True. However.
The US has wanted to play a major role in Europe for 80 years because it meant they controlled the narrative. This, co-incidentally was favourable to European countries because they could spend their money elsewhere.
Over the past few years the US has decided that it would prefer to play in the Pacific rather than Europe and so has been edging away.
It's true that Western Europe has been slow to respond, but it's also important to acknowledge that Trump just changed the pace of this redirection and so it's not entirely on one or the other side.
And yes, fighting indirectly with Russia is also helping the US two-fold. Or, was until Trump decided to wake up as a sleeper agent .
You fell for this propaganda. That equipment is "old" doesn't mean it isn't actively being used. The US military uses and maintains old equipment where it still makes sense, and where there is no viable replacement.
People who do know history would tell you that you don't get peace by dismantling industrial and military capacity. To blame this on "because the US wanted it that way" is just naive. The US might have wanted it that way, but so what? It happened because it was easier to sell domestically compared to allocating hundreds of billions on say, 5th gen fighters.
Or maybe your ivory tower understanding simply ignores the realities of the working class people who voted for Trump to do away with these policies.
I'm shocked by the level of pro-Russia content coming from you and other posters. I hope it's just brigading. I'm devastated if any meaningful amount of Americans feel this way. It's a fall from grace I didn't think I'd see in such real time.
Trump disagrees with you:
> So we raised [the defense spending of NATO members by] $130 billion almost immediately. We had a meeting with all of the [NATO] countries. I said, “You got to pay.” We got $130 billion more — more.
https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/re...
Don't be. I'm neither American nor European, and from my vantage point this is far less America's (US) fault than it is Western Europe's. US has been asking Europe to increase defense spending for years now, and at the beginning of the war it was below 2% (Germany was spending 1.25% in 2018). Trump said this very publicly in during his first term, and he was ignored and mostly ridiculed. Same thing with the Gazprom deal.
Europe's defence should not be entirely on the American tax payer.