Why can't Europe defend itself?

[Sasaki Kojiro]

'Course. Does that mean you need to maintain an overly large army? No.

Is the US army overly large? It is smaller than the EU combined armies, and similar in proportion to france and italy...we just spend much more money, percentage wise.

I think visiting some cemeteries in Europe would explain why we're not so keen on waging war anymore far better than a long post written by me, Sasaki.

When is a regime bad enough that war is a better option?

How about the possiblity that Europe actually learned something from those two major conflicts that destroyed our continent and made countless Europeans, soldiers and civilians, suffer? Not so long ago, we were all at each other's throats, killing and destroying each other. Maybe, just maybe, we euro weenie pacifists afraid of policing the world by force, have been doing something right the last few decades? The mere fact that you, an American, are now talking about "Europe" and "Europeans" says a lot more than you can possibly imagine. Apparently, people who were murdering each other as a hobby not longer than 65 years ago, are, in the world outside Europe, seen as a homogeneous group.

I've been to gettysburg :p

I don't think the europeans are afraid of policing the world. I think they would rather let the US deal with the expense and the messy (and often unpopular) business of deciding whether a situation justifies war.