Of course it is, they have been taking advantage of our military power since WWII only getting more complacent every passing year. Why should they spend money on a superior military when the USA has been doing it for them?

They have never been weaker and keep barking like rabid dogs about keeping the war going in Ukraine, a war they have no hope of winning or affording without the USA. The free lunch will be ending and their weakness grows clearer every day.

From the article: 'After eighty years of relying on the U.S. for defense, the EU’s combined military power remains dwarfed by the U.S., Russia, and China.

Recent media reports have claimed that Europe is bolstering its defenses to counter Russia, increasingly independent of U.S. assistance.

These headlines, while attention-grabbing, often gloss over a critical clarification: Europe is not a unified political entity. It is a continent—a geographic space—lacking its own institutions or a standing army.'

This article is a "No Brainer".... all by design.

Well, hell yeah! If you rely on the US for 80 years and we gladly defend you while you pay less than you promised you would, it would follow that you would not have any military of your own. Been nice knowing you. And don't believe Russia will attack. Europe will be attacked/destroyed by other Europeans.

Nice articles for those who meet this topic for the first time.

What I think is underplayed here is Energy. AS long as this is not 100% solidly covered, you cannot have an industrial base that can produce in war time.

Not to mention that the so called 1.3 million is only on paper. You need lethality.

Then RSI capability which includes embedding, and this leads to a command structure.

Then there is the WHY question. WHY would EU want to howl as the big dogs on the block?

1. Creating a warlike structure is deflecting from inherent structural weakness in the EU system and economy, and finance.
2. Since EU is a political process, and in 2022 the COVID transfer Union was executed, now comes the logical next step. And in order to do that they need two things: EU taxing power and Foreign policy/Defense power.

Of course, La France, Germany, Poland, and other States are really waiting for this moment to go to their populace and say: see, we need this.

Since, that has political ramification, they need a military crisis.

I would say, there is one coming, but it is not one from the outside, but one that is growing when 25% of the original population has been replaced, and out bred.