Wouldn’t happen; too much money at stake from both sides.
Oh, and God is English - you can tell by his lovely writing style in The Bible.
Let’s be honest: The US would beat the snot out of the British.
But at the end of the day, the Brits would never *dare *take on the US. For a long time they have been kissing our ass (arse), even when the majority of the populace disagrees with our policy (see Blair-Bush relations). But they simply don’t have a choice.
Sad, really.
And they can keep him.
Seriously, after George W’s screw-ups, it’s hard to believe anything could.
Except another Bush, of course.
FFS what is it about my OP that you are unable to grasp?..I said NO WAR.
When you speak of Brits kissing your arses matey, you confuse the idiot Brits with the Brits having a lot more nous…something that neither Blair or Bush had.
As for never daring to take on the US, don’t be so certain pal, this is Britain and we aint fucking scared of anyone
We don’t need a war. We can bring the UK to its knees via a naval/air blockade. Let’s see how long you can go without tea, motherfuckers!
What would happen if the Commonwealth was turned into a full trading bloc and both them and the EU raised trade barriers against the US in retaliation?
Tea? you can keep the crappy stuff.
Black coffee is the only non-alky beverage worth drinking…motherfuckers.
The European defenses are no great shakes, but the U.S. barely has enough men to occupy Iraq (and even there, only with mixed success).
ASSUMING that we were insane enough to want to invade Europe, and ASSUMING that Britain and France weren’t ready to repel us with nukes (two very weak assumptions), how many men would we need just to ATTEMPT it? Millions more than we have, that’s for sure.
And where would be gather our troops for the invasion? Invading Normandy was possible in 1944 because we had England as a jumping off point. Who’d let us use their country as a jumping off point for an invasion of Europe???
The USA is the single most powerful nation in the world, militarily… but that doesn’t give us much PRACTICAL leverage in Europe.
Well, they did fuck us in the ass over Suez. And you’ll still find people who resent it. But economic self-interest won out in the end, as it usually does.
No war. Now here’s a peaceful bit of fun. How about we sue them for using our place names? You know, don’t they have some settlements using names of York, Boston, Plymouth, Washington etc? And we want all our Glasgows and Aberdeens and Dundees and Edinburghs and Dunedins back too. Oh, yes and Dallas and Houston obviously.
Heheheh - rubs hands gleefully - more oil for us! 
I wonder how much we could charge.
I don’t know. I’d be pretty trepedatious about taking on England, Germany, and everything East of the old bloc.
You’re forgetting that at this very moment the US already has many thousands of troops in Germany, Italy, and the U.K., with smaller numbers in Spain, Portugal, the Netherlands, Belgium, Turkey, Greece, and maybe some others I’m forgetting. Presumably in the run-up to the war these bases would be surrounded, but presumably the Americans would also be smart enough to secure their toeholds. We might also fairly easily occupy the Azores (where we have a base) and invade from there.
Also, if the invasion of Iraq was largely launched from the American bases in Europe(?), a reverse invasion might in part be launched from a semi-pacified Iraq??
Americans and war !!
The mind truly boggles
Aye, there does seem a bit of fondness for a war here. :eek: Heck, when I was a politics and philosophy kiddy, I used to joke that while we were all supposed to be worrying about the U.S.S.R., no that’s not how things work - an attack would come from an *unexpected * quarter, so look out, the U.S.A. will bomb us first. Now I wonder whether I was joking.
So how would things work, short of war? I imagine a fall-out between the U.S. and the U.K. would cause some ripples of merriment in parts of the Middle East. I *could *see lots of European countries thinking “o hell, U.S. is valuable trading partner” and sends lots of tourists, BUT they might very well not want the have the U.K. turned into Airstrip One and the 51st State in reality right on their doorstep. Yeah, I know there are various bits of U.S. forces dotted around but they are supposed to be friendly for now.
I wish I could remember who it was who sang a song parody that went “Bombed by the U.S.A”.
I dont think that its just a case of trade between the U.S. but the fact that we are financially and commercially entwined very deeply,amongst other things British companies own American banks and other U.S. companies and vice versa.
I don’t have a link to it, but I’ve read interviews with developers for the online game World of Warcraft where they remarked that one of the unexpected surprises of running such a game was the fact that the US players were much, much more bloodthirsty than the European ones. There’s two main “sides,” which are at war and can’t talk to each other although there’s factions on both sides working for peace; in ER servers, players from opposite sides will sometimes assist each other when they see that the other guy is attempting a particularly difficult task - if they roleplay, it’s usually that they’re for the peace effort; in US servers, the new arrival would most likely try to complicate things even further for the other guy (preferably by the time-honored method of killing him) - if they roleplay, it’s for the war effort.
The effect may have gotten less noticeable as the muddle in Irak went on, but I don’t have data on that.
Americans and war, indeed 
I imagine Spain would stand with the US, given that, of our two main parties, PP (social democrats) usually stand with the US on international matters and PSOE (socialist) are so much in love with the Americans it’s ridiculous. On paper, PP loves the US and PSOE hates them, but it’s PSOE who likes copying them.
Sucks for our TV programming…
They also own Manyoo.
So all things considered it might not be a bad thing if we did fall out, we’d have a legit excuse for firebombing mould trafford;)
You’re wrong. Such an alliance would be a sure sign of the Apocalypse.
I imagine in that case that the US would have a harder time wrt the UNSC if we couldn’t count on the UK’s vote. Also, I imagine the US would revoke our MFNS for the UK and they would do likewise for US trade. Possibly the UK would completely pull out of Iraq as well.
My guess is that all of this would hurt both sides, but the the Brits would get hurt worse than the US if there was such a split as to cause us both to tear up our ‘Special Relationship’. Both sides derive a LOT of benefits from that relationship after all, and both are allies on so many different levels that it’s hard to say what all it would effect. You’d really need to look at WHAT the split was over and what other nations were involved in it.
War would be so improbable that it’s not even worth discussion, no matter what the provocation is. Unless we are talking about a trade war of some kind. Hell, the US and UK tearing up our ‘Special Relationship’ is pretty improbable at this time for that matter.
I think this would depend on what the issue was that caused the rift. I don’t think that France would automatically side with the Brits or reject the US…the US has a rather odd history with the French, and it’s hard to judge how the French GOVERNMENT would react. It would all hinge on what the issue was. Remember that while the French may not like us all that well (depending on which way the wind is blowing or what day of the week it is), they don’t exactly love YOU all that much either. The UK has an even longer and more checkered history with France and the French people.
I’d say that would go for a lot of other countries too. Take the other nations in the EU. Germany for instance has a love/hate relationship with the US…but then they aren’t always that keen on the UK either. It would all depend on what the event that caused the rift was to determine which side a given nation might come down on. You are assuming that all of these nations dislike the US so much that no matter what the event was they would side with the UK…and I think that’s a bad assumption.
Depends on what caused the rift.
-XT
Would India side with their former British masters? My understanding is Bush maintained a popularity rating there above 80% his entire eight years as US president, and I know one Indian who maintains if Bill Clinton were somehow able to run for the Indian presidency, he’d win hands down. They seem to be leaning towards the US a lot these days.
I’d bet Southeast Asia would lean toward the US. Thailand in particular has been a big backer. I never did see any of the “worldwide” unpopularity of Bush here, except among foreigners. The Thais liked Bush just fine.