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Notes -
Who is this 'we'?
This is neither a common definition of victory, nor even an accurate characterization of the comparable expenditures.
It is certainly a take that a country that was not a member of a regional defensive alliance, and repeatedly disagreed internally and externally about any need to join a defensive alliance, getting repeatedly invaded and suffering major losses when countries that did join the defensive alliance were not invaded is thus a proof against value of being a party of a regional defensive alliance.
It is certainly also a take where a country vastly outnumbered by a power considered one of the strongest in the world, without the supplies to sustain operations for a year, being able to last years and fight the aggressor with designs on the entire country down to border provinces alone thanks to external aid as evidence that the external aid couldn't help anyone.
By contrast, smaller countries around the world often find these things- not being invaded and being able to substantially resist much more capable threatening neighbors if they are invaded- very very helpful, and often something they drive their entire foreign policies around. Were American alliance structures accurately perceived as such a bad deal, we would expect other American alliance members trying to leave or distance themselves from them.
Instead, over the last four years we saw increased interest in joining or strengthening them from Europe (Finland and Sweden) to the Middle East (reported Saudi Arabian terms for Israeli normalization) to Asia (Philippines re-alignment post-Duterte, increasing trends by Vietnam and India) to Latin America (Guyana). By contrast, the states that have notably tried to distance themselves from the US include such notable allies as... Afghanistan (an indefinite money and resource sink), Iraq (also a money sink), and Russia (if you are of the Mearsheimer school of thought).
What you think 'the rest of NATO might as well be dead to the remaining civilized world' means is unclear. The Ukraine War may have surprised you with the level of apathy / disinterest towards the Europeans security concerns among those countries who didn't care to go along with European sanctions, but I assure you this is very much not new or particular to Europe, and is quite consistent with European sensitivities to other states security interests both near (in Europe itself) and afar.
Again, I will ask who this 'we' is, because this goes beyond a lack of shared consensus.
In 2020, NATO was so legitimate that the Finns and Swedes didn't want to be a part of it, the Ukrainian body politic was ambivalent and still considered a Russian full-scale invasion impossible at a cultural-identity level, and that the Germans and the French were as a matter of policy trying to strengthen their ties with Russia even at the expense of the security interests of other NATO countries, including arms sales and the Nord Stream pipeline whose energy blackmail implications to both the eastern europeans and Germans was only retroactively acknowledged as maybe a bad idea.
In 2020, Russia had not 'abstained' from invading Ukraine for four years, but was at that very time actively running and had been supporting for years two incited rebellion statelets that it was attempting to leverage for demands of sovereignty concessions that would preserve its proxies and give it substantial veto controls of Ukrainian foreign policy, including economic engagement with Europe. That this was a step too far for the French and Germans, who had replaced the Americans in the Russia-Ukraine negotiations years prior and were simultaneously willing to deepen military and economic cooperation in other fronts, is demonstrative of whether it was a virtuous abstinence or not.
In 2024, by contrast, NATO is presumably less legitimate because a non-member state forcing a stalemate of a nation-scale invasion by what was arguably the strongest land army in the world is embarrassing.
And in 2024 NATO is presumably weaker than in 2020 because the addition of Finland and Sweden, years of greatly increased military-industrial investment in their armaments capabilities, and consensus that the Russians are indeed a common threat is... is presumably worth less than the stockpiles given to Ukraine shoot NATO's primary potential adversary in the face, who... apparently grew in relative strength the more NATO munitions were shot in its face and the more of its own munitions it shot at a non-NATO country.
But, you know, vibes.
Liberal Western State Dept Consensus
A true statement if we hadn't declared them a proxy via pouring in oodles of money and having leaders going around making declarations. The Biden-NATO philosophy appears to be "Speak loudly and carry a tiny stick."
"We" are NATO and establishment American foreign policy persons.
Just as importantly "they" are foreign belligerents. What you seem to care about is what France or Finland thinks of these entities. That is largely irrelevant. What Russia thinks is relevant. And they decided that the Biden administration was a good time to invade. They decided that Germany had crippled its own economy with Green pipedreams.
Also its important to keep an eye on one of the most important, but mercurial NATO members: Turkey. Turkey has bucked the rest of the members more than ever and was closer to exiting the alliance 2021-present than any time since it joined.
That capacity has proven both far too slow to materialize and far to expensive for the welfare states to maintain.
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