Canada

" about joining the plan which foresees the nations on the continent spending $1.25 trillion on defence over the next five years."

Aye and there is the rub. The news media talks about how much Germany spends on defense and how much France spends and so forth.

That's like talking about how much California spends on defense and how much Texas spends on defense and so on.

Wat matters is how much the European Union collectively spends on defense, just like what matters is how much the United States collectively spends on defense, not each individual State.

Collectively, the European Union is just as powerful economically as is the United States, and we should talk about the collective [United] European [Union] states when we compare them to the United States of America, not the individual countries (states) that make up the EU.

Americans have completely stacked the deck against the statistics comparing Europe to America, by insisting on treating every European country separately, but all of the States in America collectively. and then convincing the world the American way of comparative accounting is the correct one.