Military it's inter-dependency, that' why we're allies. The whole point of an ally is to be inter-dependency of one another. I, for one, as a citizen of a NATO country, I am very happy with this arrangement.
Of course, since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, that's changed for a lot of them. There's renewed interest in taking the defense budget seriously.
So did the US until the 2001 (and, actually, the free fall in US military spending relative to GDP started well before the end of the cold war), and by the 2010s it was back falling in the US, too.
> Of course, since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022, that's changed for a lot of them.
It actually changed since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 for the non-US members of NATO (which was also the trigger for the NATO defense spending target.) It changed for the US after the 2022 escalation (US defense spending as a share of GDP declined between 2014 and the 2022 escalation.)
> by the 2010s it was back falling in the US, too.
Because of the wars in Iraq/Afghanistan winding down, no?
> It actually changed since Russia invaded Ukraine in 2014 for the non-US members of NATO (which was also the trigger for the NATO defense spending target.) It changed for the US after the 2022 escalation (US defense spending as a share of GDP declined between 2014 and the 2022 escalation.)
Not really, no. The US took Russia's 2014 invasion more seriously than most of Western Europe did.