“If you really want to go it alone, forget that you can ever get there with 5 per cent [defence spending]. It will be 10 per cent,” Rutte said on Monday. “You have to build up your own nuclear capability. That costs billions and billions of euros.”

France has built 290 warheads with their usual budget. Nuclear weapons are not the problem.

The problem are the anti ICBM satellite weapons. That space race killed the USSR. There is also the need to create the chips for autonomous drones.

China has more than twice the manpower of the EU. If the US and the EU do not cooperate then China will crush the West economically like the West has crushed the USSR.

The US knows this and believes that the EU has no other choice but to cooperate.

Europe should use the American desire for being the hegemon as a lever to receive better conditions. America wants to be number one much more than the EU wants to be number two.