This is interesting, especially the carrier sharing. It will be interesting to see what will happen if say, Britain wants to embark on another Falklandesque operation and it is the French carriers turn.

I am guessing this is in preperation for the mothballing of the second new British Carrier when it gets completed.

I think the case was made that the English would have to wait until they get their own carrier back in action for operations where there is no justaposition of sovereign interest...

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Right, and the same would apply for french operations which do not tally with British interests.

My point was that Cameron is using this agreement in his attempt to make up for the fact that the strategic defence review, and the plans to mothball the second carrier, will leave Britian woefully unprepared to conduct overseas operations.

His claims in the OP that this agreement does not restrict Britains capability to fight on its own are accurate only in that they do not impact on the restriction his cuts already imposed on the defence establishment.

I also find the cooperation on nuclear technology interesting.

I hope that Cameron realises that this is about as far as they can go on nuclear cooperation, and that he is not hoping for some sort of future cooperation on deterrent capability/extended deterrence model, which would be totally unrealistic.

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Hence my point about 'core' vs. 'sphere'. AFAICT, there are only 5-6 countries that seem to want an 'ever closer union'. Personally, I leave Italy out no matter what they say. They're too corrupt and Berlusconi is too stupid (and Italians keep re-electing him so...) for them to be a good fit with the rest of the "France+Benelux+Holland+Germany" core entity... With the rest of Europe, more 'limited' forms of cooperation may be set up (I put limited in comas because a common currency is a pretty involved form of limited cooperation).

To be fair a lot of the new members will agree to pretty much anything we suggest as long as they get their money.

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What about those 5 states I mentioned?

I think that the German Lander plus the lawyers/judges of the countries involved would put a stop to it.

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Leaves you open to shopping around for a favourable legal system, does it not?

Doesn't seem to happen in the US.

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My point was that Cameron is using this agreement in his attempt to make up for the fact that the strategic defence review, and the plans to mothball the second carrier, will leave Britian woefully unprepared to conduct overseas operations.

To be fair to Cameron the carrier débacle was a Labour affair. I guess this is the cheapest way of getting the planes to put on the fucking things, though.

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Oh, there is some level of legal-system shopping. Deleware long ago became the place to incorporate your multi-state corporation with light regulation and taxation and very favorable liability laws. The southern states snared a good bit of manufacturing development with unfriendly-to-unions laws.

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