If Europe comes out ahead partly by defecting in a farmer's dilemma[1], it hardly seems fair to hold it up as an example of what the US should aspire to. (You

If Europe comes out ahead partly by defecting in a farmer's dilemma[1], it hardly seems fair to hold it up as an example of what the US should aspire to. (You might argue that the US doesn't need to spend that much on military. But you didn't argue that. You argued that Europe doesn't need to spend as much on military as the US, because the US does.) [1] I could have sworn the farmer's dilemma was a standard term, but I can't find it on google. If two farmers have fields next to each other, and one of them irrigates, then both of them benefit. They can split the work, or one can say "I'm not going to bother. What are you going to do, let your crops die, just to spite me?" So the second one irrigates. Then people look at the first farmer and see that he runs a successful farm without working as hard as the second, and they assume that she must be doing something wrong.