Continuing his overseas work to evaluate U.S. foreign aid to defend Europe, Sen. J.D. Vance, R-Ohio, is calling out European countries for cutting their defense spending after the Cold War and forcing Americans to bear the brunt of the cost.
"The United States has provided a blanket of security to Europe for far too long," Vance wrote in a Monday opinion column for the Financial Times. "In the aftermath of the Cold War, European nations made deep and lasting cuts to their defense budgets. Estimates suggest the continent would have spent an additional $8.6 trillion on defense over 30 years had they maintained Cold War levels of military expenditure.
"As the American defense budget nears $1 trillion per year, we ought to view the money Europe hasn't spent on defense for what it really is: an implied tax on the American people to allow for the security of Europe."
This is not an anti-Ukraine, or a pro-Russia position that Democrats and anti-Donald Trump forces try to make it out to be, according to Vance, but a pro-Europe message.
"There is frankly no good reason that aid from the U.S. should be needed," Vance continued. "Europe is made up of many great nations with productive economies. They ought to have the capacity to handle the conflict, but over decades they have become far too weak.
"America has been asked to fill the void at tremendous expense to its own citizens. Behind the price tag, this conflict has revealed the shocking weakness of the defense industrial base on both sides of the Atlantic.
"In Europe and America, fragmented defense industries make limited quantities of the most advanced weapons on earth, but struggle to produce heavy weaponry at the speed and scale needed to win a major conflict."
Russia might not be dominating Ukraine, but it is outproducing the U.S. and Europe in ammunition production, Vance said.
"For all the talk about who spends the most on defense by percentage of gross domestic product, Russia currently makes more than twice the amount of artillery shells each month than Europe and the U.S. combined," he wrote.
"The question each European nation needs to ask itself is this: Are you prepared to defend yourself? And the question the U.S. must ask is, If our European allies can't even defend themselves, are they allies, or clients? These issues go beyond budgetary gimmicks and trilateral summit attendance.
"They demand tangible military capacity and industrial power."
American leaders are weakening Europe by becoming its "crutch," according to Vance.
"U.S. leaders across the spectrum support Europe and see the value of generations-old alliances," he wrote. "But as we watch European power atrophy under an American protectorate, it is reasonable to ask whether our support has made it easier for Europe to ignore its own security."
The Ukraine war is just the most recent wake-up call that the world should not ignore any longer, he concluded.
"We owe it to our European partners to be honest: Americans want allies in Europe, not client states, and our generosity in Ukraine is coming to an end," he wrote. "Europeans should regard the conclusion of the war there as an imperative. They must keep rebuilding their industrial and military capabilities. And Europe should consider how exactly it is going to live with Russia when the war in Ukraine is over.
"In the U.S., justifications for the war often depend on a contemporary domino theory: Unless we stop Putin in Ukraine, he won't stop there. But the time has come for Europe to stand on its own feet. That doesn’t mean it has to stand alone, but it must not continue to use America as a crutch."
Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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