> Actually, France has far more territory in the Pacific than the UK, and better positioned too.

This is kind of like a nice piece of trivia. France has 0 ability to protect those territories and they're pretty much useless to any other country except in the event of a war in the Pacific, in which case the US would be using them as basis (or China or Japan or whoever but definitely not France). Sure France could sail the Charles de Gualle to the Pacific but it's not like the UK and the Falklands. It's uh... a bit of a drive. (Not to mention if there is a serious power in the region on the island(s) that is probably not enough of a force to fight with - the CdG I mean). The EU allies had a tough time with Libya without American logistics support. This was a wakeup call for the US.

The UK was added because of the close alliance. Better power projection capabilities than France but it's certainly close. But the point is that the UK is on board. Team USA all the way baby. France? Eh... not sure if we want to anger China kind of stance. They (like the rest of the EU) is keeping both trying to guess, and the US doesn't value being in that position. Better to force the issue.

> It also seems distressingly naive to say "it's been two days and nothing's happened, so nobody cares" when talking about the EU reaction. The only fast EU action you ever get is the statements, and those have been supportive of France. The interesting thing is to see what happens this spring when France has the EU presidency.

No no. I'm saying you saw what will happen. Nothing meaningful will happen because France and the EU can't really do anything. Tell me, what are they going to do? Get the gang together and start a trade war? Be even more wishy-washy toward the now non-existent US interests in the Middle East?

> Anyway, the big benefit of NATO is to keep Europe and the US aligned;

The problem here is the assumption that either cares to be aligned anymore. The EU says they're not committed to the US. So the US is relegating the EU to "just another country/group of countries". The US went through a surprising amount of trouble with the whole Huawei thing. The US expectation is frankly - hey we say drop this because China is a rival. Europe just didn't play ball and now the US is saying hey I don't think we can count on you. And you can't blame this on Trump either. It doesn't matter what his approach is.

> Europe has lived with Russia for a long time before NATO existed and the big trouble in Europe was about keeping whatever nations where large at the time from attacking each other.

I think this reinforces my point. NATO is irrelevant now. There's nothing left in Europe to care about. What's Russia going to do? Annex Ukraine? What is the US supposed to do that Europe isn't already more than willing to do? Soviet tanks aren't going to be driving through Berlin so what's the point anymore?

> I don't see the US and Russia getting along much better, precisely because, as you say, Americans don't think they need to respect the Russians very much, a judgment which the Russians don't agree with.

Yea but now we go from "bad Putin bad!!!" to "eh? who cares?". That's an improvement. Russia really is an economic backwater and this is all about economics.

At least this is my take. Appreciate your thoughts here!