Robert Gates is absolutely right:
Britain's military cuts mean it will no longer be a full partner alongside United States forces, former US defence secretary Robert Gates said Thursday.
Gates, who served under US presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, said Britain no longer had the complete spectrum of capabilities, meaning its relationship with the US military was shifting.
Prime Minister David Cameron said Gates had "got it wrong" and said Britain remained a "first-class player" globally.
The fact is, despite attempts to dress it up as efficiency, European military power is fading away. Individual European states are becoming largely incapable of independent military action and can only be plugged into an American expedition as small tribal auxiliaries to our forces.
Not that this isn't valuable. NATO remains very useful. NATO keeps these potential forces capable of operating with us be maintaining common standards in equipment and procedures. And NATO Europe is still important as an asset to defend and as a springboard to project power into an arc of crisis from West Africa to Central Asia.
But when Britain joins the rest of Europe in wanting to "lead from behind" by reducing military capabilities to the extent that they can only help somebody else who takes the lead, it is a sad day for the West. Prime Minister Cameron can pretend it is otherwise, but Gates got it right. We could once count on Britain as a significant force at our side. Now they are just another European state.
With their quality, the British are surely at the higher end of that class, but they are still in the same class as others who can only hold the door while we walk through carrying the load.
