I can't say that I think you are wrong on the militarism bit. But, on the issue of the US military maintaining the dominance of the ["]west["] and "protecting" "our interests", I can only say that they are not my interests. I say, let us stop protecting those costly corporate interests, and work on developing a sustainable economy with foreign trade not backed up by military force.

My question: is the rest of the industrialized world getting a free ride because the US is providing the military services that are required to maintain the dominance of the west? Even when the US botches things like in Iraq doesn't this still set the tone for other areas and make resource providers more willing to sell at terms favorable to the buyers?

Yes, indeed. However, I don't think getting a more favourable deal on those terms is a good thing in the slightest. All that does is pushing the moment of reckoning, when we will have to acknowledge that monotonic growth in a finite world is incompatable with physical laws, to the future. And this is not a good thing. My argument would thus be in favour, not of Europe starting to contribute their share to military might, but to take another path, that does not rely on imposing our will for corporate gain from resource extraction and labour exploitation in foreign lands.

For me, the argument of growth in Europe vs. the US is a rather uninteresting one. It is already assuming the wrong things, asking the wrong questions, and violating the principles of thermodynamics.

What would the world look like if the US spent as much per capita as the EU on militarism?

This is an interesting question. I hope the answer is "better". Let's have different "interests" so that we don't have to protect "our" current ones, because this seems to cause so much pain all around.