[stymaar]

> Western Europe was much more integrated with the US during the Cold War than it was at any time after 1990

Not quite. For instance no European countries got involved in Vietnam like they did in Iraq (twice) and Afghanistan, and France had left Nato integrated command in the 60s, only to join again in 2009.

[flohofwoe]

I suspect that this was less about helping the US, but rather about gathering at least a bit of battlefield experience for the various European armies that took part, since at that time the thought was that the Cold War armies prepared for a type of warfare that would never happen again after the Cold War was "won" (and thus also the massive demilitarization of the 1990s).

Also quite famously, Germany gave the middle finger to the US when it wanted to pull allies into 3rd Gulf War with that made up Iraqi WMD claim (and we also weren't partaking in the 2nd Gulf War before - apparently we paid $10 billion in financial support and some non-combat roles).

But yeah, Afghanistan was a pointless endeavour all around, and we shouldn't have joined there either.