In a shocking-not-shocking exclusive report in The (UK) Times, Europe "would struggle to put 25,000 troops on the ground in Ukraine" as part of a postwar peacekeeping force. Defense Editor Larisa Brown "was given a rare insight into conversations between Europe’s defence ministers and military chiefs as they thrashed out plans for a 'coalition of the willing' force," and the results are as disappointing as they are sobering.
And you know how much I hate sobering.
British defense chief Admiral Sir Tony Radakin asked European defense ministers "if they could put together a 64,000-strong force to send to [Ukraine] in the event of a peace deal." Britain offered up to 10,000 personnel, but even then, "defence ministers across Europe said there was 'no chance' they could reach that number and that even 25,000 would 'be a push for a joint effort.'"
This is not your father's NATO.
During the Cold War, the British Army of the Rhine stood watch in West Germany for half a century with a force of 50,000 men — and the promise of swift reinforcements almost as quickly as the balloon went up.
Today, all of European NATO couldn't put a peacekeeping force in Ukraine of half that size without wheezing like an asthmatic with a sinus infection hiking up Kilimanjaro.
NATO was always a little fractured and weaker than it should have been. Unlike the Warsaw Pact on the other side of the Iron Curtain, NATO members were independent nations, each with its own priorities and needs.
Paris could complain about American "hyperpower" all it liked, but we didn't send in the tanks — like Moscow would have — when France withdrew its forces from NATO command and ordered NATO troops out of France in 1966. We just made do.
And while Washington was correct to ask for more "burden-sharing" from our allies during the Cold War, it wasn't as though they didn't take the Soviet threat seriously. The West German Bundeswehr consisted of 10 battle-ready heavy Panzer and Panzergrenadier divisions, plus another division each of airborne and mountain forces — for a total of 38 combat brigades. That was just the Field Army. The Territorial forces consisted of reserve troops — older men called up to defend their cities, towns, and homes — amounting to another 450,000 soldiers.
But here's the rub.
West Germany raised those forces from a population of 60 million with a GDP of $1.6 trillion in today's dollars. Unified Germany has 80 million people, a GDP of $4.7 trillion, and a military of three divisions that are understaffed, under-trained, and unfit for combat.
The balloon went up more than three years ago in Ukraine, and yet the only substantial-sized NATO member seriously rearming is Poland.
Milblogger CDR Salamander nailed it yesterday: "Europeans expect hundreds of thousands of Americans to immediately deploy to Europe to defend them against a nation with the GDP of Texas and a population 1/4th the size of European NATO." This is from countries that admit they could barely muster 25,000 troops for Ukraine, even if their national survival depended on it.
So when President Donald Trump complains that European NATO isn't pulling its weight, he isn't trying to destroy the alliance, as his critics claim. He's warning of an existential threat to the alliance's purpose and its members' existence — and that America's patience with perennial laggards is not unlimited.
Nor should it be. And Europe's defense ministers just admitted that, too.
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