British and French officials are calling out their NATO (read that to be European partners) allies for not pulling their weight when it comes to the conflict in Libya.
via Defense News.com
"NATO is not able, at this point, to oblige our partners to take part in this action," Longuet told the French parliament.and...
"I regret, for example, that France and Britain are carrying the bulk of the effort," he said.
"That is why the United Kingdom has in the last week supplied additional aircraft capable of striking ground targets threatening the civilian population of Libya," Hague said.This is a stunning development. For all the complaints of "USA World Police" it seems that NATO is failing in this conflict. Two of the Three traditional NATO powers are complaining of the contributions of other member states. Replace NATO with EU and you have a failed European enterprise.
"Of course it would be welcome if other countries also do the same," he said. "There is always more to do."
NATO is the walking dead. The only people that don't realize it are the politicians.
hey Sol, what do you think of bringing back SEATO? it seems thats where the main conflicts will be in the future, an alliance between Australia, NZ, S Korea, Japan, and a couple of maybes i.e. India, Philippines, Taiwan (given observer status maybe?), Indonesia, etc.
ReplyDeleteon the surface it sounds like a plan but actually i'm kinda against it.
ReplyDeletei dislike monolithic defense treaties.
the US and Britain are allies because both nations desire it. same with the US and Australia or Canada.
other countries are more problematic. yeah S. Korea is our partner now but they definitely have an issue with our troops on their soil (at least the people) and once they reunify with the North then i can easily see them taking a neutral stance.
Japan actually seems more like they want to be middle ground people as do the people of Singapore.
i guess what i'm trying to say is that as tough as Europe is to figure out, Asia is even tougher.
also remember that our most challenging fights have been in Asia.