We fret over Europe, but the real threat to sovereignty has long been the US

"American influence has had far more portentous consequences. As Timothy Garton Ash recently remarked on these pages, people in Britain are subject to some of the most extensive official surveillance in the world. One excuse for this is the threat from terrorism. Would this threat be as great without our participation in the Iraq war? And would Britain have participated in that war had it not been so accustomed to following Washington's foreign-policy lead?"