The Europeans Really Are Worthless Allies

In this story, U.S. Secretary of Defense Bob Gates states the obvious about our so-called European allies. Of course, he had to make nice and apologize to keep up decent trade relations, but that was just to let the Europeans save face.When the chips are down they are essentially useless.

This is because they spend virtually no money on their defence budgets. Of course, they are able to do this because they have enjoyed the U.S. Security Umbrella for 60 years. During which time, Western Europe has grown fat, happy and lazy. While we have bankrupted our society to defend Western Civilization, they have been happily free-riding and using the money they don't spend on defence to fund lavish social welfare states - little wonder unemployment is so high - there's really no incentive to work when the government gives you free money.

It's not just me or Secretary Gates who espouses this view. It's also shared by Distinguished Professor and U.S. foreign policy expert Graham Allison (perhaps best known for his 1969 essay "Conceptual Models and the Cuban Missile Crisis "). During the terrifying and all to real Oil Shockwave simulation in Washington last November (featuring such luminaries as Carol Browner, Robert Rubin and Richard Armitage) I had the privilege of sitting next to him and asking his opinion on this very topic. His response was that Afghanistan had proven that our NATO allies were simply incapable of fighting alongside U.S. forces because they are undertrained and their governments don't buy equipment that works alongside U.S. high tech equipment - the so-called interoperability problem.

NATO originally was formed "To keep the Germans down, the Russians out, and the U.S. in." Well, the Russians are now in, the Germans are up and if it weren't for the fact that our Eastern European friends such as Poland and the Czech Republic need our protection we should be out. With the exception of our British cousins, the Europeans are useless. The Brits, Scots and Irish are the only Westerners who share our and the Eastern European values of freedom and democracy and know that they have to be fought for generation after generation to be maintained. "Old Europe" as former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld termed it is even too tired to even manage to reproduce its population - with the exception of France which almost has a replacement rate population growth (fueled by Muslim immigrants), the entire continent can't even manage to get close to the 2.1 child per family reproduction replacement rate. It's dying and therefore not even worth defending the next time they're attacked.