I think the point is that the US is no longer a reliable ally, so people will no longer want to buy weapons systems for which the US might withdraw support at any moment.
That seems to be a premature assessment. Trump paused a weapons shipment to Ukraine, then allowed to it to continue. No other shipments have been held up at all. Our allies continue to receive the output of the American arms industry just like they did six months ago.
In fact, the latest news is that Trump is expanding our circle of friends when it comes to advanced weapons, offering India the opportunity to purchase F-35s.
It's a long-term shift. European militaries are built on the assumption of US support via NATO in the event of an attack on a member state. That assumption is looking very shaky now, and it will affect future planning.
They are built on the assumption will subsidise their defence almost entirely. They are rapidly realising that the US defending them will be conditional on them defending themselves. This is not a serious threat, it is just pressure. But it has resulted in increased investment in defence in Europe which is really important for global security.
>They are built on the assumption will subsidise their defence almost entirely.
This is an exaggeration. The larger European military powers spent enough on defence to be able to operate without US assistance in a range of circumstances (e.g. the Falklands war). But Europe did not anticipate having to defend itself against Soviet aggression without US assistance.
In fairness, it would have seemed crazy, not so long ago, to think that the POTUS would be on friendlier terms with the leader of a Russian dictatorship than with the democratically elected leaders of France and Germany. But here we are.
The Falklands conflict was almost half a century ago. It is doubtful that the UK could respond today like they did in 1982.
The video "The Navy With More Admirals Than Warships"[1] addresses that exact scenario, and talks about the current woeful state of the British Navy today.
I think that’s somewhat unclear. In principle, the new carriers with F-35s should have a much bigger advantage over the Argentinian navy and air force than the tiny carriers we sent to the Falkland’s with Harrier jump jets. But of course it is impossible to know until such a thing actually happens. (Even in the case of a far more antecedently plausible conflict such as Russia/Ukraine, expert predictions were all over the place, and mostly wrong.)
