Global Post: War weary Europeans test their leaders' resolve - by Mort Rosenblum
Jean-Pierre Maulny of France’s Institute for International and Strategic Studies (ISIS) was blunt in the daily Le Monde, which last week examined the trend. “Budgets are not up to what is at stake, and Europe is sinking into a formless neutrality,” he said. “We are seeing — this is new — a real trans-Atlantic decoupling.” Europeans spend $520 a year per capita on defense, a third less than Americans. Britain’s budget, the biggest along with France’s, could drop 10 percent in five years. Where Afghanistan is concerned, these cutbacks coincide with a quickly dissipating political will.
A Daily Telegraph/YouGov poll in August found 62 percent of respondents wanted troops to come home. In a separate poll, only 27 percent favored a long deployment. In recent German elections, Chancellor Angela Merkel defeated her Social Democrat opponent, who wants out of the war. She is committed to training Afghan police. But the influential weekly, Der Spiegel, estimated that 70 percent of Germans, like the defeated candidate, want out of a costly, painful and embarrassing quagmire.
Note EU-Digest: when are the politicians going to understand that people like you and me do not want to finance costly wars or be involved in them?
Labels: Afghanistan, EU
