> The US government has been trying to get Europe to invest in its own defense for 50+ years
Blatantly untrue. America has spent 50 years ensuring europe is reliant on America for security, because America likes the economic benefits that brings.
Joe Biden on the floor of the US senate over 30+ years ago complaining about how Europe has no coherent common strategy on defense:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YA9eMKNCRuQ
> The US has warned that greater military co-operation between EU countries would be a “dramatic reversal” of three decades of transatlantic defence integration, in the latest sign of the fraying relationship between Washington and Brussels.
That's 2019. When Trump was in power.
> It said that Washington was “deeply concerned” that approval of the rules for the European Defence Fund and the Permanent Structured Cooperation, or Pesco, launched in 2017 to plug gaps in Europe’s military power, would “produce duplication, non-interoperable military systems, diversion of scarce defence resources and unnecessary competition between Nato and the EU”.
They are both true. America engineered the previous world order, where the West relied on American protection, which at the same time helped keep the dollar the world currency and America the most influential and powerful nation.
At the same time, they complained about Europe not doing enough and shouldering enough of the burden, and I find it plausible that they legitimately did wish Europe would do that, the above paragraph notwithstanding.
> At the same time, they complained about Europe not doing enough
Except whenever Europe did try to, America used its soft power to dissuade Europe from this course of action, and instead continue funneling money into American arms manufacturers.
Blatantly untrue. America has spent 50 years ensuring europe is reliant on America for security, because America likes the economic benefits that brings.