European statecraft toward the United States is predicated on a toxic mix of sanctimony and free-riding. This is continuing to push the U.S. foreign policy establishment into doubling down on a failed grand strategy that is leading to insolvency.
“To the continent’s eternal shame, as one senior British official told me, the apparently divided, dysfunctional, and declining power of the U.S. has still managed to send drastically more lethal aid to save European democracy than any other NATO power,” wrote Tom McTague in his recent piece for The Atlantic. “The depth of America’s military-industrial complex and the scale of its imperial bureaucracy mean that they are simply too heavy for a single president or Congress to remove in one go.”
