> -----Oorspronkelijk bericht----- > Van: Gautam Mukunda [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]] > Verzonden: Sunday, September 30, 2001 12:51 AM > Aan: [EMAIL PROTECTED] > Onderwerp: RE: Netherlands Promises "Deeds, Not Just Words"
> One of the major handicaps that NATO faced in Kosovo was, in fact, that > European forces were more than a generation behind their American > counterparts technologically and so imposed risks upon _American_ > forces, as well as themselves. This just keeps getting better and better. Our efforts are not only hardly meaningful, our possible contributions in Afghanistan laughable and a mere footnote, no, now we are also a danger to ourselves and our allies. What next? > And, Jeroen, you are in a strikingly poor position to complain about > pain inflicted upon the friends of the dead. Why? Were the lives of American civilians in New York and DC more valuable than the lives of Dutch and other European soldiers on the Balkan? > Although the material value of (non-British) European support in > Afghanistan - or anywhere else - will approach a rounding error in the > total correlation of forces, Ah, so *that* was next. Now we are also a rounding error. Why not call us "a statistical anomaly" while you are at it? Man, do we feel appreciated by our ally... :-( Given the apparent lack of appreciation, we might as well dismantle NATO. > the moral and diplomatic value will be non-trivial. Moral and diplomatic support must come from politicians and diplomats. You do not need our Armed Forces for that. > It's very simple, Jeroen. The United States spends more on defense > than every European country put together. The smaller ones have a *total* annual budget smaller than your Defense budget alone. > It also spends more efficiently because it avoids the massive > duplication of defense establishments necessary when your military > spending is spread across many different countries. True, the overhead you get when working together with other countries is huge. We are, however, working on that. > Note that every other navy in the world, _combined_, has, I think, _1_ > operational fleet aircraft carrier - that would be France's At least for Europe, that would make sense. Our forces are trained for operations defending Europe, not for waging war overseas. Add Europe's geography to that, and it is obvious we really do not have much need for aircraft carriers. Further, most European countries cannot afford to have and maintain something as expensive as an aircraft carrier. The Netherlands once had an aircraft carrier, but IIRC it was sold because it was too expensive to keep. > It has military bases and allies in every corner of the planet. Again, > no European country (including Britain) has anything vaguely similar. Of course not. Our Defense budgets are not *that* big. The only permanent military presence outside Europe that I know of is the Dutch military presence on the Netherlands Antilles. > When John says that the material European contribution to any potential > conflict in Afghanistan will be neglible, what he is stating is not a > subjective judgment - it is an objective fact based on the lack of > resources of the European defense establishment. That may be what he meant, but it is not how I read it. His post gave the impression that he believes that just because we do not have the budgets and firepower of US forces, us Europeans are pretty darn worthless. And that, I consider an insult to many dedicated men and women in the European forces. Jeroen _________________________________________________________________________ Wonderful World of Brin-L Website: http://go.to/brin-l
