Death to NATO

I do wonder if US sees this development as a consolation prize. One big worry for US was that Europe was becoming increasingly integrated with Russia and China economically. This necessarily meant that Europe would eventually fall out of US sphere of influence and might even start developing their own independent foreign policy. The war rekindled all the old fears from the Cold War while depletion of weapons in Europe now made it dependent on US for protection going forward.

I suspect this strategy isn't going to work in the long term because decoupling from the east is destroying European economies, and eventually we're going to see countries in Europe realize that it makes more sense for them to find common ground with Russia than to continue being vassals of the US. However, it definitely helped get everyone in line in the immediate term.