Quote Originally Posted by Centurion1 View Post
africa..... middle east....

look western militaries are top dog not only because of technology but because of what our values are . the reason the middle east has (excuse me) such crappy militaries after the medieval period is because they do not know how to respect subordinates or delegate authority. there are numerous essays on this. besides turkey they are all worthless as fighting forces.
Yes, of course life is hard in Africa and the Middle East (probably harder in Africa than any place in the world...though Transylvania is probably on parr with many parts of Africa), but I did not mention them as the chance of any real military thread coming out of them in the next 100 years I see as extremely unlikely. Therefore they are not important to this discussion.

Quote Originally Posted by Husar View Post
The UK has very short carriers that need VTOL/STOL capable aircraft, the Eurofighter is not such an aircraft as most of the countries in the program didn't need such a thing.
The UK still purchases Eurofighters for their land bases AFAIK.

The point about Germany being purely defensive is a bit funny considering we're in Afghanistan and our navy helped secure the lebanese shore etc.
Our special forces seem to be a bit more involved at times but it's not exactly the kind of thing you read about in newspapers.

I don't really see how you can say western europeans are unwilling to defend themselves as long as they aren't even really threatened.
There have been several attempts to do terror attacks in Germany, some were borked by the terrorists, others prevented by the policem, but well, this whole premise is just laughable anyway.

Europe's wealth comes mostly from trading and technology, once half the world fights over our wealth there is simply no wealth left to fight over so it's entirely pointless.
Then you forgot about nukes, Russia has them too but Russia also has a lot more natural ressources and fertile land, if you think their army is strong, think again.

Pro Tip: The Cold War is over.
The Germans are the ONLY major power in Western Europe with any real sort of military. It is very precise, but again, I don't think that the Germans have the resolve they need for sustained warfare.
The French? Certainly not!
The Cold War is over? Really? Then what is all the fighting in the Middle East? What is the problem in Korea? What is the ongoing cultural war?