Will Gives his Expert Analysis of the EU sans UK from NJ

Brexit makes the EU stronger, no? The Brits wrung some serious concessions out of Brussels when they joined, payment rebates and the like, its own currency, and they've been a royal pain in the arse ever since. 

The EU had no center of gravity as France and Germany (Jupiter and Saturn if you will) competed for the dominant position with Britain circling like a rogue star. With Britain gone that leaves Pierre and Fritz to have at it. Macron thinks he runs things or that he is at least co-equals with Frau Merkle. After a century and a half Paris still doesn't get how Europe works with Germany united.

As far as Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain (PIGS), well, 'Wer ist dein Papa!'

There's also the matter of the Eastern Europeans, Hungary and Poland especially, who've been sniping at Brussels over mass migration for half a decade now. They like the economic benefits but not the EU edicts. 

But the EU could always get new members. Scotland wants to leave Britain (Freedom!). Yeah, sure. We recall one of the SNP Independence campaign posters: Free tuition, free prescriptions, no nukes. Was this really about a free Scotland? Since they want to join the EU, probably not. When Americans think of Scots they think of warriors and industrialists, iron willed Calvinist pioneers shooting up red coats and taming the wilderness. Those are the Scots that came to America and Canada. Modern Scotland is a nation full of train-spotters; a bunch of welfare lay-abouts with the most incompetent independence movement this side of Quebec. They should leave and join.

We've rambled on about our mother's ancestral homeland, a proud descendent of the Orangemen she was. Our grandfather, from whom we get our middle name (Thompson) always told her to wear Orange on St. Patrick's Day. And so we do...and so we do.

Will's Latest from Moscow

Over at Inforos:

Founded in 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) is the most successful alliance in European history. NATO kept the Americans in, the Soviets out, and the Germans down. NATO had a fourth, grim purpose. Just the across Iron Curtain lay a massive Soviet army prepared to roll across the border and fight its way to the Rhine, with nuclear weapons if need be. Brussels thought the threat so serious that, in the 1950s, West Germany was allowed to rearm. NATO’s well trained and high-tech armies would fight the Soviets from the Iron Curtain to the Rhine, with nuclear weapons if need be. America maintained an army of a quarter of a million men in West Germany, the bulk of its combat power.

Click on over... 

The Weak Lot Wakes Up

'They're a weak lot in Europe some of them...weak...feeble.'- Margaret Thatcher

The LA Times tells us that Europe is panicking:

Deeply alarmed at President Trump’s attacks on NATO and the transatlantic relationship, European governments are rethinking their reliance on the United States as a strategic ally against Russia, but they are unlikely to make regional security arrangements independent of Washington.

Europe lives under the umbrella of protection we provide and question the way we provide it.

But European allies bewildered by Trump’s seeming hostility for NATO must confront a sobering reality: They have few good alternatives for protecting themselves against Russia or other potential adversaries.

Europe is 'bewildered'. But, but, defence has always been provided by Les Americans...

Europe could try taking national defence commitments seriously.

Europe needs America far more than it ever realized.

What's European diplomacy accomplished the last century? Versailles? Munich?

So righteous about their soft power, only American intervention ended the Yugoslav crisis. How's European 'soft power' standing against Putin's tanks?

Europe congratulates itself for 70 years of peace, but forgets that peace was imposed by the United States and the Soviet Union and guaranteed by the United States after the Cold War. 

Now Russia is resurgent and Europe finds America not necessarily willing to fight for Frankfurt, liberate Liege, or die for Dusseldorf.