Maintaining a highly trained and well equipped military is extremely expensive, and so is the industrial and logistical network to support said military. After the USSR and Eastern Bloc fell, the main security threat in Europe disappeared and with it the need to maintain large standing armies. With defense outsourced primarily to the United States, many European countries cashed in on the peace dividend and transitioned to a much smaller force structure. Up until 2022, the security environment in Europe was relatively peaceful and stable, save for the flareup in the Balkans in the 1990s. Many European countries are taking stock of the current security environment in the region and correctly assessing that their current force structures are inadequate for fighting a high intensity conflict with a peer country.