The US actually needs to produce weapons to sell them. Just go look at stuff like missile production rates. The US ran through more than half its stocks in the war on Iran in just a couple of months. They need to replenish thousands of missiles now while they’re able produce the them in artisanal numbers. Since the US still has ambitions of challenging China in Asia, that’s where whatever they’re able to produce will go. They already had to pull weapons from the vassals all over the world like THAAD batteries from Korea. That’s how things are going.
And I don’t see how the rest of NATO will magic factories and logistics chains into being. This isn’t like printing money. Real world infrastructure takes decades to build. You have to train the workers, build factories, engineer machines, and so on. There is no way to produce all that in the foreseeable future in nations that are thoroughly deindustrialized. The skill base isn’t there.
If the US pulled out, the rational thing for smaller countries would be to make deals with other big powers like China to balance the US.
The last point shows that the alliance is not combat effective. So, it’s not going to provide the kind of protection people expect even if it did survive, and magically figured out how to produce weapons at scale.
First of all, NATO is not a defensive alliance by any stretch of imagination. This alliance has a long history of invading and destroying countries and it’s responsible for killing and displacing millions of people. NATO invaded Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya.
Second, it’s kind of weird that you don’t understand why weapons production is a key part of a military alliance. Who produces the military strength is, in fact, the key question. And read what I actually wrote. What I said was that replacing the US role would take decades. I said there’s no magic way to shortcut that.
We can also see how this investment of yours works out in practice already. Europeans pledged to produce 1.5 mil artillery shells for Ukraine. A bunch of money was allocated to various slush funds, and the shells never materialized. That’s what NATO is actually good at, sucking money out of productive economy and driving austerity to line the pockets of the oligarchs.
And not sure which capabilities you claim already exist. Given how NATO weapons performed in Ukraine and Iran, it’s pretty clear that there is no meaningful capability here.
And why would it matter whether China is a NATO ally or not. China is the only major world power that can contest the US. Why would anybody be imbecilic enough to want to turn China into a potential adversary? What sort of absolute idiocy would that be. Also go cry about copyright infringement to somebody who gives a fuck. What military technology could China possibly steal from countries that are far behind it technologically in every way. What fantasy world do live in?