French soldiers patrol the outskirts of the Nijrab valley, Afghanistan. Charuel / SipaFrom Time Magazine:
Barack Obama arrived in Strasbourg on Friday for this weekend's NATO summit enthusing about the military organization, which he described at a joint press conference with French President Nicolas Sarkozy as "the most successful alliance in modern history." That it may have been. But Obama's praise contrasts starkly with the scathing assessment of the state of NATO, now 60 years old, by European military analysts, who say that the gap in military capability between the United States and Europe has grown so big that in some places battlefield communication between NATO forces and their US allies has become difficult. "It is such a deep divide that there is a risk that NATO will become an irritant for the Americans, rather than a partner of choice," says James Arbuthnot, a British Conservative Party politician who chairs the Parliament's select defense committee. The apparent problem-free warmth between Obama and other NATO leaders over the state of the alliance, he believes, "is an illusion."
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My Comment: Europeans have no appetite to get involved in the AfghanPak conflict. If they can get out of their commitments .... they will in a heartbeat.
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