> ...the EU's demographic, economic and cultural heft means it can pretty
> much do what
> it wants, free from US pressure. I'm not here to sing the praises of
> Eurocapital - it has paid staff to do that - but the EU really is a
> superpower, and this is a basic reality which should be acknowledged.
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The economic weight of the EU is not in dispute. But a superpower has to
have both the will and the capacity to project military power abroad.
The EU has the capacity to build up its armed forces, but has neither the political cohesion nor will - especially at the popular level - to do so. It accepts instead to let the US bear the heavy costs of acting as the gendarme for the global capitalist system. This arrangement necessarily subordinates "European" foreign policy - which is hardly a common one at any rate (France/Germany vs UK/Poland) - to that of the US.
It's simply not true, as you assert, that Europe "can pretty much do what it wants, free from US pressure." The EU's ineffectual efforts to pursue its interests in the adjoining Middle East, ie. to prevent the American invasion of Iraq, to effect a Palestine peace settlement, and to insulate its banks and corporations from the threat of US sanctions for trading with Iran is, for starters, evidence of who has the greater "heft" on the world stage.