#2
Hey, NATO "allies". The gravy train has derailed. I suggest you pay your own fair share.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
03/06/2011 10:54 Comments ||
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#3
The echos of the union mobs in Madison. Hey, guys, the bank is broke. Running off the American military welfare support of the last thirty years is about to end. Maybe you too can hire some professional protesters to march outside the White House [doing the jobs Euros won't].
#4
...Before 2012, we're going to see in the open something I've been saying since the mid 90s: THERE IS NO NATO. The NATO nations (with the exception of the UK, which is now busily catching up) destroyed their militaries in the mid 1990s and have literally nothing but a few token units, certainly nothing they could actually hope to survive a war with. We've been paying for and providing easily 85% of the effort of defending Europe for 16 years now.
Mike
Posted by: Mike Kozlowski ||
03/06/2011 13:36 Comments ||
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#5
Its pretty simple NATO "allies" (other than the Tommies and Diggers):
ISAF means "I See Americans Fighting" (and not much anyone else other than the aforementioned Anglo allies).
Your troops will fight if you let them, but your politicians can governments have held back - so you can kiss our asses. We are the ones bleeding, and until you put some fight into the war, you should just shut up and stay out of the way.
You do not pull your weight in Afghanistan, and until you do, screw you.
#6
"We've been paying for and providing easily 85% of the effort of defending Europe for 16 years now"
Having lived in Europe, Mike, and having seen all the treasures of the Western world that are there, I used to think our sacrifice was worth it.
I've changed my mind. >:-(
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
03/06/2011 14:29 Comments ||
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#7
I can't think of a better reason for cutting the military budget.
That said, I think that's that last thing that should be cut, and I include all the 'entitlements' on the chopping block, and I can retire in four years.
Posted by: Bobby ||
03/06/2011 15:00 Comments ||
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#8
we spend 100's of billions on defense, time too disband NATO and let them pay their own way
Posted by: chris ||
03/06/2011 15:57 Comments ||
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#9
I'm not entirely sure that backing out of NATO is a wise move for us, and I say that as someone who in the past has advocated precisely that.
Think of the possibilities:
1) Europe re-arms and causes trouble. That's what Winston Churchill used to refer to by noting that Germans would be either at your feet or at your throat. We've had them at our feet these past 60 years (well the French have been sulking in a corner); do we really want Europe to decide to return to its old ways?
2) Europe DOESN'T rearm. Sub-possibilities --
a) Russia takes over.
b) Islam takes over.
c) Lichtenstein takes over.
You can see the problems.
Without NATO, within a generation the US and Europe would be back to the usual pre-WWII hates and mistrusts. I'm not sure that's good for the world. I'm re-evaluating.
Posted by: Steve White ||
03/06/2011 16:07 Comments ||
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#10
There just needs to be a way to make Nato :
a) effective and on demand
b) each country to pull its weight
Its a good buffer zone and dumping ground for you on the other side of the pond and has been far more effective over the years than the UN , not that that amounts to much. (facepalm)
Posted by: Oscar ||
03/06/2011 16:13 Comments ||
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#11
do we really want Europe to decide to return to its old ways?
This assumes the Euros want to return to their old ways and actually can. Both assumptions are questionable, particularly the later. They certainly aren't a threat to us and I'm not sure we wouldn't benefit if they became a threat to some others, especially those to the east and south of them. Frankly, I think Mexico is a much greater threat to us than Europe.
Nato was was created for a purpose, to prevent a military invasion of Europe by the Soviet Union. It was the most successful military alliance in world history because it achieved its goal with out ever engaging in organized combat. With the dissolution of the Soviet Union, the need for Nato disappeared. Rather than dissolve an unnecessary alliance we maintained our security umbrella over the EUros. The results have been as disastrous as the effect of the Great Society on the black family.
Rather than maintain the fictional alliance to protect a client population from a fictional enemy, we should dissolve Nato and create a real alliance between threatened parties to deal with the real enemy that threatens us, radical Islam. This threat is very different from the Soviet Union and will require an international response that is very different from Nato. That we have failed to do so is an indictment of the imagination and creativity of our leadership.
I see the historical replay that after the Goths et al had their way with the Western Roman Empire, Justinian exhausted financially and militarily the Eastern Empire trying to resurrect something that was already dead and past its time, leaving the remaining portion open to collapse when the first muzzies streamed out of the Arabian peninsula on their great conquest. It left the Eastern Empire a rump of what it once was and for what? There's a reason it's called the Dark Ages.
#13
I think what the Euros should be worried about is not so much a future reduction-in-force as the actual reduction-in-balls that occurred in January 2009. The Red Army would be in Paris by the time The One decided to fight them on the Vistula. (Assuming of course that their tanks didn't break down, which is a big if.)
Posted by: Matt ||
03/06/2011 18:17 Comments ||
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#14
With a few exceptions, the era of large, standing armies is drawing to a close. They are just too expensive.
So the alternative will be to go back to what existed before, after a fashion. Mercenary armies, or really, corporate armies.
Importantly, not as the main battle organization, but to perform the low intensity operations that both erode a fighting force, and are enormously expensive.
A company like Xe could save the US billions, and go to many places we as a nation abhor sending our military, read "Africa".
Europe can afford to do the same for its purposes.
#15
The problem with private armed forces (ex: Xe)is that they are for profit by nature and not sworn by honor/duty/history to protect the Constitution of the United States of America.
Maybe I've read too much Sci Fi and sech, but I do not want mercs as my first line of defense. And especially not as my last line of defense.
#17
With a few exceptions, the era of large, standing armies is drawing to a close. They are just too expensive.
Actually, they're cheaper per soldier than the professional armies. That's why they became the norm, starting with the Levee en Masse of the French Revolution. The mass was able to stop and then beat the professional armies of the monarchies. Of course when human life is considered cheap, then you can overwhelm the few with the many. What has happen is that technology and the leverage of powering down [read pushing authority and initiative to the lowest level] has provided a counter to the mass. However, it is very expensive and hard to sustain over the long run without being subject to historical patterns of rot and neglect by opportunistic politicians.
[Arab News] As Libya churned with popular rebellion, Serbia's ex-president flew to Tripoli to arrange an interview with Muammar Qadaffy for a Serbian TV channel -- giving the Libyan leader a platform to bluster about his grip on power.
"The Libyan people are fully behind me," Qadaffy defiantly told Pink TV in a telephone interview.
The gesture of support for Qadaffy was not officially endorsed by the Serbian government. But it has been criticized at home for failing to join worldwide condemnation of Qadaffy's bloody crackdown against the uprising.
A possible reason for the silence: hundreds of millions of dollars worth of military and construction contracts.
Serbia's cozy ties with Libya sit ill with its recent efforts to rehabilitate its image after the Balkan wars, in particular by participating in peace keeping missions.
It's almost certain that some of the ammunition fired by Qadaffy's troops against pro-democracy protesters in Libya was made in Serbia, and that some of the air force pilots who targeted rebel-held positions were trained by Serbs.
Western nations like Britain and Italy have armed and cooperated with Qadaffy's regime, but the issue is particularly sensitive for Serbia as it tries to join the European Union and possibly NATO and shed its image as a pariah nation.
"Serbia and former Yugoslavia had exposed themselves to a political risk with the defense deals with controversial regimes like in Libya," said military analyst Sasa Radic.
During the 1970s and 80s Yugoslavia's defense industry struck several export deals with nations in Asia, North Africa, and the Middle East, including Saddam Hussein's Iraq, which made the Balkan country one of the top 10 arms exporters in the world.
The trade collapsed when Yugoslavia itself disintegrated in the 1990s. But it has been picking up in recent years, particularly in Serbia, which retains the Balkans' largest defense industry.
A liberal Serb group has demanded that Belgrade stop arming the Qadaffy regime, even as Serbia's defense ministry claims it has suspended all ties with the Libyan military since the uprising began.
Continued on Page 47
Posted by: Fred ||
03/06/2011 00:00 ||
Comments ||
Link ||
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A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
