> So it was pretty irresponsible of the Europeans to leave themselves beholden to the US for so long.

> Which is it?

The answer is complex.

Europe's dependence on US is not much on the military front (again, there are no realistic threats in a conventional war that European countries have) as it is on a political and diplomatic one.

Europe is made of 27+ countries that have different foreign policies, goals, and whose word in a war of real defence has never been tested.

Under that situation US is an absolutely critical reference as in times of difficulties even countries with different interests will still realistically rally around US guidance.

You can thus understand why the group of Baltics and Poland are absolutely much more leaning into playing friends with Washington than they are with Brussels.

Europe is absolutely dependent as of now, and likely will be forever for these very reasons, on US.

The answer is complex, but it should never read as "Europe does not have enough weapons or soldiers to defend itself", rather than "Europe is not taking their own defence under its own responsibility".

It is difficult to tell Italians: "stop producing your own rifles, tanks, mines, etc, let's all agree on a single design". It is hard to tell the Portuguese "look, you're gonna deploy two brigades in Estonia for the next 10 years". It is hard to tell the Belgians they have to follow the command of an Austrian in a war fought in Eastern Europe.

Europe is plagued by differences that the common alliance with the US flattens out. Without US, it's a borderline disaster. It's not a matter of money being spent.

> there are no realistic threats in a conventional war that European countries have

You underestimate russia and clearly only glance over war news over past few years, if at all. They are not sending their maximum potential, nor sending their best equipment like tanks, Ukraine is rather a minor operation for them. Its true their conventional warfare capabilities have been damaged to certain extent, in some cases severely but China has stepped up and covered many holes, no reason to think they won't continue testing their equipment further (US did & does the same, its basic realpolitik).

Do you think they ran out of rather modern tanks and thus are sending 60-70 year old models? Far from it. They still didn't introduce mandatory draft because they didn't need to, folks dying in Ukraine now are all volunteers who get a massive signing bonus high enough to buy a flat or some smaller/older house. Their current drone capabilities would decimate any western Europe army in few weeks to the cinder, even Poland is not be completely up to the game, only Ukraine realistically is right now. These days, war is fought with 2 ingredients - drones and enough boots on the ground with nontrivial attrition.

Can they conquer all Europe? Nope, but they could easily take baltics for example. Thus they also subvert via bribes and corrupt exploitable politicians - look at Orban, Fico and failed attempt in Romania. Those countries would not fight them nato or not, they would roll on their back and invite them themselves, in (maybe not vain) hope that their corrupt highly criminal regimes can continue and thrive under new&old rulers in same vein as in Belarus.

Don't underestimate them, they are by far the biggest threat Europe as a whole has, it has been like that for past 100+ years. Their inferiority complex runs deep and western democracies are a direct threat to their typical corrupt dictatorship way of life. 2025 is really not the year to have such misguided & naive ideas.

Also as a proper mafia state they only understand power. Demonstrate you have enough and you will be left alone. Otherwise not so much.