due in part to US Marshall Aid and encouragement, which have led to increasing prosperity and self-confidence amongst the major European actors; these changes have also reshaped the context of relations between the US and its allies. America’s allies are no longer weakened war-torn powers glad of aid on virtually any condition. Instead we find a new assertiveness and willingness to challenge US leadership on key policy issues, as well as the beginnings of some fundamental changes in traditional threat perceptions, even though the effects of the reforms in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union are ambiguous, at least in security terms. At one extreme they could signify that US forces are becoming superfluous to the security of that continent and maybe to the US’s own forward defence as well.
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Notes and References
Quoted in S. Duke, U.S. Defense Bases in the United Kingdom (London: Macmillan, 1987) p. 15.
See D. Yergin, Shattered Peace (London: Penguin, 1977) pp. 163–92.
R. Harkavy, Great Power Competition for Overseas Bases: The Geopolitics of Access Diplomacy (New York: Pergamon, 1982) pp. 112–13.
Quoted in J. L. Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Post War American Security Policy (Oxford University Press, 1982) p. 99.
Lord Ismay, NATO: The First Five Years 1949–1954 (Paris: NATO Information Service, 1955) pp. 31–3.
P. Williams, The Senate and U.S. Troops in Europe (London: Macmillan, 1985) p. 47.
D. Acheson, Present at the Creation (New York: W.W. Norton, 1969) pp. 374–5.
H. Borowski, A Hollow Threat: Strategic Air Power and Containment before Korea (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1982) p. 210.
Figures from, J. Molero, ‘Economic Aspects of the US Military Presence in Spain’, in J. Sharp (ed.), Europe After and American Withdrawal: Economic and Military Issues (Oxford University Press, 1990) p. 182.
National Archives, Washington DC, DCS/O TS AAG, File 23, Box 7. Letter from John McCloy to Dean Acheson, 19 Sept 1945, quoted in S. Duke, US Defence Bases in the United Kingdom: A Matter for Joint Decision! (London: Macmillan, 1987) p. 25 (emphasis added).
See K. Adenauer, Memoirs 1945–53, (Chicago: Henry Regnery Co., 1966) pp. 402–7.
T. H. Etzold, ‘The End of the Beginning … NATO’s Adoption of Nuclear Strategy’, in O. Riste (ed.), Western Security: The Formative Years (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985) p. 291, quoted in T.G. Carpenter (ed.), 1990. p. 38.
G. Treverton, The Dollar Drain and American Forces in Germany: managing the political economics of the Alliance (Athens, Ohio: Ohio University Press, 1978) p. 4.
For a detailed description of the exercises and the reactions see C. M. Kelleher, Germany and the Politics of Nuclear Weapons (New York: Columbia University Press, 1975) pp. 35–43.
Quoted in Maj-Gen E. Fursdon, The European Defence Community: A History (London: Macmillan, 1980) p. 210.
Such attitudes were most typical of the French under de Gaulle, who envisaged security arising through multiple decision-making centres, not one. See M.M. Harrison, The Reluctant Ally: France and Atlantic Security (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins Press, 1981).
D. J. Nelson, A History of U.S. Military Forces in Germany (Boulder, Co: Westview, 1987) p. 8l.
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© 1993 Simon Duke
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Duke, S. (1993). The Burdensharing Debate in its Historical Context: Setting the Tone. In: The Burdensharing Debate. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-12489-3_3
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