alt Hacker News> stop relying on America to fight the Russians for them,
That's a very uncharitable take. Europe relies on NATO to fight the Russians. Of course it does. There is no alternative, and the US would never allow other credible alliances to form. Because why would they? It's certainly not in their interest.
It's good that Europe spends more in security, and it's good that Europe seems to be serious about Ukraine. However western Europe is something else. If push really would come to shove, there is zero chance Russia could take and hold continental Europe.
The population is larger, the economy is larger by a ridicolous amount, and there are French and British nukes positioned all over. What Europe is mainly lacking military projection in the Pacific and the Middle East, and that's not likely to change.
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Until recently, most NATO members were not meeting their commitment to spending 2% minimum GDP on defense. They were demonstrably externalizing their defense costs onto the US.
Indeed. And every initiative in the past to create a 'European army' was strenuously opposed by previous US administrations, who wanted their alliances fragmented. US policymakers have said that any European military integration must avoid the '3 D's: Decoupling (from NATO), Duplication (of NATO command/legistic structures), and Discrimination (against US and Israeli arms vendors).
This has been policy from at least the Clinton administration, and it has worked great to ensure that the US remains the biggest fish in the NATO pond, even if it is not bigger than all the others put together. Now that the current administration is tearing NATO in real time and the President is saying that his 'personal morality' trumps international law and treaties (never mind that ratified treaties stand on the same level as the Constitution, per the Constitution itself), I would imagine that the other members are working around the clock to implement their contingency plans and ramp up domestic military production and other avenues of procurement.