Die Kosten- (und Nutzen-)Analyse der NATO-Erweiterung: Beispiel für die ökonomische Bewertungsproblematik von ordnungspolitischen Maßnahmen

Costs play a considerable role in the eastward enlargement of NATO particularly since initial studies estimated costs in the hundreds of billions of dollars. These studies, together with more recent ones which, by contrast, conclude that there will be hardly any additional costs, provide a good opportunity to clarify the fundamental problems of cost (and benefit) analyses for measures of Ordnungspolitik. These problems include a delimitation of costs appropriate to resource consumption, which presupposes a conscientious with-and-without comparison. In this respect analysts sometimes make the mistake of ascribing both the costs for the increases in the mobility of the old NATO members and those for the modernisation of the weapons systems of the new members to the NATO enlargement process. An appropriate cost and benefit delimitation with regard to period is also problematic if the time span under analysis is too restricted. In the case of measures of Ordnungspolitik such as the enlargement of NATO, in which significant benefits are immediately apparent, whereas costs can occur later, the temporal limitation of the cost-benefit analysis tends to act in favour of the measure - in contrast to the usual areas of application of cost-benefit analyses, where costs occur immediately and benefits may only be apparent later. Whereas benefits such as income and employment effects often play an important role in cost-benefit analyses of other measures, they are almost insignificant here. Rather, primary importance here is attached to indirect effects such as increased security, political stability and accelerated integration, effects for which the techniques of the cost-benefit analysis have yet to produce sufficiently convincing evaluation methods. One solution in such cases may be to compare the relation of the evaluable benefits and costs with the usual efficiency criteria and then calculate the minimum value of the intangible benefits in order to achieve efficiency. Calculations based on data from the CBO of the USA and the Rand Corporation show that the enlargement of NATO is efficient for the USA on the basis of the high proportion of its armaments exports even if the intangible effects are ignored. For the rest of the old members of NATO intangible effects do not have to be particularly high for enlargement to be efficient.