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If you think Britain relies or has relied on your military, your ignorance is off the chart. I am sure 99% of your fellow Americans will think you are talking rot.

You left off the </sarc> tag.

The EU, and GB military has been a paper tiger for years. You implicitly but completely rely on U.S. Military might to keep you from being overrun (by whom is a different thread).

The plain text of the article speaks to the issue.

OR, you can start spending the % of GDP on the military the US does. Or even a teeny tiny fraction thereof.

‘The EU, and GB military has been a paper tiger for years.’

Britain has the fourth highest military spending in the world. You confuse dilution of British power (due to end of empire, military cuts and other financial and political reasons) with us being a paper tiger. Britain may not have the military power it once had, but we still punch well above our military weight and to say we are a paper tiger reliant on America is a nonsense and hyperbole.

How can we be a paper tiger when we are your biggest ally, be it the Gulf, Iraq, Afghanistan, Bosnia?. Think of the men and machines brought to bear in those conflicts. Second only to the US. Were we a paper tiger needing US help in 1982?.

And in 2011, who is leading the NATO op in Libya?. Who has just sent five more ships there?. Who has a Royal Navy Cougar Taskforce sitting in the Eastern Med waiting to reinforce that operation?.

‘You implicitly but completely rely on U.S. Military might to keep you from being overrun (by whom is a different thread).’

Drivel. Take every last US plane and soldier out of Britain tonight and we can defend ourselves perfectly fine. And neither are we reliant on American support for any operation beyond our borders. Another myth, once held even by too many British, let alone Americans. Dont get me wrong, I am happy when you are at our side in war, but dont think we actually ‘need’ you in that way.

And I will give the tiresome and woefully ignorant allusion to dhimmitude the contempt it deserves.

You seem to have a lack of knowledge of what Britain can still bring to the military table, if I am being frank.

I know many Americans have this bee in their bonnet about subsidising the defences of Europe (and in fact, the rest of the free world too) Such is the burden of being the only world superpower.

However, I don't think its really fair to lump the UK in with the rest of the EU so dismissively. Over the decades since WW2 our defence spending, % of GDP, while not as great as that of the US, has certainly been substantially higher than that of any of the other European powers, and we have consistently used our armed forces in conjunction with, and in support of, the US far more than any of them.