Trump committed to cutting ties with Europe, apparently, in favour of Russia...

[bdbdbd]

So, what's news? It's not like EU already treated US as an inferior because of smaller economy. This is why EU and US have a race in hauling as much immigrants as possible, in order to increase population and economy.

As far as NATO goes, people like Alexander Stubb (while being in EU position), was talking about the new Europe-lead NATO, and also the WEU was buried in favour of NATO, while it's not uncommon for people to see USA (in terms of NATO) as a cold war remnant.

The Lisbon treaty proponents were using Germanys influence on EU as an argument for the treaty, as it would decrease Germanys power in the EU. 

There have been lots of concerns of other countries leaving the EU following brexit.

It's common to use Germany as an example of failed immigration policy - by the people who are against immigration as well as it's proponents. 

Fuck, I bet Trump have read newspapers in Europe and is just parroting what they write about.

TheWPCTraveler said:

vivster said:

I wouldn't consider military might a factor at all. I doubt any country would honestly threaten Europe, not even Russia.

And some people might leave the EU but that's basically just a formality anyway since there are so many ties between European countries. You can leave the EU but you cannot leave Europe.

It's all just political and economical struggles that will be resolved in time. Do you really think the whole of EU will be thrown into turmoil because of tiny quarrels and a bit of economic instability? The individual European countries are too strong to let that have any significant effect.

Oh, I see how we're talking past each other.

On the bolded part, I hope I am wrong, but history tells us that it can and it will. We are already seeing economic instability in the form of your anemic economy as a whole, and the rise of the new populists and the (new)* far-right tells us otherwise. And, well, tensions with Russia over Ukraine have been mounting for quite some time now, and have (fortunately) not blown up into full-blown war - though maybe Trump would actually turn this situation around.

* - new in the sense that they aren't monarchists, or disaffected nobility, I suppose.

The economic problems are largely coming from the common currency, that's made for political needs, not financial. 

Rise of populism and far right follows the rise of anarchism and far left in Europe. But yes, you're right that there's some turmoil to be expected sometime in the future.