The supposed European free-rider problem was also a complaint of two recent former U.S. defense secretaries. Robert Gates, who served as secretary of defense under both Obama and his predecessor George W. Bush, warned in 2011 of an impending trans-Atlantic divide “between those willing and able to pay the price and bear the burden of commitments, and those who enjoy the benefits of NATO membership but don’t want to share the risks and costs.” Likewise, then-Defense Secretary Leon Panetta later that year underlined the need for increased defense spending in Europe lest lack of investment “hollow out this [NATO] alliance.” These criticisms were and remain fair, considering that the European defense budgets, and therefore European contributions to NATO defense spending, have decreased since the end of the Cold War.

But Obama’s claims today do not account for recent trends. For the first time in several years, defense-spending cuts have all but stopped in European countries, with few exceptions. This seems largely due to a significantly changed security environment on the continent—specifically the apparent return of great-power competition with Russia to the east, and the challenge of a power vacuum fueling instability, terrorism, and migrations from the south. Although it is very unlikely that all European NATO countries will soon be spending as much as 2 percent of their GDP on defense, as required by NATO, the main European powers are at the threshold (like the United Kingdom and Poland), closely approaching it (France), or taking steps to increase resources allocated to defense (Germany).

Obama claims that U.S. allies have had a habit “for the last several decades” of pushing the United States to act and then being unwilling to contribute themselves. But an examination of U.S. military campaigns since the end of the Cold War shows how infrequently Europeans have pushed the United States to take military action—in fact, more often they have contributed militarily to U.S. efforts, even in cases when their interests were not directly at stake.

Europeans did not push America into Iraq during the first Gulf War in 1991, but supported and participated in the operation with tens of thousands of troops. With their interests directly on the line, Europeans were ambivalent about U.S.-led NATO interventions in the Balkans in 1995 and 1999, but there too they participated after diplomatic options had been exhausted, and then contributed greatly to the stabilization effort in the former Yugoslavia. After the September 11, 2001, attacks on the United States, European leaders unanimously supported the U.S. intervention in Afghanistan—a country where they arguably had few direct interests. Thousands of European troops were part of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force mission established in the country in 2001, though they certainly did not push America to invade. Likewise, it is an understatement to say that Europeans did not push the United States to invade Iraq in 2003. Although some European countries, like the United Kingdom and Spain, joined the U.S.-led coalition, others, like France and Germany, did not—and did not regret it. But European divisions over supporting a U.S. decision to use force have been the exception, not the norm.