Our New Improved Middle East

[tw]

Originally Posted by regular.joe

You make me laugh TW, they (Pakistan), have the planes without the maintenance package, they have the pilots without the hours, they have the nukes without the expertise to use them properly, etc...

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?