Robert Gates - hints at US pulling out of NATO

[Santa_Claus]

I can see his point - USA does chip in more financially and militarily than the European countries for "defence". and he makes a good point that for future generations of US politicians the cold war (and WWII etc) will not mean anything.

My take is that it is simply based on the economic reality, the US simply cannot afford the military reach it once had as it no longer pays for itself. And as the Brits (and others) discovered: No cash = no guns = no empire......

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110610/ap_ ... ato_doomed

But, IMO no such thing as a free lunch If European re-arms (err....increases it's defence contribution to NATO ) then easy to see these getting deployed on a "we've got it, so lets use it" basis. And history tells us that we Europeans are pretty good at that sort of thing. and have a hard time stopping........

[mistermack]

Good thing too.
NATO may have a dim and dismal future. Not surprising, with it's dim and dismal past.
The US wants more participation from the Europeans, but still wants the casting vote.
I say scrap it, and leave the US to fight it's own wars alone.
Bring Russia into the EU and have a European United States, with one army.
.

[Seth]

Bout fucking time. Let the socialist swine in Europe stew in their own juices say I.

[MarkS]

You seem to have a bit of an idee fixee, Seth!

[Rum]

The USA made Europe the front line and buffer zone in the Cold War. Any fighting would probably have started there and would have given America a head start (in theory, given the MAD scenario). NATO may well have been about mutual security in the North Atlantic and the countries around it in principal, but in practice most of its members were the USAs minefields against the Ruscies. Europe of course benefited too - financially to a huge extent.

Its usefulness is looking less obvious in my view to all its members, but there is a basic issue here and that is that the old NW European countries have and continue to spend on average a smaller proportion of their GDP on 'defence' compared to similar countries.. (I prefer the term 'weapons' myself).

[Svartalf]

USA pulling out of NATO? can't they speak straight for once and say "dissolving the alliance and annulling the treaty"?
NATO without the USA is like the Warsaw pact without the USSR or paris hilton without a sex tape.

[Svartalf]

Bout fucking time. Let the socialist swine in Europe stew in their own juices say I.

You understand that NATO always was about protecting US interests, not Europe's... it just might have looked that way back when Europe was the buffer territory that prevented the soviets from having full access to the Atlantic coast.
You're advocating cutting off your own leg to spite an ingrown toenail.

[JimC]

You seem to have a bit of an idee fixee, Seth!

We have a winner for "understatement of the year"!

[MrJonno]

Fine by me, would probably good for Europe as it would force a common pooling of forces. Scrap all the national forces and replace them with proper integrated EU ones

[Audley Strange]

What he means is pulling out to ejaculate on its face.

[Santa_Claus]

Bout fucking time. Let the socialist swine in Europe stew in their own juices say I.

You understand that NATO always was about protecting US interests, not Europe's... it just might have looked that way back when Europe was the buffer territory that prevented the soviets from having full access to the Atlantic coast.
You're advocating cutting off your own leg to spite an ingrown toenail.

Yeah, part of the US strategy was to neuter the European powers so that the US became the primary sole / world western power - with the economic benefits that went with that. I can see the Europeans (not all of them) forming a Euro Army, in fact I think economically no choice - If the EU can secure the North African oil, and maybe also some of the Middle East. and bits of Africa then could finance another generation of prosperity.

Of course we will need to kill any local fuzzy wuzzies who object to selling resources at 20p in the pound but us Europeans are good at that

[Svartalf]

Dollahu AKBAR !!

[Seth]

You seem to have a bit of an idee fixee, Seth!

Somewhat. It's called "fuck all those ingrate fuckers who want the US to fund their defense against tyranny and invasion at our cost who aren't willing to step up and do it themselves."

I'm rapidly becoming more and more of an isolationist the more I see of European cowardice and cupidity.

If we're going to be required to fund the Pax Americana, then for fuck's sake let's just get on with imposing on all those fucking morons in Europe and make them dance to our tune or die.

Enough of this pussy-footing around. Everybody accuses us of imperialistic empire-building even though we are doing nothing of the kind, so fuck it, let's go ahead and make their complaint valid. Might as well be hung for a sheep as for a goat.

The whole world would be far better off anyway under US rule. We could just hang all the radicals and Marxists and be done with it once and for all.

Couldn't make things any worse than they are now, so why not?

[Robert_S]

I wonder what the impact on the US economy would be if we just decided to slash our military spending and go isolationist.

[Svartalf]

maybe not as good as some would believe... slashing military personnel would put a lot of people on the job market, and even slashing spendings while keeping the personnel would still harm a lot of US companies and probably force the economy into some dump, at least short term.