article_snippet: The Basildon and Billericay MP added: ‘Failing defence budgets across Nato have emboldened the Russian president, who has concluded that the heart has gone out of the alliance.
article_snippet: Referencing comments made by the US chief of staff General Raymond Odierno,
article_snippet: The Basildon and Billericay MP said the idea of British brigades serving within American divisions because of severe cuts to numbers was ‘unthinkable’ only a decade ago.
article_snippet: a motion in Parliament, was passed but has no legal force.
article_snippet: People stand up and list all the different kit that we have bought, but People do not intend ever to use all the different kit that we have bought.
article_snippet: Tory MP Simon Reevell described the Prime Minister’s suggestion that intelligence service spending could count towards the 2 per cent target as ‘kindergarten economics’.
article_snippet: Tory MP Simon Reevell said Iraq and Afghanistan showed ‘what happens when you try and deploy troops abroad on the cheap, without being properly equipped’.
article_snippet: It took the Americans to put in another 20,000 troops before the Americans pulled that situation round.
article_snippet: the Americans require armed forces of sufficient capability and capacity to respond to any challenge.