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This article got me to thinking about just what kind of military relationship the US does have with the European nations. While it is true that NATO did invoke Which got me thinking about Operation Desert Storm. That was an "allied effort", but when you look at who committed how much to it, it ends up that about three quarters of the force there was American. There were token forces from a swarm of nations, but the only significant contributions came from the French, the British, the Egyptians, the Saudis, Syria, the UAE and Kuwait itself. Politically it was necessary for this to be an allied force; in particular, it was politically vital that there be substantial Arab forces involved to defuse any hint of this being a war of the West against Arabs. (It was also politically necessary for there to be a significant European presence, to defuse grumbling from American voters.) But from a military standpoint, it's much different. When you look at a map of the deployments and eventual movements of the various forces, it becomes clear that while the other forces involved did indeed do the jobs they were assigned, Schwarzkopf actually set up his battle so that he would win even if they didn't and retreated. (On that map, any unit which is represented by a symbol which is not a flag is American.) No non-American unit except one was given an assignment without being backed up by a substantial American force. The Arabs were collected together into two major commands on the right flank and given the assignment to move directly to Kuwait City to liberate it -- but they did so bracketing two American Marine divisions who were quite capable of doing the job on their own if the Arabs had not done so. The French were used to guard the left flank of the theater, to protect against any potential counter-attack from the NW, but any such movement of troops would have been spotted by air recon and gotten the crap blasted out of it by bombing; it's doubtful if it would even have made it to the theater and engaged on the ground at all. And even if it did, not only were the French there, so the 82nd and 101st Airborne divisions. Had the French not stood, our Airborne would have held the position. The only non-American formation given a substantial job without American backup (i.e. the only one which was really being relied on) was the British armor. You get the same picture when you add up the aircraft deployed in the theater. You end up with the Americans providing at least three quarters of the air power, and in fact I suspect that we flew an even higher proportion of the important missions. And in terms of naval forces, there were a lot of ships from a lot of nations, but the only ones which mattered were the American carriers and the American amphib support ships which performed It's not that the allies in that war did badly; they in fact did a superb job. If any of them failed to fight well, I have never heard of it (though if that were the case it would probably have been hushed up). The point is that there is no question that the US was capable of fighting that war completely without military help from anyone else. The only non-American support which was critical was logistical help from Saudi Arabia; all the rest could have been dispensed with, on a strictly military basis. The other forces were there for political reasons. The United States is, sometime soon, going to begin some sort of offensive military operations against Afghanistan. In this case there is no chance whatever of getting substantial military help from any Arab nation except possibly from Pakistan. As to NATO, the problem is that help from France and Italy would come at too high a price. We don't need their help, and if they committed units they would quite naturally want a say in how they were used and in the overall strategy of the war, and in especially where it would be fought, against whom, and when it would stop. But if the US doesn't actually n 
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