Pax Addiction

I've been whinging about Europe taking advantage of American taxpayers for a very long time. Certainly before Trump came onto the scene and repeated that same assertion. The "Pax Americana" that has let the old-economy European nations overspend on their welfare states while underspending on their national defense - and the Cold War outlays that eventually exposed and bankrupted the Soviet Union and precipitated the fall of the Iron Curtain - falls into "Herbert Stein's Law" territory. As in, if something cannot go on forever, it won't.

Nor should it.

These days, as Trump makes it very clear he's not just flapping gums when complaining about Europe's under-spending on defense, I see a spate of conservatives and neocons carrying on about how "we are abandoning our allies" and how "I won't like a world where America withdraws."

Poppycock.

Without getting into the series of bad outcomes and outright disasters American militarism has precipitated, decades and trillions of dollars of global defense effort should, by any reasonable reckoning, buy us decades of good-will payback.

As in, time for Europe to walk without the American crutch. Time for the nations addicted to America's defense blanket to have that blanket pulled away, for their governments to build up their own armies and their own security umbrellas.

If it takes wild-man antics of someone like Trump to make the toddlers-who-had-their-candy-taken-away grow up and take responsibility for their own people, so be it. Europe has twice America's population and a GDP roughly the size of America's, so it's not like we're expecting a cluster of piddling little nations to fend for themselves.

Fact is, America is drowning in debt, and every dollar that DOGE or the rest of the Administration tries to rescue is being fought over tooth-and-nail by people who don't care if the nation sinks as long as they get theirs. Having to keep underwriting Europe's defense is not just unsustainable, it's a mockery and an insult.

Addicts will come up with any and every excuse they can think of to rationalize their behavior and to perpetuate the support structures that allow them to persist in their addictions.

Unfortunately, the addicts usually, even after they hit bottom and attempt recovery, relapse. Relapses are made easier by enablers, and I would not be shocked in the least if Democrats, should they take the WH in 2028, resume the pre-Trump Pax Americana, if only to spite him. I'd also not be shocked in the least if Europe's mandarins put on a big show, talk a big game, and start plans that won't need real money until after Trump is out of office.

Again, that is the way of the addict. Promise to do better, but they need the fix just this last time. It's always a test of wills, and it takes a dose of tough love.

America has her own addiction to deal with. It's an addiction to spending, to running up the credit cards with little or no regard for how they'll be paid off, and even less regard for the burden being placed on future generations. It's also one that's learned, like that old anti-drug PSA:

Who taught how to do this stuff?

You, all right? I learned it by watching you!

America's younger generations are complaining that they can't afford to buy homes or live the lifestyles their parents lived. Unfortunately, their demand is the same, Other People's Money. They tell us that they deserve their due for the profligacy of their elders, rather than recognizing the only way out of this mess is for the government to spend less, instead of perpetuating the vicious spiral of earlier generations bleeding later ones.

But I digress. Europe needs to be a defense partner, not a defense dependent, and if the only way that happens is by America telling Europe "we're not going to be your globocop any more," so let it be.