Let Europe Defend Itself
http://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/world-report/2013/06/18/syrian-crisis-highlights-need-to-merge-nato-with-the-eu
NATO was set up 64 years ago to defend Europe against the Soviet Union. The North Atlantic Treaty that created the Alliance hitched the United States’ military might to the defense of Europe and ring-fenced the Soviet empire until it collapsed, leaving Europe without any significant threat. Thanks to European industry and NATO’s defense umbrella, Europeans rebuilt their countries from the devastation of World War II, created the European Union and built one of the largest economies in the world.
But NATO also left two corrosive legacies on the transatlantic allies: Europeans became accustomed to getting their defense on the cheap via the U.S. taxpayer; the United States has drunk deeply from the jug of “leader of the free world” and has difficulty passing even a regional baton to the Europeans. The result: an anemic European security establishment that is regularly criticized by American leaders.
Witness the Libyan war, in which European military forces could do little against the middling power of Mummar Qaddafi until the United States deployed its high tech weaponry to bail out its allies, in their backyard, at a cost to the U.S. taxpayer of $1 billion. Can this unbalanced division of labor in which one NATO member, the United States, is permanently responsible for the protection of 26 European countries continue to be viable forever?
Given the massive cuts to the U.S. defense budget looming on the horizon and America’s “pivot to Asia,” we don’t think so.
Please stop spamming the thread.
A European army resurrects a very dangerous enemy of the USA, bottom line.