Burdensharing v . Responsibility Sharing: 1960–1990

Abstract

The 1950s and most of the 1960s was the era of ‘massive retaliation’, a strategy resting upon the use of massive nuclear retaliation in response to an attack. Although the doctrine had its detractors on both sides of the Atlantic, it also had its advocates. In burdensharing terms it meant that the overt reliance upon nuclear weapons emphasized the US position within the Alliance but also allowed the allies to shelter under a US nuclear umbrella while keeping their own expenditure to a prudent minimum. Several factors were to severely disrupt US-European relations during this decade and they all had an impact upon the burdensharing debate: the growing questioning of US nuclear guarantees (particularly from France); the US involvement in Vietnam and the European allies’ refusal to become involved; the French bid for its own nuclear deterrent force; and a change in strategy at the end of the 1960s which emphasized conventional contributions at the time that the US was being compelled to withdraw forces to meet the needs of the Vietnam war. Disillusionment with the lackadasical European allies, alongside other pressures, mounted in Congress and culminated in the Mansfield Amendments, which marked the most serious attempt to formally reallocate defence burdens within NATO, and the beginnings of the offset negotiations with Germany.