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International regimes and alliance behavior: explaining NATO conventional force levels

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 May 2009

John S. Duffield
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of Government and Foreign Affairs at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville.
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Abstract

With the end of the cold war, the military posture of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) has entered a period of profound change. Prior to the recent dramatic political events in Europe, however, NATO conventional force levels in the Central Region had been remarkably stable for some three decades. This article seeks to explain this record of stability in terms of three widely used theories of international relations. It argues that balance-of-power theory and public goods theory cannot alone provide a satisfactory account. Rather, these traditional approaches for understanding alliance behavior must be supplemented by regime theory, which emphasizes the constraining effects of enduring institutional factors even in the face of structural change. Specifically, it shows how an international regime has influenced the provision of conventional forces in the Central Region by alliance members. More generally, this analysis seeks to contribute to the literature on international regimes in three ways. First, it demonstrates that regimes do matter by providing an example of their importance for explaining state behavior and international outcomes. Second, it extends regime theory to relations among military allies. Third, it elaborates a comprehensive model for understanding why states actually comply with regime injunctions. The model stresses both the ways in which regimes effectively modify the international environment within which states operate, altering the costs and benefits associated with different courses of action, and the ways in which participating states may internalize regime norms and rules, thereby making compliance increasingly automatic.

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Articles
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Copyright © The IO Foundation 1992

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References

An earlier version of this article was presented at the meeting of the American Political Science Association, San Francisco, 30 August—2 September 1990. For helpful comments on previous drafts, I would like to thank Robert Beck, Mark Brawley, Cheryl Eschbach, Sandra Gubin, David Hendrickson, Lisa Martin, Herman Schwartz, Nina Tannenwald, Steve Weber, and, especially, Stephen Krasner and two anonomyous reviewers for International Organization. Steven Finkel provided valuable assistance with the statistical analysis. For research support, I am grateful to the Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University.

1. The Alliance's New Strategic Concept,” NATO Review 39 (12 1991), pp. 2532Google Scholar. The new NATO strategy document is the first ever to be made public.

2. The size limits on German forces are contained in the “Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany,” which is reprinted in Arms Control Today 20 (October 1990), pp. 33–34. For a discussion of the CFE treaty, see Daalder, Ivo H., The CFE Treaty: An Overview and an Assessment (Washington, D.C.: The Johns Hopkins Foreign Policy Institute, 1991)Google Scholar.

3. Before German unification, the NATO Central Region was defined to include Belgium, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG), less its territory north of the Weser river. Although the FRG traditionally stationed a small fraction of its forces outside of the Central Region in Schleswig-Holstein, the figures in this article include all West German forces.

4. This study focuses on three variables: military personnel, divisions, and brigades. Of these, the number of military personnel is, perhaps, the best indicator of actual combat capability. Standard combat units vary in size from one country to another. The number of divisions or brigades fielded by a particular nation, moreover, may increase or decrease simply as a result of reorganizations that produce little or no change in fighting power. It may be argued that such simple, quantitative measures provide an inadequate guide to actual combat capability. Qualitative improvements alone may result in significant increases in the strength of NATO's conventional forces. To be sure, incremental qualitative improvements are inevitable because of advances in military technology. In the case of NATO, however, such improvements tended to be canceled out over time by comparable, if not greater, qualitative improvements in Warsaw Pact forces. Moreover, the overall effect of qualitative changes on combat capability is extremely difficult to measure in the absence of actual wartime experience. Indeed, more sophisticated equipment may prove to be less reliable or more difficult to maintain under adverse combat conditions.

5. This study does not intend to suggest that the nuclear component of NATO's military posture has not been important. It is based, however, on the premise that the sizes of the alliance's conventional and nuclear forces, while clearly related, are amenable to distinct theoretical explanations. Some of the links between the two types of forces are discussed below.

6. Between 1951 and 1967, the three largest variations occurred (1) during the late 1950s, when the Eisenhower administration withdrew approximately 30,000 noncombat personnel; (2) during the 1961–62 Berlin crisis, when President Kennedy dispatched 40,000 additional troops to Europe; and (3) in 1966, when 30,000 specialists were temporarily withdrawn because of the war in Vietnam.

7. For an insightful application of these theories to a related set of issues, see Kupchan, Charles A., “NATO and the Persian Gulf: Examining Intra-alliance Behavior,” International Organization 42 (Spring 1988), pp. 317–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

8. It should be emphasized that this study does not purport to offer a comprehensive evaluation of the validity of the theories discussed. Rather, it has the much more limited aim of determining which theories are most useful for understanding the important phenomena described above.

9. For a clear articulation of balance-of-power theory, see Waltz, Kenneth N., Theory of International Politics (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, 1979)Google Scholar, especially chapter 6.

10. For example, Posen defines power as “military capability and assets that contribute to military capability.” See Posen, Barry R., The Sources of Military Doctrine: France, Britain, and Germany Between the World Wars (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1984), p. 61Google Scholar. See also Waltz, , Theory of International Politics, p. 131Google Scholar.

11. A more general formulation of balance-of-power theory is offered by Stephen Walt, who emphasizes the role of threats, rather than power alone, in determining international behavior. Walt defines threats as a function of offensive capabilities, geographical proximity, and perceived intentions as well as aggregate power. See Walt, Stephen M., The Origins of Alliances (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1987)Google Scholar.

12. To be sure, the application of balance-of-power theory to the question of NATO conventional force levels in the Central Region is not without its difficulties. The theory is intended to explain general tendencies in international relations rather than specific foreign policy decisions. Nevertheless, it has already been used with some success to account for the specific military strategies that states adopt (see Posen, The Sources of Military Doctrine). Because the history NATO conventional force levels covers a considerable time span—some four decades—and represents an important component of the foreign policies of a significant number of states, it would seem to lend itself at least as well to a balance-of-power explanation. Perhaps more troublesome are several specific problems raised by attempts to apply balance-of-power theory.

One problem is the difficulty of measuring perceptions of adversary intentions and the probability of war. Moreover, even in situations where adversary capabilities and intentions seem clear-cut, it may be difficult to ascertain just what the appropriate response, in terms of conventional force levels, would be. Nevertheless, it should be possible to overcome these difficulties to some extent by focusing on the effects of changes in the independent variables rather than on their absolute values. For further discussion of the problems of threat perception, see Knorr, Klaus, “Threat Perception,” in Knorr, , ed., Historical Dimensions of National Security (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1976), pp. 78119Google Scholar.

13. See Olson, Mancur, The Logic of Collective Action: Public Goods and the Theory of Groups (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1965)Google Scholar. This formulation of the basic hypothesis is borrowed from Oneal, John R., “The Theory of Collective Action and Burden Sharing in NATO,” International Organization 44 (Summer 1990), p. 380CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

14. The literature on the subject is vast and continues to grow; the first such attempt remains the seminal article. See Olson, Mancur and Zeckhauser, Richard, “An Economic Theory of Alliances,”Review of Economics and Statistics 48 (08 1966), pp. 266–79CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For a valuable recent analysis, see Oneal, John R., “Testing the Theory of Collective Action: NATO Defense Burdens, 1950–1984,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 34 (09 1990), pp. 426–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

15. In addition to the previously cited works by Oneal, important analyses of this question include the following: Sandler, Todd and Cauley, Jon, “On the Economic Theory of Alliances,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 19 (06 1975), pp. 330–48CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Sandler, Todd, “Impurity of Defense: An Application to the Economics of Alliances,” Kyklos, vol. 30, no. 3, 1977, pp. 443–60CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Murdoch, James C. and Sandler, Todd, “A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis of NATO,” Journal of Conflict Resolution 26 (06 1982), pp. 237–63CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Oneal, John R. and Elrod, Mark A., “NATO Burden Sharing and the Forces for Change,” International Studies Quarterly 33 (12 1990), pp. 435–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16. For an early analysis of the contributions of NATO's conventional forces to deterrence, see Snyder, Glenn H., Deterrence and Defense: Toward a Theory of National Security (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1962)Google Scholar.

17. It may be argued that conventional force levels, although superior to military spending, are still an inadequate operationalization of collective security, since NATO nuclear weapons have also helped to deter Soviet aggression. In addition, it is impossible to establish the respective contributions of conventional and nuclear forces to deterrence with any degree of certainty. For obvious reasons, however, it is unlikely that there has been a close relationship between the provision of conventional forces and contributions to nuclear deterrence in the Central Region by NATO countries. Nuclear deterrence has been provided extremely disproportionately by the United States. Moreover, with the exception of those weapons stationed in or clearly dedicated to the defense of Europe, the analysis of the contribution of U.S. nuclear forces is rendered problematic by the fact that they were also used to deter a wide range of threats outside the NATO area. Thus, it seems reasonable to consider conventional and nuclear forces separately, especially to the extent that they deterred different types of military threats in Europe or contributed to the deterrence of a particular threat in different ways.

18. Relative benefits, which are difficult to measure in any case, are assumed to be constant, as they are in most applications of public goods theory. It could be argued that public goods theory does not purport to indicate how much of a change in a state's relative GDP is required to produce a change in its relative force contribution. The dependent variable could exhibit a degree of “stickiness” that would result in no observable movement in response to sufficiently small variations in the independent variable. This would seem to be a serious limitation to the explanatory and predictive power of the theory, however. The implication of previous applications of public goods theory, moreover, is that the relationship is a continuous one.

19. As a consequence of the invasion of Czechoslovakia, which resulted in the stationing of five Soviet divisions in that country, the number of Soviet combat units and military personnel located across West Germany's eastern borders increased by approximately one-fifth in the late 1960s. Between 1965 and 1980, moreover, the total number of Warsaw Pact military personnel in Central Europe rose by 150, 000, or some 20 percent. During the same period, the Warsaw Pact extended its advantage over NATO in the number of major weapons systems deployed with active combat units in Central Europe from 50 to 100 percent, even as it eroded NATO's traditional qualitative advantages. See Karber, Philip A., “To Lose An Arms Race,” in Nerlich, Uwe, ed., The Soviet Asset: Military Power in the Competition over Europe (Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger, 1983), pp. 34, 37, and 40Google Scholar.

20. It could be argued that these opposing pressures tended to cancel each other out. It seems highly unlikely, however, that they would have done so quite so precisely. For a discussion of the U.S. reassessments of Warsaw Pact capabilities, see Enthoven, Alain C. and Smith, K. Wayne, How Much Is Enough? Shaping the Defense Program, 1961–1969 (New York: Harper & Row, 1971)Google Scholar.

21. Although the assumption that changes in force levels should correspond to changes in GDP over five-year intervals may be questioned, it is no less plausible than the assumption that is usually employed in applications of public goods theory, namely, that changes in GDP should be reflected in changes in defense burden in the very same year. Indeed, it seems more likely that the impact of changes in GDP will be registered over a period of at least several years.

22. Confidence in the significance of this result is increased by a further consideration. Consistently marginal changes in relative GDP would make the establishment of any correlation problematic. In fact, relative GDP often varied substantially within five-year intervals, sometimes as much as it did during the entire thirty-five year period.

23. Much of the regime literature addresses trie rise, fall, and transformation of regimes. The present study, however, focuses solely on regimes as determinants of state behavior.

24. See especially Krasner, Stephen D., ed., International Regimes (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1983)Google Scholar; Keohane, Robert O., After Hegemony: Collaboration and Discord in the World Political Economy (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1984)Google Scholar; Aggarwal, Vinod, Liberal Protectionism: The International Politics of Organized Textile Trade (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985)Google Scholar; and Moravcsik, Andrew M., “Disciplining Trade Finance: The OECD Export Credit Arrangement,” International Organization 43 (Winter 1989), pp. 173205CrossRefGoogle Scholar. An important exception is Young, Oran R., International Cooperation: Building Regimes for Natural Resources and the Environment (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1989)Google Scholar.

25. Examples include the following: Jervis, Robert, “Security Regimes,” in Krasner, , ed., International Regimes, pp. 173–94Google Scholar; Stein, Janice Gross, “Detection and Defection: Security ‘Regimes’ and the Management of International Conflict,” International Journal 40 (08 1985), pp. 599627Google Scholar; Nye, Joseph S. Jr., “Nuclear Learning and U.S.-Soviet Security Regimes,” International Organization 41 (Summer 1987), pp. 371402CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and George, Alexander L., Farley, Philip J., and Dallin, Alexander, eds., U.S.-Soviet Security Cooperation: Achievements, Failures, Lessons (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988)Google Scholar.

26. Jervis concludes, for example, that a security regime probably did not regulate U.S.-Soviet relations “because narrow and quite short-run self-interest can account for most of the restraints [observed in U.S. and Soviet behavior].“ See his “Security Regimes,” p. 187.

27. See ibid, pp. 174–76; and Lipson, Charles, “International Cooperation in Economics and Security Affairs,” World Politics 37 (10 1984), pp. 123CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

28. For further discussion of this concept, see Jervis, Robert, “Cooperation Under the Security Dilemma,” World Politics 30 (01 1978), pp. 167214CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

29. Smith, Roger K., “Explaining the Non-proliferation Regime: Anomalies for Contemporary International Relations Theory,” International Organization 41 (Spring 1987), pp. 253–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30. One should be careful not to push the analogy between intra-alliance security relations and international economic relations too far, however. Differences of a fundamental nature distinguish the roles of regimes in those two spheres of activity. In the economic realm, regimes typically serve to restrain states from interfering in the operation of markets, allowing transactions among private entities to go forward. In the case of intra-alliance relations, the emphasis is primarily on the actions of the states themselves as prescribed or proscribed by regimes. For discussions of the nature of nonsecurity regimes, see Young, , International Cooperation, pp. 1314Google Scholar; and the analytical framework offered in Aggarwal, , Liberal Protectionism, pp. 1822Google Scholar.

31. Surprisingly little of the regime literature addresses the question of whether and how regimes actually influence state conduct. See Haggard, Stephan and Simmons, Beth A., “Theories of International Regimes,”International Organization 41 (Summer 1987), pp. 491517CrossRefGoogle Scholar;and Young, , International Cooperation, pp. 206–7Google Scholar.

32. See Young, ibid, pp. 15–16. Similarly, Keohane has defined international institutions, including regimes, as “persistent and connected sets of rules, formal and informal, that prescribe behavioural roles, constrain activity, and shape expectations.” An early consensual definition of regimes is described by Krasner as “sets of implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures around which actors' expectations converge in a given area of international relations.” See Keohane, Robert O.Multilateralism: An Agenda for Research,” InternationalJournal 45 (Autumn 1990), p. 732Google Scholar;and Krasner, Stephen D., “Structural Causes and Regime Consequences: Regimes as Intervening Variables,” in Krasner, , ed., International Regimes, p. 2Google Scholar. Norms and rules are also central in the sense that in their absence, other regime elements, such as those creating incentives to comply, would serve no meaningful purpose. Throughout the rest of this article, the terms “norms,” “rules,” “conventions,” “injunctions,” “standards,” and “guides to behavior” are used interchangeably.

33. The best general treatments of this question are to be found in Young, , International Cooperation, pp. 7080Google Scholar; and Keohane, , After Hegemony, pp. 98106Google Scholar and 237–40. Also instructive are analyses of compliance with international law. See, especially, Fisher, Roger, “Constructing Rules that Affect Governments,” in Brennan, Donald G., ed., Arms Control, Disarmament, and National Security (New York: George Braziller, 1961)Google Scholar;Henkin, Louis, How Nations Behave: Law and Foreign Policy (New York: Praeger, 1968)Google Scholar, especially chapter 4; and Chayes, Abram, “An Inquiry into the Workings of Arms Control Agreements,” Harvard Law Review 85 (03 1972), pp. 905–69CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

34. The first approach is most fully developed in Keohane, After Hegemony. The second is suggested by Rosenau, James N., “Before Cooperation: Hegemons, Regimes, and Habit-driven Actors in World Politics,”International Organization 40 (Autumn 1986), pp. 849–94CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For similar distinctions, see Young, , International Cooperation, pp. 210–12Google Scholar; and Bull, Hedley, The Anarchical Society: A Study of Order in World Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977), p. 139CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Below, I seek to identify more explicitly the domestic and cognitive sources of state “habits.”

35. For further discussion of the role played by concern for reputation, see Axelrod, Robert, “An Evolutionary Approach to Norms,”American Political Science Review 80 (12 1986), pp. 1107–8CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

36. I thank Stephen Walt for helping me to appreciate the significance of this fundamental point.

37. Keohane, , After Hegemony, pp. 103–6Google Scholar.

38. See Young, , International Cooperation, pp. 20, 7782Google Scholar; and Nye, “Nuclear Learning and U.S.-Soviet Security Regimes.” For a discussion of the internalization of norms, see Axelrod, , “An Evolutionary Approach to Norms,” p. 1104Google Scholar. See also Keohane's, discussion of the implications of bounded rationality in After Hegemony, pp. 111–16Google Scholar.

39. See Nye, ibid., especially pp. 398–401; and Keohane, , “Multilateralism,” pp. 737–38Google Scholar.

40. For a useful general discussion of organizational behavior in the national security arena, see Halperin, Morton H., Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1974)Google Scholar.

41. For an analysis of how regimes can empower new groups, see Haas, Peter M., “Do Regimes Matter? Epistemic Communities and Mediterranean Pollution Control,” International Organization 43 (Summer 1989), pp. 377404CrossRefGoogle Scholar. The role of firms in promoting free trade is discussed in Milner, Helen V., Resisting Protectionism: Global Industries and the Politics of International Trade (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1988)Google Scholar. On the purposive use of international institutions to shape domestic structures, see Snyder, Jack, “Averting Anarchy in the New Europe,”International Security 14 (Spring 1990), pp. 541CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

42. Chayes, , “An Inquiry into the Workings of Arms Control Agreements,” p. 919Google Scholar.

43. In addition to Halperin, Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy, see Allison, Graham T., Essence of Decision: Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis (Boston: Little, Brown, 1971)Google Scholar; and Chayes, , “An Inquiry into the Workings of Arms Control Agreements,” pp. 935–46Google Scholar.

44. Useful overviews of the role of cognitive factors are provided by Jervis, Robert, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1976), especially pp. 117202Google Scholar; and , John D. Steinbruner, The Cybernetic Theory of Decision: New Dimensions of Political Analysis (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1974), pp. 88139Google Scholar. The role of the development of shared knowledge and cause-and-effect beliefs in reinforcing regime compliance is discussed in Haas, “Do Regimes Matter?” For a discussion of the concept of policy legitimacy, see George, Alexander L., “Domestic Constraints on Regime Change in U.S. Foreign Policy: The Need for Policy Legitimacy,” in Holsti, Ole R., Siverson, Randolph M., and George, Alexander L., eds., Change in the International System (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1980), pp. 233–62Google Scholar.

45. Young, , International Cooperation, p. 71Google Scholar.

46. See Simmons, Haggard and, “Theories of International Regimes,” pp. 513–14Google Scholar. For a similar argument concerning the impact of beliefs, see George, Alexander L., “The Causal Nexus Between Cognitive Beliefs and Decision-making Behavior: The ‘Operational Code’ Belief System,” in Falkowski, Lawrence S., ed., Psychological Models in International Politics (Boulder, Colo.: Westview, 1979), pp. 95124Google Scholar.

47. As noted above, however, compliance need not occur in every instance.

48. In fact, in 1955 the alliance adopted a measure requiring members to inform the North Atlantic Council of any important changes in force contributions that were being considered. See DC(55)40, “UK Position in the 1955 NATO Annual Review,” memorandum by the Minister of Defense, 27 September 1955, Cabinet Office Records (CAB)131/16, Public Record Office, London (PRO).

49. National goals for ready forces in the Central Region during this period, like actual force contributions during the subsequent three decades, remained relatively constant (Table 4). In most cases, they varied by no more than one division. The main exception was the goal for French forces, which declined sharply in the late 1950s from seven to only four ready divisions, following the withdrawal of most NATO-assigned French forces for duty in North Africa in the mid-1950s.

50. See Table 4. Once again, the only significant difference lay in the French forces. At the time, the gap between German requirements and actual force levels was expected to be closed within several years with the completion of the West German military buildup.

51. Cleveland, Harlan, NATO: The Transatlantic Bargain (New York: Harper & Row, 1970), pp. 8182Google Scholar.

52. See Young, , International Cooperation, pp. 8183Google Scholar; and Schelling, Thomas C., The Strategy of Conflict (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960), pp. 6770Google Scholar and 111–13. I am grateful to Edward Rhodes for illuminating this connection.

53. “Protocols to the Brussels Treaty, 22 October 1954,” Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) 1952–1954, vol. 5 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1983), pp. 1443–45Google Scholar.

54. “Protocols to the Brussels Treaty.”

55. It should be noted that a second important function of the U.S. political commitment and military presence has been to reassure the other countries of Western Europe with respect to the possibility of a resurgent Germany and to ensure that any German forces would be integrated into a larger, multinational force that Germany could not dominate. See Ireland, Timothy P., Creating the Entangling Alliance: The Origins of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1981)Google Scholar; and Joffe, Josef, The Limited Partnership: The United States and Western Europe (Cambridge, Mass.: Ballinger, 1987)Google Scholar.

56. For example, see Buchan, Alistair Francis, “The United States and the Security of Europe,” in Landes, David, ed., Western Europe: The Trials of Partnership (Lexington, Mass.: D.C. Heath, 1977), p. 311Google Scholar.

57. Simon, Herbert A., “Human Nature in Politics: The Dialogue of Psychology with Political Science,” American Political Science Review 79 (06 1985), pp. 293304CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

58. For an illustration of such thinking, see the testimony of GeneralsBurchinal, David A. and Goodpaster, Andrew J., in U.S. Congress, Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Forces in Europe: Hearings Before the Subcommittee on United States Security Agreements and Commitments Abroad, part 10, 91st Congress, 1st sess., 1970Google Scholar.

59. Many U.S. policymakers, in particular, subscribed to the questionable belief that in the absence of a firm U.S. commitment, the European countries would readily bandwagon with the Soviet Union. See Lepgold, Joseph, The Declining Hegemon: The United States and European Defense, 1960–1990 (New York: Greenwood Press, 1990), pp. 8692Google Scholar. For evidence that bandwagoning behavior in international relations is the exception rather than the rule, see Walt, Origins of Alliances.

60. For a discussion of the distinction between general and specific beliefs, see Odell, John S., U.S. Monetary Policy: Markets, Power, and Ideas as Sources of Change (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1982), pp. 6264Google Scholar.

61. For examples of the views of high-level U.S. officials and leading American defense intellectuals, see Raj, Christopher S., American Military in Europe: Controversy over NATO Burden Sharing (New Delhi: ABC Publishing House, 1983), pp. 147Google Scholar, 182, and 189.

62. For further discussion of the concept of organizational “essence,” see Halperin, , Bureaucratic Politics and Foreign Policy, pp. 2840Google Scholar.

63. Kupchan argues that European force levels have been determined primarily by domestic factors. See his “NATO and the Persian Gulf,” p. 346.

64. See the discussion of German force planning in the 1970s in Baldauf, Joerg, Implementing Flexible Response: The U.S., Germany, and NATO's Conventional Forces,” Ph.D. diss., Massachusetts Institute of Technology, 1987, pp. 507–8Google Scholar.

65. For further discussion of the method of “process-tracing,” see George, “The Causal Nexus Between Cognitive Beliefs and Decision-making Behavior,” and Aggarwal, Liberal Protectionism.

66. In principle, it would be most useful to study instances in which balance-of-power theory or public goods theory would predict significant change in NATO force levels. This criterion presents two sets of difficulties, however. First, it may be impossible to specify the precise point at which variations in the factors emphasized by these theories would be expected to cause change in the dependent variables. A second problem arises whenever change is not seriously considered by national decision makers, notwithstanding structural pressures. Indeed, we may note that very few proposals to alter national force contributions were made after the 1950s. Although such cases would seem to conform to the expectations of regime theory, the empirical obstacles to establishing regime influence may be insurmountable. Thus, a more tractable approach is to limit the analysis to instances in which a significant change in a state's conventional force contribution was considered within the government and to examine how those proposals fared. In any case, strong international or domestic pressures militated for force reductions in each of the cases considered below.

67. The cases do not include the French withdrawal from NATO's integrated military structure in 1966. The only immediate force structure consequence of that move, however, was the redeployment of approximately 10,000 French air force personnel from West Germany to France. The size of the French ground forces in West Germany was not significantly affected.

68. For Eisenhower's, views, see the following documents in FRUS 1952–1954, vol. 2 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1984)Google Scholar; “Memorandum by Cutler to the Secretary of State, 3 September 1953,” pp. 455–57; “Memorandum by the President to the Secretary of State, 8 September 1953,” p. 460; and “Memorandum of Discussion at the 165th Meeting of the National Security Council, 7 October 1953,” pp. 527–29.

69. For details of the Radford plan, see Kelleher, Catherine McArdle, Germany and the Politics of Nuclear Weapons (New York: Columbia University Press, 1975), pp. 4344Google Scholar.

70. See the following documents in FRUS 1955 –1957, vol. 4 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1987)Google Scholar; “Memorandum of a Conversation, ‘NATO Force Levels,’ 13 08 1956,“ pp. 93–95; “Memorandum of a Conference With the President, 2 October 1956,” pp. 99–102; “Memorandum of a Conversation,” Defense Expenditures and Forces in Germany,' 11 December 1956,” p. 131. See also Memorandum, , Elbrick, and MacArthur, to Dulles, , “Review of NATO Strategy and Withdrawal of Forces,” 27 09 1956Google Scholar, 740.5/9–2756, Record Group 59, National Archives and Records Administration.

71. See, for example, COS(97th)l, “Overall Strategic Concept,” 9 October 1956, Ministry of Defense Records (DEFE) 4/90, PRO.

72. See the following documents in FRUS 1955–1957, vol. 4: “Memorandum of a Conversation Between the Secretary of State and the British Ambassador (Makins), 29 June 1956,” pp. 84–86; “Memorandum of a Conversation Between the Secretary of State and the British Ambassador (Makins), 13 July 1956,” pp. 89–90; “Letter from Prime Minister Eden to President Eisenhower, 18 July 1956,” pp. 90–92.

73. Specifically, Britain was permitted to reduce the size of its forces on the continent as long as it maintained the “equivalent fighting capacity” of four divisions and a tactical air force. The British government could also petition the North Atlantic Council to review the situation if too great a strain on Britain's external finances was imposed. See “Protocols to the Brussels Treaty,” p. 1445.

74. See, for example, Brook memorandum to the Minister of Defense, 5 December 1956, Foreign Office Records (FO) 371/123189, PRO; and Clinton-Thomas memorandum to the Foreign Secretary, 18 December 1956, FO 371/123189, PRO.

75. See, for example, CC(14)1, “Western European Union,” 28 February 1957, CAB 128/31, Part 1, PRO; COS(57) “UK Force Cuts-NATO Annual Review and SHAPE Planning Guidance,” 8 May 1957, 103, DEFE 5/75, PRO; C(58)5, “Local Defense Costs in Germany,” 8 January 1958, Annex, CAB 129/91, PRO.

76. For details of the negotiations, see Treverton, Gregory F., The “Dollar Drain ” and American Forces in Germany: Managing the Political Economics of Alliance (Athens: Ohio University Press, 1978)Google Scholar; and II, Darnell M. Whitt, “Quarrel on the Rhine: The Trilateral Talks of 1966–1967,” Ph.D. diss., The Johns Hopkins University, 1977Google Scholar.

77. Trilateral Negotiations and NATO,” n.d., Declassified Documents Reference System(DDRS), no. 1098 (Washington, D.C.: Carrollton Press, 1985)Google Scholar. DDRS documents will hereafter be cited by document number and publication year.

78. “Trilateral Negotiations and NATO”; and Memorandum for the Secretary of Defense, Military Redeployments from Europe,' 2 February 1967,” DDRS, no. 2571, 1986Google Scholar.

79. The views of the Joint Chiefs of Staff are presented in “Memorandum for the Secretary of Defense, ‘Withdrawal of U.S. Forces From Europe,’ 27 October 1966,” DDRS, no. 2570, 1986Google Scholar. For McCloy's views, see Letter, McCloy to the President, 21 November 1966, and attachments, DDRS, no. 1098, 1986.

80. “Trilateral Negotiations and NATO.”

81. Telegram, Bonn 12730, 24 April 1967, DDRS, no. 1021, 1985.

82. Telegram, State 183936, 27 April 1967, DDRS, no. 191, 1985.

83. The most thorough account is provided by Williams, Phil, The Senate and U.S. Troops in Europe (New York: St. Martin's, 1985)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

84. The original 1971 amendment required a 50 percent reduction by the end of the year. Mansfield subsequently modified the amendment to incorporate a phased withdrawal over three years, unless negotiations on mutual NATO-Warsaw Pact troop reductions began by the end of the year. A second 1971 amendment would have required the withdrawal of only 50,000–60,000 troops. The 1973 amendment called for a 50 percent reduction in all U.S. forces overseas with the understanding that the reduction need not be absorbed by European forces alone.

85. In addition to Williams, The Senate and U.S. Troops in Europe, see Lawrence, Richard D. and Record, Jeffrey, U.S. Force Structure in Europe: An Alternative (Washington, D.C.: The Brookings Institution, 1974), pp. 12Google Scholar.

86. For a summary of the administration's arguments, see Williams, , The Senate and U.S. Troops in Europe, pp. 174–86Google Scholar and 213–18.

87. Ibid, p. 147.

88. Williams, Phil,“The Nunn Amendment, Burden-sharing, and U.S. Troops in Europe,” Survival 27 (01/02 1985), pp. 210CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

89. Abshire, David M., Preventing World War III: A Realistic Grand Strategy (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), p. 75Google Scholar.

90. Williams, , “The Nunn Amendment, Burden-sharing and U.S. Troops in Europe,” p. 5Google Scholar.

91. For a concise discussion of the various perspectives on whether or not regimes matter, see Krasner, , “Structural Causes and Regime Consequences,” pp. 510Google Scholar.

92. See Krasner, Stephen D., “Regimes and the Limits of Realism: Regimes as Autonomous Variables,” in Krasner, , ed., International Regimes, especially pp. 355–58Google Scholar.

93. For further discussion of the sources of regime autonomy, see ibid, pp. 359–67.

94. For a similar conceptualization that is couched in terms of physical and behavioral laws on the one hand, and rules on the other, see Ostrom, Elinor, “An Agenda for the Study of Institutions,” Public Choice, vol. 48, no. 1, 1986, pp. 325CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

95. For discussions of the indeterminacy of structural factors, see, for example, Waltz, , Theory of International Politics, pp. 6873Google Scholar; and Waltz, Kenneth N.,“Reflections on Theory of International Politics: A Response to My Critics,” in Keohane, Robert O., ed., Neorealism and Its Critics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1986), pp. 343–44Google Scholar.

96. For a useful summary of the consequences of different configurations of interests for the creation and maintenance of international regimes, see Krasner, Stephen D.,“Global Communications and National Power: Life on the Pareto Frontier, ” World Politics 43 (04 1991), especially pp. 337–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

97. For examples, see George, Farley, and Dallin, eds., U.S.Soviet Security Cooperation.

98. For a recent proposal regarding Europe's future security arrangements that draws upon the insights provided by regime theory, see Kupchan, Charles A. and Kupchan, Clifford A., “Concerts, Collective Security, and the Future of Europe, ” International Security 16 (Summer 1991), pp. 114–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar.