The United States is certainly providing far more value than they’re receiving back, especially given many partners in NATO aren’t even meeting their relatively paltry obligations to defense spending.

There’s of course some benefit here but it’s largely intangible. It extends the United States’ sphere of influence and diminishes Russia’s.

I’m not saying it’s altruistic because we’re definitely acting in our own self interest and there is perceived benefit to doing these things but the consequence is still that we are spending more money on defense than we need to and other countries get to spend far less than they should be.

Yeah, let's go back to heavily armed European countries at each other's necks every couple decades... The US benefits immensely from having a stable and not terribly militaristic trading bloc.