> The point im trying to make is that there is another way here which i beleive nets the West (both USA and Europe – USA's natural ally)
And this is the crux of the issue. It's hubris to assume Europe is our natural ally and should always be our top priority.
In the US, our Pacific allies (Taiwan, Japan, South Korea, Australia, New Zealand) are a higher priority than our European ones.
As can be seen in US Military Deployments (the majority of US Armed Forces personnel is deployed in the Pacific) along with economic relations (APAC trade is larger than EU trade)
For the US, China is the primary adversary to worry about, not Russia. Why should European states assume the US has an obligation to always support Europe? At least France and UK have historically tried to maintain some strategic autonomy, and Eastern NATO states like Poland, Romania, and Turkiye have continued to build domestic defense capacity.
And unlike most European countries, our Asian allies (SK, JP, TW) have continued to build fairly competitive domestic defense industries. Japan and South Korea can manufacture their own ballistic missiles, tanks, submarines, airframes, heavy artillery, etc. Only France has a similar diversity of domestic defense R&D and manufacturing capacity in Europe.
> more benefits than gearing up for war (aka the Peace Dividend).
It's Europe that gets the peace dividend. Not the US. We still need to the capacity to fight a two continent war. That's a bum deal.
> I would think that Europe has knowledge and skillset.
Europe as a continent, sure. But in reality, it's a number of individuals states working on their own domestic production, procurement, and supporting their domestic champions.
France will continue to protect Thales Group, Arianne Group, Dassault Group, etc, just like how Germany continues to back Rheinmetall, ThysennKrupp, Eurofighter, etc.
There is no ability to unify production and procurement without also undermining domestic industries and jobs.
France's Ariane Group will never transfer their Medium Range Ballistic Missiles technology to a German company - they don't want to help a potential competitor.
This same thing happened with the Eurofighter project, with France deciding to back Dassault instead.
