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There are already limits on what the US shares with European countries so things like the data that the US pulled from Ukraine is already at their whim and not guaranteed anyway. My old man was in UK Int and it was fun trying to work out what projects/alliances he was working on, based on who was coming round for dinner and whether they were Yanks, Aussies, Swedes, Danes etc etc, (ie Five Eyes, NATO, non-NATO etc).

What is new (or a new realisation for us over here) is that US interests are not very aligned with European interests anymore. The US is more obviously pivoting to focusing on the far east / China, and moreover the EU is more obviously being positioned as a rival economic bloc rather than a close ally. That's only going to become more obvious as Europe gets stronger militarily. (This is one thing Trump's lot don't understand: they haven't been subsidising Europe's defence, they've been stopping Europe from developing as a rival military powerhouse)

For EU/continental Europe, I don't think the impact is going to be *as* great as it might appear as they can more easily pivot to relying on their own defence and intelligence industries. They probably end up just replacing reliance on US / US foreign policy to relying on France / French foreign policy. Fast forward 20 years and people will be muttering that France won't let them do X, Y or Z. Plus ca change.

The UK, I think, is in a very difficult/interesting spot because we're neither within that European bubble nor securely within the US bubble. Fortunately the US is pretty reliant on the UK as things stand - eg a good chunk of F35 manufacturing sits with us, so whilst the US may (or may not) have a kill switch, we can bugger up their logistics in the short term. And they're reliant on some UK intelligence and other assets that aren't easily replaceable. So it's not *as* doom & gloom for us as it is for some European allies.

But we're too perhaps tied to US whims and foreign policy and it's going to be increasingly hard to play off both the EU and US.

I actually think the US dropping out of the European picture / NATO would be very good for Europe & the UK in the medium-long term, but that's a different post for another day. 500 million Europeans vs 350 million Americans. Nuff said.

Posted By: CWC, Mar 14, 10:38:12