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The European Union is widely regarded to be the main reason driving a peaceful Europe. I've not really heard of the argument at all, ever, that the US is what keeps Europe from engaging in war. It's true that the US-led United Nations and principles of the right of self-determination led to massive post-war decolonization, leading to Europe being much less imperialistic (which accelerated the inevitable independence movements which were already in full force in most countries) but even here the US subsidizing defense doesn't apply, the amount of military power that was used for the colonies was quite slim, almost everywhere they became police-heavy, and the US wouldn't have subsidized colonial powers, on the contrary. As for Europe warring until US ascendancy... while it's certainly true that the US was never more powerful relatively to everyone else than after the second world war, but they've been the largest economy in the world since the 19th century. They were the superpower before the first world war even started, let alone the second. Hell if anything, since then the US only lost power as Russia became a superpower, Western Europe became united and China rose, none of which were true at the end of the 19th century, and the per-capita wealth gap between the US and everyone else only slimmed since then. But I'll agree with you on the fact that the US subsidizes defense spending through the NATO in the tug of war for eastern Europe, sure. It's unlikely that the EU could have grown eastward so much, without NATO we would've seen today's Ukraine happen much sooner with say Estonia, Latvia, Romania or Poland 10 years ago. |