I would like for President Trump to know that Europe’s dependence on America was all part of the plan.
At the end of World War II, the United States became the main provider of security for Europe. This U.S. security guarantee made a united Europe possible by providing safeguards against a return to the continent’s destructive past.
The security bargain also had an economic dimension. Our allies and former enemies could spend less on defense and more on strengthening their economies. America did not insist on winning every economic contest or every trade deal. We were willing to play Gulliver, tied down by Lilliputian’s ropes, in the interest of binding the world’s democratic communities together. In the end, everyone prospered and the post-World War II economic expansion became known as the Golden Age of Capitalism.
The United States, with all its great power, could have gone in a different direction. But it didn’t.
