No. of Recommendations: 18
Okay, homie. If that's how you want things to be:
Another excellent illustration of why it might not be entirely in our interests for Europe stop being a supplicant, dependent on collective security with the U.S. serving as the tentpole, and go back to being a globally relevant military power in its own right.
We've made it abundantly clear that we really aren't going to be the "World Cop" protecting them from the bad guys anymore. That we fully expect them to massively, and rapidly, increase their own defense capabilities and start operating as a strong military power commensurate with their economic strength. That we regarded the historic collective security arrangement under NATO as Europe "free riding" on our coattails. After all, we weren't getting anything out of it.
Well, one of the consequences of forcing Europe to be stronger on their own is that they have more leeway to say "no" to us on things. We benefited from them being dependent on us militarily. We benefited from being the oversized contributor to NATO. It meant that we were the ones that were completely in charge of most security decisions - that if we wanted to engage in military exercises, everyone would have little option but to go along with it.
We've changed that. We get the benefit of spending less on military support for Europe. But the cost of that benefit is that we don't get to be quite as influential in Europe. Turning a loyal supplicant into a militarily strong competitor doesn't seem like it's the most beneficial thing for the U.S. to do....but there you are.
I expect this won't be the last time that we start running into our erstwhile allies saying "no" to us more often. The less dependent they are on us, the less they have to cooperate with us when their own interests - or their own domestic politics - point them in the other direction.
