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Originally Posted by tw
Posting wild speculation does nothing to address one glaring fact. European nations have severely diminished military capacity. Turkey even fears attacking ISIS in Iraq without US air support. And yes, Pakistan (and many other lesser nations) have more military than many European nations.
Just because the fact is mostly unknown means you can deny it? For most of the past decade, America has been trying to get the Europeans to address their diminished militaries. Even the Brits are not advocating less military due to the attitude of their current Prime Minister combined with the foolishly deployments previously by Tony Blair.
Are British voters learning in this election that their leaders now want diminished military abilities? Most all European nations are not spending what even their NATO commitments required them to spend. Why was European so toothless even during the Balkan wars? Back then, those nations had larger military abilities. One would think they see the threats demonstrated in Ukraine. They don't.
BTW, who is the world's number two spender on military? Nobody will guess. A nation that should not have an offensive ability: Japan. Or did you also not know that?
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Don't know much about the other Euro nations, but Britain has always had a quirky relationship with its army. There have been reductions and reorganisations over the last couple of years. There are always reductions to the army in peacetime.
That is a fairly typical British approach: plow in funding and resources when it becomes necessary, then reduce the regulars when the war is over and try to plug the gaps with the territorial army (weekend soldiers).
This has been the British paradigm for the last two or three hundred years.