I grasp that fine. You are apparently unable to grasp that the UK still relies on the US military. For what is a matter of debate. But the point is that they still do.
Yes we rely on you to project our strength, I said that at the very start. It's entirely different to a reliance of the US defending our borders which was your entire point. Which leads me on to your next comment.
Again. YOU are the only one that took that to specifically mean to rely on the US to defend the UK from invasion. You made that jump. Up till then nowhere did I state or even insinuate that the UK currently relies on the US for territorial defense.
You were replying to someone who was replying to someone who said this:
It will at least have a choice whether or not to join an "alliance" of countries who have brought their militaries to the point of literal ruin with defense cuts and the attitude of, "Oh well, if anything happens, the Americans will come and take care of it anyway."
The entire point is the UK doesn't need the US to defend itself, which has been the entire point of this chain of comments. Perhaps you decided to go on a tangent out of the blue, if you did you could have made it clearer,
WTF do you think the strategic purpose of the US maintaining bases in Europe was? To protect the USA?
Was it to protect the UK? No of course it wasn't, it was the US to project its influence, the same way you have bases across the world. By projecting your influence you protect the US, as you can threaten Russia with satellite states. For example missile defences in Poland are as important for the US as they are for Poland. You have a base in Australia, is that to protect the Australians from invasion, if so who from?
It was to protect Western Europe. You know the thing the US just lost hundreds of thousands of troops fighting for.
Oh I'm sorry, I didn't realise the US was the only one to have fought in WWII, how terribly sorry of me. If the amount of deaths in WWII denotes how much military presence you can have in Europe then Russia should have hundreds of bases in every European country. Western Europe wouldn't have existed but for Russia accounting for 75% of German casualties.
Again. The point is the UK cannot, either through capability or expense, create or maintain their own ICBMs. They rely on the US for it. You guys cannot even load them onto your own ships.
We pay you for the assistance, its a transaction. I don't see how you consider it to be charity.
Well both of those countries did and still do have nuclear weapons. They are just owned and under the control of the US military during peacetime.
They are US nukes, but even if you count those countries as nuclear states, what about Greece, Spain etc? When should I expect to see a Russian invasion?