I don't often comment but I reckon Finnpog has it about right.
Slowly we are creating a federal Europe that is a little more coherent than a loose association of nation states and a little less than a full blown union. Think Southern Confederacy rather than USA. Whilst I'm an Atlantacist I'm also a European and I am perfectly aware that the USA has always had a very clear view of national self-interest (e.g. it wasn't fated that we had to give up Empire - but it was a strategic objective of the Cousins that they successfully pursued over five decades).
Therefore if we (UK/EU) are in an operation with the USA then we can turn up with whatever we have and be welcome (provided we are interoperable). But if we (UK/EU) are in an operation without the USA then a UK-solo operation is going to be pretty challenged in many situations absent CVF but equally we probably wouldn't go into something that required CVF. But thinking about things that we went into as a pan-EU operation then pretty soon you realise that only two countries are going to provide SSN, SSBN, CVF, and MARS and the satellite & comms cover but plenty can provide the lighter naval forces (DD/FF) or a wide range of land air and army capabilities. So from a UK perspective the must do things tends to reduce to those hard core naval things.
Twas ever thus. Wellington wouldn't have fought Waterloo or the Peninsulr campaign if he didn't have the naval forces and the continental allies. It's no suprise that it plays in our interests to have a strong naval bias in our force composition and still will even in a tighter EU.
Provided we can train the politicians to avoid getting militaristic I'm also a proponent of 'the more you have the less you use' so a good CVF does it for me and that requires two of them. Fingers crossed through the next five years of stupid defence reviews.
pp