SecDef Gates To Europe: Be More Warlike, We Need Auxilliaries

By Steve Hynd

Outgoing SecDef Bob Gates is warning that NATO has a "dim if not dismal future" if European member states don't ante up.

Perhaps most significantly, Mr. Gates issued a dire warning that the United States, the traditional leader and bankroller of the alliance, is exhausted by a decade of war and and its own mounting budget deficits, and simply may not see NATO as worth supporting any longer.

�The blunt reality is that there will be dwindling appetite and patience in the U.S. Congress � and in the American body politic writ large � to expend increasingly precious funds on behalf of nations that are apparently unwilling to devote the necessary resources or make the necessary changes to be serious and capable partners in their own defense,� Mr. Gates said.

Mr. Gates complained of what he called a �two-tiered� membership structure, �between those willing and able to pay the price and bear the burdens of commitments, and those who enjoy the benefits of NATO membership but don�t want to share the risks and the costs.� He added that some NATO partners are �apparently willing and eager for American taxpayers to assume the growing security burden left by reductions in European defense budgets.�

Ummm - why the sudden interest in European nations building up their defense establishments after a half century of US policy that emphasized the exact opposite because of what happened the last time Europeans were all armed to the teeth?

Could it be because the US is broke but still expects the European members of NATO to follow along like good little auxilliaries and fight all of America's commitments - Afghanistan, Libya and future wars - for it?

Europe should tell Gates that it has no natural existential enemies right now, that a bunch of goat herders with improvised bombs is no justification for a massive military-industrial complex, and that it collectively has no intention of breaking its own already shaky banks to further American inventionist policies.

In other words, Mr Gates, America's interventionism can go the way of the Romans - into history.