I think there's a catalogue of western failures that made Putin, a man whose background inclined to autocracy, revert away from his very pro-Western stance after 9-11, back to the familiar. Those are legal ; Iraq, economic ; the long after-effects of the early 1990s ; and strategic ; going back on original verbal assurances of not expanding NATO to Ukraine.
We are where we are, and he's gradually become more unhinged and pathologically anti-Western over time now, on his own track. We should be looking at the absolute maximum economic sanctions, and heavily reinforcing a whole line from the Baltics to Greece.
That is just nonsense. We might have perceived Russia as becoming more friendly after the collapse of the USSR, but Putin was never pro-Western. That was projection on the part of the West.
Ukraine has painfully exposed the faults of a British government that prizes rhetoric over substance and revealed the truth, that Britain is more irrelevant in Europe than it has been for 300 years. https://twitter.com/PhillipsPOBrien/status/1496559498571489281
Why does that matter? Why is Britain being 'relevant' hundreds of miles from our shores something to be so highly prized? It's a very illiberal approach that says we need to be able to bash people over the head for not behaving themselves the way we would like them to, and if we're not powerful enough to be the bashers, we have to join a bigger organisation so we can have a small part in the bashing. Switzerland has been getting on with being irrelevant in Europe for centuries, and doing very nicely out of it thankyou.
There is an emergency EU summit tomorrow. BoZo and Truss will have to beg someone to tell them what happened.
Global Britain is a global joke...
And how many anti tank guns have the EU supplied? Germany offered some helmets and stopped people with their kit passing it on.
These kind of comments are really uncalled for. It’s almost as if you had a different agenda Scott.
Yes, this is a time for people to decide which side they are on.
The government / Conservatives are not the evil actors in this saga. What's more, there might be stuff going on that isn't known atm (as seen in the Libya evacuation).
Either you are against this Russian aggression, or you are trying to blame the west for 'poking' them into it. That poor Putin. How he is sinned against!
No, both can be agreed to.
You think the repeated Russian aggression is our fault? You think we caused Salisbury?
I think there's a catalogue of western failures that made Putin, a man whose background inclined to autocracy, revert away from his very pro-Western stance after 9-11, to the familiar. Those are legal ; Iraq, economic ; the early 1990s ; and strategic ; going back on original verbal assurances of not expanding NATO to Ukraine.
We are where we are now, and he's gradually become more unhinged and anti-Western on his own track. We should be looking at the absolute maximum economic sanctions, and heavily reinforcing a whole line from the Baltics to Greece.
Ah, so you are a 'blame us' person.
The fault here lies in Putin. A bad actor can always find excuses for their bad behaviour. A practiced bad actor will always get fools to make the excuses for him.
Putin was not forced to invade Georgia. He was not forced to kill Litvinenko. He was not forced to kill or jail hundreds of journalists. He was not forced to take Crimea. He was not forced to do the Salisbury poisonings. He is not being forced to attack Ukraine.
He is evil. Whatever we did, he would find excuses for his actions.
Life is not black and white.
Indeed. Generally, we find it hard to distinguish more than 256 scales of colour. It is why we use 24-bit colour much of the time (256 red, 256 green, 256 blue (*). But most people can tell something that is nearly black from something that is nearly white.
These messes are all Putin's doing. He had not been forced to do it. They are his choice. And the sad thing is that Russia had the capability to take a better path, but he chose not to do the hard thing.
Ukraine has painfully exposed the faults of a British government that prizes rhetoric over substance and revealed the truth, that Britain is more irrelevant in Europe than it has been for 300 years. https://twitter.com/PhillipsPOBrien/status/1496559498571489281
Why does that matter? Why is Britain being 'relevant' hundreds of miles from our shores something to be so highly prized? It's a very illiberal approach that says we need to be able to bash people over the head for not behaving themselves the way we would like them to, and if we're not powerful enough to be the bashers, we have to join a bigger organisation so we can have a small part in the bashing. Switzerland has been getting on with being irrelevant in Europe for centuries, and doing very nicely out of it thankyou.
And all they’ve given us is the cuckoo clock, as Orson Welles said.
I think there's a catalogue of western failures that made Putin, a man whose background inclined to autocracy, revert away from his very pro-Western stance after 9-11, back to the familiar. Those are legal ; Iraq, economic ; the long after-effects of the early 1990s ; and strategic ; going back on original verbal assurances of not expanding NATO to Ukraine.
We are where we are, and he's gradually become more unhinged and pathologically anti-Western over time now, on his own track. We should be looking at the absolute maximum economic sanctions, and heavily reinforcing a whole line from the Baltics to Greece.
That is just nonsense. We might have perceived Russia as becoming more friendly after the collapse of the USSR, but Putin was never pro-Western. That was projection on the part of the West.
I refer the honourable gentleman to the reply I gave some days ago.
There is an emergency EU summit tomorrow. BoZo and Truss will have to beg someone to tell them what happened.
Global Britain is a global joke...
And how many anti tank guns have the EU supplied? Germany offered some helmets and stopped people with their kit passing it on.
These kind of comments are really uncalled for. It’s almost as if you had a different agenda Scott.
Yes, this is a time for people to decide which side they are on.
The government / Conservatives are not the evil actors in this saga. What's more, there might be stuff going on that isn't known atm (as seen in the Libya evacuation).
Either you are against this Russian aggression, or you are trying to blame the west for 'poking' them into it. That poor Putin. How he is sinned against!
No, both can be agreed to.
You think the repeated Russian aggression is our fault? You think we caused Salisbury?
I think there's a catalogue of western failures that made Putin, a man whose background inclined to autocracy, revert away from his very pro-Western stance after 9-11, to the familiar. Those are legal ; Iraq, economic ; the early 1990s ; and strategic ; going back on original verbal assurances of not expanding NATO to Ukraine.
We are where we are now, and he's gradually become more unhinged and anti-Western on his own track. We should be looking at the absolute maximum economic sanctions, and heavily reinforcing a whole line from the Baltics to Greece.
Ah, so you are a 'blame us' person.
The fault here lies in Putin. A bad actor can always find excuses for their bad behaviour. A practiced bad actor will always get fools to make the excuses for him.
Putin was not forced to invade Georgia. He was not forced to kill Litvinenko. He was not forced to kill or jail hundreds of journalists. He was not forced to take Crimea. He was not forced to do the Salisbury poisonings. He is not being forced to attack Ukraine.
He is evil. Whatever we did, he would find excuses for his actions.
You spend half your time demanding people pick a side, and the other half on querulous whataboutery toward people who are actually on your side.
Ukraine has painfully exposed the faults of a British government that prizes rhetoric over substance and revealed the truth, that Britain is more irrelevant in Europe than it has been for 300 years. https://twitter.com/PhillipsPOBrien/status/1496559498571489281
Why does that matter? Why is Britain being 'relevant' hundreds of miles from our shores something to be so highly prized? It's a very illiberal approach that says we need to be able to bash people over the head for not behaving themselves the way we would like them to, and if we're not powerful enough to be the bashers, we have to join a bigger organisation so we can have a small part in the bashing. Switzerland has been getting on with being irrelevant in Europe for centuries, and doing very nicely out of it thankyou.
And all they’ve given us is the cuckoo clock, as Orson Welles said.
"The reason NATO is expanding eastwards is the desperation of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and other countries in the region to secure themselves against inevitable Russian aggression. They too have Russian-speaking minorities who can be weaponised against them. They too were part of the Soviet empire after being invaded and annexed by Stalin while Europe was busy with Hitler.
The people in these countries understand something very few Westerners do: Russia is not a bear to be pacified. Russia is a hungry wolf who cares not one bit about your protestations, your pathetic sanctions or your naïve appeals to morality.
The crisis in Ukraine is a symptom of a far bigger problem, one about which I have been warning for some time: the West is divided, distracted and weak. A terrible pandemic has ravaged the minds of Western elites for decades, turning us into a self-loathing, nihilistic people whose main preoccupation is self-flagellating while hypnotically reciting the wrongs of our past...
While here in the West we talk endlessly about equality, diversity and social justice, in the rest of the world, things are much simpler. People respect strength and despise weakness. "
I actually think that's quite a lenient description of the governments of the West and their policies since the fall of the blessed Lady Margaret (PBUH) and Ronald Reagan.
Yet it is the Wokefinders on the hard right that are the biggest apologists for Putin. Farage, Banks, Hitchins, Trump etc.
I would argue Putin's apologists are those who engendered the self loathing. So none of the above.
Putin's real enablers are those in extinction rebellion and other green lobbies who effectively shut down new gas and oil production and deprived us of a huge weapon to fight Putin, and do so even now.
Its also abundantly clear that Russia, China and other enemies could not give a f8ck about climate change, and regard efforts to reduce emissions merely as a useful tool to weaken us, and which they have no intention of ever implementing in their own countries.
Ukraine has painfully exposed the faults of a British government that prizes rhetoric over substance and revealed the truth, that Britain is more irrelevant in Europe than it has been for 300 years. https://twitter.com/PhillipsPOBrien/status/1496559498571489281
Why does that matter? Why is Britain being 'relevant' hundreds of miles from our shores something to be so highly prized? It's a very illiberal approach that says we need to be able to bash people over the head for not behaving themselves the way we would like them to, and if we're not powerful enough to be the bashers, we have to join a bigger organisation so we can have a small part in the bashing. Switzerland has been getting on with being irrelevant in Europe for centuries, and doing very nicely out of it thankyou.
You yourself have talked about the basic fact that countries compete for power and influence; yes even Switzerland (notably in its never-ending negotiations with the EU).
There are an amazing amount of Russia experts on here, and indeed on Twitter.
The wonderful world of Google and Social Media...
I love Russia, its history, landscapes, culture, art, music and literature, but boy do they have a long history of terrible governments going back centuries. Most countries get a bad government every now and then, but the culture of tyranny in Russia is a very hard one to break.
Ukraine has painfully exposed the faults of a British government that prizes rhetoric over substance and revealed the truth, that Britain is more irrelevant in Europe than it has been for 300 years. https://twitter.com/PhillipsPOBrien/status/1496559498571489281
Why does that matter? Why is Britain being 'relevant' hundreds of miles from our shores something to be so highly prized? It's a very illiberal approach that says we need to be able to bash people over the head for not behaving themselves the way we would like them to, and if we're not powerful enough to be the bashers, we have to join a bigger organisation so we can have a small part in the bashing. Switzerland has been getting on with being irrelevant in Europe for centuries, and doing very nicely out of it thankyou.
And all they’ve given us is the cuckoo clock, as Orson Welles said.
Lindt chocolate!
One admires the Swiss, but Zurich is terribly dull and Geneva even worse.
I think there's a catalogue of western failures that made Putin, a man whose background inclined to autocracy, revert away from his very pro-Western stance after 9-11, back to the familiar. Those are legal ; Iraq, economic ; the long after-effects of the early 1990s ; and strategic ; going back on original verbal assurances of not expanding NATO to Ukraine.
We are where we are, and he's gradually become more unhinged and pathologically anti-Western over time now, on his own track. We should be looking at the absolute maximum economic sanctions, and heavily reinforcing a whole line from the Baltics to Greece.
That is just nonsense. We might have perceived Russia as becoming more friendly after the collapse of the USSR, but Putin was never pro-Western. That was projection on the part of the West.
Indeed, Putin is the most dangerous Russian leader of my lifetime, far worse than Yeltsin and Gorbachev. Indeed I would now go so far as to say he is the most dangerous Russian leader since Stalin
There is an emergency EU summit tomorrow. BoZo and Truss will have to beg someone to tell them what happened.
Global Britain is a global joke...
And how many anti tank guns have the EU supplied? Germany offered some helmets and stopped people with their kit passing it on.
These kind of comments are really uncalled for. It’s almost as if you had a different agenda Scott.
Yes, this is a time for people to decide which side they are on.
The government / Conservatives are not the evil actors in this saga. What's more, there might be stuff going on that isn't known atm (as seen in the Libya evacuation).
Either you are against this Russian aggression, or you are trying to blame the west for 'poking' them into it. That poor Putin. How he is sinned against!
No, both can be agreed to.
You think the repeated Russian aggression is our fault? You think we caused Salisbury?
Trying to look objectively in to the causes of the current situation is not the same as being pro-Russia. The 'poking the bear' meme has some truth in it. There was an expansion of Western institutions (including NATO and the EU) in Eastern Europe with the obvious objective of eventually bringing Russia in to the fold. This was despite earlier assurances to Russia that this was not our intention. Putin realised that this would ultimately almost certainly mean the overthrowing of his regime, which is not consistent at all with western democratic values, and this is why relations turned bad around 2008.
It is possible to both recognise this history as a cause of the current situation and completely reject Russias current actions in Ukraine.
There's a time to discuss the history, and a time to address the current issues. Discussing the history as a way of excusing the current issues is a crass diversion.
As for NATO expansion: it's been proved correct, hasn't it? These countries democratically wanted protection from their erstwhile mother. Do you really believe those countries would be in a better state today if they had not joined NATO?
Russia could have provided an equally attractive offer.
'Poking the bear' meme has no truth. It is excuse-making for evil.
There are an amazing amount of Russia experts on here, and indeed on Twitter.
The wonderful world of Google and Social Media...
I love Russia, its history, landscapes, culture, art, music and literature, but boy do they have a long history of terrible governments going back centuries. Most countries get a bad government every now and then, but the culture of tyranny in Russia is a very hard one to break.
And here I agree. Putin showed some early and partial signs of breaking it, but the West didn't really understand the stakes in not making easier for him. Now he's a lost cause I think.
Ukraine has painfully exposed the faults of a British government that prizes rhetoric over substance and revealed the truth, that Britain is more irrelevant in Europe than it has been for 300 years. https://twitter.com/PhillipsPOBrien/status/1496559498571489281
Why does that matter? Why is Britain being 'relevant' hundreds of miles from our shores something to be so highly prized? It's a very illiberal approach that says we need to be able to bash people over the head for not behaving themselves the way we would like them to, and if we're not powerful enough to be the bashers, we have to join a bigger organisation so we can have a small part in the bashing. Switzerland has been getting on with being irrelevant in Europe for centuries, and doing very nicely out of it thankyou.
And all they’ve given us is the cuckoo clock, as Orson Welles said.
A reference that shows you don't get the point at all. It has always been the europhile side who are obsessed with Empires and blocs - claiming that Brexit supporters were hankering after Empire was simple transference.
There are an amazing amount of Russia experts on here, and indeed on Twitter.
The wonderful world of Google and Social Media...
I love Russia, its history, landscapes, culture, art, music and literature, but boy do they have a long history of terrible governments going back centuries. Most countries get a bad government every now and then, but the culture of tyranny in Russia is a very hard one to break.
I’ve always fancied a visit to Kamchatka and Lake Baikal. So,e wonderful natural history in Russia.
Ukraine has painfully exposed the faults of a British government that prizes rhetoric over substance and revealed the truth, that Britain is more irrelevant in Europe than it has been for 300 years. https://twitter.com/PhillipsPOBrien/status/1496559498571489281
Why does that matter? Why is Britain being 'relevant' hundreds of miles from our shores something to be so highly prized? It's a very illiberal approach that says we need to be able to bash people over the head for not behaving themselves the way we would like them to, and if we're not powerful enough to be the bashers, we have to join a bigger organisation so we can have a small part in the bashing. Switzerland has been getting on with being irrelevant in Europe for centuries, and doing very nicely out of it thankyou.
And all they’ve given us is the cuckoo clock, as Orson Welles said.
A reference that shows you don't get the point at all. It has always been the europhile side who are obsessed with Empires and blocs - claiming that Brexit supporters were hankering after Empire was simple transference.
Not really.
Remainers tended to be liberal internationalists. Not all, of course, but that’s the general view.
Brexiters tended to be nationalists, and because British nationalism has a certain quotient of imperial nostalgia, that was often in the mix too. Indeed, this is why JRM is still wanking on about imperial measures. Read Anderson and others on “banal nationalism”.
Why does that matter? Why is Britain being 'relevant' hundreds of miles from our shores something to be so highly prized?
It matters to the Brexiteers.
They cherished it.
They fantasised about it.
They irretrievably fucked it.
If you think Britain’s international position is irretrievably fucked, you must know how the world will look in 5-10 years’ time. Could you give us a quick overview?
"The reason NATO is expanding eastwards is the desperation of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and other countries in the region to secure themselves against inevitable Russian aggression. They too have Russian-speaking minorities who can be weaponised against them. They too were part of the Soviet empire after being invaded and annexed by Stalin while Europe was busy with Hitler.
The people in these countries understand something very few Westerners do: Russia is not a bear to be pacified. Russia is a hungry wolf who cares not one bit about your protestations, your pathetic sanctions or your naïve appeals to morality.
The crisis in Ukraine is a symptom of a far bigger problem, one about which I have been warning for some time: the West is divided, distracted and weak. A terrible pandemic has ravaged the minds of Western elites for decades, turning us into a self-loathing, nihilistic people whose main preoccupation is self-flagellating while hypnotically reciting the wrongs of our past...
While here in the West we talk endlessly about equality, diversity and social justice, in the rest of the world, things are much simpler. People respect strength and despise weakness. "
So where the F are they? Why are the Ukraine’s trenches not filling up with units from all these states that fear Russia and its demented ways?
Ukraine has painfully exposed the faults of a British government that prizes rhetoric over substance and revealed the truth, that Britain is more irrelevant in Europe than it has been for 300 years. https://twitter.com/PhillipsPOBrien/status/1496559498571489281
Why does that matter? Why is Britain being 'relevant' hundreds of miles from our shores something to be so highly prized? It's a very illiberal approach that says we need to be able to bash people over the head for not behaving themselves the way we would like them to, and if we're not powerful enough to be the bashers, we have to join a bigger organisation so we can have a small part in the bashing. Switzerland has been getting on with being irrelevant in Europe for centuries, and doing very nicely out of it thankyou.
And all they’ve given us is the cuckoo clock, as Orson Welles said.
Lindt chocolate!
One admires the Swiss, but Zurich is terribly dull and Geneva even worse.
The city of John Calvin dull, surely not?
(Actually for all I know Calvin was a fun dude, but Calvinism seems like a right bummer)
"The reason NATO is expanding eastwards is the desperation of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and other countries in the region to secure themselves against inevitable Russian aggression. They too have Russian-speaking minorities who can be weaponised against them. They too were part of the Soviet empire after being invaded and annexed by Stalin while Europe was busy with Hitler.
The people in these countries understand something very few Westerners do: Russia is not a bear to be pacified. Russia is a hungry wolf who cares not one bit about your protestations, your pathetic sanctions or your naïve appeals to morality.
The crisis in Ukraine is a symptom of a far bigger problem, one about which I have been warning for some time: the West is divided, distracted and weak. A terrible pandemic has ravaged the minds of Western elites for decades, turning us into a self-loathing, nihilistic people whose main preoccupation is self-flagellating while hypnotically reciting the wrongs of our past...
While here in the West we talk endlessly about equality, diversity and social justice, in the rest of the world, things are much simpler. People respect strength and despise weakness. "
I actually think that's quite a lenient description of the governments of the West and their policies since the fall of the blessed Lady Margaret (PBUH) and Ronald Reagan.
Yet it is the Wokefinders on the hard right that are the biggest apologists for Putin. Farage, Banks, Hitchins, Trump etc.
I would argue Putin's apologists are those who engendered the self loathing. So none of the above.
Putin's real enablers are those in extinction rebellion and other green lobbies who effectively shut down new gas and oil production and deprived us of a huge weapon to fight Putin, and do so even now.
Its also abundantly clear that Russia, China and other enemies could not give a f8ck about climate change, and regard efforts to reduce emissions merely as a useful tool to weaken us, and which they have no intention of ever implementing in their own countries.
That is simply back to front.
Sustainable renewable energy is the route to independence from Russian oil and gas. That is why Putin hates the Greens.
Sure, China has some way to go but is making massive investments in renewable energy. In 2019 UK led the world in offshore wind, with 8 Gw, but in the last 2 years China installed twice that.
Ukraine has painfully exposed the faults of a British government that prizes rhetoric over substance and revealed the truth, that Britain is more irrelevant in Europe than it has been for 300 years. https://twitter.com/PhillipsPOBrien/status/1496559498571489281
Why does that matter? Why is Britain being 'relevant' hundreds of miles from our shores something to be so highly prized? It's a very illiberal approach that says we need to be able to bash people over the head for not behaving themselves the way we would like them to, and if we're not powerful enough to be the bashers, we have to join a bigger organisation so we can have a small part in the bashing. Switzerland has been getting on with being irrelevant in Europe for centuries, and doing very nicely out of it thankyou.
And all they’ve given us is the cuckoo clock, as Orson Welles said.
A reference that shows you don't get the point at all. It has always been the europhile side who are obsessed with Empires and blocs - claiming that Brexit supporters were hankering after Empire was simple transference.
There is an emergency EU summit tomorrow. BoZo and Truss will have to beg someone to tell them what happened.
Global Britain is a global joke...
Sgt Wilson voice - Hello? Hello is that Berlin? Would you mind please faxing your list over to London, it appears we don’t know how to do this. We are awfully obliged. Thank you.
"Your name vill also go on ze list! Vot is it?"
“Don’t tell him Sunil.’ “Captain Malmesbury. I’m going to tell my mum about you.”
Ukraine has painfully exposed the faults of a British government that prizes rhetoric over substance and revealed the truth, that Britain is more irrelevant in Europe than it has been for 300 years. https://twitter.com/PhillipsPOBrien/status/1496559498571489281
Why does that matter? Why is Britain being 'relevant' hundreds of miles from our shores something to be so highly prized? It's a very illiberal approach that says we need to be able to bash people over the head for not behaving themselves the way we would like them to, and if we're not powerful enough to be the bashers, we have to join a bigger organisation so we can have a small part in the bashing. Switzerland has been getting on with being irrelevant in Europe for centuries, and doing very nicely out of it thankyou.
And all they’ve given us is the cuckoo clock, as Orson Welles said.
Lindt chocolate!
One admires the Swiss, but Zurich is terribly dull and Geneva even worse.
The city of John Calvin dull, surely not?
(Actually for all I know Calvin was a fun dude, but Calvinism seems like a right bummer)
Went to Geneva in 2014, I thought it was rather nice.
Ukraine has painfully exposed the faults of a British government that prizes rhetoric over substance and revealed the truth, that Britain is more irrelevant in Europe than it has been for 300 years. https://twitter.com/PhillipsPOBrien/status/1496559498571489281
Why does that matter? Why is Britain being 'relevant' hundreds of miles from our shores something to be so highly prized? It's a very illiberal approach that says we need to be able to bash people over the head for not behaving themselves the way we would like them to, and if we're not powerful enough to be the bashers, we have to join a bigger organisation so we can have a small part in the bashing. Switzerland has been getting on with being irrelevant in Europe for centuries, and doing very nicely out of it thankyou.
And all they’ve given us is the cuckoo clock, as Orson Welles said.
A reference that shows you don't get the point at all. It has always been the europhile side who are obsessed with Empires and blocs - claiming that Brexit supporters were hankering after Empire was simple transference.
Not really.
Remainers tended to be liberal internationalists. Not all, of course, but that’s the general view.
Brexiters tended to be nationalists, and because British nationalism has a certain quotient of imperial nostalgia, that was often in the mix too. Indeed, this is why JRM is still wanking on about imperial measures. Read Anderson and others on “banal nationalism”.
Wallace too with his asinine comments about the Crimea today. It ain't 1853 anymore, and that thin red line is much shorter and thinner now.
There are an amazing amount of Russia experts on here, and indeed on Twitter.
The wonderful world of Google and Social Media...
I love Russia, its history, landscapes, culture, art, music and literature, but boy do they have a long history of terrible governments going back centuries. Most countries get a bad government every now and then, but the culture of tyranny in Russia is a very hard one to break.
IMV, Russia (*) had a more defensive posture than NATO during the Cold War. America and the West were sending carrier groups around the world, in a grey version of the Great White Fleet. I can't blame Russia for having a defensive posture, given their rather chaotic history of invasions - and not just Napoleon and Hitler.
I can understand the Russian state for being paranoid about invasions. But that does not excuse their bullying behaviour towards smaller neighbouring nations. If anything, those countries have more reason to be paranoid about their larger eastern neighbour.
Ukraine has painfully exposed the faults of a British government that prizes rhetoric over substance and revealed the truth, that Britain is more irrelevant in Europe than it has been for 300 years. https://twitter.com/PhillipsPOBrien/status/1496559498571489281
Why does that matter? Why is Britain being 'relevant' hundreds of miles from our shores something to be so highly prized? It's a very illiberal approach that says we need to be able to bash people over the head for not behaving themselves the way we would like them to, and if we're not powerful enough to be the bashers, we have to join a bigger organisation so we can have a small part in the bashing. Switzerland has been getting on with being irrelevant in Europe for centuries, and doing very nicely out of it thankyou.
And all they’ve given us is the cuckoo clock, as Orson Welles said.
But also, not the Holocaust. Do you think that, say, Beethoven and Goethe make up for that?
"The reason NATO is expanding eastwards is the desperation of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania and other countries in the region to secure themselves against inevitable Russian aggression. They too have Russian-speaking minorities who can be weaponised against them. They too were part of the Soviet empire after being invaded and annexed by Stalin while Europe was busy with Hitler.
The people in these countries understand something very few Westerners do: Russia is not a bear to be pacified. Russia is a hungry wolf who cares not one bit about your protestations, your pathetic sanctions or your naïve appeals to morality.
The crisis in Ukraine is a symptom of a far bigger problem, one about which I have been warning for some time: the West is divided, distracted and weak. A terrible pandemic has ravaged the minds of Western elites for decades, turning us into a self-loathing, nihilistic people whose main preoccupation is self-flagellating while hypnotically reciting the wrongs of our past...
While here in the West we talk endlessly about equality, diversity and social justice, in the rest of the world, things are much simpler. People respect strength and despise weakness. "
I actually think that's quite a lenient description of the governments of the West and their policies since the fall of the blessed Lady Margaret (PBUH) and Ronald Reagan.
Yet it is the Wokefinders on the hard right that are the biggest apologists for Putin. Farage, Banks, Hitchins, Trump etc.
I would argue Putin's apologists are those who engendered the self loathing. So none of the above.
Putin's real enablers are those in extinction rebellion and other green lobbies who effectively shut down new gas and oil production and deprived us of a huge weapon to fight Putin, and do so even now.
Its also abundantly clear that Russia, China and other enemies could not give a f8ck about climate change, and regard efforts to reduce emissions merely as a useful tool to weaken us, and which they have no intention of ever implementing in their own countries.
That is simply back to front.
Sustainable renewable energy is the route to independence from Russian oil and gas. That is why Putin hates the Greens.
Sure, China has some way to go but is making massive investments in renewable energy. In 2019 UK led the world in offshore wind, with 8 Gw, but in the last 2 years China installed twice that.
Or, he's gambling that renewable resources *won't* be able to provide the west's needs, and with all those projects shut down, there's more of a market (and hence higher prices) for his gas and oil?
One thing that isn't discussed as a possible cause of the current situation is the recent protests and unrest in Belarus. It seems that people are generally not too keen on the 'dictatorship' model of government expounded by Putin and Lukashenko.
I was hoping for something more than a slogan. How do you think events will develop from here given that we are entering a period of profound global instability.
There is an emergency EU summit tomorrow. BoZo and Truss will have to beg someone to tell them what happened.
Global Britain is a global joke...
Sgt Wilson voice - Hello? Hello is that Berlin? Would you mind please faxing your list over to London, it appears we don’t know how to do this. We are awfully obliged. Thank you.
The extras are just members of the Russian parliament. Almost irrelevant.
There is an emergency EU summit tomorrow. BoZo and Truss will have to beg someone to tell them what happened.
Global Britain is a global joke...
And how many anti tank guns have the EU supplied? Germany offered some helmets and stopped people with their kit passing it on.
These kind of comments are really uncalled for. It’s almost as if you had a different agenda Scott.
Yes, this is a time for people to decide which side they are on.
The government / Conservatives are not the evil actors in this saga. What's more, there might be stuff going on that isn't known atm (as seen in the Libya evacuation).
Either you are against this Russian aggression, or you are trying to blame the west for 'poking' them into it. That poor Putin. How he is sinned against!
No, both can be agreed to.
You think the repeated Russian aggression is our fault? You think we caused Salisbury?
Trying to look objectively in to the causes of the current situation is not the same as being pro-Russia. The 'poking the bear' meme has some truth in it. There was an expansion of Western institutions (including NATO and the EU) in Eastern Europe with the obvious objective of eventually bringing Russia in to the fold. This was despite earlier assurances to Russia that this was not our intention. Putin realised that this would ultimately almost certainly mean the overthrowing of his regime, which is not consistent at all with western democratic values, and this is why relations turned bad around 2008.
It is possible to both recognise this history as a cause of the current situation and completely reject Russias current actions in Ukraine.
There's a time to discuss the history, and a time to address the current issues. Discussing the history as a way of excusing the current issues is a crass diversion.
As for NATO expansion: it's been proved correct, hasn't it? These countries democratically wanted protection from their erstwhile mother. Do you really believe those countries would be in a better state today if they had not joined NATO?
Russia could have provided an equally attractive offer.
'Poking the bear' meme has no truth. It is excuse-making for evil.
I get understanding Russia's position as a way of understanding their actions now, but I really don't see how laying out their position ends with the idea there is some truth to the poking the bear meme. Ultimately that seems to have been free nations making their own free choices - whatever Russia was promised by a rival superpower, things developed in a different direction and their whinges about that are simply not reasonable. Since they are not reasonable - as they amount to demanding nations who are not Russia must do as Russia pleases, and others must force them to do so - doing it cannot be called provocation.
And really that is why when understanding their complaints, I think it is important not to use or give succour to an expression likeing poking the bear, since it implies that Russia was provoked. Not to argue that their reaction was justified, most people don't mean that, but the terminology of poking is closer to their excuses of responding to provocation.
Rather than the bear being poked what seems to have happened is the bear saw someone getting given some tasty steak next door and decided to mope about it.
Ukraine has painfully exposed the faults of a British government that prizes rhetoric over substance and revealed the truth, that Britain is more irrelevant in Europe than it has been for 300 years. https://twitter.com/PhillipsPOBrien/status/1496559498571489281
Why does that matter? Why is Britain being 'relevant' hundreds of miles from our shores something to be so highly prized? It's a very illiberal approach that says we need to be able to bash people over the head for not behaving themselves the way we would like them to, and if we're not powerful enough to be the bashers, we have to join a bigger organisation so we can have a small part in the bashing. Switzerland has been getting on with being irrelevant in Europe for centuries, and doing very nicely out of it thankyou.
You yourself have talked about the basic fact that countries compete for power and influence; yes even Switzerland (notably in its never-ending negotiations with the EU).
They don't, or they shouldn't, compete for power and influence, they 'compete' if such a term is applicable, to advance the interests of their people. That's what Switzerland is doing in its negotiations with the EU. And even in the pomp of the British Empire, wars, alliances, deals etc. were done in the cause of advancing Britain's interests. Bewailing our lack of 'cred' in the councils of the world is totally missing the point.
The best sanction would be to trace and locate all the assets of V Putin esq. Having done so sequestrate every one of them, making loud and public announcements of how many billions of his ill-gotten gains have been seized. Do wonders for his popularity in Russia. Some of his loot could even be promised to retutn to the Russian people post Putin.
Ukraine has painfully exposed the faults of a British government that prizes rhetoric over substance and revealed the truth, that Britain is more irrelevant in Europe than it has been for 300 years. https://twitter.com/PhillipsPOBrien/status/1496559498571489281
Why does that matter? Why is Britain being 'relevant' hundreds of miles from our shores something to be so highly prized? It's a very illiberal approach that says we need to be able to bash people over the head for not behaving themselves the way we would like them to, and if we're not powerful enough to be the bashers, we have to join a bigger organisation so we can have a small part in the bashing. Switzerland has been getting on with being irrelevant in Europe for centuries, and doing very nicely out of it thankyou.
And all they’ve given us is the cuckoo clock, as Orson Welles said.
Lindt chocolate!
One admires the Swiss, but Zurich is terribly dull and Geneva even worse.
The city of John Calvin dull, surely not?
(Actually for all I know Calvin was a fun dude, but Calvinism seems like a right bummer)
Certainly the austere grimness of Calvinism is an acquired taste, but the reason it caught on a big way is there is a strange masochistc joy in it, and endless opportunities for schadenfreude.
We’re all getting into a bout of naval gazing at the apparent victory of Russian might over Western equivocation. Good. That kind of naval gazing is part of what makes us proper democracies.
But look at it in another way. The West keeps winning, on the things that matter. Over and over again. Despite Trump, despite Corbyn, and Boris, and Le Pen. Despite Covid. The West by and large (when you actually look at the stats) keeps getting richer or at least maintaining living standards, living longer, becoming less polluted, cutting emissions, reducing crime. Russia, like other anti-West pariahs, is depopulating, economically stagnating, unwell, democratically deficient and unhappy.
China is the exception: anti-West, but growing and economically powerful. But it will only take the step from middle income to high income if it can truly open its markets and culture to the world, and that’s far from certain now.
My Russian colleague once told me “Putin is a great tactician and a lousy strategist”. I think Ukraine is exhibit A and Belarus exhibit B of exactly this.
I was hoping for something more than a slogan. How do you think events will develop from here given that we are entering a period of profound global instability.
I don’t know about irretrievable, but the 2020s look very grim economically for the UK, with much of it self-inflicted.
Well, here's one shite employer adopting the Bank of England Governor's position on wages:
Health unions have criticised the government for offering NHS staff in England a “miserly” 3% pay rise from April, despite inflation having hit 5.5%.
Ministers have proposed the increase in their written evidence to the NHS pay review body, which advises what salary uplifts the service’s 1.3 million staff should get.
“With spiralling inflation and hikes to national insurance contributions, this derisory proposal means NHS workers are staring at yet another real terms loss,” said Rachel Harrison, a national officer with the GMB.
The union, along with Unison and the Royal College of Nursing, warned that offering only a 3% rise – the same as staff got in the current year – will prompt frontline workers to quit and thus exacerbate the NHS’s already widespread understaffing. Harrison said that the GMB had warned ministers and the pay review body that staff are already leaving. “This will be the final push that many others need”, she added.
One thing that isn't discussed as a possible cause of the current situation is the recent protests and unrest in Belarus. It seems that people are generally not too keen on the 'dictatorship' model of government expounded by Putin and Lukashenko.
Ridiculous, they love it - I for one find it totally plausible a democratic politician would still win 80% of the vote in a free and fair election after 26 years in power.
I think there's a catalogue of western failures that made Putin, a man whose background inclined to autocracy, revert away from his very pro-Western stance after 9-11, back to the familiar. Those are legal ; Iraq, economic ; the long after-effects of the early 1990s ; and strategic ; going back on original verbal assurances of not expanding NATO to Ukraine.
We are where we are, and he's gradually become more unhinged and pathologically anti-Western over time now, on his own track. We should be looking at the absolute maximum economic sanctions, and heavily reinforcing a whole line from the Baltics to Greece.
That is just nonsense. We might have perceived Russia as becoming more friendly after the collapse of the USSR, but Putin was never pro-Western. That was projection on the part of the West.
Indeed, Putin is the most dangerous Russian leader of my lifetime, far worse than Yeltsin and Gorbachev. Indeed I would now go so far as to say he is the most dangerous Russian leader since Stalin
Ukraine has painfully exposed the faults of a British government that prizes rhetoric over substance and revealed the truth, that Britain is more irrelevant in Europe than it has been for 300 years. https://twitter.com/PhillipsPOBrien/status/1496559498571489281
Why does that matter? Why is Britain being 'relevant' hundreds of miles from our shores something to be so highly prized? It's a very illiberal approach that says we need to be able to bash people over the head for not behaving themselves the way we would like them to, and if we're not powerful enough to be the bashers, we have to join a bigger organisation so we can have a small part in the bashing. Switzerland has been getting on with being irrelevant in Europe for centuries, and doing very nicely out of it thankyou.
You yourself have talked about the basic fact that countries compete for power and influence; yes even Switzerland (notably in its never-ending negotiations with the EU).
They don't, or they shouldn't, compete for power and influence, they 'compete' if such a term is applicable, to advance the interests of their people. That's what Switzerland is doing in its negotiations with the EU. And even in the pomp of the British Empire, wars, alliances, deals etc. were done in the cause of advancing Britain's interests. Bewailing our lack of 'cred' in the councils of the world is totally missing the point.
Well it depends on the nature of government. It’s hard to know whether Putin is competing in their interests of his people, or just for himself and his crime family.
But let’s accept the first premise.
The point about the lack of cred, is that it appears that our soft power has declined of late. So less, not more, ability to advance the interests of the British people.
There is an emergency EU summit tomorrow. BoZo and Truss will have to beg someone to tell them what happened.
Global Britain is a global joke...
And how many anti tank guns have the EU supplied? Germany offered some helmets and stopped people with their kit passing it on.
These kind of comments are really uncalled for. It’s almost as if you had a different agenda Scott.
Yes, this is a time for people to decide which side they are on.
The government / Conservatives are not the evil actors in this saga. What's more, there might be stuff going on that isn't known atm (as seen in the Libya evacuation).
Either you are against this Russian aggression, or you are trying to blame the west for 'poking' them into it. That poor Putin. How he is sinned against!
No, both can be agreed to.
You think the repeated Russian aggression is our fault? You think we caused Salisbury?
Trying to look objectively in to the causes of the current situation is not the same as being pro-Russia. The 'poking the bear' meme has some truth in it. There was an expansion of Western institutions (including NATO and the EU) in Eastern Europe with the obvious objective of eventually bringing Russia in to the fold. This was despite earlier assurances to Russia that this was not our intention. Putin realised that this would ultimately almost certainly mean the overthrowing of his regime, which is not consistent at all with western democratic values, and this is why relations turned bad around 2008.
It is possible to both recognise this history as a cause of the current situation and completely reject Russias current actions in Ukraine.
There's a time to discuss the history, and a time to address the current issues. Discussing the history as a way of excusing the current issues is a crass diversion.
As for NATO expansion: it's been proved correct, hasn't it? These countries democratically wanted protection from their erstwhile mother. Do you really believe those countries would be in a better state today if they had not joined NATO?
Russia could have provided an equally attractive offer.
'Poking the bear' meme has no truth. It is excuse-making for evil.
I get understanding Russia's position as a way of understanding their actions now, but I really don't see how laying out their position ends with the idea there is some truth to the poking the bear meme. Ultimately that seems to have been free nations making their own free choices - whatever Russia was promised by a rival superpower, things developed in a different direction and their whinges about that are simply not reasonable. Since they are not reasonable - as they amount to demanding nations who are not Russia must do as Russia pleases, and others must force them to do so - doing it cannot be called provocation.
And really that is why when understanding their complaints, I think it is important not to use or give succour to an expression likeing poking the bear, since it implies that Russia was provoked. Not to argue that their reaction was justified, most people don't mean that, but the terminology of poking is closer to their excuses of responding to provocation.
Rather than the bear being poked what seems to have happened is the bear saw someone getting given some tasty steak next door and decided to mope about it.
I would see it more in terms of giving the bear the impression it might not only have a neutral zone on its immediate borders, but even join the club itself, especially after 9-11 ; then changing direction. The bear was always inclined to want to eat, but there was not only an opportunity missed, but actually damage done.
We’re all getting into a boot of naval gazing at the apparent victory of Russian might over Western equivocation. Good. That kind of naval gazing is part of what makes us proper democracies.
But look at it in another way. The West keeps winning, on the things that matter. Over and over again. Despite Trump, despite Corbyn, and Boris, and Le Pen. Despite Covid. The West by and large (when you actually look at the stats) keeps getting richer or at least maintaining living standards, living longer, becoming less polluted, cutting emissions, reducing crime. Russia, like other anti-West pariahs, is depopulating, economically stagnating, unwell, democratically deficient and unhappy.
China is the exception: anti-West, but growing and economically powerful. But it will only take the step from middle income to high income if it can truly open its markets and culture to the world, and that’s far from certain now.
My Russian colleague once told me “Putin is a great tactician and a lousy strategist”. I think Ukraine is exhibit A and Belarus exhibit B of exactly this.
I agree, and worth noting the progress in democracy and liberal economics across the world. Large parts of Africa, Latin America and Asia are in a much better place than 50 years ago. Eastern Europe even more so.
Putin is fighting a losing battle, and knows it. That is why he is so dangerous, like a cornered rat.
Bloody hell. Panorama on the Shropshire maternity scandal is grim.
Not unique either with similar scandals in Morecombe Bay, Nottingham, Essex.
There will always be failures in an organisation the size of the NHS. What matters is recognising those failures as quickly as possible, correcting them, and spreading lessons around the organisation.
Too many within and without the NHS have been historically unwilling to accept that there are failures, and instead institute a CYA approach. Or even blaming the messenger: witness Stafford.
Much of the NHS is glorious and worthy of praise. But some of the NHS is like the worst private companies: unwilling to accept blame or make progress.
There has been a long history of similar issues in the NHS. Remember the Bristol childrens' heart issue - which was 30 years ago,long before Stafford or these dreadful maternity cases. Remember too the problems at Gosport War Memorial Hospital. I wrote about this case on my work blog here - https://barry-walsh.co.uk/what-whistleblowers-really-want/.
One common theme is the appalling treatment of those who blow the whistle and speak up. And that appalling treatment is precisely why others remain silent.
The other big problem is our hero worship of the NHS. We treat it like a secular religion. This is not good because it makes an institution arrogant, less likely to indulge in necessary self-criticism and far too willing to bat away challenge. We need to stop behaving as if criticism of the NHS is tantamount to wanting to hang, draw and quarter those who work in it.
Ukraine has painfully exposed the faults of a British government that prizes rhetoric over substance and revealed the truth, that Britain is more irrelevant in Europe than it has been for 300 years. https://twitter.com/PhillipsPOBrien/status/1496559498571489281
Why does that matter? Why is Britain being 'relevant' hundreds of miles from our shores something to be so highly prized? It's a very illiberal approach that says we need to be able to bash people over the head for not behaving themselves the way we would like them to, and if we're not powerful enough to be the bashers, we have to join a bigger organisation so we can have a small part in the bashing. Switzerland has been getting on with being irrelevant in Europe for centuries, and doing very nicely out of it thankyou.
And all they’ve given us is the cuckoo clock, as Orson Welles said.
But also, not the Holocaust. Do you think that, say, Beethoven and Goethe make up for that?
Bung in Schubert, Friedrich, Kraftwerk & Lang and I'll have a think.
I think there's a catalogue of western failures that made Putin, a man whose background inclined to autocracy, revert away from his very pro-Western stance after 9-11, back to the familiar. Those are legal ; Iraq, economic ; the long after-effects of the early 1990s ; and strategic ; going back on original verbal assurances of not expanding NATO to Ukraine.
We are where we are, and he's gradually become more unhinged and pathologically anti-Western over time now, on his own track. We should be looking at the absolute maximum economic sanctions, and heavily reinforcing a whole line from the Baltics to Greece.
That is just nonsense. We might have perceived Russia as becoming more friendly after the collapse of the USSR, but Putin was never pro-Western. That was projection on the part of the West.
Indeed, Putin is the most dangerous Russian leader of my lifetime, far worse than Yeltsin and Gorbachev. Indeed I would now go so far as to say he is the most dangerous Russian leader since Stalin
One thing that isn't discussed as a possible cause of the current situation is the recent protests and unrest in Belarus. It seems that people are generally not too keen on the 'dictatorship' model of government expounded by Putin and Lukashenko.
Ridiculous, they love it - I for one find it totally plausible a democratic politician would still win 80% of the vote in a free and fair election after 26 years in power.
One thing that isn't discussed as a possible cause of the current situation is the recent protests and unrest in Belarus. It seems that people are generally not too keen on the 'dictatorship' model of government expounded by Putin and Lukashenko.
Ridiculous, they love it - I for one find it totally plausible a democratic politician would still win 80% of the vote in a free and fair election after 26 years in power.
Ukraine has painfully exposed the faults of a British government that prizes rhetoric over substance and revealed the truth, that Britain is more irrelevant in Europe than it has been for 300 years. https://twitter.com/PhillipsPOBrien/status/1496559498571489281
Why does that matter? Why is Britain being 'relevant' hundreds of miles from our shores something to be so highly prized? It's a very illiberal approach that says we need to be able to bash people over the head for not behaving themselves the way we would like them to, and if we're not powerful enough to be the bashers, we have to join a bigger organisation so we can have a small part in the bashing. Switzerland has been getting on with being irrelevant in Europe for centuries, and doing very nicely out of it thankyou.
And all they’ve given us is the cuckoo clock, as Orson Welles said.
But also, not the Holocaust. Do you think that, say, Beethoven and Goethe make up for that?
Bung in Schubert, Friedrich, Kraftwerk & Lang and I'll have a think.
I think there's a catalogue of western failures that made Putin, a man whose background inclined to autocracy, revert away from his very pro-Western stance after 9-11, back to the familiar. Those are legal ; Iraq, economic ; the long after-effects of the early 1990s ; and strategic ; going back on original verbal assurances of not expanding NATO to Ukraine.
We are where we are, and he's gradually become more unhinged and pathologically anti-Western over time now, on his own track. We should be looking at the absolute maximum economic sanctions, and heavily reinforcing a whole line from the Baltics to Greece.
That is just nonsense. We might have perceived Russia as becoming more friendly after the collapse of the USSR, but Putin was never pro-Western. That was projection on the part of the West.
Indeed, Putin is the most dangerous Russian leader of my lifetime, far worse than Yeltsin and Gorbachev. Indeed I would now go so far as to say he is the most dangerous Russian leader since Stalin
I think there's a catalogue of western failures that made Putin, a man whose background inclined to autocracy, revert away from his very pro-Western stance after 9-11, back to the familiar. Those are legal ; Iraq, economic ; the long after-effects of the early 1990s ; and strategic ; going back on original verbal assurances of not expanding NATO to Ukraine.
We are where we are, and he's gradually become more unhinged and pathologically anti-Western over time now, on his own track. We should be looking at the absolute maximum economic sanctions, and heavily reinforcing a whole line from the Baltics to Greece.
That is just nonsense. We might have perceived Russia as becoming more friendly after the collapse of the USSR, but Putin was never pro-Western. That was projection on the part of the West.
I refer the honourable gentleman to the reply I gave some days ago.
I think you should read Catherine Belton's book Putin's People which deals extensively with Putin's background and that of his closest allies from the period of the end of the USSR to the time he entered the inner circle around Yeltsin. Putin didn't become a different person when he became President, his actions as President are a continuation of how he operated in the KGB in Dresden, in government in St. Petersburg, and ultimately in Moscow now at a national scale.
Ukraine has painfully exposed the faults of a British government that prizes rhetoric over substance and revealed the truth, that Britain is more irrelevant in Europe than it has been for 300 years. https://twitter.com/PhillipsPOBrien/status/1496559498571489281
Why does that matter? Why is Britain being 'relevant' hundreds of miles from our shores something to be so highly prized? It's a very illiberal approach that says we need to be able to bash people over the head for not behaving themselves the way we would like them to, and if we're not powerful enough to be the bashers, we have to join a bigger organisation so we can have a small part in the bashing. Switzerland has been getting on with being irrelevant in Europe for centuries, and doing very nicely out of it thankyou.
And all they’ve given us is the cuckoo clock, as Orson Welles said.
But also, not the Holocaust. Do you think that, say, Beethoven and Goethe make up for that?
I think there's a catalogue of western failures that made Putin, a man whose background inclined to autocracy, revert away from his very pro-Western stance after 9-11, back to the familiar. Those are legal ; Iraq, economic ; the long after-effects of the early 1990s ; and strategic ; going back on original verbal assurances of not expanding NATO to Ukraine.
We are where we are, and he's gradually become more unhinged and pathologically anti-Western over time now, on his own track. We should be looking at the absolute maximum economic sanctions, and heavily reinforcing a whole line from the Baltics to Greece.
That is just nonsense. We might have perceived Russia as becoming more friendly after the collapse of the USSR, but Putin was never pro-Western. That was projection on the part of the West.
Indeed, Putin is the most dangerous Russian leader of my lifetime, far worse than Yeltsin and Gorbachev. Indeed I would now go so far as to say he is the most dangerous Russian leader since Stalin
I hate it when I agree with you
Never, never, agree with HYUFD. It only encourages him.
There is an emergency EU summit tomorrow. BoZo and Truss will have to beg someone to tell them what happened.
Global Britain is a global joke...
And how many anti tank guns have the EU supplied? Germany offered some helmets and stopped people with their kit passing it on.
These kind of comments are really uncalled for. It’s almost as if you had a different agenda Scott.
Yes, this is a time for people to decide which side they are on.
The government / Conservatives are not the evil actors in this saga. What's more, there might be stuff going on that isn't known atm (as seen in the Libya evacuation).
Either you are against this Russian aggression, or you are trying to blame the west for 'poking' them into it. That poor Putin. How he is sinned against!
No, both can be agreed to.
You think the repeated Russian aggression is our fault? You think we caused Salisbury?
Trying to look objectively in to the causes of the current situation is not the same as being pro-Russia. The 'poking the bear' meme has some truth in it. There was an expansion of Western institutions (including NATO and the EU) in Eastern Europe with the obvious objective of eventually bringing Russia in to the fold. This was despite earlier assurances to Russia that this was not our intention. Putin realised that this would ultimately almost certainly mean the overthrowing of his regime, which is not consistent at all with western democratic values, and this is why relations turned bad around 2008.
It is possible to both recognise this history as a cause of the current situation and completely reject Russias current actions in Ukraine.
There's a time to discuss the history, and a time to address the current issues. Discussing the history as a way of excusing the current issues is a crass diversion.
As for NATO expansion: it's been proved correct, hasn't it? These countries democratically wanted protection from their erstwhile mother. Do you really believe those countries would be in a better state today if they had not joined NATO?
Russia could have provided an equally attractive offer.
'Poking the bear' meme has no truth. It is excuse-making for evil.
The people who are in the wrong are those that seek to excuse Russian aggression on the basis of an analysis of western foreign policy which assumes that we are always evil and everyone else is good. But I don't think that anyone on here actually falls in to that category.
Understanding the history and the other sides perspective can help to make better policy. If we aren't going to overthrow Putin, and want to avoid a world war or a nuclear war, then ultimately we will have to come to some sort of settlement over the eastern border. What is clear to me is that such a settlement can only be negotiated from a position of strength, which we don't currently have.
I think there's a catalogue of western failures that made Putin, a man whose background inclined to autocracy, revert away from his very pro-Western stance after 9-11, back to the familiar. Those are legal ; Iraq, economic ; the long after-effects of the early 1990s ; and strategic ; going back on original verbal assurances of not expanding NATO to Ukraine.
We are where we are, and he's gradually become more unhinged and pathologically anti-Western over time now, on his own track. We should be looking at the absolute maximum economic sanctions, and heavily reinforcing a whole line from the Baltics to Greece.
That is just nonsense. We might have perceived Russia as becoming more friendly after the collapse of the USSR, but Putin was never pro-Western. That was projection on the part of the West.
I refer the honourable gentleman to the reply I gave some days ago.
I think you should read Catherine Belton's book Putin's People which deals extensively with Putin's background and that of his closest allies from the period of the end of the USSR to the time he entered the inner circle around Yeltsin. Putin didn't become a different person when he became President, his actions as President are a continuation of how he operated in the KGB in Dresden, in government in St. Petersburg, and ultimately in Moscow now at a national scale.
All true, but he also was clearly open, or even enthusiastic for a western alliance early on in his time as President too. He also had formative years as young KGB agent who quickly adopted Western mores, in some respects, at the end of the '80s, like his peers. Everything was in flux and still to be decided for him from about 1989, to 2003 or 2004.
There is an emergency EU summit tomorrow. BoZo and Truss will have to beg someone to tell them what happened.
Global Britain is a global joke...
And how many anti tank guns have the EU supplied? Germany offered some helmets and stopped people with their kit passing it on.
These kind of comments are really uncalled for. It’s almost as if you had a different agenda Scott.
Yes, this is a time for people to decide which side they are on.
The government / Conservatives are not the evil actors in this saga. What's more, there might be stuff going on that isn't known atm (as seen in the Libya evacuation).
Either you are against this Russian aggression, or you are trying to blame the west for 'poking' them into it. That poor Putin. How he is sinned against!
No, both can be agreed to.
You think the repeated Russian aggression is our fault? You think we caused Salisbury?
Trying to look objectively in to the causes of the current situation is not the same as being pro-Russia. The 'poking the bear' meme has some truth in it. There was an expansion of Western institutions (including NATO and the EU) in Eastern Europe with the obvious objective of eventually bringing Russia in to the fold. This was despite earlier assurances to Russia that this was not our intention. Putin realised that this would ultimately almost certainly mean the overthrowing of his regime, which is not consistent at all with western democratic values, and this is why relations turned bad around 2008.
It is possible to both recognise this history as a cause of the current situation and completely reject Russias current actions in Ukraine.
There's a time to discuss the history, and a time to address the current issues. Discussing the history as a way of excusing the current issues is a crass diversion.
As for NATO expansion: it's been proved correct, hasn't it? These countries democratically wanted protection from their erstwhile mother. Do you really believe those countries would be in a better state today if they had not joined NATO?
Russia could have provided an equally attractive offer.
'Poking the bear' meme has no truth. It is excuse-making for evil.
I get understanding Russia's position as a way of understanding their actions now, but I really don't see how laying out their position ends with the idea there is some truth to the poking the bear meme. Ultimately that seems to have been free nations making their own free choices - whatever Russia was promised by a rival superpower, things developed in a different direction and their whinges about that are simply not reasonable. Since they are not reasonable - as they amount to demanding nations who are not Russia must do as Russia pleases, and others must force them to do so - doing it cannot be called provocation.
And really that is why when understanding their complaints, I think it is important not to use or give succour to an expression likeing poking the bear, since it implies that Russia was provoked. Not to argue that their reaction was justified, most people don't mean that, but the terminology of poking is closer to their excuses of responding to provocation.
Rather than the bear being poked what seems to have happened is the bear saw someone getting given some tasty steak next door and decided to mope about it.
I would see it more in terms of giving the bear the impression it might not only have a neutral zone on its immediate borders, but even join the club itself, especially after 9-11 ; then changing direction. The bear was always inclined to want to eat, but there was not only opportunity missed but damage actually done.
That puts rather too much on outside actors and not on the nation itself. The path Putin's regime has taken responds to the ebb and flow of global politics like anyone else, but we have decades of proof of his style, his actions and his goals. Up against a 'if only X had made more effort to reach out 25 years ago maybe Y could have happened' and sure, that's possible, but as far as opportunities go the body of evidence we have suggests such an opportunity may not have been a very wide one. Let's not forget the broad historical scope of his justifications which go well beyond a brief moment of a club being dangled in front of them.
Obviously there's a danger in seeing where we've ended up as being inevitable and that's not how history works, but I'd be very wary of thinking diversions from that path would have been so simple given how things have turned out.
There are an amazing amount of Russia experts on here, and indeed on Twitter.
The wonderful world of Google and Social Media...
I love Russia, its history, landscapes, culture, art, music and literature, but boy do they have a long history of terrible governments going back centuries. Most countries get a bad government every now and then, but the culture of tyranny in Russia is a very hard one to break.
IMV, Russia (*) had a more defensive posture than NATO during the Cold War. America and the West were sending carrier groups around the world, in a grey version of the Great White Fleet. I can't blame Russia for having a defensive posture, given their rather chaotic history of invasions - and not just Napoleon and Hitler.
I can understand the Russian state for being paranoid about invasions. But that does not excuse their bullying behaviour towards smaller neighbouring nations. If anything, those countries have more reason to be paranoid about their larger eastern neighbour.
(*) Russia, as opposed to Communism.
Well, defensive if you mean "I set up my defense in other people's countries. At gun point."
The post 1990 expansion/contraction of NATO/EEC/Warsaw Pact/COMECON shows how those were viewed by the recipients.....
Ukraine has painfully exposed the faults of a British government that prizes rhetoric over substance and revealed the truth, that Britain is more irrelevant in Europe than it has been for 300 years. https://twitter.com/PhillipsPOBrien/status/1496559498571489281
Why does that matter? Why is Britain being 'relevant' hundreds of miles from our shores something to be so highly prized? It's a very illiberal approach that says we need to be able to bash people over the head for not behaving themselves the way we would like them to, and if we're not powerful enough to be the bashers, we have to join a bigger organisation so we can have a small part in the bashing. Switzerland has been getting on with being irrelevant in Europe for centuries, and doing very nicely out of it thankyou.
You yourself have talked about the basic fact that countries compete for power and influence; yes even Switzerland (notably in its never-ending negotiations with the EU).
They don't, or they shouldn't, compete for power and influence, they 'compete' if such a term is applicable, to advance the interests of their people. That's what Switzerland is doing in its negotiations with the EU. And even in the pomp of the British Empire, wars, alliances, deals etc. were done in the cause of advancing Britain's interests. Bewailing our lack of 'cred' in the councils of the world is totally missing the point.
Well it depends on the nature of government. It’s hard to know whether Putin is competing in their interests of his people, or just for himself and his crime family.
But let’s accept the first premise.
The point about the lack of cred, is that it appears that our soft power has declined of late. So less, not more, ability to advance the interests of the British people.
Many Governments are not competing for the interests of their people sadly - what I'm describing is how it should work. But the moaning about being 'irrelevant in Europe' and Truss in her silly hat all come from the same place, a desire for empty national prestige whilst missing the entire point of the exercise.
There is an emergency EU summit tomorrow. BoZo and Truss will have to beg someone to tell them what happened.
Global Britain is a global joke...
Sgt Wilson voice - Hello? Hello is that Berlin? Would you mind please faxing your list over to London, it appears we don’t know how to do this. We are awfully obliged. Thank you.
"Your name vill also go on ze list! Vot is it?"
“Don’t tell him Sunil.’ “Captain Malmesbury. I’m going to tell my mum about you.”
I think there's a catalogue of western failures that made Putin, a man whose background inclined to autocracy, revert away from his very pro-Western stance after 9-11, back to the familiar. Those are legal ; Iraq, economic ; the long after-effects of the early 1990s ; and strategic ; going back on original verbal assurances of not expanding NATO to Ukraine.
We are where we are, and he's gradually become more unhinged and pathologically anti-Western over time now, on his own track. We should be looking at the absolute maximum economic sanctions, and heavily reinforcing a whole line from the Baltics to Greece.
That is just nonsense. We might have perceived Russia as becoming more friendly after the collapse of the USSR, but Putin was never pro-Western. That was projection on the part of the West.
Indeed, Putin is the most dangerous Russian leader of my lifetime, far worse than Yeltsin and Gorbachev. Indeed I would now go so far as to say he is the most dangerous Russian leader since Stalin
Stalin didn’t have a nuclear capability.
He did, from 1949 to 1953.
I stand corrected. I’m not great on ancient history.
I think there's a catalogue of western failures that made Putin, a man whose background inclined to autocracy, revert away from his very pro-Western stance after 9-11, back to the familiar. Those are legal ; Iraq, economic ; the long after-effects of the early 1990s ; and strategic ; going back on original verbal assurances of not expanding NATO to Ukraine.
We are where we are, and he's gradually become more unhinged and pathologically anti-Western over time now, on his own track. We should be looking at the absolute maximum economic sanctions, and heavily reinforcing a whole line from the Baltics to Greece.
That is just nonsense. We might have perceived Russia as becoming more friendly after the collapse of the USSR, but Putin was never pro-Western. That was projection on the part of the West.
Indeed, Putin is the most dangerous Russian leader of my lifetime, far worse than Yeltsin and Gorbachev. Indeed I would now go so far as to say he is the most dangerous Russian leader since Stalin
I hate it when I agree with you
I'd compare him with Brezhnev. Czechoslovakia. China. Afghanistan. Not really stopped until he declined to intervene in Poland.
Of course, I could be wrong and Putin decide to invade half the known world.
Ukraine has painfully exposed the faults of a British government that prizes rhetoric over substance and revealed the truth, that Britain is more irrelevant in Europe than it has been for 300 years. https://twitter.com/PhillipsPOBrien/status/1496559498571489281
Why does that matter? Why is Britain being 'relevant' hundreds of miles from our shores something to be so highly prized? It's a very illiberal approach that says we need to be able to bash people over the head for not behaving themselves the way we would like them to, and if we're not powerful enough to be the bashers, we have to join a bigger organisation so we can have a small part in the bashing. Switzerland has been getting on with being irrelevant in Europe for centuries, and doing very nicely out of it thankyou.
And all they’ve given us is the cuckoo clock, as Orson Welles said.
But also, not the Holocaust. Do you think that, say, Beethoven and Goethe make up for that?
There are an amazing amount of Russia experts on here, and indeed on Twitter.
The wonderful world of Google and Social Media...
I love Russia, its history, landscapes, culture, art, music and literature, but boy do they have a long history of terrible governments going back centuries. Most countries get a bad government every now and then, but the culture of tyranny in Russia is a very hard one to break.
IMV, Russia (*) had a more defensive posture than NATO during the Cold War. America and the West were sending carrier groups around the world, in a grey version of the Great White Fleet. I can't blame Russia for having a defensive posture, given their rather chaotic history of invasions - and not just Napoleon and Hitler.
I can understand the Russian state for being paranoid about invasions. But that does not excuse their bullying behaviour towards smaller neighbouring nations. If anything, those countries have more reason to be paranoid about their larger eastern neighbour.
(*) Russia, as opposed to Communism.
Well, defensive if you mean "I set up my defense in other people's countries. At gun point."
The post 1990 expansion/contraction of NATO/EEC/Warsaw Pact/COMECON shows how those were viewed by the recipients.....
One historian, I forget which one, commented that the Warsaw Pact was a unique project in that it is the only military alliance in history to exclusively invade and attack its own members.
I think he sold the Holy Alliance of 1815 a bit short, but the general thrust of the comment is correct.
Ukraine has painfully exposed the faults of a British government that prizes rhetoric over substance and revealed the truth, that Britain is more irrelevant in Europe than it has been for 300 years. https://twitter.com/PhillipsPOBrien/status/1496559498571489281
Why does that matter? Why is Britain being 'relevant' hundreds of miles from our shores something to be so highly prized? It's a very illiberal approach that says we need to be able to bash people over the head for not behaving themselves the way we would like them to, and if we're not powerful enough to be the bashers, we have to join a bigger organisation so we can have a small part in the bashing. Switzerland has been getting on with being irrelevant in Europe for centuries, and doing very nicely out of it thankyou.
And all they’ve given us is the cuckoo clock, as Orson Welles said.
But also, not the Holocaust. Do you think that, say, Beethoven and Goethe make up for that?
Bung in Schubert, Friedrich, Kraftwerk & Lang and I'll have a think.
I think there's a catalogue of western failures that made Putin, a man whose background inclined to autocracy, revert away from his very pro-Western stance after 9-11, back to the familiar. Those are legal ; Iraq, economic ; the long after-effects of the early 1990s ; and strategic ; going back on original verbal assurances of not expanding NATO to Ukraine.
We are where we are, and he's gradually become more unhinged and pathologically anti-Western over time now, on his own track. We should be looking at the absolute maximum economic sanctions, and heavily reinforcing a whole line from the Baltics to Greece.
That is just nonsense. We might have perceived Russia as becoming more friendly after the collapse of the USSR, but Putin was never pro-Western. That was projection on the part of the West.
Indeed, Putin is the most dangerous Russian leader of my lifetime, far worse than Yeltsin and Gorbachev. Indeed I would now go so far as to say he is the most dangerous Russian leader since Stalin
I hate it when I agree with you
I would say that Putin is far more "adventurist" than Stalin ever was. Hell, the whole Stalin project was an opposition to Trotsky's version of start something, everywhere, all the time.
I think there's a catalogue of western failures that made Putin, a man whose background inclined to autocracy, revert away from his very pro-Western stance after 9-11, back to the familiar. Those are legal ; Iraq, economic ; the long after-effects of the early 1990s ; and strategic ; going back on original verbal assurances of not expanding NATO to Ukraine.
We are where we are, and he's gradually become more unhinged and pathologically anti-Western over time now, on his own track. We should be looking at the absolute maximum economic sanctions, and heavily reinforcing a whole line from the Baltics to Greece.
That is just nonsense. We might have perceived Russia as becoming more friendly after the collapse of the USSR, but Putin was never pro-Western. That was projection on the part of the West.
Indeed, Putin is the most dangerous Russian leader of my lifetime, far worse than Yeltsin and Gorbachev. Indeed I would now go so far as to say he is the most dangerous Russian leader since Stalin
I hate it when I agree with you
Never, never, agree with HYUFD. It only encourages him.
On the contrary, past experience would suggest disagreeing with him is what encourages him.
Well, here's one shite employer adopting the Bank of England Governor's position on wages:
Health unions have criticised the government for offering NHS staff in England a “miserly” 3% pay rise from April, despite inflation having hit 5.5%.
Ministers have proposed the increase in their written evidence to the NHS pay review body, which advises what salary uplifts the service’s 1.3 million staff should get.
“With spiralling inflation and hikes to national insurance contributions, this derisory proposal means NHS workers are staring at yet another real terms loss,” said Rachel Harrison, a national officer with the GMB.
The union, along with Unison and the Royal College of Nursing, warned that offering only a 3% rise – the same as staff got in the current year – will prompt frontline workers to quit and thus exacerbate the NHS’s already widespread understaffing. Harrison said that the GMB had warned ministers and the pay review body that staff are already leaving. “This will be the final push that many others need”, she added.
There is an emergency EU summit tomorrow. BoZo and Truss will have to beg someone to tell them what happened.
Global Britain is a global joke...
And how many anti tank guns have the EU supplied? Germany offered some helmets and stopped people with their kit passing it on.
These kind of comments are really uncalled for. It’s almost as if you had a different agenda Scott.
Yes, this is a time for people to decide which side they are on.
The government / Conservatives are not the evil actors in this saga. What's more, there might be stuff going on that isn't known atm (as seen in the Libya evacuation).
Either you are against this Russian aggression, or you are trying to blame the west for 'poking' them into it. That poor Putin. How he is sinned against!
No, both can be agreed to.
You think the repeated Russian aggression is our fault? You think we caused Salisbury?
Trying to look objectively in to the causes of the current situation is not the same as being pro-Russia. The 'poking the bear' meme has some truth in it. There was an expansion of Western institutions (including NATO and the EU) in Eastern Europe with the obvious objective of eventually bringing Russia in to the fold. This was despite earlier assurances to Russia that this was not our intention. Putin realised that this would ultimately almost certainly mean the overthrowing of his regime, which is not consistent at all with western democratic values, and this is why relations turned bad around 2008.
It is possible to both recognise this history as a cause of the current situation and completely reject Russias current actions in Ukraine.
There's a time to discuss the history, and a time to address the current issues. Discussing the history as a way of excusing the current issues is a crass diversion.
As for NATO expansion: it's been proved correct, hasn't it? These countries democratically wanted protection from their erstwhile mother. Do you really believe those countries would be in a better state today if they had not joined NATO?
Russia could have provided an equally attractive offer.
'Poking the bear' meme has no truth. It is excuse-making for evil.
I get understanding Russia's position as a way of understanding their actions now, but I really don't see how laying out their position ends with the idea there is some truth to the poking the bear meme. Ultimately that seems to have been free nations making their own free choices - whatever Russia was promised by a rival superpower, things developed in a different direction and their whinges about that are simply not reasonable. Since they are not reasonable - as they amount to demanding nations who are not Russia must do as Russia pleases, and others must force them to do so - doing it cannot be called provocation.
And really that is why when understanding their complaints, I think it is important not to use or give succour to an expression likeing poking the bear, since it implies that Russia was provoked. Not to argue that their reaction was justified, most people don't mean that, but the terminology of poking is closer to their excuses of responding to provocation.
Rather than the bear being poked what seems to have happened is the bear saw someone getting given some tasty steak next door and decided to mope about it.
I would see it more in terms of giving the bear the impression it might not only have a neutral zone on its immediate borders, but even join the club itself, especially after 9-11 ; then changing direction. The bear was always inclined to want to eat, but there was not only opportunity missed but damage actually done.
That puts rather too much on outside actors and not on the nation itself. The path Putin's regime has taken responds to the ebb and flow of global politics like anyone else, but we have decades of proof of his style, his actions and his goals. Up against a 'if only X had made more effort to reach out 25 years ago maybe Y could have happened' and sure, that's possible, but as far as opportunities go the body of evidence we have suggests such an opportunity may not have been a very wide one. Let's not forget the broad historical scope of his justifications which go well beyond a brief moment of a club being dangled in front of them.
Obviously there's a danger in seeing where we've ended up as being inevitable and that's not how history works, but I'd be very wary of thinking diversions from that path would have been so simple given how things have turned out.
It was very revealing, though, that he mentioned Clinton at the end of the 1990's, in his long rant last night. These moments of strategic crossroads are where part of his own brain still is, because he very clearly could have gone either way.
I think there's a catalogue of western failures that made Putin, a man whose background inclined to autocracy, revert away from his very pro-Western stance after 9-11, back to the familiar. Those are legal ; Iraq, economic ; the long after-effects of the early 1990s ; and strategic ; going back on original verbal assurances of not expanding NATO to Ukraine.
We are where we are, and he's gradually become more unhinged and pathologically anti-Western over time now, on his own track. We should be looking at the absolute maximum economic sanctions, and heavily reinforcing a whole line from the Baltics to Greece.
That is just nonsense. We might have perceived Russia as becoming more friendly after the collapse of the USSR, but Putin was never pro-Western. That was projection on the part of the West.
Indeed, Putin is the most dangerous Russian leader of my lifetime, far worse than Yeltsin and Gorbachev. Indeed I would now go so far as to say he is the most dangerous Russian leader since Stalin
I hate it when I agree with you
I would say that Putin is far more "adventurist" than Stalin ever was. Hell, the whole Stalin project was an opposition to Trotsky's version of start something, everywhere, all the time.
Trotsky's big ideas in the post-Lenin period were 'permanent revolution,' I.e. founding communist governments in other states who would be friendly to the USSR, and rebuilding a heavy industry system ravaged by years of war through state intervention and planning.
If you'll explain to me how that was materially different from what Stalin ended up doing, I'd be obliged to you.
There is an emergency EU summit tomorrow. BoZo and Truss will have to beg someone to tell them what happened.
Global Britain is a global joke...
And how many anti tank guns have the EU supplied? Germany offered some helmets and stopped people with their kit passing it on.
These kind of comments are really uncalled for. It’s almost as if you had a different agenda Scott.
Yes, this is a time for people to decide which side they are on.
The government / Conservatives are not the evil actors in this saga. What's more, there might be stuff going on that isn't known atm (as seen in the Libya evacuation).
Either you are against this Russian aggression, or you are trying to blame the west for 'poking' them into it. That poor Putin. How he is sinned against!
No, both can be agreed to.
You think the repeated Russian aggression is our fault? You think we caused Salisbury?
Trying to look objectively in to the causes of the current situation is not the same as being pro-Russia. The 'poking the bear' meme has some truth in it. There was an expansion of Western institutions (including NATO and the EU) in Eastern Europe with the obvious objective of eventually bringing Russia in to the fold. This was despite earlier assurances to Russia that this was not our intention. Putin realised that this would ultimately almost certainly mean the overthrowing of his regime, which is not consistent at all with western democratic values, and this is why relations turned bad around 2008.
It is possible to both recognise this history as a cause of the current situation and completely reject Russias current actions in Ukraine.
There's a time to discuss the history, and a time to address the current issues. Discussing the history as a way of excusing the current issues is a crass diversion.
As for NATO expansion: it's been proved correct, hasn't it? These countries democratically wanted protection from their erstwhile mother. Do you really believe those countries would be in a better state today if they had not joined NATO?
Russia could have provided an equally attractive offer.
'Poking the bear' meme has no truth. It is excuse-making for evil.
I get understanding Russia's position as a way of understanding their actions now, but I really don't see how laying out their position ends with the idea there is some truth to the poking the bear meme. Ultimately that seems to have been free nations making their own free choices - whatever Russia was promised by a rival superpower, things developed in a different direction and their whinges about that are simply not reasonable. Since they are not reasonable - as they amount to demanding nations who are not Russia must do as Russia pleases, and others must force them to do so - doing it cannot be called provocation.
And really that is why when understanding their complaints, I think it is important not to use or give succour to an expression likeing poking the bear, since it implies that Russia was provoked. Not to argue that their reaction was justified, most people don't mean that, but the terminology of poking is closer to their excuses of responding to provocation.
Rather than the bear being poked what seems to have happened is the bear saw someone getting given some tasty steak next door and decided to mope about it.
I would see it more in terms of giving the bear the impression it might not only have a neutral zone on its immediate borders, but even join the club itself, especially after 9-11 ; then changing direction. The bear was always inclined to want to eat, but there was not only opportunity missed but damage actually done.
That puts rather too much on outside actors and not on the nation itself. The path Putin's regime has taken responds to the ebb and flow of global politics like anyone else, but we have decades of proof of his style, his actions and his goals. Up against a 'if only X had made more effort to reach out 25 years ago maybe Y could have happened' and sure, that's possible, but as far as opportunities go the body of evidence we have suggests such an opportunity may not have been a very wide one. Let's not forget the broad historical scope of his justifications which go well beyond a brief moment of a club being dangled in front of them.
Obviously there's a danger in seeing where we've ended up as being inevitable and that's not how history works, but I'd be very wary of thinking diversions from that path would have been so simple given how things have turned out.
It was very revealing though that he mentioned Clinton in the late 1990's in his long rant last night. Those strategic moments and crossroads are where part of his own brain still is, because he really could have gone either way.
Given where he started his speech, I doubt that, even he is fooling himself otherwise.
All true, but he also was clearly open, or even enthusiastic for a western alliance early on in his time as President too. He also had formative years as young KGB agent who quickly adopted Western mores, in some respects, at the end of the '80s, like his peers. Everything was in flux and still to be decided for him from about 1989 to 2003 or 2004.
I have absolutely no doubt that Putin would want to cultivate relations with Western leaders and persuade them that he was an ally, and to an extent that view did persist for quite a while after he came to power, but that doesn't mean that was his true intent. Putin and his associates were basically hoods for the USSR, who took their skills and applied them at ever larger scales until he reached the very top. Corruption, abuse of power, links with organised crime, shell companies hiding state monies, epic levels of graft, it all goes right back to the start of Putin's career. Why the West collectively came to believe that this particular leopard had changed his spots will puzzle future historians.
I think there's a catalogue of western failures that made Putin, a man whose background inclined to autocracy, revert away from his very pro-Western stance after 9-11, back to the familiar. Those are legal ; Iraq, economic ; the long after-effects of the early 1990s ; and strategic ; going back on original verbal assurances of not expanding NATO to Ukraine.
We are where we are, and he's gradually become more unhinged and pathologically anti-Western over time now, on his own track. We should be looking at the absolute maximum economic sanctions, and heavily reinforcing a whole line from the Baltics to Greece.
That is just nonsense. We might have perceived Russia as becoming more friendly after the collapse of the USSR, but Putin was never pro-Western. That was projection on the part of the West.
Indeed, Putin is the most dangerous Russian leader of my lifetime, far worse than Yeltsin and Gorbachev. Indeed I would now go so far as to say he is the most dangerous Russian leader since Stalin
I hate it when I agree with you
I would say that Putin is far more "adventurist" than Stalin ever was. Hell, the whole Stalin project was an opposition to Trotsky's version of start something, everywhere, all the time.
Trotsky's big ideas in the post-Lenin period were 'permanent revolution,' I.e. founding communist governments in other states who would be friendly to the USSR, and rebuilding a heavy industry system ravaged by years of war through state intervention and planning.
If you'll explain to me how that was materially different from what Stalin ended up doing, I'd be obliged to you.
I cannot keep up with the variations of communist faction nomenclature, all seems a lot of complex verbiage to end up with very similar situations.
BBC footage of Ukr kids practising getting into their school bomb shelter this afternoon is very moving.
Bleak times.
Vladislav Davidzon @VladDavidzon Tonight is the most frightened I have ever seen the Ukrainian capital. Everyone thinks that something is about to happen. A friend who spent time with Presidential Admin today tells me that they looked nervous.
There is an emergency EU summit tomorrow. BoZo and Truss will have to beg someone to tell them what happened.
Global Britain is a global joke...
And how many anti tank guns have the EU supplied? Germany offered some helmets and stopped people with their kit passing it on.
These kind of comments are really uncalled for. It’s almost as if you had a different agenda Scott.
Yes, this is a time for people to decide which side they are on.
The government / Conservatives are not the evil actors in this saga. What's more, there might be stuff going on that isn't known atm (as seen in the Libya evacuation).
Either you are against this Russian aggression, or you are trying to blame the west for 'poking' them into it. That poor Putin. How he is sinned against!
No, both can be agreed to.
You think the repeated Russian aggression is our fault? You think we caused Salisbury?
Trying to look objectively in to the causes of the current situation is not the same as being pro-Russia. The 'poking the bear' meme has some truth in it. There was an expansion of Western institutions (including NATO and the EU) in Eastern Europe with the obvious objective of eventually bringing Russia in to the fold. This was despite earlier assurances to Russia that this was not our intention. Putin realised that this would ultimately almost certainly mean the overthrowing of his regime, which is not consistent at all with western democratic values, and this is why relations turned bad around 2008.
It is possible to both recognise this history as a cause of the current situation and completely reject Russias current actions in Ukraine.
There's a time to discuss the history, and a time to address the current issues. Discussing the history as a way of excusing the current issues is a crass diversion.
As for NATO expansion: it's been proved correct, hasn't it? These countries democratically wanted protection from their erstwhile mother. Do you really believe those countries would be in a better state today if they had not joined NATO?
Russia could have provided an equally attractive offer.
'Poking the bear' meme has no truth. It is excuse-making for evil.
I get understanding Russia's position as a way of understanding their actions now, but I really don't see how laying out their position ends with the idea there is some truth to the poking the bear meme. Ultimately that seems to have been free nations making their own free choices - whatever Russia was promised by a rival superpower, things developed in a different direction and their whinges about that are simply not reasonable. Since they are not reasonable - as they amount to demanding nations who are not Russia must do as Russia pleases, and others must force them to do so - doing it cannot be called provocation.
And really that is why when understanding their complaints, I think it is important not to use or give succour to an expression likeing poking the bear, since it implies that Russia was provoked. Not to argue that their reaction was justified, most people don't mean that, but the terminology of poking is closer to their excuses of responding to provocation.
Rather than the bear being poked what seems to have happened is the bear saw someone getting given some tasty steak next door and decided to mope about it.
I would see it more in terms of giving the bear the impression it might not only have a neutral zone on its immediate borders, but even join the club itself, especially after 9-11 ; then changing direction. The bear was always inclined to want to eat, but there was not only opportunity missed but damage actually done.
That puts rather too much on outside actors and not on the nation itself. The path Putin's regime has taken responds to the ebb and flow of global politics like anyone else, but we have decades of proof of his style, his actions and his goals. Up against a 'if only X had made more effort to reach out 25 years ago maybe Y could have happened' and sure, that's possible, but as far as opportunities go the body of evidence we have suggests such an opportunity may not have been a very wide one. Let's not forget the broad historical scope of his justifications which go well beyond a brief moment of a club being dangled in front of them.
Obviously there's a danger in seeing where we've ended up as being inevitable and that's not how history works, but I'd be very wary of thinking diversions from that path would have been so simple given how things have turned out.
It was very revealing though that he mentioned Clinton in the late 1990's in his long rant last night. Those strategic moments and crossroads are where part of his own brain still is, because he really could have gone either way.
Given where he started his speech, I doubt that, even he is fooling himself otherwise.
Well, that's quite subjective, I would say. We can't really tell to what extent he was fooling himself or not, but there were certainly enough concrete external factors at that time to make him think that relations with the West would turn out significantly differently.
I do also agree that this isn't necessarily the most relevant topic for today, though. This is all quite a long time ago, and we now have a mad dictator on our hands.
I think there's a catalogue of western failures that made Putin, a man whose background inclined to autocracy, revert away from his very pro-Western stance after 9-11, back to the familiar. Those are legal ; Iraq, economic ; the long after-effects of the early 1990s ; and strategic ; going back on original verbal assurances of not expanding NATO to Ukraine.
We are where we are, and he's gradually become more unhinged and pathologically anti-Western over time now, on his own track. We should be looking at the absolute maximum economic sanctions, and heavily reinforcing a whole line from the Baltics to Greece.
That is just nonsense. We might have perceived Russia as becoming more friendly after the collapse of the USSR, but Putin was never pro-Western. That was projection on the part of the West.
Indeed, Putin is the most dangerous Russian leader of my lifetime, far worse than Yeltsin and Gorbachev. Indeed I would now go so far as to say he is the most dangerous Russian leader since Stalin
I hate it when I agree with you
I would say that Putin is far more "adventurist" than Stalin ever was. Hell, the whole Stalin project was an opposition to Trotsky's version of start something, everywhere, all the time.
Trotsky's big ideas in the post-Lenin period were 'permanent revolution,' I.e. founding communist governments in other states who would be friendly to the USSR, and rebuilding a heavy industry system ravaged by years of war through state intervention and planning.
If you'll explain to me how that was materially different from what Stalin ended up doing, I'd be obliged to you.
I cannot keep up with the variations of communist faction nomenclature, all seems a lot of complex verbiage to end up with very similar situations.
The irony is that Stalin probably genuinely did oppose Trotsky on ideological not personal grounds, certainly over industrialisation - before later changing his mind.
Guardian suggesting tonight that Johnson due to his legal representation will avoid an FPN but the minions might not
That looks even worse for Johnson. His minions get an FPN and he gets nothing. It seems, whether it is or not is moot, unfair.
Johnson will view no FPN as a vindication of his behaviour, a confirmation of innocence.
My lapdog Conservative MP will agree.
This is old news from yesterday, when ITV got lawyers to say, only what Cyclefree gave us for free last month “Questionnaire? That’s hopeless way of doing it, if you can hire a decent lawyer where they can fill this in you get off Scot free.”
I don’t believe it actually. I think the Gruniad are poking the hornets nest a bit. As pointed out, if he gets off and underlings fined, there will be uproar.
Have I missed the bit where Nut Nut the main partying protagonist returned a questionnaire? There is absolutely no way she can avoid a fine is there?
But in Boris case, this is not a simple ticking off - it’s his law, to lock us down with the impact of family who died without being able to see or nurse them, funerals where you sit alone, weddings cancelled - he didn’t lead by example on the law he created, he broke it whilst his henchman were on tv lecturing us.
Okay he wasn’t gone yesterday. He has evaded the end game rather well/fortunately, but he can’t avoid it much longer. Survives this year evens?
In fact a vonc last month he might have scraped home, this delay, for his backbenchers to learn from the Saville resignations, the 2M Russian money he’s accepted in last two years he is going to be hounded about forever now, sanction bombardment shambles, if anything each day without vonc seals it against him.
Ukraine has painfully exposed the faults of a British government that prizes rhetoric over substance and revealed the truth, that Britain is more irrelevant in Europe than it has been for 300 years. https://twitter.com/PhillipsPOBrien/status/1496559498571489281
Why does that matter? Why is Britain being 'relevant' hundreds of miles from our shores something to be so highly prized? It's a very illiberal approach that says we need to be able to bash people over the head for not behaving themselves the way we would like them to, and if we're not powerful enough to be the bashers, we have to join a bigger organisation so we can have a small part in the bashing. Switzerland has been getting on with being irrelevant in Europe for centuries, and doing very nicely out of it thankyou.
And all they’ve given us is the cuckoo clock, as Orson Welles said.
But also, not the Holocaust. Do you think that, say, Beethoven and Goethe make up for that?
Bung in Schubert, Friedrich, Kraftwerk & Lang and I'll have a think.
And Bowie’s Berlin era.
Holbein, Durer, Nina’s 99 Red Balloons (topical)
Shit, guys, are we talking about the same Holocaust? The being shot but not killed and thrown into a fire anyway, babies being used for machine gun practice one? You think a single death, let alone millions, in those circumstances can be outweighed by sodding Beethoven's wanking fifth? David Bowie? Really really?
There is an emergency EU summit tomorrow. BoZo and Truss will have to beg someone to tell them what happened.
Global Britain is a global joke...
And how many anti tank guns have the EU supplied? Germany offered some helmets and stopped people with their kit passing it on.
These kind of comments are really uncalled for. It’s almost as if you had a different agenda Scott.
Yes, this is a time for people to decide which side they are on.
The government / Conservatives are not the evil actors in this saga. What's more, there might be stuff going on that isn't known atm (as seen in the Libya evacuation).
Either you are against this Russian aggression, or you are trying to blame the west for 'poking' them into it. That poor Putin. How he is sinned against!
No, both can be agreed to.
You think the repeated Russian aggression is our fault? You think we caused Salisbury?
Trying to look objectively in to the causes of the current situation is not the same as being pro-Russia. The 'poking the bear' meme has some truth in it. There was an expansion of Western institutions (including NATO and the EU) in Eastern Europe with the obvious objective of eventually bringing Russia in to the fold. This was despite earlier assurances to Russia that this was not our intention. Putin realised that this would ultimately almost certainly mean the overthrowing of his regime, which is not consistent at all with western democratic values, and this is why relations turned bad around 2008.
It is possible to both recognise this history as a cause of the current situation and completely reject Russias current actions in Ukraine.
There's a time to discuss the history, and a time to address the current issues. Discussing the history as a way of excusing the current issues is a crass diversion.
As for NATO expansion: it's been proved correct, hasn't it? These countries democratically wanted protection from their erstwhile mother. Do you really believe those countries would be in a better state today if they had not joined NATO?
Russia could have provided an equally attractive offer.
'Poking the bear' meme has no truth. It is excuse-making for evil.
I get understanding Russia's position as a way of understanding their actions now, but I really don't see how laying out their position ends with the idea there is some truth to the poking the bear meme. Ultimately that seems to have been free nations making their own free choices - whatever Russia was promised by a rival superpower, things developed in a different direction and their whinges about that are simply not reasonable. Since they are not reasonable - as they amount to demanding nations who are not Russia must do as Russia pleases, and others must force them to do so - doing it cannot be called provocation.
And really that is why when understanding their complaints, I think it is important not to use or give succour to an expression likeing poking the bear, since it implies that Russia was provoked. Not to argue that their reaction was justified, most people don't mean that, but the terminology of poking is closer to their excuses of responding to provocation.
Rather than the bear being poked what seems to have happened is the bear saw someone getting given some tasty steak next door and decided to mope about it.
I would see it more in terms of giving the bear the impression it might not only have a neutral zone on its immediate borders, but even join the club itself, especially after 9-11 ; then changing direction. The bear was always inclined to want to eat, but there was not only opportunity missed but damage actually done.
That puts rather too much on outside actors and not on the nation itself. The path Putin's regime has taken responds to the ebb and flow of global politics like anyone else, but we have decades of proof of his style, his actions and his goals. Up against a 'if only X had made more effort to reach out 25 years ago maybe Y could have happened' and sure, that's possible, but as far as opportunities go the body of evidence we have suggests such an opportunity may not have been a very wide one. Let's not forget the broad historical scope of his justifications which go well beyond a brief moment of a club being dangled in front of them.
Obviously there's a danger in seeing where we've ended up as being inevitable and that's not how history works, but I'd be very wary of thinking diversions from that path would have been so simple given how things have turned out.
It was very revealing though that he mentioned Clinton in the late 1990's in his long rant last night. Those strategic moments and crossroads are where part of his own brain still is, because he really could have gone either way.
Given where he started his speech, I doubt that, even he is fooling himself otherwise.
Well, that's quite subjective, I would say. We can't really tell to what extent he was fooling himself or not, but there were certainly enough concrete external factors at that time to make him think that relations with the West would turn out significantly differently.
I do also agree that this isn't necessarily the most relevant topic for today, though. This is all quite a long time ago, and we now have a mad dictator on our hands.
There's an 'if' missing from my original sentence about him fooling himself. There really was no need for him to ramble on to the extent he did as part of any diplomatic justification or playing to the home audience, so I'm inclined to assume, ridiculous as some of it was, he thinks he believes it at any rate. As you say we cannot know, but people are very good at kidding themselves, particularly when they want to pretend they don't have a choice for doing somehting bad.
Comments
These messes are all Putin's doing. He had not been forced to do it. They are his choice. And the sad thing is that Russia had the capability to take a better path, but he chose not to do the hard thing.
(*) I won't mention the CMYK deviants.
https://edition.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/europe/09/10/ar911.russia.putin/index.html
They cherished it.
They fantasised about it.
They irretrievably fucked it.
Putin's real enablers are those in extinction rebellion and other green lobbies who effectively shut down new gas and oil production and deprived us of a huge weapon to fight Putin, and do so even now.
Its also abundantly clear that Russia, China and other enemies could not give a f8ck about climate change, and regard efforts to reduce emissions merely as a useful tool to weaken us, and which they have no intention of ever implementing in their own countries.
I love Russia, its history, landscapes, culture, art, music and literature, but boy do they have a long history of terrible governments going back centuries. Most countries get a bad government every now and then, but the culture of tyranny in Russia is a very hard one to break.
Though I do want us to do our bit with regards to Ukraine.
As for NATO expansion: it's been proved correct, hasn't it? These countries democratically wanted protection from their erstwhile mother. Do you really believe those countries would be in a better state today if they had not joined NATO?
Russia could have provided an equally attractive offer.
'Poking the bear' meme has no truth. It is excuse-making for evil.
There were also isolationist Brexiters.
Remainers tended to be liberal internationalists. Not all, of course, but that’s the general view.
Brexiters tended to be nationalists, and because British nationalism has a certain quotient of imperial nostalgia, that was often in the mix too. Indeed, this is why JRM is still wanking on about imperial measures. Read Anderson and others on “banal nationalism”.
(Actually for all I know Calvin was a fun dude, but Calvinism seems like a right bummer)
Sustainable renewable energy is the route to independence from Russian oil and gas. That is why Putin hates the Greens.
Sure, China has some way to go but is making massive investments in renewable energy. In 2019 UK led the world in offshore wind, with 8 Gw, but in the last 2 years China installed twice that.
https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2022/01/27/china-now-has-nearly-half-of-the-worlds-offshore-wind-capacity
Try USA, China, India etc etc etc
“Captain Malmesbury. I’m going to tell my mum about you.”
😂
I can understand the Russian state for being paranoid about invasions. But that does not excuse their bullying behaviour towards smaller neighbouring nations. If anything, those countries have more reason to be paranoid about their larger eastern neighbour.
(*) Russia, as opposed to Communism.
And really that is why when understanding their complaints, I think it is important not to use or give succour to an expression likeing poking the bear, since it implies that Russia was provoked. Not to argue that their reaction was justified, most people don't mean that, but the terminology of poking is closer to their excuses of responding to provocation.
Rather than the bear being poked what seems to have happened is the bear saw someone getting given some tasty steak next door and decided to mope about it.
But look at it in another way. The West keeps winning, on the things that matter. Over and over again. Despite Trump, despite Corbyn, and Boris, and Le Pen. Despite Covid. The West by and large (when you actually look at the stats) keeps getting richer or at least maintaining living standards, living longer, becoming less polluted, cutting emissions, reducing crime. Russia, like other anti-West pariahs, is depopulating, economically stagnating, unwell, democratically deficient and unhappy.
China is the exception: anti-West, but growing and economically powerful. But it will only take the step from middle income to high income if it can truly open its markets and culture to the world, and that’s far from certain now.
My Russian colleague once told me “Putin is a great tactician and a lousy strategist”. I think Ukraine is exhibit A and Belarus exhibit B of exactly this.
Health unions have criticised the government for offering NHS staff in England a “miserly” 3% pay rise from April, despite inflation having hit 5.5%.
Ministers have proposed the increase in their written evidence to the NHS pay review body, which advises what salary uplifts the service’s 1.3 million staff should get.
“With spiralling inflation and hikes to national insurance contributions, this derisory proposal means NHS workers are staring at yet another real terms loss,” said Rachel Harrison, a national officer with the GMB.
The union, along with Unison and the Royal College of Nursing, warned that offering only a 3% rise – the same as staff got in the current year – will prompt frontline workers to quit and thus exacerbate the NHS’s already widespread understaffing. Harrison said that the GMB had warned ministers and the pay review body that staff are already leaving. “This will be the final push that many others need”, she added.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/2022/feb/23/health-unions-criticise-nhs-staff-pay-rise
https://twitter.com/forwardnotback/status/1496498541279256584?s=21
But let’s accept the first premise.
The point about the lack of cred, is that it appears that our soft power has declined of late. So less, not more, ability to advance the interests of the British people.
Putin is fighting a losing battle, and knows it. That is why he is so dangerous, like a cornered rat.
One common theme is the appalling treatment of those who blow the whistle and speak up. And that appalling treatment is precisely why others remain silent.
The other big problem is our hero worship of the NHS. We treat it like a secular religion. This is not good because it makes an institution arrogant, less likely to indulge in necessary self-criticism and far too willing to bat away challenge. We need to stop behaving as if criticism of the NHS is tantamount to wanting to hang, draw and quarter those who work in it.
https://www.flightradar24.com/RRR4048/2aeb412d
Wonder where it's going?
EDIT: looks like it's returning to base.
It only encourages him.
Understanding the history and the other sides perspective can help to make better policy. If we aren't going to overthrow Putin, and want to avoid a world war or a nuclear war, then ultimately we will have to come to some sort of settlement over the eastern border. What is clear to me is that such a settlement can only be negotiated from a position of strength, which we don't currently have.
Obviously there's a danger in seeing where we've ended up as being inevitable and that's not how history works, but I'd be very wary of thinking diversions from that path would have been so simple given how things have turned out.
The post 1990 expansion/contraction of NATO/EEC/Warsaw Pact/COMECON shows how those were viewed by the recipients.....
Now I'm worried.
Of course, I could be wrong and Putin decide to invade half the known world.
I think he sold the Holy Alliance of 1815 a bit short, but the general thrust of the comment is correct.
(It really isn't, I've got tickets for Sunday, which ensures a Chelsea victory.)
If you'll explain to me how that was materially different from what Stalin ended up doing, I'd be obliged to you.
Bleak times.
@VladDavidzon
Tonight is the most frightened I have ever seen the Ukrainian capital. Everyone thinks that something is about to happen. A friend who spent time with Presidential Admin today tells me that they looked nervous.
I do also agree that this isn't necessarily the most relevant topic for today, though. This is all quite a long time ago, and we now have a mad dictator on our hands.
Much as Khrushchev later did with Malenkov.
I don’t believe it actually. I think the Gruniad are poking the hornets nest a bit. As pointed out, if he gets off and underlings fined, there will be uproar.
Have I missed the bit where Nut Nut the main partying protagonist returned a questionnaire? There is absolutely no way she can avoid a fine is there?
But in Boris case, this is not a simple ticking off - it’s his law, to lock us down with the impact of family who died without being able to see or nurse them, funerals where you sit alone, weddings cancelled - he didn’t lead by example on the law he created, he broke it whilst his henchman were on tv lecturing us.
Okay he wasn’t gone yesterday. He has evaded the end game rather well/fortunately, but he can’t avoid it much longer. Survives this year evens?
In fact a vonc last month he might have scraped home, this delay, for his backbenchers to learn from the Saville resignations, the 2M Russian money he’s accepted in last two years he is going to be hounded about forever now, sanction bombardment shambles, if anything each day without vonc seals it against him.