No. of Recommendations: 8
Yes, there is a need. Because having 80K troops and clouds of aircraft means that the nations of Europe don't need to be independently ready to take on an invasion (should one happen) on their own. And because they don't have to do that, it dramatically lowers the temperature and risk of intra-European war.
How does this square with
Again, Russia isn't an imminent threat, and they're still under the NATO umbrella. That means they don't need to upend their economy to convert to a wartime footing.
Pretty easily. Russia is a threat to the EU and NATO. It is not an imminent threat, in the sense that Russia is not presently attacking the EU or NATO. And it is a threat that is more or less countered by the massive combined military forces defending, of which a large portion consist of American air and naval forces.
So there's no need for Germany to, say, seize control of VW's factories under wartime authority and convert them from making Golfs to making armored vehicles. Russia's not attacking yet, nor is America leaving. So moving with all deliberate speed consistent with a peacetime industrial economy is just fine. And that's what they're doing.
Going back to 2004 levels or armament...isn't enough to ratchet up anything on the continent.
Nor is it enough to allow the U.S. to materially redeploy resources away from the continent. Which is why that's not what's on the table. In 2004, European military expenditures were about 1.6% of GDP. Lower than what it is today.
We're not asking the Europeans to go back to 2004 - we're asking them to go to 5% of GDP, which is vastly higher than 2004. It hasn't been that high for more than five decades - the height of the Cold War in the 1960's.
There's nothing unreasonable about asking the Europeans to commit to their own defenses, to stop buying energy from Russia, and in allowing US goods to enter their market.
No one's saying it's "unreasonable." It just might not be a smart policy. It certainly isn't without downsides, in addition to upsides. Having the Europeans "commit to their own defense" will certainly free up resources for the U.S....but it will also make Europe less stable and increase the risk of intra-European conflicts, and reduce our ability to project power in not only Europe but in the Middle East as well. Is that a good trade-off? It may or may not be - but it is a trade-off, not an unalloyed win.
So too with our trade war. You noted that the U.S. GDP has grown much faster than that of Europe, which allows us to be stronger and have more a military presence than they probably can afford. But note that during that time, the U.S. was the one running a trade deficit, and the EU running a trade surplus. Yet our economy has grown vastly faster than theirs. In part, because we learned the lesson that the old Mercantilists never understood - to grow your economy, it's better to have stuff than it is to have bullion. You can make things with copper and steel and auto parts and computer equipment, but you can't make things (or not many things) with gold ingots or silver bars or T-bills and promissory notes. Trade with the EU consists of them giving us tons of actual useful physical things, and we give them financial products that increase in value much more slowly than our economy. It's not "unreasonable" for us to ask that to stop - but it probably isn't very smart to do so.
