Our NATO “allies” are quite happy to let the U.S. bear the financial burden of protecting them. This has been an issue going back to the early 1970’s, and still Europe is not paying up. They talk and they promise, but they don’t commit. Time for that game to end.
Give it time. PJT will make it happen!
I was re-reading “Germany Plots with the Kremlin” by T.H. Tetens recently, and at the heart of the EU going back to Konrad Adenauer’s time was anti-Americanism. The plan was to bleed the USA for all they could (while re-establishing Germany’s dominance of the continent), and then go Molotov-Ribbentrop with the Soviets as soon as possible in order to pull the legs out from under the US. Even with the USSR gone, they still have the same plan, even if it means with Putin’s regime; things like the Nord Stream pipeline are part of it.
Of course, plenty of leftists in the USA were on board with this notion way back then as well. We even had an “American Committee on United Europe” that helped in the desanguination of the USA by playing up the threat of the USSR while helping Bonn make several overtures of friendship towards Moscow.