A senior Army strategist and Pentagon advisor agrees with a recent assessment of Defense Secretary Robert Gates on the demilitarization of Europe.
Gates believes that Europeans' aversion to military force is limiting the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO) ability to fight effectively, and in recent remarks to a forum on rewriting the basic mission plan for NATO, the defense secretary called for far-reaching reforms in an organization created 61 years ago as a political and military bulwark against the former Soviet Union. He said the early successes of NATO in averting post-World War II eruptions of European conflict have led to a new set of concerns and that the "demilitarization" of Europe has gone from a blessing in the 20th century to an impediment in achieving real security in the 21st century.Lt. Col. Bob Maginnis (USA-Ret.) travels to Europe on a regular basis. He reports that most of those countries invest less than two percent of their gross national product on defense. "They have very little capability to project force, much less to allow that force to go overseas and to work with us," he contends. "But the NATO footprint, though it includes most of the 26 members, is a pretty paltry footprint, especially when you consider the type of equipment they have available to assist the battle, because that requires a lot of helicopters, a lot of remote capability, which most of them don't have, nor have they invested in it. So it's pretty dismal." The Pentagon advisor notes that the only NATO country that has shown an appreciable increase in defense capability has been Poland, which has become a close ally of the U.S.
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