Recently the defense secretary complained about the poor military depth of the European allies. Then he went on to insist that the US would maintain its military hegemony on every part of the world stage! Sam Roogeven gently points out the mixed message:
Why would European NATO members feel under any pressure to take on a bigger role when the US seems so keen to do the job itself, and when they know the US will step in whenever Europe is caught short?
To be fair, the Americans have in some ways made good on their threats that they would not carry the NATO burden alone — US troop numbers in Europe have plummeted since the end of the Cold War. But it's a measure of how secure European NATO members feel that this precipitous decline in the US military commitment to the continent has done nothing to change their defence spending habits. In fact the US is alone among NATO members in not substantially cutting its defence spending since the Soviet collapse.
Gates complains that European NATO members can barely sustain their modest operations in Afghanistan and Libya, and he reads this as a lack of will. But maybe European governments simply see the threat differently. They simply don't regard these two operations as being important enough to their security to really do anything about them, beyond their current meager efforts.
The Dish 