Europe’s Free Ride On The Back Of Nato Is Over -- The Telegraph
With America losing faith in the Nato alliance, Britain and France must lead its renewal.
These are confusing times for supporters of Nato. On the one hand, the alliance has completed its mission in Libya without a single casualty. On the other, its future looks less certain than ever in the face of fiscal austerity, increasingly uneven burden-sharing between members, and America’s dwindling faith in its utility.
The fact that the US feels this way is understandable. In 2000, America’s share of Nato defence spending was around 50 per cent. Today, it has risen to 75 per cent. With peace at home, many European nations have redirected spending towards other priorities, free-riding off the US when it comes to threats overseas. And this problem is set to get worse, since every European Nato member is set for severe defence cuts – including France, whose own equivalent of Britain’s defence review begins next year.
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My Comment: According to the above article .... Europe's "free loading days" on NATO are over.
1 comment:
What free-loading (or free-riding) days?
The issue is not that Europe doesn't spend enough - it can fight its entire periphery simultaneously without U.S. help and win - but that the U.S. has gone crazy and has been overspending for a long time.
There's actually very little if any benefit to Europe in the U.S. overspending on the military. Most U.S. military adventures and overseas deployments don't serve European interests. At times, the militarised U.S. foreign policy is running counter to European NATO foreign policy (just think of the Turks who want to get along well with their neighbours, and the U.S. is sabre-ratttling against Iran!).
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