Thailand maintains the carrier mostly because it's owned by their royal family. In terms of actual need/use, they have no real purpose for it. Maybe to keep Indonesia under control.
Brazil however, is a growing nation, and looking to expand its role internationally.
Brazil is basically like a smaller version of China or India. They can maybe get close to the United States in power over the long term, but unlike the other two, they don't really have the capability of eclipsing us (barring some huge depopulation or economic collapse on our part).
And a good strong navy is historically the way to do so. England, like the rest of Europe (except France somewhat) hasn't had to deal with defense issues like you stated earlier. They've developed generational atrophy toward military strength.
Well, at first it was good, as a militaristically weak and pacifistic Europe is certainly preferable to what we saw at the beginning of the century. They basically fought themselves into half a century of war exhaustion. However, the ideal would be a Europe that's both peaceful and strong, committed to its own collective defense instead of collective destruction. For one thing, the western world is going to have to spend a lot of time making up for its past. If it becomes militarily weak during this period, I assure you, when injustices are done to us, people will say "Ah, they're getting what's coming to them!" It is maybe unfair that we carry the burden for the sins of our fathers, but that is the way the world works. We are acceptable targets. And when we are weak acceptable targets, we won't even be able to do anything about it.
The problem is that, while collectively it is a powerful bloc, well, if any individual country spends its ass off on the military, they're not going to really even make much of a dent. It's honestly perfectly understandable. If the Soviet Union comes rolling through Europe, they're going to roll right along no matter what Poland spends on their military. Why even bother? Times are hard, as they often are, and people are suffering. And even if they did all spend a decent amount, their division doesn't make for an effective force. They needlessly duplicate effort, and only a few countries are big enough to even consider working on the big superweapons that could really make a difference. If every state had to make it's own military, we wouldn't have 11 supercarriers either. California and Texas would maybe have a medium sized carrier, and no one else would even try.
That's why, ideally, the EU needs to move to a more federal structure. I realize, of course, that this is a wild, naive dream. I myself am often rather annoyed seeing Americans on reddit and such looking at the European debt crisis and saying, well, Europe obviously just needs to unite, as if it's the easiest and most sensible thing in the world. In America, we all speak one primary language, and we do have a unified culture of sorts and a shared history. In Europe, I suppose the best you can do is to have a lingua franca like English, and to point to some broader post-Christian, Greco-Roman culture. But that's obviously weaker than what you have in the US, and will be weaker for a long time. And those weaknesses flare out every time things get a little tough, with everyone pulling out old resentments and threatening to secede (this is, indeed, what you see in Europe right now, and what you saw frequently in the early American republic and even still today somewhat). You also sort of have the problem that support for the military is usually tied to nationalism, and nationalism directly impedes such a goal. So, Germany is pro-europe and anti-militaristic (I suppose it's easier to be "European" than "the Hitler people"), while France is more anti-europe and more militaristic.
The UK is particularly tough, because it has the same nationalism as France as well as close ties to America and the Commonwealth that often divide its loylaties with Europe. If there is ever a majority in the UK for such a measure, it will be a future generation that's way different from their parents. The British honestly by themselves hugely complicate things, as it's practically impossible to get them on board and difficult to get them out of the picture. Tthey will hugely slow down a one-speed europe, and a two speed europe would weaken the whole structure, with countries constantly pulling out to the first speed when things get tough. It's like secession-lite. Rhode Island would've never signed the constitution, and plenty of other states would be jostling to pull back everytime a president they didn't like was elected (or for some other stupid reason), if it were a choice between the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution, instead of between being a different country and the Constitution. That's too bad as well, because the UK would make a significant contribution. Just going by population, a Europe without the UK would be like America without Texas and California.
But if you could accomplish the goal of a united Europe in some form, the two of us together could easily balance rising Chinese power for the forseeable future. With a dedication of 4%-5% of their GDP to the military, it could easily match ours in a generation or so. Europe would have 11 supercarriers and 9 SVTOL carriers, instead of one moderate size carrier and a handful of SVTOL carriers. It would be better for the US as well, as they could be a moderating influence on some of our less wise military adventurism if they weren't so easily ignorable. As it is, it's too easy for Americans to unwisely get it in their head that, since we're funding this whole thing anyway, we may as well go it alone. But a europe that is able to contribute just as much is a europe that's going to have much more say, an equal partner instead of a tag along.
