The country that barely has an edge on Ukraine? Lol

That they failed to predict our CO2 output would jump up to 35 billion tonnes a year is probably not their fault back when the Ford model T had just entered production a couple years ago.

The countries in the EU simply haven’t really needed to spend a whole lot. Most of what our military did for the past 20 years was uselessly fucking around in the middle East at the behest of the USA. Having a low military budget at this time made sense.

Times have changed though. The geopolitical landscape looks different. The US itself is a possible threat, having stated invasion of Greenland was not off the table. Russia is a threat and even if they can’t convincingly beat Ukraine they can be a massive pain in the ass and an existential threat to the Baltic countries if NATO collapses.

Yeah, we have to invest more in military. I don’t think things would have been massively different through most of the 2000s and 2010s even if the EU and the US weren’t close allies. Perhaps Russia would have been bolder earlier.