“The mightiest military alliance in history is only 11 weeks into an operation against a poorly armed regime in a sparsely populated country. Yet many allies are beginning to run short of munitions, requiring the US, once more, to make up the difference.” The underlying reason for these failings is no secret. Most Europeans spend too little on defence, and what they do is often wasted. That Europeans would struggle, militarily and politically, to maintain 10k troops in far-off Afghanistan is understandable. That they should be tiring in a limited air campaign on Europe’s own borderlands (less intense than the Kosovo war of 1999, for instance) suggests something bigger is amiss.

NATO can’t even sustain a campaign against libya.

poland, hungary and others are forming an alternative to NATO, since the european armies are weak and unwilling.