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Why Afghanistan might be NATO's last fight
The Week ^ | 6:57am EST September 26, 2013 | David Francis, Fiscal Times

Posted on 09/26/2013 5:51:21 PM PDT by Pan_Yan

In Paris last month, French Defense Minister Jean-Yves Le Drian announced that France plans to spend $251 billion on its military. This amount was not just for 2014; it was for the next five years, meaning that Paris only plans to spend about $50 billion on its armed forces each year, or about 1.3 percent of GDP, down from 1.9 percent this year.

As part of the reductions, France is cutting 34,000 troops from its ranks. Germany has also cut $10.7 billion out of its 2014 military budget, and recently announced that it would reduce the size of its military from 250,000 to 165,000 and ended conscription, a practice that had been around since the end of World War II.

The cuts made by France and Germany, combined with similar cuts being made in the United Kingdom, show that defense spending is far from a priority in the European Union. But it also shows that the future of NATO, the alliance responsible for everything from intervention in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s to the current war in Afghanistan, is in serious doubt.

Right now, the only NATO members that meet the requirement to spend 2 percent of GDP on defense are the United States, the United Kingdom and, ironically, Greece. NATO was an alliance formed to win a land war in Europe. Now that the possibilities of such a war rapidly recede, the Eurozone is struggling to justify the alliance's existence.

The latest to sound the alarm is Secretary-General Anders Fogh-Rasmussen, who warned last week that Europe was at risk of becoming irrelevant if it doesn't share the NATO burden with the United States. Right now, 70 percent of funding for the alliance comes from Washington.

(Excerpt) Read more at theweek.com ...


TOPICS: Foreign Affairs; Germany; News/Current Events; United Kingdom
KEYWORDS: afghanistan; europeanunion; france; germany; jeanyvesledrian; nato; unitedkingdom; yugoslavia

1 posted on 09/26/2013 5:51:21 PM PDT by Pan_Yan
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To: Pan_Yan

Meanwhile, Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine spend way more than 2% of their GDP on defense spending.


2 posted on 09/26/2013 5:55:47 PM PDT by Thunder90 (All posts soley represent my own opinion.)
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To: Pan_Yan

To bring things into perspective, NATO did more to prop communism in Europe than Soviet military ever could do.
All the extra money Europeans saved having American military defending them were spent for a welfare state.


3 posted on 09/26/2013 6:12:24 PM PDT by cunning_fish
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To: Pan_Yan; NFHale; Impy; Perdogg; fieldmarshaldj

The (former) USA should do the same thing - pay the vets that paid their dues, sh*tcan the rest.

Why bother having a military, since our overlords have ceded the defense of the West and Christianity to Vladimir Putin.

I never thought I’d live in an age where an ex-KGB agent speaks for me more than 90+% of elected officials, certainly more than the sitting POS, err, POTUS.


4 posted on 09/26/2013 6:14:11 PM PDT by GOPsterinMA (Time to musk up.)
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To: Pan_Yan

Why don’t they just buy one large white flag and call it a day?

Interesting that they reacted properly in Mali but lacked the logistics to get their troops there in a timely manner.

Old Uncle Sam came to the rescue, again.

The French need to bring back the French Foreign Legion as their African strike force. The rest of their military can sit back and eat quiche. The real men will get the job done.


5 posted on 09/26/2013 7:06:19 PM PDT by MadMax, the Grinning Reaper
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To: Pan_Yan

NATO had no business there in thr first place.


6 posted on 09/26/2013 7:19:38 PM PDT by bravo whiskey (We should not fear our government. Our government should fear us.)
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To: bravo whiskey

NATO should have died when the Warsaw Pact died.


7 posted on 09/26/2013 7:20:08 PM PDT by dfwgator
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To: GOPsterinMA

Putin is a dedicated nationalist and loves HIS country.

The same can’t be said for the Temporary Hired Help we currently have.

Pretty simple.


8 posted on 09/27/2013 6:36:14 AM PDT by NFHale (The Second Amendment - By Any Means Necessary.)
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To: NFHale

As usual, spot on analysis!


9 posted on 09/28/2013 9:02:02 AM PDT by GOPsterinMA (Time to musk up.)
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To: GOPsterinMA

Danke, mein freund...


10 posted on 09/28/2013 9:06:33 AM PDT by NFHale (The Second Amendment - By Any Means Necessary.)
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To: NFHale

Anytime, brother!


11 posted on 09/28/2013 9:31:03 AM PDT by GOPsterinMA (Time to musk up.)
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