BUT, I do have to declare that I spent 9 years as a senior civilian officer of WEU, the European defence diplomatic clearing centre which also hosted the European defence HQ, as a sharp and permanent reminder of what happens if we got it wrong. We did a huge chunk of the work in creating the Paece Agenda, before anyone starts in, which won the 2012 Nobel Peace Prize for Europe. It means I far prefer jaw-jaw to the alternative. When that function disappeared off the the Council of the European Commission, I was kept on as part of the cadre guaranteeing the self-defence legal right of Europe.
That means I have a very clear and immediate view of the problems of US military policy, and the autonomous behaviour of that structure, for instance in the way Homeland Security has fulfilled the worst nightmares of those who warned of its omnipotence at the start, has more than worried the rest of the World: it raises exactly the question I put in microcosm, whether the US is fit to be a superpower.
Objectively, having taken you to a position which you find uncomfortable with, I must lead you on to the corollary, reminding you that in fact it is the presumption that you can do nothing which is wrong. One of the new dynamics in lobbying is the appearance of groups like change.org and the UK's 38 degrees, which are very good at bringing the disenfranchised back into the political system, very much from a socialist angle, giving the people a voice. Their UK membership, for instance, each far outweighs the total activist membership of the established political parties put together, and the political system is frightened: they can neither deny them nor ignore them. They would love to get them to sign up, but that's spurned.