Spain charges AQ suspects
Nearly forgot this odd incident and found this Pakistani newspaper report that some suspects have now been charged: http://www.dawn.com/2008/06/06/top10.htm . A second press report: http://www.expatica.com/es/articles/...ays-judge.html
davidbfpo
Germany, NATO, Europe and the US
The problem isn't Germany, the real problem is NATO. This was a great organization for waging the Cold War. Now that the Cold War is 20 years into the rearview mirror it has taken on a disturbing new role. If the U.S. pulled out of NATO, I suspect the EU would stand it down shortly thereafter as being either redundant to the EU or simply irrelevant.
The U.S., however clings to this organization as it gives us tremendous leverage to coerce our allies to do things in support of US national interests that are not necessarily in support of their own. The old Cold Warrior crowd are also using NATO to push Russia back into a corner for reasons that escape me.
I for one believe it is time to seriously reconsider our role in NATO and to be careful on how our current approach is wearing thin with our allies and competitors alike.
Consider the Cost Estimates...
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Bob's World
The problem isn't Germany, the real problem is NATO. This was a great organization for waging the Cold War. Now that the Cold War is 20 years into the rearview mirror it has taken on a disturbing new role. If the U.S. pulled out of NATO, I suspect the EU would stand it down shortly thereafter as being either redundant to the EU or simply irrelevant.
The U.S., however clings to this organization as it gives us tremendous leverage to coerce our allies to do things in support of US national interests that are not necessarily in support of their own. The old Cold Warrior crowd are also using NATO to push Russia back into a corner for reasons that escape me.
I for one believe it is time to seriously reconsider our role in NATO and to be careful on how our current approach is wearing thin with our allies and competitors alike.
Bob, I appreciate your contributions to FID/SOF/SF analysis, however I disagree with your analysis of NATO. The US is not an Island; globalization impacts us even more than it has in the past.
Regards,
Steve
A critic’s analysis of the cost of WW II
Quote:
…the Second World War, when 16.3 million U.S. troops fought in a campaign lasting four years, at a total cost (in 2007 dollars, after adjusting for inflation) of about $5 trillion...
2000 Forbes Analysis of the cost of NATO
Quote:
Were it not for keeping the peace in the Balkan states of Bosnia and Kosovo, a reasonable mission that is more suited to the United Nations, NATO would have nothing else to do. NATO is a military alliance--and having added three members in 1998, a growing military alliance--that has no adversary. Barring the unlikely event that Russia suddenly goes back to being a militaristic power with expansionist leanings, NATO will have little to do other than prepare for a war that will never come, and endlessly contemplate its role in the world.
With an estimated annual budget of $1.56 billion, the U.S. shouldered about 29% of NATO's operating budget in 1999, or about $452 million. Each of the member nations pays into NATO based on its gross domestic product, making the U.S. the biggest single contributor. That fund pays for NATO's basic day-to-day operations like staffing and communications, and will presumably pay for NATO's new headquarters, a 557,000-square-foot complex in Brussels
2005 IHT NATO Analysis of the cost of NATO
Quote:
NATO has a civilian budget of around €130 million, or $167 million, and a military budget of around € 780 million. The United States, Britain, Germany and France are the largest contributors to both segments, with payments ranging from 15 percent to over 23 percent into those budgets while Belgium, Turkey, Denmark, Poland and the Netherlands pay under 2.75 percent.
Also a few lightweights like
Wes Clark...
Yet another Commission with yet another report -- saying the same things are needed that we've known since the 50s. Better Intel, less bureaucracy, centralized planning (not totally beneficial), decentralized execution -- old wine in new bottles as the saying goes...
Here's the big problem with their recommendations:
Quote:
"We must build a better executive-legislative branch partnership."
Until Congress gets on board and gets considerably less venal and concerned with reelection there will be no reform; we will continue to blunder about -- fortunately, doing more right than wrong.
Short August 2009 study...
From American Institute for Contemporary German Studies (John Hopkins) by Gunther Hellman: A Status-Conscious Germany between Adolescence and Retirement: Foreign Policy Commemorations on the 60th Anniversary of the Federal Republic
Quote:
One way to recount the history of Germany’s foreign policy over the past sixty years is to tell it as a story of an unflagging yet patient drive for equal status. It is almost entirely a success story—particularly because the status of all the other states relative to which Germans aspired to be treated as “equal” has continuously risen. Membership in the European Coal and Steel Community, the predecessor to the European Union, in the early 1950s; then NATO in 1955; the UN and the G7 in 1970s; and, most recently, the “P5 plus Germany” group, the exclusive club made up of the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany that tries to tackle the Iranian nuclear program—all this marks an impressive line of continuous successes of (West) German diplomacy rising within the ranks of the international hierarchy of power and prestige. Given the lack of hard military resources upon which ascending powers had traditionally relied in pushing for admission to the great power club, Germany’s success is undoubtedly due in no small part to its “civilian power” qualities—i.e., the emphasis on soft power tools such as diplomacy, economic aid, and restraint.
Not surprising that .....
Germany is a 'great power", given this from Economy of Germany:
Quote:
As of 2007[update], comparable IMF figures, billion dollars, current prices:
United States: 13,807.550
Japan: 4,381.576
Germany: 3,320.913
China: 3,280.224
As of 2008[update], IMF staff estimates:
United States: 14,334.034
Japan: 4,844.362
China: 4,222.423
Germany: 3,818.470
"
Report for Selected Countries and Subjects". World Economic Outlook Database, October 2008. International Monetary Fund. Retrieved today (JMM).
Some times power comes from the barrel of a gun; most times, it comes from the barrels of smokestacks. The Germans also seem to have a reasonably working health care program, which I suppose has its roots in the Bismarck era.
Still surviving are such pioneers as Deutz AG (the successor to Otto's engine factory, the first in the world - use full screen view - F11 - to scroll though pages); and new amalgamations such as Otto GmbH & Co KG, the world's largest mail-order company (second largest online IIRC). Some bias in favor of those two companies because I know one of their directors; but they exemplify both tradition and adaptation which have served German businesses well.