NATO has been a most successful military defence alliance but in seeking to move away from old fashioned territorial defence to defence at arms length its very clear mission has become blurred. Instead of a military alliance with a very clear purpose and significant support it has now become synonymous with dubious overseas military adventurism. In his parting shot the [...]
In the news today is the UK’s £105m contribution to the £841 million new NATO building in Brussels. John Glen, the Conservative MP for Salisbury and a member of the House of Commons defence select committee, expressed “frustration” at the spending of hundreds of millions of pounds on a building while British armed forces faced severe reductions. “I find it [...]
For several years there has been a slow and steady drift into greater collaboration with European allies in matters of defence. Collaboration then becomes resource sharing, then integration and before you know it we will have slid into a state of affairs that leaves us unable to deploy military capabilities alone. The carriers are an obvious case in point. Since [...]
In principle, I think sharing carefully selected defence capabilities with the French makes sense. The French forces are extremely professional and despite the unfair characterisation of them in various UK and US quarters, do get involved in international operations. Beyond the banter and jokes about Wellington and Roast Beef, at a tactical and operational level, relations are very good and [...]
NATO have just published a new Strategic Concept, the first for a over decade. With a commitment to the same core values of collective defence but a recommendation to improve missile defence and cyber capabilities it makes an interesting read. Where do they get the names of these reports though? Download from here
Another contributor to our little blog, this time ripping one of my previous posts to pieces, the bloody cheek! This is a riposte to my post about Afghanistan from Mark Nixon I will drop my response (along with the dummy) in comments. On December 9th, ADMIN posted Afghanistan, Who is Pulling Their Weight and concluded his piece with: “It is simply too [...]
There is a widely help opinion that some NATO nations are not pulling their weight in Afghanistan. NATO is a political and military alliance, therefore it should act as a collective if one nations security is threatened. Article V of the NATO charter states; The Parties agree that an armed attack against one or more of them in Europe or [...]
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