View from London – Robert Gates slams NATO
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Parting shot from Robert Gates to NATO:
“You need to do more”
The American Defense Secretary, Robert Gates, has attacked the lack of enthusiasm from Europe towards NATO, and said that America might choose to pull out if Europe did not provide more support. He was quite right.
The precursor to NATO was a mutual defense agreement in 1948 between the United Kingdom, France, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxemburg. Because it was not strong enough to resist the communist USSR, America and Canada joined together with others to form the North Atlantic Treaty Organization in 1949.
The aims of NATO were that “an armed attack against one or more of the members in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack against them all“. Consequently all members should assist in the defense, but it left individual countries to decide what type of support they would give. The attack on the twin towers was considered to be an armed attack and therefore NATO members were obliged to become involved. Hence the military operations in Afghanistan to root out terrorism.
Robert Gates accuses NATO of relying on America
To put it mildly Europe has been somewhat backward in coming forward. There have been 2518 deaths so far in Afghanistan of which 1615 were American and 371 were British. The rest of Europe accounted for 309, of which France, Germany and Italy accounted for half. Even Australia and New Zealand took part. This is why Robert Gates has criticized the European members. They are just relying on America to bear the biggest burden. I do not believe that the 27 members of the European Union are incapable of putting up a force equal to America‘s. After all, The EU population is 501 million against America’s 309 million.
I have long railed against the EU as being a corrupt organization whose bureaucrats’ only interest is to expand their empire. As I have a habit of writing to government with complaints and suggestions, I have in the past written to the American ambassador in London, the White House and the two leaders of Congress. I doubt that they will make any difference but somebody has to spread the word. My message has been that the EU is not to be trusted. Perhaps Robert Gates’ speech may be the start of disillusionment with the EU.
I know that the American government is not happy with British defense cuts. Our Prime Minister David Cameron has cut our armed forces to the bone. We will have no aircraft carriers complete with aircraft for the next ten years. The army is being reduced by tens of thousands. The air force has been similarly attacked – five new surveillance aircraft which had been completed and flown but were not yet in service were destroyed. It made no sense and all the experts are up in arms over the cuts. The government’s promise before the election was that it would maintain our armed forces sufficiently to cover our foreign policy – it apparently did not recognize that we need to defend our own country or support NATO. No wonder Robert Gates is unhappy.
I do not know whether the Libya problem fits into the NATO remit, except that it has oil, which if interrupted could be a problem for the west. What will happen if NATO folds? Are we going to leave people to be massacred? The east is getting more and more dangerous, terrorism is rife and the UN is virtually useless as an armed force. Some organization has to be available for problems such as Afghanistan and Sierra Leone, and genocide as in Bosnia and Rwanda.
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The US military budget is greater than all EU countries combined, so participation based on GDP might be closer than you suppose.
But GDP in 2010 was America $14.7 trillion and the EU $16.2 trillion. I think the European countries are just spending their money on other things than defence. For example I understand that to maintain the Ark Royal and Harrier jets (now on the scrap heap) for a year would cost $660m. In contrast Cameron gave $1072m to Pakistan, on the basis that better education would reduce terrorism. In Britain we have better educated children turning into home grown terrorists.
We could have used those military assets (to use the current phrase)for Libya instead of flying aircraft thousands of miles.
I recently found out that you could had cut the major general points Gates was try to make, paste it to most DOD Secretary speeches for pretty much from the beginning of this alliance, and be unable to tell the difference. Was NATO always this troublesome? I mean, by the 1990s, all our major European allies had climbed out from WWII and stagflation, so why this?