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How is NATO dependant on America? European NATO has 400 nukes, 2 million troops, carriers, submarines, aircraft, everything.
European NATO would crush Russia in a conventional war. 500 million Europeans beat 140 million Russians 100% of the time. They're only behind in nuclear weapons but still retain the power to cause Russia a lot of damage.
Everyone points to them not spending as much as the US military but they have everything they need already.
"They're only behind in nuclear weapons" - this is blatantly untrue. Russia has substantial technological advantages in multiple fields, especially hypersonics for which there are only theoretical missile interdiction systems. Additionally, Russia and her allies have an immense military materiel manufacturing advantage - look at the disparity in artillery ammunition supplies in Ukraine. If you cut off foreign aid (so no China/North Korea/Iran for Russia and no US for EU Nato) the disparity becomes overwhelming - it doesn't matter how many warm bodies you can supply if you don't have weapons for them to fire or bullets for them to shoot. If they're telling the truth about the Oreshnik's availability the conflict would be even more one-sided.
If Russia has been struggling to crush Ukraine for the past 3 years even with their munitions advantage, then they can't beat a force vastly larger and stronger than Ukraine.
Europe has large navies that can blockade Russian sea trade. Europe has large air forces that can at least secure air parity, they won't be reduced to sitting around getting glide-bombed to death. They have a massive front with Russia that Russia will struggle to man, stretching from Turkey up to Finland.
Europe produces machine tools domestically. They have Germany for precision engineering. If they're actually at war they'll get serious and start producing ammunition in large quantities. It's really not that hard to produce shells and gun barrels, we know from history that German industry can produce large amounts of munitions, not to mention the other states. They're just trapped in the EU aura of omnishambles and are dragging their feet. Aside from Britain I doubt most of the other NATO countries care that much. This war doesn't really harm their interests enough to make a serious effort to arm Ukraine intensively.
The Russians don't have enough munitions to destroy 2 million professional soldiers, which is what they'd need to do before Europe starts drafting. Europe's sheer size and scale can buy them time to militarize their economy. Russia doesn't seem very good at swift blitzkriegs.
Ukraine has somehow managed to hold this long by throwing warm bodies into the fray, Europe can do that for years and years. Ukraine has no navy and next to no air power, Europe has both.
And this whole discussion is silly because Europe does have nuclear weapons and wouldn't be attacked anyway.
This is because the majority of EU munitions were actually sent to Ukraine, along with a lot of "instructors" and other technical staff who used those weapons. They aren't struggling to crush Ukraine by itself - they're dealing with EU's stocks as well. The EU currently has a massive ammunition shortfall, and according to people who are actually involved in the EU defence industry they need at least 3-4 years to build their stocks back up, and 10 years to be fully prepared. I will freely admit that if you give the EU a decade's warning to prepare in advance that they'd do substantially better, but that's not the situation we're in now.
They currently don't have enough materiel to put up a fight against Russia - it was all shipped to Ukraine. That weakness you're identifying is actually lethal if the conflict took place now as opposed to ten years in the future. It doesn't matter how many warm bodies and soldiers you can produce if you can't actually give them bullets to shoot or guns to shoot them from.
And in this situation (assuming a kindly wizard has disarmed all nuclear weapons) Russia would just threaten EU leaders with Oreshnik strikes and let them know that it isn't just grunts and poor people who would be in danger - and the EU would immediately surrender.
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Are you counting Ukraine as part of Europe? Because right now the rest of Europe doesn't seem to be doing a great job of defending it. They also notably had trouble with Serbia/Bosnia in the 90s and Russia/Georgia in the 2000s. Defense is about more than just "is able to continue to exist." As always, the main problem is that those 500 million Europeans are divided into about 50 different countries that don't agree on much.
Ukraine isn't in the EU or in NATO, tons of european voters dislike Ukraine (illegally flooding markets with their cheaper grain, bombing the oil pipeline with Russia, covering up their own accidents that killed some polish people and trying to blame it on russia) so the motivation to defend it isn't fully there.
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In this context I mean European NATO which was also unthreatened by Serbia or the Russian invasion of Georgia. Georgia would be nigh-impossible to defend even with the US involved, just via geography.
There has to be a limit, NATO countries can't be expected to fight and die for countries that aren't even in the alliance as a reasonable part of their defence.
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Yeah, if it wasn’t for nukes, EU could defeat. The nukes are still not something one can take out of the equation, though.
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I would argue a vast amount of those military resources were researched designed and developed with US IP... decreasing costs for our allies...
And to add to that, if you have XX amounts of jets including however many f-16s, as you can see in ukraine, once you get into a real war, those artillery shells start to deplete quickly. Im aware some european countries produce their own jets but I believe, and am willing to be proved wrong, that despite that much of the equipment is still sold to them by the US. So they get into a war and then you have Macron begging in the house just like zelensky for a loan to buy equipment.
Europe does buy a lot of American equipment but that's fine, many countries do that. They buy it with their own money as opposed to other people's money like Ukraine.
And they have the Eurofighter, Rafale and Tornado that were produced entirely in Europe. They have Leopards, Leclercs, Marders, MLRS and long-range SAMs... Turkey license-builds the F-16 domestically. There is a European version of just about everything except stealth fighters.
Maybe the American stuff is a bit better? American aid would obviously make it much easier to beat Russia. But it's not strictly necessary with over 3:1 population advantage and a much larger industrial base. 1v1 Europe would beat Russia every time in a conventional war. It would be like the Ukraine war but in reverse where sheer size is the most important thing. Broadly speaking, as Russia is to Ukraine, so Europe is to Russia.
If they were actually at war, then they'd start building serious numbers of artillery shells. But there's no reason for them to be at war so they don't bother.
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