Why does what is happening in the Crimea affect the size of the UK armed forces? You planning on invading Russia?
Where on Earth have you got that idea from?
I'm saying we have a commitment to NATO and our wider European defence, which the United States is, quite rightly, getting fed up of providing for us because we would prefer to spend our money on social behemoths.
Russia clearly doesn't respond to soft power and our hard power bluster is completely unsubstantiated because we simply do not have the assets to back it up...one of their ships sat off the coast of Lossie, for a couple of days, before we could do anything about it, FFS.
We have a resurgent Russia that is willing to bully Europe into doing what it wants. The West has done as near to nothing as makes no difference to punish or deter it from invading Crimea or Eastern Ukraine. So what next in the mind of Putin? Moldova? Estonia? Any other former Soviet states?
I can only assume that you are not serving, otherwise you would be all too aware of the fact that there is a gulf between government rhetoric and what we are actually able to achieve these days.