The problem of talking about military strength in terms of manpower and also talking about the issues with europe's military strength are sort of similar so i'll address both. First of all, equipment is a far more effective metric at comparing. If you removed the US from NATO, effectively consider them enemies or at least not allies, you remove the f35 programme from european countries, this for one thing removes access to any 5th generation fighters from Europe. There are only f22s f35s, su57s and chines j20s that are service ready and considered 5th generation. Russia and china are not going to be giving them to europe, and america makes f22s and f35s, so take those away, and the most advanced fighters europe will have access to will be eurofighter typhoons, which are heavily modified 4th gen aircraft. Developing a new platform takes decades, so assuming this split from america is soon, they'd not have any more modern jets for decades. This will constitute a severe lack of airpower.
Also with the loss of the 35, the most advanced fighter they have access to will now no longer be carrier capable, so their carrier fleets will be significantly weakened. The two most modern aircraft carriers in europe are the two british ones, which use the f35s, and britain doesn't actually have any carrier capable jets to replace them, and nor do teh two carriers have a catapult to be given other fighters, so essentially by losing the 35s, u are losing 90% of the capability of the carriers. France has a carrier, which is pretty old but has 30 Rafale M fighters on it which are fairly capable but 4th generation. Spain kinda has a carrier, its more of an amphibious assault ship, which has onboard some 70 year old harrier jets. Italy has an old carrier which has like 10 f35s, but take those away and they have no aircraft to replace it. So in one fell swoop, you entirely annihilate the strike projection of NATO, making all aircraft carriers essentially just floating platforms, with
only one with jets that are even vaguely capable being the french one which can carry a couple of douzen older generation aircraft. To defend that aircraft carrier (which is neccessary and all carriers move in fleets) the french have 2 anti air ships, with some more in development. To play devils advocate, adn to pretend this can ever work, i will essentially combine the british navy with hte french carriers, as at least the british have enough anti air ships to make some carrier fleets. I will combine that into one carrier group around the french carrier, which will constitute a fairly large amount of very modern and capable anti air ships like the type 26 frigate. What we have now is a single functioning airfleet. Germany has no vessels large enough to even enter teh conversation here.
So now that we've completely annihilated our navy's strike capabilities, lets look at a more traditional airforce, where it is not necessary to launch from carriers. Here i'd say europe shines a bit better, in that it has 107 eurofighters from britain, 141 from germany, 68 from spain, 79 from italy, and probably a few others scattered around. That's not too bad, they also have stuff like the french rafales, some tornados knocking around - pretty significant fleet, probably enough to provide air defence from ur standard threat so long as that threat doesn't try to field anything designed in the last 40 years.
Now the problem is that nato currently enjoys the aircraft of the US, with 149 f15, 218 f15E, 762 f16, 183 f22, 302 f35, constituting over 1600 fighter jets, about 500 of which are decades more advanced than anything europe possesses. That along with the enormous US bomber fleet of b2, b21, b52 and others, as well as the huge amount of support aircraft,
all of which europe conspicuously lacks in large numbers because they rely on the alliance with the US to fill the gaps in their capability. So by alienating the US you would overnight annihilate NATO's aircraft.
Similar story with tank fleets, artillery and air defence systems. I would say europe can hold its own vaguely with nuclear submarines, but that's primarily because even one submarine is pretty much enough for a nuclear holocaust.
However, all of this pales in comparison to the real problem with europe's defence at present, and that is industrial capacity. There's a reason that most of europe's shit is old and buggared, and that reason is because they don't make a lot of shit now. UK, France and Germany are definitely europe's most powerful militaries, but even they have absolutely miniscule industrial capacities for this equipment, and not particularly large stockpiles. Reports by the british government indicate that if the US actually did go to war, it would run out of ammunition in just 10 days. This is hte best of europe, and through deindustrialisation they have made themselves extraordinarily vulnerable to any war effort lasting longer than about a month. Even if europe did have modern stuff, it doesn't have hte industrial base to keep producing the equipment and ammo to maintain a war effort. When hte british made their challenger 2 tank, they had to scrap half hte fleet to create a supply of spair parts to repair the remaining ones if damaged in battle because the industrial support was just that shite. If you lose america u lose access to the vast majority of actual defence manufacturing output and utterly decimate their strength.
numbers of men do not factor in here. God forbid if the rest of nato were to go into a war with the US in defence of canada, or against an expansionist china, they'd essentially be defenceless soon into the war just on industrial capacities alone. Why do you think they allowed themselves to become US protectorates? Buying the f35 programme comes with the caveat of having US influence on their foreign policy - why do you suppose they opt into that? Because they have to. They don't make a lot of stuff - and its a real shame they've allowed themselves to reach this point, but that reminas hte reality of the situation.
Then there's every other issue that would come into losing alliance with the US that isn't even defence based but we won't bother even getting into that.
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