If Russia is the existential threat European leaders claim it is, then their behavior makes no sense. For over a decade they’ve warned of Russian aggression while funding it through energy dependence, under investing in their own defense, and redirecting moral outrage toward the one alliance that actually deters Moscow. This isn’t about ideology or values—it’s strategy. You can’t claim containment as a mission while enriching your adversary, hollowing out your military, and outsourcing your security, then act shocked when the alliance frays. When words and actions move in opposite directions for this long, it stops being naïveté and starts looking like deliberate self-deception.
It has become common for European politicians and commentators to frame Russia as an existential threat while simultaneously casting the United States as a moral or political danger due to its domestic policies. This posture would be odd under any circumstances. It becomes indefensible when paired with Europe’s actual behavior.
The issue is not that Europe disagrees with the United States on policy. The issue is that many of America’s allies are strategically unserious, and that unseriousness debases their moral grandstanding.
In strategy, beliefs are revealed by behavior, not rhetoric. By that standard, something does not add up.
Energy Dependency and the Reality Test
If Russia truly represents the greatest threat to European security, then energy policy is not an economic footnote — it is national defense.
Crimea was annexed in 2014. Georgia was invaded in 2008. Those moments should have triggered an emergency-priority transition away from Russian energy dependence. Not an overnight cutoff — that would be unrealistic — but a wartime-tempo shift that treated continued dependency as unacceptable risk.
The obvious question is simple: what concrete moves did European nations make to ensure they would no longer be financially supporting their declared greatest threat?
The answer, unfortunately, is very little at the level of urgency their rhetoric implies. Exemptions were carved out. Supply routes were rerouted. Dependency was managed, not dismantled. European states continued sending enormous sums of money to Russia while insisting Russia posed an existential danger.
At some point, this stops being unfortunate inertia and becomes a strategic choice.
This raises an even more uncomfortable question: at what point did NATO stop being about containing Russia such that member states believed economic dependence on it was safe? Because if the alliance exists to deter and contain Russian power, then funding that power through energy purchases is not a side issue — it is a contradiction.
Defense Spending and the Question of Seriousness
The same pattern appears in military readiness.
NATO has spending targets for a reason. They are not symbolic. They are a minimum bar for shared deterrence. Yet many European nations have consistently failed to meet even those modest commitments.
This would be troubling under normal circumstances. It becomes absurd when paired with claims that the United States itself is drifting toward authoritarianism or fascism. If that were genuinely believed, the rational response would be immediate and massive independent rearmament.
Instead, we see the opposite: reliance on U.S. military power alongside criticism of U.S. domestic politics.
This raises a basic strategic question: what exactly are these nations contributing to deterrence?
Aircraft carriers are a useful example here — not because every nation needs one, but because they function as a proxy for something deeper: flexible, independent, rapid-response capability. Modern deterrence requires mobility and the ability to act beyond one’s borders. Containment cannot be achieved while remaining physically and operationally confined.
If European nations lack the ability to project force or respond independently without the United States, then what they bring to the alliance is not deterrence but dependency.
At that point, the relationship begins to resemble one between patron and client states. And if that is the case, missed contribution targets are not accidents — they are defaults.
Soft Power and Moral Outsourcing
Defenders of the status quo often retreat to soft power: diplomacy, norms, and moral leadership. These things matter — but they are not self-enforcing.
If soft power were sufficient to deter Russia, then U.S. hard power would not be required. If norms alone could contain aggression, there would be no need for American troops, American logistics, American intelligence, or American taxpayers underwriting European security.
But European leaders do not argue for U.S. withdrawal. They demand continued U.S. deterrence while simultaneously criticizing U.S. political culture. That combination reveals the truth: they know soft power is insufficient, but they are unwilling to bear the cost of the alternative.
That is not moral leadership. It is moral outsourcing.
The Myth of “America Benefits Anyway”
When confronted with these imbalances, a common response is that “America benefits from the arrangement anyway.” This claim collapses the moment it is interrogated.
How, exactly?
Forward basing benefits the United States only if the burden is shared. When the U.S. supplies the bulk of logistics, intelligence, lift, missile defense, and force projection, deterrence becomes subsidized security, not partnership.
Market access is often cited as another benefit, but this too is largely fictional. European nations — through the EU — maintain tariffs, quotas, and regulatory barriers that make U.S. access conditional at best. Trade with Europe is competitive and adversarial, not a reward for security guarantees. Defense is unconditional; trade is negotiated. That is not reciprocity.
Political influence is also overstated. Influence that cannot compel allies to meet their commitments or align their economic behavior with shared security goals is not leverage — it is responsibility without authority.
Even the strongest argument — that U.S. involvement ensures European stability — cuts both ways. Stability guaranteed by an external power creates moral hazard. If catastrophe will always be prevented by someone else, there is little incentive to pay the full cost of prevention.
Benefits that depend on one side carrying a permanent, growing, and unreciprocated burden are not benefits. They are obligations. And obligations require renegotiation.
The Core Contradiction
This is the central problem facing the alliance:
Europe’s rhetoric says Russia is the greatest threat and America is morally suspect.
Europe’s behavior says Russia is economically tolerable and America is strategically indispensable.
A nation cannot credibly claim an adversary is its primary existential threat while continuing to fund that adversary and directing its political outrage at its strongest military ally. That is not strategy. It is contradiction.
Serious nations align their economics, defense spending, and alliances with their stated threat assessments. Many of America’s allies do not.
This does not mean the alliance should be abandoned. It does mean Americans are justified in questioning whether it is being treated as a mutual defense pact — or as an entitlement.
History is unforgiving to arrangements built on illusion. The question is not whether these contradictions exist. The question is how long we are expected to pretend they do not.
History has seen this mistake before: when Byzantium tried to buy peace from the Huns, the payments didn’t prevent invasion—they advertised weakness and financed it. Enriching your adversary has never secured stability; it has only delayed confrontation while making it worse.
Mic G
Postscript
A fair point was raised in conversation with my wife after I wrote this: the United States is not immune to strategic dependency. Large portions of our supply chain remain tied to China, and that reliance presents real national security risks. I agree with her. Where I would draw a distinction is not in the existence of the problem, but in how it has been treated. However imperfect or controversial the effort, the United States has at least begun to acknowledge that dependency on a strategic rival is dangerous and to take steps to confront it. The broader point remains unchanged: strategic vulnerability is one thing; continuing to fund and normalize an adversary while publicly declaring it an existential threat is another. Serious nations eventually align their behavior with their threat assessments.
Life after door kicking. 
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