I agree that in some cases US actions are helpful to others. They are certainly helpful in the case of Ukraine, for example, or the recent very strong contributions to NATO exercises to demonstrate its power. And certainly in cases where international law is being defended.

But even if, for example, something is in the interests of the states allied to the US, it is still in the interests of the US itself, because alliances like NATO also strengthen the US itself (such as the US alliances with Japan and Australia). In such cases it is also the other way round - and it makes sense to emphasise that each member must contribute to the alliance.

I do not have the impression that, for example, the contributions of other states to the US wars in Afghanistan and Iraq are even noticed by a certain political party in the US. These wars were certainly mainly motivated by the ideology of that party and were very detrimental to Europe because of the destabilisation of the region (in that sense also detrimental to the US itself). The heavy Western involvement in these wars also helped Putin because it made it much less likely that there would be Western intervention against Putin's wars. Furthermore, I do not have the impression that a certain political party is taking responsibility - for example, for the serious violations of human rights and international law that have taken place in these wars. Putin and other members of his regime repeatedly paraphrase Bush when justifying their own actions..

I wonder what would have happened if the US had made it clear that any further Russian aggression against Ukraine would be met with a military response. Such threats were made to prevent the use of Russian tactical nuclear weapons - and very likely were successful, i.e. responsible that these were not used by Putin's regime.

The US had astonishingly accurate intelligence about Russian plans to attack Ukraine in 2022 - and it was made public before the attacks. Unfortunately, this alone did not prevent the attack. "Normal" governments would have cancelled their war plans if they were made public with such precision. But Putin did not care and attacked anyway. This should be a powerful lesson in the scale of the threat Putin poses. He is threatening to reclaim the former Russian colonial empire (which included not only most of Eastern Europe but also much of Central Asia and even South Korea - and if we take him literately also Alaska).