davidjohnson6 wrote:Speaking as a European... there is ample opportunity for countries in Europe to spend 2% of GDP on defence.. and not play accounting games about how one classifies pensions of former soldiers
Maybe it would still need the USA occasionally to back up the odd threat... but it would be a strong start and signal effective intent.
Europe on its own failed to keep the peace in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s without the USA getting involved - such a shameful failure should not be repeated
That's the point, 'as a European', so not one country, so expect some divergence of views.
Case in point, the one you cited, Yugoslavia, you had sinister old Mitterand with his agendas, a Germany newly reunited and grappling with all that brought and still bound by the very restrictions the WW2 allies, in this case mainly the US and UK, had put in place in regard to the use of their military.
That left the UK, which though it put more than it's share of forces on the ground the UN peacekeeping role, that white hatted role for the troops was by it's nature limiting. And what they saw being done, infuriating.
The airstrikes that brought the 1995 talks were not a wholly US affair, no matter how they try and spin it otherwise.
Then we had Kosovo and a UK PM determined to deal with the Serbs, prompting the usual jibes from watching too many dumb Hollywood movies of 'the Europeans want us Americans to fight for them', some maybe, not all.
Hence the advanced planning to put, if airstrikes failed, half of the then entire British Army into the fight, it got as far as preparing to send out call ups for reservists in substantial numbers.
With the message to allies, 'as NATO members we expect your logistical and air support even if you don't put any troops on the ground'. As well as to the enemy, as these preparations were 'leaked' to the press.
In the end, the airstrikes worked, these also marked the first combat action by German forces since WW2.
It's not difficult to see why, it must be nice to judge from afar, 3000 miles in fact, since that means you have no idea as a country what having a war above and/or on your territory is like, within living memory, heavy bombing is one thing, a full scale land war too another entirely.
So small wonder why some are skittish about conflicts in their part of the world and how they tend to escalate.
Ironically, it's easier to build a coalition for operations outside the NATO area than to do so within Europe for operations.
The US certainly was not short of NATO allies prepared to put boots on the ground and more in Afghanistan, not so much Iraq except in one notorious exception, which I would argue was one of the factors which led to the massive lost of trust in political institutions in the UK, look where that has led us to.
The French took a lot of abuse from the US with Iraq but who was proved right on what the results would be?
Even the Cold War which froze conflicts in Europe, had differing ideas on how to defend against the perceived threat.
Against a conventional attack through the Fulda Gap, NATO's best defence would be a series of heavily defended positions, to slow and wear down it was hoped, the advance.
But for Germany, that meant losing a chunk of their territory, again.
Would they ever get it back even if the cold logic of a NATO vs WarPac conflict's endgame did not get all 'instant sunshine' and mushroom clouds?
Hence why the West Germans, against the military logic of a defensive battle against superior numbers, invested in all those C.160's, CH-53's, airportable vehicles and a crack Airborne force. For a nation with no out of area role.
More of a political than military driven idea.
(They even unlike the UK, emphasized mobility over protection and firepower in their tanks when they started building their own and were way ahead of other NATO nations in infantry fighting vehicles, the Marder was designed before NATO knew of the Soviet BMP series, again a system designed to advance and in this case re take ground, while the rest at the NATO forces at the time and years afterwards just had tracked armoured boxes with a machine gun on top).
Irritating as German attitudes towards Russia might be, they do have rather stricter controls of exports of weapons, sure they lean into to these with the Ukraine more than in some cases, still those controls exist.
And German governments, made up as they are by coalitions, have also to contend with that.
Macron, like all French Presidents, will want to try to present themselves as brokers to prevent conflict, as de facto European 'Leader', a task made easier by British stupidity since 2016. But that is a fact of French political culture, to be seen as leading in Europe, woe betide anyone in that post who does not present themselves like that.
It's expected.
Nonetheless, if push comes to shove they will be on side, along with the UK being the only European nation with decent out of area capability and since we are dealing in this case with Putin who also likes to swagger with his renewed strategic force build up, one of the only two European nations with a strategic deterrent.
Who has Putin got on his team? That clapped out puppet Lukashenko.
Things are not too rosy in his garden though;
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/ ... an-buildup
