certainly useless for conflicts like in iraq and afghanistan. by nato's own admission, only 30% of europe's land forces can ever be deployed. thanks to the need for troop rotations and similar concerns, only about 10% of the continent's soldiers can be fighting overseas at any given time. so while the u.s. has half a million fewer troops than europe, it can deploy twice as many. take a look at the war in afghanistan, which you'll remember, is a nato operation. isaf, the nato group responsible for conducting the war, says as of the beginning of february, the u.s. supplied 47,000 of the 86,000 troops in country. the u.s. is left picking up all of the slack from its partners in europe. now, european countries do not need to instantly become war fighting great powers. that's not needed, probably not desirable. been there, done that. but surely europe can put together 100,000 to 150,000 troops trained and deployable for actual fighting in war zones.