> Western Europe needs to figure out quickly how to adapt to a likely diminished or non-existent American role in NATO while at the same time dealing with a very assertive Russia.

Primary, western europe seems to be last chance for democracy. Like, last democracies standing.

That assumes only nation-state-level entities. This has been a very poor assumption: even within my lifetime, the last ~40 years, we've seen nations like Yugoslavia and the USSR break up, and some of the successor states (eg. Slovenia, Croatia, Ukraine, and the Baltic States) have developed robust democracies where previously totalitarian communist governments existed.

Within the territory of the U.S, states like California and NY and Massachusetts continue to have robust democracies even if the federal government doesn't. In California's case it's often a bit too robust, and we often get ourselves into trouble with ballot propositions that have a lot of popular support even when they're economically unworkable.