Can the US be relied upon?

[Pat Mustard]

MoD plan future without US alliance

Well here's a measure of just how far the US has fallen under Trump.

Actually the US has been an unreliable ally since the seventies, with the exception of Western Europe up until the mid-nineties. And even then that reliability for Europe was dependent on the total subordination of Europe's militaries to the US's.

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Britain is one to talk with their foolish Brexit.

I agree wholeheartedly with the sentiment, though. Obviously, the US is unfit to lead the Boy Scouts with Trump at the helm. There is no international leader for democracy at this point.

Regarding leaving the EU; Brussels has ignored us for 30 years and pushed ahead with projects to which we object at a fundamental level. B

Actually the problem has been for the last thirty years, the EU has been far too willing to listen to the UK. Look at the major problems it is currently facing and their geneses. 1) Pushing the single market into a free market deregulated entity where all areas are subject to the same market forces and pressures; Maggie the milk thief pushed that very hard in the 80's when nobody else in Europe wanted it. 2) The mass expansion in the late '90s, Tony Bliar goaded on by sucessive US presidencies. 3) The Euro, again largely a UK originating idea (although like with expansion at the behest of the US). Yes this time, France wanted it too, but few other countries did. And the Euro was the first stage towards the crash. 4) Continent wide financial deregulation and a Europe wide financial non-regulator, pushed very hard by the City of London. 5) Resistance to tax harmonisation and tougher financial regulations, UK again, though ably assisted by Ireland and the Netherlands. But in all these areas the UK was the EU's genesis and hardest backer of problematic ideas.

I see, in the medium to long term, the UK leaving as a golden opportunity for the EU to right itself and return from the precipice of free-market hard right economics and politics and return to its social democratic roots and goals. Without the malign influence of the UK and its US handler pushing everything towards a Chicago School type hothouse, maybe Europe can return to what made it a great idea in the first place.

Good riddance to bad rubbish, and all that.