Quote Originally Posted by Ja'chyra View Post
Just seen this thread, got to say it is amusing.

The idea that the countries who birthed globe spanning empires and birthed countries like the US are, all of a sudden, incapable of fielding a force to defend themselves is laughable.

The simple fact is that we do not need to, neither does the US, I think you'll find that if kith and kin were threatened then the UK could and would field millions, and western Europe 10's of millions. I think you'll also find this also holds true for most countires, best to let sleeping dragons lie and not start WW3.
But for any other conflict, Europe(And the US in many cases) refuse to fix the problem. Like in Rwanda where the Belgians pulled out all their peacekeepers after 10 or so died and then let nearly a million people die as the Hutu Interahamwe slaughtered them. Fortunately, the RPF was able to drive out the Interahamwe. However, so much death could have been avoided had the West decided to intervene. And of course, there are other situations where if European nations were more martial, a lot of terrible things wouldn't have happened.

Quote Originally Posted by Fragony View Post
Can dismiss Centurion but did any post ww2 western army ever really lost a war, or even a battle, beyond parlement of course
1st Indochina War? I'm pretty sure they were pretty decisively defeated at Dien Bien Phu.