@Sasaki: you are confusing me. Anyway it's fairly simple:

- If the USA acts in its self interest good. If the USA acts for “the good of the world”, even better.
- Ditto for Europe.
- There's no requirement on either to act for “the good of the world”, so self interest is what you are going to get.
- There's no requirement for Europe to assist the USA or vice versa. So common interest is as much as you can ask for.
- Observably, both the USA and Europe primarily act in their self interest and not for “the good of the world” or even some championed “ideal”. There's always that self-interest,
even if it sometimes is mixed with a genuine belief in ideals.

- The USA has taken the approach of having a worldwide network of military bases to interfere where they want to.
- Europe has taken an approach of bilateral economic ties/strings which can be leveraged after the colonies were dismantled (so military bases were out of the question to begin with). In addition Europe maintains a military of similar technological capabilities as that of the USA, but far smaller in raw numbers. (Incidentally a lot of the USA budget on military expenses ends up in Europe due to the USA's main suppliers of some of the tech being European.)
- Primary threats to Europe are gone, so the cold war style armies are too. We find it saves us a lot of money, and collectively time that we can spend on something worth doing.
- Neither can don the cloak of moral righteousness and expect the world to follow their every word. Neither can intimidate far smaller parties into complying with demands either.
- Apart from that it's laughable that either China or Russia should invade their primary export markets.
- Especially when China and Russia are perfectly content focusing on eroding the power of the USA.

Now tell me where the need for Europe arises to have more of an army? Now tell me how Europe cannot defend itself?