Lost amidst the welcome news of British-French cooperation on military cost-sharing in some tough talk from their ministers of defense on NATO.

Last week, British defense secretary Liam Fox pronounced that, “We cannot accept a bloated Nato organisation that is consuming far too much money for the output we are receiving. The fat needs to be trimmed away, because we’re not in NATO as a job creation project. We are there to ensure that it delivers what we need in terms of our combined security.”

In my New Atlanticist post, “NATO: A Fat, Bloated, Job Creation Project?” I confess my bemusement that these quotes were buried in the 13th and 18th paragraphs of reports by the FT and AFP.

Both reports indicate that Fox’s French counterpart, Herve Morin, shared these views.

So, the senior defense policymakers of the two most significant military players in Europe think that the tiny portions of their tiny defense budgets going to NATO is mostly wasted?  Now, perhaps having spent the last three years ensconced at a pro-NATO think tank has clouded my judgment but this strikes me as A1, above-the-fold, banner headline news.   At very least, it deserves a sidebar or off-lede treatment of its own.   But the average news consumer would surely have stopped well short of that point in the stories, once the writers started delving into the arcana of budgeting history.

I go on argue that, while not exactly off base, Fox is missing the forest for the trees.