Russia has a GDP smaller than Italy's. It's a threat only in the minds of a very particular segment of society that seeks to blame it anytime they lose an argum

Russia has a GDP smaller than Italy's. It's a threat only in the minds of a very particular segment of society that seeks to blame it anytime they lose an argument. "Kremlin propaganda" isn't responsible for Trump or Brexit and may well not exist at all, as every attempt to reveal it keeps disappearing into puffs of smoke. What exists are arguments Euro-federalists keep losing for reasons they can't understand, so they seek to blame shadowy conspiracies that are always just out of reach of proof. This is visible in your own post! My view of the EU is neither bleak nor non-bleak. It's a simple factual statement of what the EU is and what it's becoming, as stated very clearly and repeatedly by the people who run it. The goal of the EU is to merge countries together. Do you believe the EU is not a federalist project? That its goal is not to become a new country? How do you explain the ever growing power of the Commission, the new Army, the flag, the laws that make disrespecting the flag illegal, the continual push for ever more integration, the explicit talking points you repeat here that the EU must "unite" to "face US, Russia and China"? The end state is not to lose a "degree" of independence, as you put it. It's to lose all independence completely. That is the end result of ever closer union, as the treaties word it, and that goal can be seen in the actions of the EU every day. It's not standing still. It's unifying armies, tax rules, trying to create new immigration law and so on, often without adjusting the treaties because they know that would trigger automatic referendums in some countries that they are guaranteed to lose. Finally, the EU is not an alliance. Alliances are agreements between separate entities to support each other within some precisely defined scope, like military defence in case of invasion. The EU is something more: a movement to merge the separate entities together completely in all conceivable areas, until there's nothing left to be allied anymore because they're the same thing. Rejection of the EU is not a rejection of alliances, it's the opposite - it's a preference for alliances.