Gautam said: > Hi Rich. It's an interesting argument - I think I've > talked about it with you briefly. I just want to > point out, though, that I think you've stacked the > deck a little bit.
Yes, you did talk to me about it briefly, and I appreciate your comments both then and now. I don't think I've stacked the deck though. I originally wrote the article as a reply to a weblog post that more or less suggested that the Europeans weren't spending anything on defence, which is not the case. I then hoped that I'd explained why it might look like this was the case, and why it might look like the UK was much more militarised than the rest of Europe. I don't dispute the fact that the US has spent more in total and more as a percentage of GDP, or that a larger percentage of US defence spending was used for ships, strategic aircraft and nuclear weapons. And it is the case that Europe is investing quite a lot of effort in being able to deploy forces globally rather than locally, as I hope might be demonstrated by my (partial) list of new naval assets (many of which are programmes started in the immediate aftermath of the Soviet collapse). In time, this will doubtless have an effect on the way the European powers approach the question of military interventions elsewherer. > The second, larger point I'd make, is that it's true > that Europe will, to some extent, have closed the gap > with where the US is _today_ by 2015. That's aiming > at a moving target, though. The US military is going > to have advanced an enormous amount by 2015 - the gap, > if I had to guess, will probably be _larger_, not > smaller, than it is today. This also is true. The important thing, though, is not the gap between the US and EU militaries, but between the EU militaries and anybody they're likely to fight. It seems to me (although I'm not even remotely a military analyst!) that the gap in effectiveness between European forces and those of potential adversaries is increasing in size even if not at the rate at which American forces are gaining in relative superiority. Rich _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
