The warheads are ours, made here. The subs are ours. The missiles are made/serviced by US

We have operational autonomy BUT who'd bet against them suddenly not servicing our missiles any more, so I'd agree that we should look at alternative delivery systems with some urgency and have no doubt that's already happening.

I do wonder if the French policy might not be revisited in light of recent events.

Eight of the EU states currently have far right governments and there is significant far right presence in many states which don't. The far right, of course, loves Putin right off (because he likes to fund them so they will destabilise their respective countries).

I do think something will happen focused on defence at the European - not EU - level including us and Norway.

Interesting questions arise if we all sign up to mutual defence and Trump lands troops on Greenland, of course (more than the usual at the space base there).

Other interesting questions arise around the scope of this new thing (which I think is pretty much nailed on) - "defence" of course includes industrial capacity and hence terms of trade, in raw materials like metals and chemicals as well as finished bits of Shiny Kit(tm). So there'd have to be some kind of trade component allowing free movement of all the above. Then you need expertise from one place somewhere else, so people start moving around...it won't happen this way but you could see a proto-new-EU emerging from this, including some states like us not currently in the EU, not including states like Hungary and, latterly, Slovakia who are pro-Russia.

Brexit was a massive act of national self-harm but Breturn would be fraught with difficult questions (Schengen, Euro they'd give up but we'd need to make concessions to get them to; no rebates any more, of course) and I wonder if the defence focused thing isn't both very necessary in itself and a smart way to get better relations with some sensible stuff in place more broadly.

Posted By: Old Man, Mar 1, 21:45:12