The Opinionated Bastard

From this article by Radek Sikorski:

Non-U.S. NATO members own 13,000 tanks, 30,000 armored infantry vehicles, 11,000 air-craft, and numerous ships, including aircraft carriers. Europe keeps about two million men and women in uniform and spends close to $200 billion annually on defense, making it--if it were a country--the second military power in the world after the United States by a long stretch. Yet Europe's pathetic defense posture is such a cliché these days that it barely requires explanation. Most of the equipment is old, most of the money is spent on personnel, and most of the troops cannot actually be deployed beyond its shores.

...Famously, German troops had to hire Ukrainian transport planes to get to Afghanistan, and British troops found themselves with no flak jackets in Basra. Europe is at least a generation behind the United States in transport planes, satellite intelligence, mid-air refueling, and battlefield integration between the services....

...Even when it comes to conventional or peacekeeping operations, the record has been lamentable. Dutch troops stood by as the Serbs butchered the Muslim men of Srebrenica. Kosovo Force (KFOR) troops stayed in their barracks during anti-Serb riots in Kosovo in March this year. Typically, when Afghan interim president Hamid Karzai begged the NATO Istanbul summit in June to bolster NATO's strength in his country to secure the upcoming presidential and parliamentary elections--a goal that Europeans say they fervently share--barely 3,000 extra soldiers and three helicopters could be scraped together in response....

....The gap has political consequences. Europeans thought they were being good allies of the United States in September 2001 when, for the first time, NATO unanimously invoked Article 5 of the Washington Treaty in response to the 9/11 attacks. Before the authorship of the attacks was fully established, they were pledging themselves to go to war with whoever was responsible--the first time ever that the alliance made such a decision. It still rankles with them that the United States brushed the offer aside like an unwelcome distraction. The Pentagon, having been set an ambitious task of fighting a war on the other side of the globe, did not have the patience to deal with allies who, in the words of one of my interlocutors, were "in the way."....

....NATO Secretary General: "With only 55,000 soldiers currently deployed on multinational missions, most of your countries plead that they are overstretched and can do no more. "...

Kerry repeated his "we need to get our allies more involved" lie again yesterday. The fact is, there's no way that we can rely on any NATO member nations to help us bring any of the 140,000 troops in Iraq home. They just don't have the capability to be of any use. Their troops, at best, are still focused on fighting the battles of the Cold War, not dealing with nation building.

Many people in the world think we acted unilaterally in Iraq. There's some truth to that. However, acting multilaterally would have led to the same result.