Pentagon board says cuts essential

[K. A. Pital]

Bleh. Unless this gets split to Coliseum, I'm not really eager to push the discussion further.

We seem to stand at a relative agreement that nations may be unhappy with the US, but you somehow judge the possibility of their future action by past action (assuming that their division will remain strong enough to prevent being a heavy US counter), which isn't too helpful. If we were judging by past events and actions, most powers should never have seen their influence eroded, and yet this has happened.

[Kane Starkiller]

You misunderstand me. I don't have a crystal ball or anything and there is certainly no guarantee US will remain a superpower or anything. I'm merely saying it has the best predispositions to remain a leading superpower and that past actions by various alliances like EU or SCO don't exactly fill me with confidence they can pose a serious challenge to US as a unified entity.

[Colonel Olrik]

Portugal and Spain joined the Iraq war initially for historical reasons (weaker countries supporting their traditional bigger stick allies), the toxic mix of lies that the Bush administration passed to the governments and people as facts (which did fool a lot of people at the time) and, as Stas Bush said, the presence of centre - right wing, USA cocksucking prime ministers who wanted to be like Tony Blair. Their were kicked out of power and this was one of the main reasons, and they still haven't recovered from it.

That said, Portugal and Spain are strongly pro-EU. They are part of the club always pushing for more integration, both political and military, and both already have forces committed to the EU proto-military. Using them as examples of countries that side with the US because of the Iraqi affair is a strongly biased conclusion.

[Kane Starkiller]

Spanish withdrawal came in light of March 17 bombing attacks, just before elections which ensured victory of the opposition. The timing of the attack certainly wasn't accidental and terrorists got exactly what they wanted.
I never said Spain or Portugal or any other European country will always side with US I was merely showing an example of how EU unity can easily disintegrate. Whether Spain or Portugal are pro EU is not the issue, but how they envision EU. EU whose external policy is dominated by French-German alliance, as was in the cards in 2003, certainly didn't appeal to the rest of Europe.
Chirac's outburst in which he stated the countries which sided with US don't posses "well brought up behaviour" and that "they missed a great opportunity to shut up" neatly confirmed perceptions of French arrogance and desire to control the external policy of EU.