[IronDuke99]

When I talk about 'Western Forces' most of the time I mean US/British/Old Commonwealth (ie, Canada, Australia and New Zealand). The Anglosphere, if you like.

My knowledge of, and interest in, German, French and Italian forces is more limited. Beyond those nations, most Western European armed forces are really no longer fit to face first class enemies at all, in my view (although the Netherlands has a fairly small force of good marines who sometimes operate alongside the UK Royal Marines).

In terms of peer forces: German forces are important in Europe (as are the Poles). France, as always, runs a two tier army with some very good forces, like the Foreign Legion, that are mostly used for purely French purposes. How good French, or Italian, armoured battle groups might be remains to be seen and, hopefully we shall never have to find out. For my money Germany and the EU are very unwise to push Russia on anything east of Poland and certainly lack the military strength to back it up. I hope UK stays well clear of this. I actually think there is a very strong case for some sort of 'entente cordiale' between 'Western nations' and Russia, given that China is a much bigger, much richer, much longer term threat to both.

Most Western European nations spend less on Defence than the percentage NATO officially requires. Even the UK - that does spend proportionally more than other European nations - is only doing so with a bit of 'creative accounting' at present.

In terms of US allies, outside Europe, especially east of the Gulf of Arabia, only UK, and, to a considerably lesser degree, France, within Western Europe, is at all likely to have the will, or military capacity, to act usefully. So then you have to look at countries like Australia, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan and, perhaps in due course, India in terms of any major war involving China and perhaps North Korea.