I'm not really in the business of answering to leaving foreign secretaries of defence, but other bloggers do it as well and Gates keeps spouting much nonsense at allies, so here's my take.
His superficial "the Europeans don't spend more on military power" whining was already answered by the following posts:
(Defence and Freedom, 2010/03)
(Defence and Freedom, 2009/05)
related:
(Defence and Freedom 2008/02)
(Defence and Freedom 2008/02)
He didn't offer any new opinions in his departure speech, so I guess I can recycle old stuff as well. The ability to simply link to an old text is among the few benefits of a for-free blogger.
S O
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Just one more, pretty significant, sign of a hegemon in decline. Little to no soft power left, no prosperity to share, no more capital to finance the "go it alone"-approach, no sympathetic allies, who share its sentiments - now the whinging starts.
ReplyDeleteIts like the fit of a child, a severe sign of weakness, a latter stage of the arrogance that Rumsfeld displayed once upon a time. Hope the audience got that notion, too.