US Policy and Its Role in Enabling European Social Spending Post-1970 After the

US Policy and Its Role in Enabling European Social Spending Post-1970

After the turmoil of World War II, the United States emerged as the architect of a new global order often dubbed Pax Americana. Especially from the 1970s onward – and even more so after the Soviet Union’s 1991 collapse – U.S. foreign and economic policies underwrote a long peace and unprecedented prosperity in the West. This American-led order provided security guarantees and economic stability that effectively subsidized Western Europe’s social welfare models. European allies like Germany, France, the UK, Italy, Spain, and others were able to invest heavily in domestic social services (from generous public healthcare to expansive welfare programs) while keeping defense budgets low, confident that America’s strategic umbrella had them covered. At the same time, however, this arrangement had a dual effect: it buoyed European economies and social spending, but contributed to deindustrialization and economic strains on America’s own working and middle classes. To understand this complex trade-off, we must look at the pillars of Pax Americana, how Europe capitalized on it, and what thinkers have said about the benefits and costs involved.

Foundations of Pax Americana: U.S. Global Commitments

By the late 20th century, the United States was providing critical global public goods that underpinned international stability. These commitments included maintaining military supremacy, promoting free commerce, and sustaining key institutions – all of which enabled U.S. allies to flourish under an American security blanket. Key pillars of the Pax Americana included:

Military Guarantees and Sovereignty Protection: Through alliances like NATO, the U.S. pledged to defend many nations, effectively deterring threats to its allies’ sovereignty. American forces were permanently stationed in Europe and elsewhere as tripwires against aggression, imposing what one analyst called a “stability and security tax” on the U.S., which kept troops on allied soil for decades. This forward deployment meant European states faced little risk of invasion, allowing them to feel secure with minimal military buildup of their own.

Freedom of the Seas and Trade Routes: The U.S. Navy’s dominance guaranteed open sea lanes and safe passage for global commerce. From the Atlantic to the Persian Gulf and the Pacific, American patrols protected shipping from piracy or blockade. For example, the U.S. considered the Persian Gulf’s stability a vital interest (articulated in the Carter Doctrine of 1980) and led coalition efforts like the Gulf War (1991) to ensure oil continued to flow. A striking illustration comes from 1945, when President Roosevelt struck a deal with Saudi Arabia’s King Ibn Saud: the U.S. would guarantee Saudi security in exchange for stable access to oil. As one commentator noted, this “Deal of Bitter Lake” became a prototype for Pax Americana – oil would flow through U.S.-protected trade routes, be priced in U.S. dollars, and underpin global trade. In short, America’s naval and military power kept vital chokepoints (like Suez, Hormuz, and later the Malacca Strait) open for business, benefiting all trading nations – Europe especially, as its economies depended heavily on imported oil and export markets overseas.

Financial Leadership and Free Flow of Capital: American economic policy crafted an open, dollar-centered financial system. Under the Bretton Woods framework (1940s–1971), the U.S. anchored global currencies to the dollar, fostering stability. Even after the gold peg ended in 1971, the dollar remained the world’s reserve currency, lubricating international trade and finance. The U.S. promoted freedom of finance – encouraging allies to remove capital controls and embrace investment. Wall Street and the City of London (with U.S. blessing) became hubs of global capital movement. Crucially, Washington often kept U.S. markets open to allied exports as a means of strengthening friends and binding them into the liberal economic order. This meant the U.S. often ran trade deficits, effectively absorbing Europe’s and Asia’s exports to spur their growth. Policymakers in Washington viewed this not as charity but strategy: a prosperous, interdependent Europe would be a stable partner against communism (and later, against global turmoil). Indeed, participating in Pax Americana required America to shoulder certain burdens – like tolerating trade imbalances and foreign competition – in exchange for a more integrated and cooperative world. U.S. leaders accepted that opening the giant American market to trade and investment from abroad was part of the price of leadership. In effect, the U.S. provided the global economy with a consumer of last resort and a stable currency, enabling European and Asian allies to boom.

Leadership in International Institutions: The U.S. was instrumental in creating and leading institutions such as the United Nations, World Bank, IMF, and later the World Trade Organization. American diplomats and experts often set the rules that governed global finance, development, and conflict resolution. Through the UN Security Council (where the U.S. holds a permanent seat), Washington helped uphold a system nominally based on collective security and national sovereignty. Through the World Bank and IMF (where U.S. influence is largest), it guided reconstruction and development – from Marshall Plan aid in the late 1940s to managing debt crises in the developing world. This U.S.-led institutional framework – sometimes called the “liberal international order” – ensured that market democracies (especially in Europe) operated in a relatively stable, predictable environment. For Europe, this meant access to financing, investment, and export markets under rules largely shaped by Western values and enforced with American heft.

Commodity and Price Stability: In the post-1970 era, the U.S. also took on the role of stabilizer for key commodities. It used its influence to mitigate oil shocks (for instance, brokering deals with Saudi Arabia and other OPEC members to moderate prices after the 1973 and 1979 oil crises). The American strategic petroleum reserve and willingness to police the Gulf helped prevent energy crises from crippling European economies. Likewise, as one of the world’s largest agricultural exporters, the U.S. contributed to global food security, often increasing grain exports when harvests failed elsewhere or using aid to prevent famine. By assuring allies that they would not starve or freeze due to geopolitical turmoil, the U.S. further reduced the necessity for those nations to create costly strategic stockpiles or military adventures of their own. In essence, if Middle Eastern oil was threatened or a shipping route like the Suez Canal was closed, Washington stepped in to resolve it – sparing European governments from having to do so themselves. An example was the U.S. response in 1987–88 with Operation Earnest Will reflagging Kuwaiti tankers to keep oil flowing during the Iran-Iraq War, which safeguarded Europe’s energy supplies without European navies needing to act.

All these commitments formed a worldwide Pax Americana – a generally peaceful, prosperous environment (at least among the major powers) under U.S. predominance. American strategists argued this system benefited everyone, including the U.S. itself. The mindset in Washington was that a win-win regime was possible: allies would grow richer and freer under U.S. protection, and in turn they would support American leadership. As one policy expert noted, the prevailing view was that Pax Americana “enhanced American power, security and prosperity” while also advancing common interests. Instead of old-fashioned empires extracting tribute, the U.S. postwar approach was to build a community of democracies that traded and cooperated, albeit with the U.S. unmistakably in the lead.

Europe’s Security Umbrella and the Rise of Welfare States

Western Europe became the primary beneficiary of Pax Americana’s protections. After 1970, and especially once the Cold War ended, Europe’s major powers were able to dramatically scale back military expenditures and redirect resources to domestic social programs. The implicit bargain was simple: America provides security; Europe spends on social welfare. In the words of one observer, throughout NATO’s history it was a case of “Americans doing the securing and Europeans doing the collecting.” Protected by the U.S., “Western Europeans constructed the most elaborate welfare states known to man with the resources they would otherwise have had to spend on their own defense”.

European governments seized this “peace dividend” with vigor. For example, Germany, once on the front line of the Cold War, saw defense spending peak at over 3% of GDP in the 1970s; by 1989 West Germany was spending about 2.4% of GDP on defense. After the Soviet threat vanished, reunified Germany rapidly slashed its military outlays, falling well below 2% in the 1990s as it “took full advantage of the peace dividend”. Across the political spectrum, German leaders agreed to funnel money away from tanks and towards pensions, healthcare, and the integration of former East Germany. The story was similar in France and Britain – while they maintained somewhat larger militaries (including nuclear forces), even these two UN Security Council powers settled into defense budgets around only 2% of GDP or slightly above. By 2010 Britain was spending just 2.6% of its GDP on defense and France about 2.1%, fractions of what the U.S. spent proportionally. Smaller NATO members spent even less: Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Belgium, and others often hovered near 1–1.5% of GDP on defense through the 1990s and 2000s, well under NATO’s benchmark of 2%. Sweden (neutral but Western-aligned) likewise kept military spending low (usually around 1.5% of GDP) while building one of the world’s most generous universal healthcare and social welfare systems.

Freed from high defense budgets, European nations poured funds into their social services and welfare programs. Throughout the 1970s and beyond, Western European governments expanded public healthcare to cover all citizens, built extensive unemployment and pension benefits, and subsidized higher education and housing – hallmarks of what became known as the European social model. For instance, Britain’s National Health Service (founded in 1948) could be maintained and improved in later decades partly because the U.S.-led NATO shield meant Britain did not need to draft more soldiers or build more aircraft carriers. In continental Europe, countries like France and Italy established or enlarged national healthcare systems in the 1970s, while also funding robust arts, infrastructure, and welfare projects. Spain after its 1970s transition to democracy similarly prioritized social spending over military might, confident that NATO (which it joined in 1982) and U.S. security ties would safeguard its new democracy from external threats.

NATO’s collective security arrangement essentially allowed European “free-riding.” American officials frequently grumbled that allies were taking advantage of U.S. protection. This complaint grew louder after the Cold War, as U.S. defense spending stayed extraordinarily high while European armies shrank. A 2010 analysis noted that even during Afghanistan and Iraq war deployments, Europe’s military spending moved from merely inadequate to truly pathetic. Washington’s frustration was that Europe’s welfare states grew heavier even as their tanks, fleets, and fighter jets atrophied. In one revealing anecdote, a Slovak politician justified defense cuts by admitting “we enjoy protection primarily from NATO” – code for American protection. This sentiment was echoed silently in many European capitals: why buy expensive military hardware when the U.S. security guarantee makes invasion highly unlikely? Thus, money that might have gone into armored divisions or missile defense could instead fund childcare allowances in Sweden, or free college in Germany.

From the American perspective, Europe’s dependence was a double-edged sword. On one hand, U.S. policymakers welcomed prosperous, socially stable allies – it validated the success of Pax Americana. Indeed, a core purpose of NATO and the U.S. alliance network was to enable liberal democracies to thrive without fear of war. Americans took pride in Europe’s success as a kind of showcase: nations that once were battlegrounds had become affluent welfare states under U.S. stewardship. But on the other hand, U.S. leaders saw the imbalance as increasingly unfair by the late 20th century. Some warned that Europe’s “free-riding” had gone too far – that allies assumed America would forever pick up the check for global security. By 1998, one commentator quipped that NATO had basically become “welfare for Europe,” allowing Western Europeans to keep living large on social spending while Americans did the hard work of security. The same analyst noted that if NATO kept expanding (for example, adding new members in Eastern Europe), it would only enlarge the implicit income transfer from the U.S. to Europe, since new territories to defend would ultimately be shielded by American power more than European.

It’s worth noting that Europe’s own economic integration, culminating in the European Union, was made possible by the calm and confidence that U.S. protection provided. During the Cold War, West European nations could afford reconciliation and unity – exemplified by France and Germany’s friendship – partly because the U.S. security umbrella dampened old rivalries. After 1991, the EU accelerated integration (launching the euro currency, for example) in an environment still safeguarded by American-led NATO. Europe even spoke of a “Pax Europaea” – the idea that Europe had achieved a zone of peace – but this peace was inextricably linked to the wider Pax Americana. European politicians, whether openly or tacitly, understood that U.S. strategic guarantees allowed them to divert focus inward, building cradle-to-grave welfare systems rather than armaments. As former U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates once lamented, the alliance risked a two-tier system: “between those willing and able to pay the price and bear the burdens of commitments, and those who enjoy the benefits… but don’t want to share the risks and costs”. That gentle scolding encapsulated how European capitals grew accustomed to low defense and high social spending – a habit formed under U.S. guardianship.

The American Trade-Off: From Industrial Might to “Rust Belt” Woes

While Pax Americana delivered stability and growth to allies, it also introduced pressures on the American domestic economy, especially for industrial workers. By championing free trade, open markets, and the strengthening of allied economies, U.S. policy unintentionally hastened deindustrialization at home. Starting in the 1970s, the U.S. manufacturing sector faced intense competition from the very allies it had helped uplift (such as West Germany and Japan) and later from newly globalized economies (like China, which the U.S. welcomed into the world trading system). American factories began to shutter or move overseas in search of cheaper labor and production costs. Over the decades, millions of blue-collar jobs vanished. An analysis by the Economic Policy Institute found that mismanaged globalization – including failed trade deals and an overvalued dollar – fueled growing trade deficits that eliminated over 5 million U.S. manufacturing jobs and about 70,000 factories. The workers displaced from those assembly lines often had to take lower-wage service jobs with fewer benefits, eroding a pathway to middle-class life. In other words, even as globalization under U.S. stewardship created wealth, the distribution of its gains was skewed – and many American communities paid the price.

Several trends underscored this reversal of fortunes for American labor, often linked to the same policies that underwrote allies’ prosperity:

Chronic Trade Imbalances: To help integrate allies into a U.S.-led order, the United States tolerated (and indeed encouraged) trade imbalances that favored Europe and later East Asia. By the 1980s, the U.S. was importing far more than it exported – not only oil, but cars, steel, electronics, and consumer goods from allies. Countries like Germany and Japan ran large trade surpluses, effectively at the expense of U.S. industries like auto manufacturing and machine tools. Over time, the U.S. dollar’s role as the world’s reserve currency (a linchpin of Pax Americana finance) kept the dollar’s value high, making American-made goods relatively more expensive and less competitive internationally. This dynamic – sometimes explained by the Triffin dilemma in economics – meant the U.S. had to supply the world with dollars (for trade and reserves) by importing goods, which in turn hollowed out sectors of its own economy. American workers saw factories relocated or shuttered as companies found it more profitable to import or produce abroad under the global free trade regime the U.S. had advocated.

Offshoring and Outsourcing: From the 1990s into the 2000s, offshoring of production accelerated. U.S. corporations, taking advantage of the liberalized trade and investment climate that Washington had long promoted, moved manufacturing to lower-cost nations (first Mexico and East Asia, and later China and Eastern Europe). Whole supply chains were outsourced, from textiles to electronics. While consumers benefited from cheaper products, the industrial Midwest – the “Rust Belt” – suffered population and job loss. This trend was politically salient: by the 2010s, anger in these communities contributed to a populist backlash against globalization. Nobel-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz pointed out that “among the big losers” of globalization were “the middle and working classes in the advanced countries”, even if globalization boosted overall GDP. In other words, the U.S. embraced a system that in aggregate made the pie larger, but many Americans saw their slice of that pie shrink. Stiglitz and others argue that policy choices – like prioritizing capital mobility and corporate interests – meant that American workers bore a disproportionate share of globalization’s costs.

Eroding Industrial Base as a Strategic Weakness: What began as an economic side-effect of Pax Americana also turned into a national security concern. By outsourcing so much manufacturing, the United States gradually lost its self-sufficiency in critical sectors. A stark example is the semiconductor industry: the U.S. once led the world in making computer chips, but today only about 10% of global semiconductor manufacturing is located in the United States. America lacks the capacity to produce the most advanced chips (at 5 or 7 nanometer scale), relying on ally nations like Taiwan and South Korea for cutting-edge supply. Key stages of electronics production – assembly, testing, packaging – are also overwhelmingly done in Asia (Taiwan, China, Malaysia), not on American soil. This disaggregation of production saves costs in peacetime but “heightens risks relevant to national security,” raising fears of intellectual property theft, counterfeit parts, or supply disruptions if geopolitical conflict erupts. Similarly, the U.S. found itself almost entirely dependent on China for certain rare earth elements and critical materials essential for electronics and defense. In 2020, China produced the lion’s share of these rare minerals while the U.S. mined only a small fraction. Beijing even demonstrated its leverage by tightening exports of rare earths, which left American industries in a vulnerable position. These gaps underscore how the U.S., in powering a globalized economy, allowed critical supply chains to migrate abroad, potentially to the detriment of its own security resilience.

By the 2010s, American strategists started voicing alarm that the country’s strategic positioning had weakened in certain areas. The massive defense spending that upheld Pax Americana had not been invested in domestic infrastructure or next-generation manufacturing to the degree needed. The COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 further exposed how dependent the U.S. had become on foreign production – from personal protective equipment and pharmaceuticals to semiconductors – for its well-being. This sparked a new emphasis on “reshoring” industry and securing supply chains, a stark reversal of the decades-long assumption that globalization was an unmixed good. Critics note the irony: while U.S. alliances and free trade policies enriched allied nations and helped them maintain high living standards, the U.S. middle class stagnated and American inequality widened. The “American Dream” didn’t materialize as expected for many, even as Europe’s welfare states appeared to deliver a comfortable life to their citizens. As one commentary bitterly observed, Europe could afford a “Paradise” of low military risk and high social protection, whereas parts of America were becoming a “Rust Belt” casualty of that same global system.

Perspectives from Economists and Geostrategists

This transatlantic bargain – guns for one side, butter for the other – has been analyzed (and debated) by many economists, political scientists, and strategists. Different frameworks help illuminate the dynamic of U.S. support and European social development:

Hegemonic Stability Theory: Economist-historian Charles Kindleberger, reflecting on the lessons of the Great Depression, argued that a stable global economy needs a hegemon to provide public goods. The hegemon (in this case, the U.S.) supplies things like a reserve currency, a lender of last resort, open markets for distressed goods, and security guarantees. In return, other nations enjoy the benefits without paying the full cost – a situation ripe for “free-riding.” Robert Gilpin and Robert Keohane later refined this into hegemonic stability theory. It essentially describes Pax Americana: the U.S. bore costs to keep the system going (from patrolling sea lanes to absorbing imports) while allies gained in security and commerce. Over time, this theory predicts, the hegemon may feel strain as others prosper relatively more. Indeed, by the 1970s and 80s, some in the U.S. worried about this “hegemonic burden.” But at least initially, American leaders believed the costs were worth it. As noted, they saw Pax Americana as a “win-win” that also enhanced U.S. power – a sentiment consistent with Kindleberger’s idea that it is in the hegemon’s enlightened self-interest to uphold the system.

Alliance Free-Riding and Burden-Sharing: The imbalance in NATO has been a perennial subject of study. In 1966, economists Mancur Olson and Richard Zeckhauser famously analyzed NATO as a case of the collective action problem – concluding that the largest ally (the U.S.) will end up providing disproportionately more of the alliance’s defense effort, while smaller allies free-ride. This set the stage for decades of discussion about how to make European states contribute more. Political scientist Barry Posen and others in the realist school have argued that Europe became capable enough to defend itself after the Cold War, and that the U.S. could safely retrench – but they acknowledge European nations had little incentive to do more as long as Uncle Sam was willing to do the heavy lifting. Even U.S. leaders themselves, such as Defense Secretary Robert Gates and President Donald Trump, echoed these scholarly concerns in blunt terms, warning that America’s patience with European free-riding was not infinite. The flipside is that Europeans like former NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg pointed out how much Europe still values and needs U.S. support, implicitly confirming the core of the free-rider critique.

“Mars and Venus”: Divergent Strategic Cultures: In the early 2000s, scholar Robert Kagan memorably framed the U.S.–Europe difference as “Americans are from Mars, Europeans are from Venus.” Kagan observed that Europe, after decades under the U.S. security umbrella, had moved beyond power politics into a “post-historical” mindset focused on laws, rules, and welfare – whereas the U.S. remained ready to use hard power in a dangerous world. The quip captured a truth: Europe could afford to emphasize diplomacy, soft power, and domestic well-being because American hard power was safeguarding the global backdrop. Kagan’s 2003 book Of Paradise and Power argued that Europeans had built their “paradise” of low military spending and high welfare knowing that the U.S. – the “Mars” – would handle the necessary violence if crisis struck. This analysis, while a bit provocative, aligns with the idea that European strategic complacency was a luxury subsidized by U.S. strength. In a similar vein, historian Niall Ferguson described the U.S. in this period as an “empire in denial” – providing imperial-style order (like the British Empire once did) but without acknowledging the burdens this placed on American society.

Globalization Critics – The Cost to U.S. Society: As the decades passed, a number of economists and commentators began critiquing how the U.S.-led economic order impacted American workers. Joseph Stiglitz emerged as a leading voice, especially with his book Globalization and Its Discontents (2002) and later writings. He noted that middle-class stagnation in America was tied to trade and financial globalization that the U.S. engineered. Stiglitz famously pointed out that the promise that “everyone benefits” from globalization rang hollow for many wage-earners; in fact, “those at the bottom and the middle and working classes in the advanced countries” often “gained little or nothing” in the era of Pax Americana’s hyper-globalization. Likewise, economist Dani Rodrik formulated a “globalization trilemma,” suggesting that democracy, national sovereignty, and full globalization are mutually incompatible – implying the U.S. could not fully globalize its economy without undermining its social contract at home. These thinkers argue that choices made to integrate the world (such as offshoring jobs or prioritizing corporate mobility) undercut the American middle class, contributing to wage stagnation and regional decline. Even more conservative-leaning analysts like Patrick Buchanan in the 1990s or more recent populists echoed these themes, lambasting U.S. leaders for “shipping jobs overseas” and “letting allies take advantage” of the American market.

Imperial Overstretch and Strategic Solvency: Some historians and geostrategists have warned that the U.S. might overextend itself by carrying the world on its shoulders. Historian Paul Kennedy in The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers (1987) warned of “imperial overstretch,” drawing parallels to past empires that spent themselves into decline. While Kennedy’s thesis was more about Cold War military spending, it resonates with the idea that bearing the costs of a global Pax Americana could weaken the U.S. over time. More recently, military analysts like Andrew Bacevich have argued that America’s “Washington rules” – its penchant for maintaining a vast military presence everywhere – not only burden U.S. finances but also distort its economy (favoring defense industries over civilian needs) and invite quagmires. The debate often centers on whether the U.S. should continue being the world’s policeman (with allies as beneficiaries) or whether a more constrained strategy would better preserve American prosperity. John Mearsheimer, a prominent realist scholar, contends that U.S. resources would be better focused on critical rivalries (like managing China in Asia) than on indefinitely subsidizing European defense. Such voices call for Europe to step up – something that, in light of new threats like a resurgent Russia, European nations have cautiously begun considering by modestly raising defense budgets in recent years.

In summary, a wide array of thinkers from economics, political science, and strategy have dissected this unique arrangement. Some celebrate it as an ingenious American project that created an era of peace – a Pax Americana that allowed democracy and welfare capitalism to flourish in Europe. Others criticize it for breeding dependency abroad and neglect at home – arguing that American leaders, in pursuing an expansive global role, neglected the “homeland” economic foundation and the well-being of their own middle class. This very tension defines much of the U.S. foreign policy debate today.

Conclusion

The decades following 1970 (and especially the post-1991 unipolar moment) reveal a grand bargain at the heart of the transatlantic relationship. The United States provided the overarching security and economic framework – from nuclear deterrence and naval patrols to the dollar-based financial system – that kept the world mostly peaceful and prosperous. Under this shelter, Western European nations built their egalitarian welfare states, spending relatively little on armies while spending lavishly on healthcare, education, and social safety nets. This Pax Americana gave Europe the confidence to prioritize “butter over guns,” fundamentally shaping European lifestyles and governance.

However, the story has a flipside: the burdens of global leadership often fell on American shoulders – and wallets. U.S. taxpayers funded the military that defended far-off lands; U.S. factories faced waves of foreign competition; U.S. workers saw their industries shift overseas in the name of a liberalized world economy. Over time, what was a boon for Europe’s social democracies became, in some respects, a strain on America’s own social contract. As one European diplomat wryly noted, “The Americans paid for NATO with their taxes, and we [Europeans] paid for it with our pensions” – highlighting that U.S. social spending remained thinner than Europe’s partly because U.S. defense spending was so much higher.

Today, with geopolitical rivalries returning and questions arising about the future of American leadership, this historical arrangement is under renewed scrutiny. Did Pax Americana amount to America subsidizing others’ prosperity at its own expense, or was it a mutually beneficial grand strategy? The truth lies somewhere in between. The U.S. did gain immeasurably in power, influence, and economic ties from the order it created – the West’s victory in the Cold War and the long peace in Europe are testaments to that success. But the distribution of costs and benefits was uneven, and many American communities indeed paid a price.

Ultimately, the post-1970 era of U.S. hegemony allowed allies to “ride for free” on many security and economic matters, and Europe’s flourishing welfare states are, in no small part, a peacetime dividend of American sacrifice and commitment. Understanding this history is crucial as both Americans and Europeans navigate the future: adjusting burden-sharing in NATO, correcting imbalances in trade, and ensuring that the benefits of any international order – old or new – are felt widely at home, not just abroad. As the U.S. and Europe forge ahead, the legacy of Pax Americana serves as both an inspiration and a cautionary tale about the interplay between global leadership and domestic well-being.

Sources:

Carpenter, Ted G., & Tupy, Marian L. “U.S. Defense Spending Subsidizes European Free-Riding Welfare States.” Cato Institute (2010).

Krauss, Melvyn B. “NATO Expansion? It’s Just Welfare for Europe.” Hoover Institution (1998).

Waltz, Michael. “America: the empire that texted itself to death.” TheArticle (2023).

Shea, Jamie. “Bye, Bye Miss American Pie: Is the US Leaving the West?” Friends of Europe (2025).

Kunz, Barbara. “The Real Roots of Germany’s Defense Spending Problem.” War on the Rocks (2018).

Economic Policy Institute – Robert E. Scott et al. “Globalization’s Toll on U.S. Manufacturing.” (2022).

Stiglitz, Joseph E. “Globalization and its New Discontents.” Project Syndicate (2016).

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Kagan, Robert. Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe in the New World Order. (2003). (Analysis of Europe’s reliance on U.S. power)