The US kept merrily spending as if the Cold War was still a thing while the Europeans allowed their forces ti wither.

So yes. It's 100% accurate to call it free riding post ~1989.

Oh, no question we took on the massive amount of providing defense Europe, both during and after the Cold War. My questioning whether one could call it "free riding" is based not on the relative proportion of expenditures, but rather on the quid pro quo that the U.S. got out of it. Europe got much of its defense provided by a country on the other side of the world....but the U.S. got to be in charge of Europe militarily and assume the mantle of the Leaders of the Free World. That's different than the normal free rider situation, like someone picking up the trash on a road by themselves that everyone else uses. The U.S. got an enormous strategic benefit from this exchange. We got to decide the state of military affairs for an entire continent, and one that had cause the U.S. massive losses twice in the prior three decades - and to decide policy and priorities during the Cold War.

The Texas Guard by itself could maybe start in Normandy and probably defeat most of Europe by itself.

Most of Europe's militaries aren't merely "weak". They just don't exist anymore.

As we've discussed before, this is entirely false. The Texas Guard has about 23,000 service members in all branches. Just the army of just France has about 120,000 service members during peacetime. They'd never get off the beaches.

Whenever these conversations come up, you always focus on equipment and material - especially planes and naval forces. But that's not where Europe's "domestic" military resources have been allocated. They've concentrated mostly on infantry and ground units. Because things like fighter jets and military ships are very mobile, so they can be moved into and around the Continental theater very easily. So because European military strategy is oriented towards working with the U.S. (which would be expected to dominate the air and the seas in response to any invasion), the European military is mostly ground forces.

That's why there are about 85,000 U.S. troops in all branches in Europe - and there's about 200,000 troops in the Greek Army alone. We have vastly more equipment than they do; they have vastly more troops.

We could change that, of course. We could get Europe to stop relying on U.S. air power and naval power, and be in a position to stand on their own in defending against a Continental invasion. But the cost of that is that we would have to cede our absolute air and naval superiority over to the countries of Europe. Which would have negative consequences for our national security. Right now, the U.S. could conquer Europe (the Texas national guard couldn't, but the entire U.S. military could) - and everyone knows that. Which imposes a certain....."standard of behavior" on the military relations between countries like Germany and France, which have historically had some "dust-ups" from time to time. If we choose to walk away from that, we certainly can spend less on equipment in Europe, but there is a price associated with that.....