On hidden messages – Philippe Jacqué in Le Monde:

‘However, they all know the US priority is more focused on Asia than on Europe and Washington regularly asks European allies to invest more in their own defense.
Ironically, "efforts at improving defense industrial cooperation, namely by the EU, have often been met by fierce opposition from the US," wrote Sophia Besch, a Europe fellow at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and Max Bergmann, a director of the Stuart Center and the Europe, Russia, and Eurasia Program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, in an article published on March 7, in the journal Foreign Affairs.’

Read the article here.

Europe is incapable of standing militarily on its own feet, that’s for sure. But the US, despite all the talk, doesn’t want Europe to become militarily independent from the US. The US wants Europe on a leash, and if I were the US I would want the same.