ABSTRACT
The American nation is quite different in its underlying assumptions about foreign policy from all of the nations of Europe. The relatively light burden of the German defense effort is sometimes disguised—either by making attacks on the Americans for not having the draft or by pointing out that German defense spending has grown by higher percentages. In addition to certain burdens, it continues its deployments to supplement regional military forces in Korea and in Western Europe, operating 7,000 miles and 3,000 miles respectively from the United States. The United States also bears the cost of 97 percent of the total nuclear capabilities of the alliance—the backbone, incidentally, of alliance strategy. If the Europeans are willing to settle for a low-confidence deterrent, no amount of hectoring from the United States will lead them to spend the vast sums needed to achieve a high-confidence deterrent.
