Recently, I’ve noticed a pretty interesting phenomenon—Norway has been quietly making a fortune these past few years. Whenever the Russia-Ukraine situation heats up, Europe’s energy market goes wild, and Norway’s natural gas exports rake in massive profits—about $200 billion over a few years. Just think: Europe used to buy cheap gas from Russia, but now, insisting on sanctions and decoupling, they’ve accepted paying high prices for Norway’s supply.

Some European scholars have done the math: the whole of Europe has a population of 500 million, compared to just 340 million in the US; GDP is even higher than China’s; and its industrial base is extremely solid—aerospace, shipbuilding, pharmaceuticals, machine tools, cars, weapons—almost all among the world’s best. By all rights, with this kind of hardware, they should be able to support a military powerhouse.

But the real problem lies in “division.” Europe has dozens of countries: the wealthy north doesn’t want to bleed money, the central countries are capable manufacturers but each has its own agenda, and the populous south and east lag behind economically. Every country’s defense procurement protects its own companies, and the end result is a mess—no one gets big, and no one gets strong enough.

So, some people started thinking: why not have Norway foot the bill? After all, they’re making a killing from the energy crisis, their sovereign wealth fund is worth over a trillion dollars, and with just over 5 million people to share the wealth, they’re definitely not short on cash. Logically, since Europeans gave up Russian energy for “security,” and Norway is the biggest beneficiary, asking them to give back to defense makes sense, right?

But can this really work? Europe took forever to argue over confiscating Russia’s $300 billion in assets to support Ukraine—Belgium alone could hold things up. Dozens of countries sitting together to discuss how to deal with “unreliable neighbors” and “wavering allies”—the level of coordination required is unimaginable. Will Norway obediently pay up? Probably won’t happen anytime soon.