More from Mark Steyn

Haven't had time to celebrate the Administration's decision to cut troop strength in Europe and Korea. Nor the irony of Kerry's team critiquing the draw-down. I agree with NRO's "Kerry Spot":

[The Dems'] viewpoint appears to be a formula for paralysis. Don't change anything without checking to make sure no other country would be "unhappy" with the move.

But Mark Steyn in the Telegraph (U.K.), nails it, as usual:

The basic flaw in the Atlantic "alliance" is that, for almost all its participants, the free world is a free lunch: a defence pact of wealthy nations in which only one guy picks up the tab. . . . [I]n Nato, for generations, whenever the bill's come, there's been a stampede to the washroom . . .

European countries now have attitudes in inverse proportion to the likelihood of their acting upon them. They're like my hippy-dippy Vermont neighbours who drive around with "Free Tibet" bumper stickers. Every couple of years, they trade in the Volvo for a Subaru, and painstakingly paste a new "Free Tibet" sticker on the back.

What are they doing to free Tibet? Nothing. Tibet is as unfree now as it was when they started advertising their commitment to a free Tibet. And it will be just as unfree when they buy their next car and slap on the old sticker one mo' time. If Don Rumsfeld were to say, "'Free Tibet'? That's a great idea! The Third Infantry Division go in on Thursday", all the 'Free Tibet' crowd would be driving around with 'War is not the answer' stickers. When entire nations embrace self-congratulatory holier-than-thou moral poseurdom as a way of life, it's even less attractive. . . .

The US security umbrella, along with the Eurovision Song Contest, was really the prototype pan-European institution. The Americans helped build a continent in which you could sing Waterloo rather than fight it, and, . . in their excessive generosity[, . . .] accelerated an inclination to softness and decadence.

Read the whole thing.