Everyone knows what’s going on. Europe is slowly reacquiring pants (too slowly for my taste).
The US has this ridiculous belief that Europe has no military ability. The truth is that Europe is far too skilled at war, and collectively disarmed after the Second World War and let the US make the decisions and pay for it all because that was the only way to achieve a lasting peace. European armed forces aren’t ready for war, but they are skeletons on which wartime forces can be reconstituted.
Now that the US is dropping its responsibilities it’s also losing its privileges, but everyone is moving quietly so that the amateurs in the White House don’t cotton on. The world doesn’t need a sheriff; it’s just going to have a bunch of players looking after their own interests. The historical attitude to war already prevails: ‘it’s fine as long as it doesn’t affect us.’
Unfortunately the skeleton analogy is not correct, because it assumes that the foundation is fine, and you just need more beef/muscle/money to scale it up.
With the exception of few European countries that did maintain a functional army (Finland, France), other countries' military skeletons suffer from terminally low levels of bone density due to decades of under- and malnutrition. The whole bodies (incl. skeletons) have to quickly be build anew.
It still has enough equipment and manpower to easily get through Baltics and defeat Germany and others. Fortunately for the latter, Poland is in the way and can perhaps put enough of a fight.
The thing that you are missing is the huge development in drone technology. Ukraine and Russia are the top2 countries that know how to use this technology as part of the military action, and Western countries would have a rude awakening as nails. More technologically advanced "tanks" would not matter much.
The US has this ridiculous belief that Europe has no military ability. The truth is that Europe is far too skilled at war, and collectively disarmed after the Second World War and let the US make the decisions and pay for it all because that was the only way to achieve a lasting peace. European armed forces aren’t ready for war, but they are skeletons on which wartime forces can be reconstituted.
Now that the US is dropping its responsibilities it’s also losing its privileges, but everyone is moving quietly so that the amateurs in the White House don’t cotton on. The world doesn’t need a sheriff; it’s just going to have a bunch of players looking after their own interests. The historical attitude to war already prevails: ‘it’s fine as long as it doesn’t affect us.’