Max Boot Learns About Collective Action And Free Riding

Via Justin Logan, Max "the most realistic response to terrorism is for America to embrace its imperial role" Boot is peeved that other people won't pay for our imperial endeavor in Afghanistan:

What irritates me about the whole situation is that it is the U.S. that has to pick up the tab. Our troops are already doing the bulk of the fighting. Why don't our rich allies — e.g., Japan, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, France, Italy, Germany, Britain — pay for more of the cost of training? Some of those countries have made sizable troop contributions; others haven't. But the U.S. has done more than any of them in terms of fighting the Taliban directly. Why do we have to do so much more than the rest of them in financing the Afghan Security Forces too?

Then in the very next paragraph he offers up the explanation:

I should note that their failure to ante up should not be an excuse for us to walk away. This is not an act of altruism; it is very much in America's national-security interest to have a functional and effective security force in Afghanistan to prevent a Taliban/al-Qaeda takeover. Our security perimeter runs right through the Hindu Kush.

Look, obviously if the only consequence of Japan failing to pay for the training of Afghan Security Forces is that America does it instead then of course Japan isn't going to do it. There are presumably an array of things the Japanese government would like to spend money on, and most of them aren't things the US will pick up the tab for if Japan doesn't do it. So Japan will spend money on advancing Japanese priorities. What else should they do?

A large country is bound to generate a certain amount of free riding, but the upshot of Boot-style policies of whining followed by unilateralism followed by whining followed by unilateralism is a shortcut to national decline and insolvency.