Is Barack Obama right to criticise Nato's free riders? Of course he is

From the shrieks in much of the British media after Barack Obama’s Nato “free riders” remarks you could be forgiven for thinking the president had gone out of his way in an interview with the Atlantic Monthly to criticise Britain, France and other allies for mishandling the bloody shambles which is now Libya.

A pompous French politician popped up on the airwaves to suggest Obama should look in the mirror. “Obama lays blame for Libya mess on Cameron” thundered the front page of the Times. Surprise, surprise, the long and thoughtful interview, optimistically billed as The Obama Doctrine, wasn’t ALL ABOUT US. It is 20,000 words long and if the offending passages occupy more than 800 of them I’d be amazed. Obama is critical of many people, including the US foreign policy elite and the oil-rich Gulf autocracies. Mind you, when it comes to the Nato allies, Obama is right. Sheltering under the big American umbrella since 1945, most Europeans have become comfortably well-off and lazy, more concerned with having a nice time than with the basics of self-defence. The richest undefended empire in history – as I like to call the EU – is facing growing problems on its eastern and southern flanks. Both refugees and related violence press on us from Syria, Iraq, and across north Africa to Morocco, and Europe is making a very poor job of tackling them. Of course, we’re free riding. All this at a time when some idiots think they can float Britain off the continent (Nato defends us, not the EU, the ninnies tell each other) and go it alone. What the Obama interview serves to tell us yet again is that this president may still be an internationalist in outlook, but he is much less of one than most since 1945. Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders – Jeremy Sanders as I like to call him – are doing well against expectations to be the next president. Both are isolationists.