Should be noted that not all of the locals have always wanted the foreign military stationed there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenham_Common_Women%27s_Peac...

It is probably time for the Cold War relics to leave. It doesn't help their case that the US and Coalition spent much of the past 25 years since 9/11 engaged in an ultimately fruitless war in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Nobody really wants to look at the Ukraine war in Western Europe. It's very apparent that the degree of caring depends on how far east a country is; Poland are talking about getting the Bomb. The UK has provided significant technical assistance and missiles but the war really is not in the public conversation, and attempts to increase military spending or even fix the Ajax have gone nowhere. Everyone is of course obsessed with refugees, but not at looking where they have come from or what they are fleeing.

The situation got even worse with the new Iran war. Is that going to be a ten or twenty year event? Is the US finally going to get the ground invasion of Iran it has wanted since the Carter administration?

We cannot build a security architecture by looking backwards. We have to look forwards. But I'd settle for looking out of the window at the world as it is today.

> UK has provided significant technical assistance and missiles but the war really is not in the public conversation

Good God! If there has been a "lack of conversation", it is simply because not sporting Ukraine would be utterly unthinkable to us. The UK support for Ukraine has been, and continues to be, one of the largest.

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/uk-support-to-ukr...

Indeed, under the Homes for Ukraine scheme, UK private citizens allowed 234,000 Ukrainian refugees to come and live with us in our homes and spare rooms. Ukraine flags are flying everywhere in Blighty. Slava Ukraini!

> the war is really not in the public conversation

We must live in very different Europes...