EUROPE AND AMERICA: Gianni Riotta writes in the Post:

It is not America’s unilateralism that relegates Europe to the kids’ table. It is Europe’s budget priorities. Europe spends $2.50 a day on every cow that grazes happily on the grass of the EU. Yet defense spending lags. Andrew Moravcsik, a professor of government at Harvard University, estimates that “the United States spends five times more on military R&D than all of Europe.” Europe’s soldiers cannot fight beside their U.S. comrades-in-arms because they lack technology such as the AN/Pvs-7 night vision goggles; the U.S. Army has 215,000 of them. European forces have 11 heavy military transport planes; U.S. forces have 250.

The United States will accept Europe as a real equal when it sees muscle behind diplomacy. However much Europeans dislike Uncle Sam’s war machine, they forget that Europe can’t fight without it.

Yes. And the United States would, I think, be happy if Europe took actual responsibility for some of the world’s problems instead of carping from the sidelines. Most of America’s biggest problem areas, after all, from Vietnam to the Middle East, were inherited from others. But so long as Europe favors subsidies over substance, carping from the sidelines will be all it can do.