America warned Europe it needed to defend itself. Only half of the Continent listened

The eastern Europeans have rearranged their spending priorities in such a way that they have redirected resources to extra defence expenditure...In western Europe, by contrast, governments have not been courageous enough even to raise the possibility of cutting other budgets in order to invest in their armed forces, meaning that any extra defence spending is borrowed money...The serious discussion about whether we can afford to continue spending as much on welfare, health, education, pensions and all the other big-ticket items has simply been avoided by the sleight of hand of saying, ‘Oh, we’ll just borrow more,’...The debate is still a childish, primitive one by which we tell our public, ‘It’s OK. Yes, there may be a war around the corner, and yes, we have to increase defence expenditure, but you don’t need to worry. None of the social programmes are going to be touched.’ And, of course, it’s nonsense.”