> because we're subsidizing europe, which is a huge free rider on the US military. The vast majority of US spending since 2001 has been wars in Iraq and Afghan

> because we're subsidizing europe, which is a huge free rider on the US military. The vast majority of US spending since 2001 has been wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that have nothing to do with the defense of Europe. This article has a good example of the spending increases specifically earmarked for Iraq/Afgahnistan: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/01/07/everything-chuck-hagel-needs-to-know-about-the-defense-budget-in-charts/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2013/01/07/every... That ignores things like the excessively high hours on F-18 airframes from a higher than anticipated rate of deployment, causing increased repair/replacement costs and lower airframe availability, even after: http://breakingdefense.com/2017/02/62-of-f-18-hornets-unfit-to-fly-dod-hill-focus-on-readiness/ http://breakingdefense.com/2017/02/62-of-f-18-hornets-unfit-... > If Putin for whatever reason decided to become an expansionist power and the US had an european level military, no one could stop him. There are other, much cheaper solutions to this - note that the US and EU have made it politically untenable for Russia to resolve the invasion of Ukraine in their favor, with extremely minimal deployments of military forces (a few show of force exercises in eastern Europe with NATO members or partners).