(06-12-2018 02:17 PM)Owl 69/70/75 Wrote:  We made bad trade deals with our allies to get them to fall in line being us in the Cold War. Their economies and their militaries had been torn to smithereens by WWII, and they needed us to help them recover.

Problem is that we won the Cold War 25 years ago (thanks, Ronald Reagan) but we never adapted to the new environment. Ross Perot said something in 1992 that made a lot of sense to me, mainly because I had been saying it myself for several years by then, "In the post-Cold War era, economic power will be more important than military power."

We need to re-level the playing field economically, and to get them to pick up more of the military load.

In a nutshell, Owl, the Europeans are like our benefit getters in that they're not happy when the tap is turned off. If I remember right, there were a lot of crying going on when they were told they had to work in order to receive anymore. Free is better.