The Royal Navy Can Fit In A Teacup
Matt Continetti has a lengthy piece on the necessary purpose of NATO at 75 which you can read here. He writes at one point of the contrast of the UN:
The same cannot be said of NATO’s brethren. Within decades of its creation, the UN became a plaything of the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China, and the postcolonial “nonaligned” states of the Third World. They turned the United Nations against the Western powers, Western ideas, and above all the democratic and Jewish state of Israel.
The UN is little more than a stage for a grotesque farce. Russia chairs the vaunted Security Council while Russian missiles kill Ukrainian civilians. Morocco’s ambassador leads the so-called Human Rights Council to accuse Israel of crimes against humanity. When the UN is not irrelevant, it is insane.
Its agencies are no better. The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) has been infiltrated by Hamas and other anti-Semitic terrorists. The International Atomic Energy Association (IAEA) has scrambled unsuccessfully to monitor and contain nuclear proliferation in India, Pakistan, North Korea, and Iran. The World Health Organization (WHO) disgraced itself by kowtowing to the People’s Republic of China during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Little to add here, other than that a strong well funded NATO prevented us from having a major European land war for longer than any of us has been alive. It may seem like ancient history but the idea that such a thing was even possible in 1949 would strike people as ridiculous. You bounce from the late 1800s wars which had over a million casualties to 17 million+ in World War I to 70+ million in World War II. Major war seemed like an every 30 years phenomenon, and it was accelerating, and worse, thanks to modern connectivity and innovation, globalizing. We couldn't afford to do that again — we almost did in 1962. And it was Dwight Eisenhower’s determination to break this regular occurrence that brought NATO into existence.
Amazingly, NATO worked. It did its job. But the “fall” of the USSR at the end of the 1980s gave the false illusion of a pause, a permanent peace, an end of history that brought us to peaceful democratic capitalism instead of Marxist communism. So the Europeans started to go down the road of spending less and less on defense and more and more on their massive internal welfare programs. They used America's commitment to defense (and to some extent the post-war endurance of the Royal Navy) as a basis to fund all this largesse. And our presidents were lax at demanding they spend more, because their focus was eastward on Afghanistan and Iraq.
Things have solidified of late. Coming out of the Ukraine experience, at this point 18 of the 31 (it might be 19 now) NATO countries are spending more than 2 percent of GDP on defense. Europe has actually committed more in total, overwhelmingly humanitarian and refugee relief. But when it comes to things that go boom, we are far and away the provider and Europe is often just buying from us. But post-Ukraine, I share the view that we now need to demand that amount double to 4 percent. CSIS had a paper arguing for this last year and it makes sense to me. Not all of that money needs to be direct for military spending, as many of these nations just don’t have the capacity for it — but they can contribute toward defense in other ways.
Some perspective is needed on the decline of Europe’s defense forces. This is the Naval Academy’s football stadium. It’s a very nice venue, perhaps you’ve been there. It has a 35,000 seat capacity.
Today the entire personnel — enlisted and reserve — of the Royal Navy could not fill the seats in the Naval Academy stadium.
Think about that. It's insane that we got to this point. Since the Falklands War, the number of ships has declined by 75%. Britain has officially given up command of *its own seaward approaches* for the first time since the early Tudor era. It is forced to advertise for openings on LinkedIn. This is an act of national suicide, and there is no explaining it, except as one of the death throes of the nation.
The world-war cycle is clearly at risk of restarting. We need these militaries back on strong footing. And one can only speak softly if you carry the big stick.