It;s not a vacuum. It’s what Europe should have been doing for the last 70+ years - taking care of itself!
That’s something they can’t be trusted to do, what with being overrun by all those socialists. We ought to have rid them of the socialists at least, if we had not been overrun with them ourselves.
Except that defense thing. We took on the defense of Europe so that Germany would not build another high class military. Consider where Merkel is now and Germany's econoomic dominance in Europe. Germany being Germany, How does one think Germany would be acting right now had Germany the sort of military of which it is capable?