They are trying to. And the BS about needing defense is actually the traditional European fantasy of invading Russia, or now openly inviting nuclear annihilation of Europe to spare the US from non nuclear winter consequences.

Europe thinks it can serve the CIA in opposition to Trump, but there natural continuation of CIA sycophancy is more desperation to serve US empire. Increasing the stupidity level to 10, with mass military programs and nuclear threats, makes it easy to go to 11, with mass imports of US weapons when they conclude that they simply weren't stupid or lying enough on Russophobia.