Should Europe invest more in defence?

In Poland, as in the Czech Republic, participation in the US's missile defence system is currently the subject of heated debate. Polish politicians of the ruling PiS party have called an additional security pact to be signed with the US because they claim NATO is "weak and unreliable". Czech commentator Lubos Palata approves of the initiative, pointing out that other NATO members are investing too little in their defence budget. "The European members are not only lagging behind Russia which is rapidly stepping up its weapons programme, they are also losing ground against China and India." According to Palata, NATO's increasingly obvious failure in Afghanistan is "primarily a failure of the European NATO wing. ... The Poles are right to describe NATO as weak. But this is also the fault of the Poles themselves - as well as the Czechs, the Germans and the Belgians. Those who want peace must prepare for war. We Europeans, however, are preparing for capitulation - and it doesn't even really matter whether we capitulate to China or to Russia."

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