Former French Ambassador to the US seems pretty chilled about the whole thing. Exuding Gallic sangfroid and a sense of "meh"
"“The US has trampled our national interest. What the US has done to our national interest is a hostile act,” he said.
"“What we were doing with the Australians was a strategic choice and this strategic choice has been swept away not only by the Australians but also by the Americans.”
"He said the British involvement was immaterial because they were “poodles of the Americans, as usual”."
Biden has single-handedly taken a wrecking ball to the western alliances. Putin and Xi must wondering why the hell they bothered with that amateur Trump.
Biden has gone up, a lot, in my estimation. He instinctively senses that NATO is over. And it is
Russia is not a strategic threat to the West. It just isn't. Its economy is too small and its people too drunk
They might try another Crimea on the Baltics, but I doubt it. They export virtually nothing but conventional oil, which is increasingly worthless, as energy gets cheaper, because renewables, shale, etc.
Xi Jinping's China, by contrast, is the greatest "threat" the West has faced in a couple of centuries. Worse than Nazi Germany
All that matters is containing her (we cannot "defeat" her). And that means rock-solid alliances with close friends ensuring that we stand together, whatever. That is how you beat bullies
Yes, even though I think his economic policies are turning into a disaster and he is obviously losing his capabilities, when it comes to foreign affairs I have a lot of grudging respect for the fact that Biden has turned out to be so fundamentally ruthless and willing to break the cosy consensus. I’d be interested to see how long Blinken stays around
Yep. I think he is a bit senile, and foolish in some respects, but when it comes to foreign policy he has clear instincts and wise opinions: as to what is in America's interest, and he has a certain heartless brutality in seeing them done. If you want to boss a superpower, I guess that is important
So this will kill 100,000 Afghans? So be it. So this will kill off our relationship with France for 3 years? So be it
Etc. Not pretty, but maybe needed
It won't kill the US-French relationship.
The French are players. They are making massive scene out of this, so that the Americans throw them a bone in some other area.
I'm not so sure that will happen. The Biden administration has continually sidelined Europe. I just don't think they care and don't see any EU country as a potential ally in the looming cold war against China. I wrote out my thoughts just now, the world has realised that the EU is happy to kowtow to China for fear of losing money.
I think you're wrong on this. For a start, I think it would be a catastrophic mistake to cleave the Western European democracies (most of whom don't really want to "kowtow" to China) off from the Anglosphere.
Re the French, I'm thinking more of them getting US support for a French candidate to be next General Secretary of the United Nations, that kind of thing. It's the kind of quid pro quo that the French are very good at getting.
Indeed, especially as Putin is more of a direct threat to us than Xi is and we need French support within NATO for containing Russia.
Jihadi terrorism is also a direct threat to us we need French intelligence cooperation on
The narrative is moving on and I doubt NATO as we know it will be recognisable soon
You simply do not see that the threat is China not Russia, and as far as France is concerned while they will not be in the tripartite agreement, both France and Canada and others will have a role to play in the South China seas
Why should we be fannying around in the South China Sea? I doubt we'd want the Chinese navy steaming up and down the English Channel. This kind of imperial delusion is embarrassing, and will only end in tears like it always does. It's like Suez, or for that matter Iraq, never happened. If we've got money to waste on these stupid dick-waving exercises, how about we pay our nurses properly, or fund education adequately, or don't cut universal credit?
Because the South China Sea matters for our own economy and the entire global trading system and does not belong to China. The English Channel is our territorial waters.
We aren't messing around in Chinese waters but we sure as hell need to ensure that international waters through which our 21st century trading system is built upon is kept free and open for all to use.
If Taiwan falls and the microchips they export are seized by China and blocked from export our entire economic system could collapse. Then we couldn't pay a fraction of what we pay now to our nurses, or teachers, or welfare.
Are you going to sign up then so you can do your duty and defend Taiwan? Why would China want to collapse the global economy, which they rely on far more than we do?
No need to sign up since if we do this right there will be no actual fighting. That's the point of a Cold War in fact, to avoid the actual fighting. Containment works better through deterrence than through conflict and we and our allies have professionals to do that much better than you or I ever could.
China is a paranoid Communist dictatorship that has been flexing its muscles not a liberal free market democracy. Forgive me if I won't put my faith in China's goodwill.
Goodwill and self interest are two different things. Xi is a repulsive scumbag but his party's hold on power relies on delivering stability and prosperity, and he's not going to jeopardise that by doing anything crazy. Historically speaking we are a far more aggressive, violent, murderous and expansionary culture than China is. They should be more afraid of us than vice versa.
Imagine if China, Russia and Myanmar announced a “tech sharing defence alliance” focused on nuclear subs.
If they were liberal democracies, I wouldn't be worried. The problem is they are dictatorships that brutalize their own citizens, so are clearly pretty prone to violence which can also be directed externally.
Sure.
I’m just trying to get Pbers to flip the perspective a bit.
I kowtow to nobody in my China-skepticism, but this is not China aggressing the West, but the West asserting a posture toward China.
Former French Ambassador to the US seems pretty chilled about the whole thing. Exuding Gallic sangfroid and a sense of "meh"
"“The US has trampled our national interest. What the US has done to our national interest is a hostile act,” he said.
"“What we were doing with the Australians was a strategic choice and this strategic choice has been swept away not only by the Australians but also by the Americans.”
"He said the British involvement was immaterial because they were “poodles of the Americans, as usual”."
Biden has single-handedly taken a wrecking ball to the western alliances. Putin and Xi must wondering why the hell they bothered with that amateur Trump.
Biden has gone up, a lot, in my estimation. He instinctively senses that NATO is over. And it is
Russia is not a strategic threat to the West. It just isn't. Its economy is too small and its people too drunk
They might try another Crimea on the Baltics, but I doubt it. They export virtually nothing but conventional oil, which is increasingly worthless, as energy gets cheaper, because renewables, shale, etc.
Xi Jinping's China, by contrast, is the greatest "threat" the West has faced in a couple of centuries. Worse than Nazi Germany
All that matters is containing her (we cannot "defeat" her). And that means rock-solid alliances with close friends ensuring that we stand together, whatever. That is how you beat bullies
Yes, even though I think his economic policies are turning into a disaster and he is obviously losing his capabilities, when it comes to foreign affairs I have a lot of grudging respect for the fact that Biden has turned out to be so fundamentally ruthless and willing to break the cosy consensus. I’d be interested to see how long Blinken stays around
Yep. I think he is a bit senile, and foolish in some respects, but when it comes to foreign policy he has clear instincts and wise opinions: as to what is in America's interest, and he has a certain heartless brutality in seeing them done. If you want to boss a superpower, I guess that is important
So this will kill 100,000 Afghans? So be it. So this will kill off our relationship with France for 3 years? So be it
Etc. Not pretty, but maybe needed
It won't kill the US-French relationship.
The French are players. They are making massive scene out of this, so that the Americans throw them a bone in some other area.
I'm not so sure that will happen. The Biden administration has continually sidelined Europe. I just don't think they care and don't see any EU country as a potential ally in the looming cold war against China. I wrote out my thoughts just now, the world has realised that the EU is happy to kowtow to China for fear of losing money.
I think you're wrong on this. For a start, I think it would be a catastrophic mistake to cleave the Western European democracies (most of whom don't really want to "kowtow" to China) off from the Anglosphere.
Re the French, I'm thinking more of them getting US support for a French candidate to be next General Secretary of the United Nations, that kind of thing. It's the kind of quid pro quo that the French are very good at getting.
Indeed, especially as Putin is more of a direct threat to us than Xi is and we need French support within NATO for containing Russia.
Jihadi terrorism is also a direct threat to us we need French intelligence cooperation on
The narrative is moving on and I doubt NATO as we know it will be recognisable soon
You simply do not see that the threat is China not Russia, and as far as France is concerned while they will not be in the tripartite agreement, both France and Canada and others will have a role to play in the South China seas
Why should we be fannying around in the South China Sea? I doubt we'd want the Chinese navy steaming up and down the English Channel. This kind of imperial delusion is embarrassing, and will only end in tears like it always does. It's like Suez, or for that matter Iraq, never happened. If we've got money to waste on these stupid dick-waving exercises, how about we pay our nurses properly, or fund education adequately, or don't cut universal credit?
Because the South China Sea matters for our own economy and the entire global trading system and does not belong to China. The English Channel is our territorial waters.
We aren't messing around in Chinese waters but we sure as hell need to ensure that international waters through which our 21st century trading system is built upon is kept free and open for all to use.
If Taiwan falls and the microchips they export are seized by China and blocked from export our entire economic system could collapse. Then we couldn't pay a fraction of what we pay now to our nurses, or teachers, or welfare.
Are you going to sign up then so you can do your duty and defend Taiwan? Why would China want to collapse the global economy, which they rely on far more than we do?
No need to sign up since if we do this right there will be no actual fighting. That's the point of a Cold War in fact, to avoid the actual fighting. Containment works better through deterrence than through conflict and we and our allies have professionals to do that much better than you or I ever could.
China is a paranoid Communist dictatorship that has been flexing its muscles not a liberal free market democracy. Forgive me if I won't put my faith in China's goodwill.
Goodwill and self interest are two different things. Xi is a repulsive scumbag but his party's hold on power relies on delivering stability and prosperity, and he's not going to jeopardise that by doing anything crazy. Historically speaking we are a far more aggressive, violent, murderous and expansionary culture than China is. They should be more afraid of us than vice versa.
Imagine if China, Russia and Myanmar announced a “tech sharing defence alliance” focused on nuclear subs.
If they were liberal democracies, I wouldn't be worried. The problem is they are dictatorships that brutalize their own citizens, so are clearly pretty prone to violence which can also be directed externally.
Do we have any stats on whether democracies are less likely to go to war with other countries?
Former French Ambassador to the US seems pretty chilled about the whole thing. Exuding Gallic sangfroid and a sense of "meh"
"“The US has trampled our national interest. What the US has done to our national interest is a hostile act,” he said.
"“What we were doing with the Australians was a strategic choice and this strategic choice has been swept away not only by the Australians but also by the Americans.”
"He said the British involvement was immaterial because they were “poodles of the Americans, as usual”."
Biden has single-handedly taken a wrecking ball to the western alliances. Putin and Xi must wondering why the hell they bothered with that amateur Trump.
Biden has gone up, a lot, in my estimation. He instinctively senses that NATO is over. And it is
Russia is not a strategic threat to the West. It just isn't. Its economy is too small and its people too drunk
They might try another Crimea on the Baltics, but I doubt it. They export virtually nothing but conventional oil, which is increasingly worthless, as energy gets cheaper, because renewables, shale, etc.
Xi Jinping's China, by contrast, is the greatest "threat" the West has faced in a couple of centuries. Worse than Nazi Germany
All that matters is containing her (we cannot "defeat" her). And that means rock-solid alliances with close friends ensuring that we stand together, whatever. That is how you beat bullies
Yes, even though I think his economic policies are turning into a disaster and he is obviously losing his capabilities, when it comes to foreign affairs I have a lot of grudging respect for the fact that Biden has turned out to be so fundamentally ruthless and willing to break the cosy consensus. I’d be interested to see how long Blinken stays around
Yep. I think he is a bit senile, and foolish in some respects, but when it comes to foreign policy he has clear instincts and wise opinions: as to what is in America's interest, and he has a certain heartless brutality in seeing them done. If you want to boss a superpower, I guess that is important
So this will kill 100,000 Afghans? So be it. So this will kill off our relationship with France for 3 years? So be it
Etc. Not pretty, but maybe needed
It won't kill the US-French relationship.
The French are players. They are making massive scene out of this, so that the Americans throw them a bone in some other area.
I'm not so sure that will happen. The Biden administration has continually sidelined Europe. I just don't think they care and don't see any EU country as a potential ally in the looming cold war against China. I wrote out my thoughts just now, the world has realised that the EU is happy to kowtow to China for fear of losing money.
I think you're wrong on this. For a start, I think it would be a catastrophic mistake to cleave the Western European democracies (most of whom don't really want to "kowtow" to China) off from the Anglosphere.
Re the French, I'm thinking more of them getting US support for a French candidate to be next General Secretary of the United Nations, that kind of thing. It's the kind of quid pro quo that the French are very good at getting.
Indeed, especially as Putin is more of a direct threat to us than Xi is and we need French support within NATO for containing Russia.
Jihadi terrorism is also a direct threat to us we need French intelligence cooperation on
The narrative is moving on and I doubt NATO as we know it will be recognisable soon
You simply do not see that the threat is China not Russia, and as far as France is concerned while they will not be in the tripartite agreement, both France and Canada and others will have a role to play in the South China seas
Why should we be fannying around in the South China Sea? I doubt we'd want the Chinese navy steaming up and down the English Channel. This kind of imperial delusion is embarrassing, and will only end in tears like it always does. It's like Suez, or for that matter Iraq, never happened. If we've got money to waste on these stupid dick-waving exercises, how about we pay our nurses properly, or fund education adequately, or don't cut universal credit?
Because the South China Sea matters for our own economy and the entire global trading system and does not belong to China. The English Channel is our territorial waters.
We aren't messing around in Chinese waters but we sure as hell need to ensure that international waters through which our 21st century trading system is built upon is kept free and open for all to use.
If Taiwan falls and the microchips they export are seized by China and blocked from export our entire economic system could collapse. Then we couldn't pay a fraction of what we pay now to our nurses, or teachers, or welfare.
Are you going to sign up then so you can do your duty and defend Taiwan? Why would China want to collapse the global economy, which they rely on far more than we do?
No need to sign up since if we do this right there will be no actual fighting. That's the point of a Cold War in fact, to avoid the actual fighting. Containment works better through deterrence than through conflict and we and our allies have professionals to do that much better than you or I ever could.
China is a paranoid Communist dictatorship that has been flexing its muscles not a liberal free market democracy. Forgive me if I won't put my faith in China's goodwill.
Goodwill and self interest are two different things. Xi is a repulsive scumbag but his party's hold on power relies on delivering stability and prosperity, and he's not going to jeopardise that by doing anything crazy. Historically speaking we are a far more aggressive, violent, murderous and expansionary culture than China is. They should be more afraid of us than vice versa.
Imagine if China, Russia and Myanmar announced a “tech sharing defence alliance” focused on nuclear subs.
If they were liberal democracies, I wouldn't be worried. The problem is they are dictatorships that brutalize their own citizens, so are clearly pretty prone to violence which can also be directed externally.
Yeah, democracies like the US and UK would never direct any violence externally, by for instance illegally invading another country and killing thousands of its citizens on the basis of made up "intelligence" and lies about links to 9/11.
Former French Ambassador to the US seems pretty chilled about the whole thing. Exuding Gallic sangfroid and a sense of "meh"
"“The US has trampled our national interest. What the US has done to our national interest is a hostile act,” he said.
"“What we were doing with the Australians was a strategic choice and this strategic choice has been swept away not only by the Australians but also by the Americans.”
"He said the British involvement was immaterial because they were “poodles of the Americans, as usual”."
Biden has single-handedly taken a wrecking ball to the western alliances. Putin and Xi must wondering why the hell they bothered with that amateur Trump.
Biden has gone up, a lot, in my estimation. He instinctively senses that NATO is over. And it is
Russia is not a strategic threat to the West. It just isn't. Its economy is too small and its people too drunk
They might try another Crimea on the Baltics, but I doubt it. They export virtually nothing but conventional oil, which is increasingly worthless, as energy gets cheaper, because renewables, shale, etc.
Xi Jinping's China, by contrast, is the greatest "threat" the West has faced in a couple of centuries. Worse than Nazi Germany
All that matters is containing her (we cannot "defeat" her). And that means rock-solid alliances with close friends ensuring that we stand together, whatever. That is how you beat bullies
Yes, even though I think his economic policies are turning into a disaster and he is obviously losing his capabilities, when it comes to foreign affairs I have a lot of grudging respect for the fact that Biden has turned out to be so fundamentally ruthless and willing to break the cosy consensus. I’d be interested to see how long Blinken stays around
Yep. I think he is a bit senile, and foolish in some respects, but when it comes to foreign policy he has clear instincts and wise opinions: as to what is in America's interest, and he has a certain heartless brutality in seeing them done. If you want to boss a superpower, I guess that is important
So this will kill 100,000 Afghans? So be it. So this will kill off our relationship with France for 3 years? So be it
Etc. Not pretty, but maybe needed
It won't kill the US-French relationship.
The French are players. They are making massive scene out of this, so that the Americans throw them a bone in some other area.
I'm not so sure that will happen. The Biden administration has continually sidelined Europe. I just don't think they care and don't see any EU country as a potential ally in the looming cold war against China. I wrote out my thoughts just now, the world has realised that the EU is happy to kowtow to China for fear of losing money.
I think you're wrong on this. For a start, I think it would be a catastrophic mistake to cleave the Western European democracies (most of whom don't really want to "kowtow" to China) off from the Anglosphere.
Re the French, I'm thinking more of them getting US support for a French candidate to be next General Secretary of the United Nations, that kind of thing. It's the kind of quid pro quo that the French are very good at getting.
Indeed, especially as Putin is more of a direct threat to us than Xi is and we need French support within NATO for containing Russia.
Jihadi terrorism is also a direct threat to us we need French intelligence cooperation on
The narrative is moving on and I doubt NATO as we know it will be recognisable soon
You simply do not see that the threat is China not Russia, and as far as France is concerned while they will not be in the tripartite agreement, both France and Canada and others will have a role to play in the South China seas
Why should we be fannying around in the South China Sea? I doubt we'd want the Chinese navy steaming up and down the English Channel. This kind of imperial delusion is embarrassing, and will only end in tears like it always does. It's like Suez, or for that matter Iraq, never happened. If we've got money to waste on these stupid dick-waving exercises, how about we pay our nurses properly, or fund education adequately, or don't cut universal credit?
I am afraid that the world is global now and our trading and prosperity will come from the huge markets of the Trans Pacific which in turn will fund our public services in the future
I would just comment that Keir Starmer has pledged his full support as indeed have most EU countries
Even Blackford of all people was generous in his support
I am all for trading with Asia, just against declaring war on them.
We are not declaring war on anyone but ensuring all the trans pacific can go about their trade without constant threat from China
With respect. How does our joining ensure that? Specifically? Sorry to be over cynical about this.
Economically or militarily?
Militarily we are doing more to defend the Pacific recently, hence last night's announcement of support for Australian nuclear submarines as well as relocating much of our own assets over there, with the US doing the same.
Economically ensuring there is a strong and stable economic system that keeps the Pacific regions trading with us and able to stand up to and not be subordinate to China does that too.
Its worth remembering from history that much of the British Empire became such without official national bullets being fired. Companies like the East India Trading Company etc were able to purchase, subordinate and economically dominate regions from which the military and politics could then follow. China has been attempting the same trick with much of the world and we and the US have woken up to this and need to ensure they don't get away with it.
But we're just acting as the US's bag-carrier and go-between again there, in return for the illusion of power. The technology for the Austrialian subs will be American, and Biden is essentially sending the same signal as Bush in 2002-3 ; I'll let you pretend to be big boys, and piggy-back off our prestige again if you tow the line at all times, and act as our emissary. No one is taking Britain, or Australia for that matter, remotely seriously as naval powers to take on China.
Former French Ambassador to the US seems pretty chilled about the whole thing. Exuding Gallic sangfroid and a sense of "meh"
"“The US has trampled our national interest. What the US has done to our national interest is a hostile act,” he said.
"“What we were doing with the Australians was a strategic choice and this strategic choice has been swept away not only by the Australians but also by the Americans.”
"He said the British involvement was immaterial because they were “poodles of the Americans, as usual”."
Biden has single-handedly taken a wrecking ball to the western alliances. Putin and Xi must wondering why the hell they bothered with that amateur Trump.
Biden has gone up, a lot, in my estimation. He instinctively senses that NATO is over. And it is
Russia is not a strategic threat to the West. It just isn't. Its economy is too small and its people too drunk
They might try another Crimea on the Baltics, but I doubt it. They export virtually nothing but conventional oil, which is increasingly worthless, as energy gets cheaper, because renewables, shale, etc.
Xi Jinping's China, by contrast, is the greatest "threat" the West has faced in a couple of centuries. Worse than Nazi Germany
All that matters is containing her (we cannot "defeat" her). And that means rock-solid alliances with close friends ensuring that we stand together, whatever. That is how you beat bullies
Yes, even though I think his economic policies are turning into a disaster and he is obviously losing his capabilities, when it comes to foreign affairs I have a lot of grudging respect for the fact that Biden has turned out to be so fundamentally ruthless and willing to break the cosy consensus. I’d be interested to see how long Blinken stays around
Yep. I think he is a bit senile, and foolish in some respects, but when it comes to foreign policy he has clear instincts and wise opinions: as to what is in America's interest, and he has a certain heartless brutality in seeing them done. If you want to boss a superpower, I guess that is important
So this will kill 100,000 Afghans? So be it. So this will kill off our relationship with France for 3 years? So be it
Etc. Not pretty, but maybe needed
It won't kill the US-French relationship.
The French are players. They are making massive scene out of this, so that the Americans throw them a bone in some other area.
I'm not so sure that will happen. The Biden administration has continually sidelined Europe. I just don't think they care and don't see any EU country as a potential ally in the looming cold war against China. I wrote out my thoughts just now, the world has realised that the EU is happy to kowtow to China for fear of losing money.
I think you're wrong on this. For a start, I think it would be a catastrophic mistake to cleave the Western European democracies (most of whom don't really want to "kowtow" to China) off from the Anglosphere.
Re the French, I'm thinking more of them getting US support for a French candidate to be next General Secretary of the United Nations, that kind of thing. It's the kind of quid pro quo that the French are very good at getting.
Indeed, especially as Putin is more of a direct threat to us than Xi is and we need French support within NATO for containing Russia.
Jihadi terrorism is also a direct threat to us we need French intelligence cooperation on
You need to catch up with the 21st century, Putin is not the threat to us.
Putin is like a spotty 4chan Incel troll in comparison to Xi.
He does have the ability to create mischief, though, and does need to be opposed. In particular, the Russian funding and support for groups that oppose fracking in the UK (to use one example) should be exposed. We cannot allow them to interfere in our democratic systems for their own benefit.
Putin has been quiet for a number of years now when it comes to the West and even the Ukraine. He has issues on the domestic front which are more pressing.
He’s also got issues on the Eastern front with China. That relationship is not as close as some assume.
Russia is a failed state. Its economy and its demographics are atrocious. Putin has coped until now by ramping ever higher proportion of the Russian economy into the military in order to be perceived as strong but he risks it all failing in the same way it failed in the 80s.
Ultimately Russia can't afford to be a power anymore. The country is broken and he's pissing it away and driving wealth out of the nation. If it weren't for certain states in Europe being content to rely upon Russian gas the entire house of cards could come tumbling down.
Russia will collapse again at some point. China is the real threat.
It has to be said that a collapsing country with a large military is almost the definition of a regional threat.
Thank goodness the UK is as strong and stable as ever.
Former French Ambassador to the US seems pretty chilled about the whole thing. Exuding Gallic sangfroid and a sense of "meh"
"“The US has trampled our national interest. What the US has done to our national interest is a hostile act,” he said.
"“What we were doing with the Australians was a strategic choice and this strategic choice has been swept away not only by the Australians but also by the Americans.”
"He said the British involvement was immaterial because they were “poodles of the Americans, as usual”."
Biden has single-handedly taken a wrecking ball to the western alliances. Putin and Xi must wondering why the hell they bothered with that amateur Trump.
Biden has gone up, a lot, in my estimation. He instinctively senses that NATO is over. And it is
Russia is not a strategic threat to the West. It just isn't. Its economy is too small and its people too drunk
They might try another Crimea on the Baltics, but I doubt it. They export virtually nothing but conventional oil, which is increasingly worthless, as energy gets cheaper, because renewables, shale, etc.
Xi Jinping's China, by contrast, is the greatest "threat" the West has faced in a couple of centuries. Worse than Nazi Germany
All that matters is containing her (we cannot "defeat" her). And that means rock-solid alliances with close friends ensuring that we stand together, whatever. That is how you beat bullies
Yes, even though I think his economic policies are turning into a disaster and he is obviously losing his capabilities, when it comes to foreign affairs I have a lot of grudging respect for the fact that Biden has turned out to be so fundamentally ruthless and willing to break the cosy consensus. I’d be interested to see how long Blinken stays around
Yep. I think he is a bit senile, and foolish in some respects, but when it comes to foreign policy he has clear instincts and wise opinions: as to what is in America's interest, and he has a certain heartless brutality in seeing them done. If you want to boss a superpower, I guess that is important
So this will kill 100,000 Afghans? So be it. So this will kill off our relationship with France for 3 years? So be it
Etc. Not pretty, but maybe needed
It won't kill the US-French relationship.
The French are players. They are making massive scene out of this, so that the Americans throw them a bone in some other area.
I'm not so sure that will happen. The Biden administration has continually sidelined Europe. I just don't think they care and don't see any EU country as a potential ally in the looming cold war against China. I wrote out my thoughts just now, the world has realised that the EU is happy to kowtow to China for fear of losing money.
I think you're wrong on this. For a start, I think it would be a catastrophic mistake to cleave the Western European democracies (most of whom don't really want to "kowtow" to China) off from the Anglosphere.
Re the French, I'm thinking more of them getting US support for a French candidate to be next General Secretary of the United Nations, that kind of thing. It's the kind of quid pro quo that the French are very good at getting.
Indeed, especially as Putin is more of a direct threat to us than Xi is and we need French support within NATO for containing Russia.
Jihadi terrorism is also a direct threat to us we need French intelligence cooperation on
The narrative is moving on and I doubt NATO as we know it will be recognisable soon
You simply do not see that the threat is China not Russia, and as far as France is concerned while they will not be in the tripartite agreement, both France and Canada and others will have a role to play in the South China seas
Why should we be fannying around in the South China Sea? I doubt we'd want the Chinese navy steaming up and down the English Channel. This kind of imperial delusion is embarrassing, and will only end in tears like it always does. It's like Suez, or for that matter Iraq, never happened. If we've got money to waste on these stupid dick-waving exercises, how about we pay our nurses properly, or fund education adequately, or don't cut universal credit?
Because the South China Sea matters for our own economy and the entire global trading system and does not belong to China. The English Channel is our territorial waters.
We aren't messing around in Chinese waters but we sure as hell need to ensure that international waters through which our 21st century trading system is built upon is kept free and open for all to use.
If Taiwan falls and the microchips they export are seized by China and blocked from export our entire economic system could collapse. Then we couldn't pay a fraction of what we pay now to our nurses, or teachers, or welfare.
Are you going to sign up then so you can do your duty and defend Taiwan? Why would China want to collapse the global economy, which they rely on far more than we do?
No need to sign up since if we do this right there will be no actual fighting. That's the point of a Cold War in fact, to avoid the actual fighting. Containment works better through deterrence than through conflict and we and our allies have professionals to do that much better than you or I ever could.
China is a paranoid Communist dictatorship that has been flexing its muscles not a liberal free market democracy. Forgive me if I won't put my faith in China's goodwill.
Historically speaking we are a far more aggressive, violent, murderous and expansionary culture than China is. They should be more afraid of us than vice versa.
The past is a relevant consideration, but not as significant a one as the present. China likes to use the former to pretend its still a victim or fighting oppressors today, we don't have to do that nonsense for them.
Former French Ambassador to the US seems pretty chilled about the whole thing. Exuding Gallic sangfroid and a sense of "meh"
"“The US has trampled our national interest. What the US has done to our national interest is a hostile act,” he said.
"“What we were doing with the Australians was a strategic choice and this strategic choice has been swept away not only by the Australians but also by the Americans.”
"He said the British involvement was immaterial because they were “poodles of the Americans, as usual”."
Biden has single-handedly taken a wrecking ball to the western alliances. Putin and Xi must wondering why the hell they bothered with that amateur Trump.
Biden has gone up, a lot, in my estimation. He instinctively senses that NATO is over. And it is
Russia is not a strategic threat to the West. It just isn't. Its economy is too small and its people too drunk
They might try another Crimea on the Baltics, but I doubt it. They export virtually nothing but conventional oil, which is increasingly worthless, as energy gets cheaper, because renewables, shale, etc.
Xi Jinping's China, by contrast, is the greatest "threat" the West has faced in a couple of centuries. Worse than Nazi Germany
All that matters is containing her (we cannot "defeat" her). And that means rock-solid alliances with close friends ensuring that we stand together, whatever. That is how you beat bullies
Yes, even though I think his economic policies are turning into a disaster and he is obviously losing his capabilities, when it comes to foreign affairs I have a lot of grudging respect for the fact that Biden has turned out to be so fundamentally ruthless and willing to break the cosy consensus. I’d be interested to see how long Blinken stays around
Yep. I think he is a bit senile, and foolish in some respects, but when it comes to foreign policy he has clear instincts and wise opinions: as to what is in America's interest, and he has a certain heartless brutality in seeing them done. If you want to boss a superpower, I guess that is important
So this will kill 100,000 Afghans? So be it. So this will kill off our relationship with France for 3 years? So be it
Etc. Not pretty, but maybe needed
It won't kill the US-French relationship.
The French are players. They are making massive scene out of this, so that the Americans throw them a bone in some other area.
I'm not so sure that will happen. The Biden administration has continually sidelined Europe. I just don't think they care and don't see any EU country as a potential ally in the looming cold war against China. I wrote out my thoughts just now, the world has realised that the EU is happy to kowtow to China for fear of losing money.
I think you're wrong on this. For a start, I think it would be a catastrophic mistake to cleave the Western European democracies (most of whom don't really want to "kowtow" to China) off from the Anglosphere.
Re the French, I'm thinking more of them getting US support for a French candidate to be next General Secretary of the United Nations, that kind of thing. It's the kind of quid pro quo that the French are very good at getting.
Indeed, especially as Putin is more of a direct threat to us than Xi is and we need French support within NATO for containing Russia.
Jihadi terrorism is also a direct threat to us we need French intelligence cooperation on
The narrative is moving on and I doubt NATO as we know it will be recognisable soon
You simply do not see that the threat is China not Russia, and as far as France is concerned while they will not be in the tripartite agreement, both France and Canada and others will have a role to play in the South China seas
Why should we be fannying around in the South China Sea? I doubt we'd want the Chinese navy steaming up and down the English Channel. This kind of imperial delusion is embarrassing, and will only end in tears like it always does. It's like Suez, or for that matter Iraq, never happened. If we've got money to waste on these stupid dick-waving exercises, how about we pay our nurses properly, or fund education adequately, or don't cut universal credit?
I am afraid that the world is global now and our trading and prosperity will come from the huge markets of the Trans Pacific which in turn will fund our public services in the future
I would just comment that Keir Starmer has pledged his full support as indeed have most EU countries
Even Blackford of all people was generous in his support
I am all for trading with Asia, just against declaring war on them.
We are not declaring war on anyone but ensuring all the trans pacific can go about their trade without constant threat from China
With respect. How does our joining ensure that? Specifically? Sorry to be over cynical about this.
Economically or militarily?
Militarily we are doing more to defend the Pacific recently, hence last night's announcement of support for Australian nuclear submarines as well as relocating much of our own assets over there, with the US doing the same.
Economically ensuring there is a strong and stable economic system that keeps the Pacific regions trading with us and able to stand up to and not be subordinate to China does that too.
Its worth remembering from history that much of the British Empire became such without official national bullets being fired. Companies like the East India Trading Company etc were able to purchase, subordinate and economically dominate regions from which the military and politics could then follow. China has been attempting the same trick with much of the world and we and the US have woken up to this and need to ensure they don't get away with it.
The quote I asked about was "ensuring all the trans pacific can go about their trade without constant threat from China". Has China ever threatened their trade? Let alone constantly? If the current incarnation of the PRC likes one thing it is international trade. They love it. Bloody love it they do. The USA did it as well for a century. It isn't a "trick". It is global capitalism. And China has been winning.
@RochdalePioneers I don’t know much about the Tees Area. But Historic England granted the “Dorman Long Tower” Grade II listing to prevent demolition 3 days ago.
According to Twitter, Nadine Dorries has rescinded this tonight, and demolition will proceed on Sunday.
Former French Ambassador to the US seems pretty chilled about the whole thing. Exuding Gallic sangfroid and a sense of "meh"
"“The US has trampled our national interest. What the US has done to our national interest is a hostile act,” he said.
"“What we were doing with the Australians was a strategic choice and this strategic choice has been swept away not only by the Australians but also by the Americans.”
"He said the British involvement was immaterial because they were “poodles of the Americans, as usual”."
Biden has single-handedly taken a wrecking ball to the western alliances. Putin and Xi must wondering why the hell they bothered with that amateur Trump.
Biden has gone up, a lot, in my estimation. He instinctively senses that NATO is over. And it is
Russia is not a strategic threat to the West. It just isn't. Its economy is too small and its people too drunk
They might try another Crimea on the Baltics, but I doubt it. They export virtually nothing but conventional oil, which is increasingly worthless, as energy gets cheaper, because renewables, shale, etc.
Xi Jinping's China, by contrast, is the greatest "threat" the West has faced in a couple of centuries. Worse than Nazi Germany
All that matters is containing her (we cannot "defeat" her). And that means rock-solid alliances with close friends ensuring that we stand together, whatever. That is how you beat bullies
Yes, even though I think his economic policies are turning into a disaster and he is obviously losing his capabilities, when it comes to foreign affairs I have a lot of grudging respect for the fact that Biden has turned out to be so fundamentally ruthless and willing to break the cosy consensus. I’d be interested to see how long Blinken stays around
Yep. I think he is a bit senile, and foolish in some respects, but when it comes to foreign policy he has clear instincts and wise opinions: as to what is in America's interest, and he has a certain heartless brutality in seeing them done. If you want to boss a superpower, I guess that is important
So this will kill 100,000 Afghans? So be it. So this will kill off our relationship with France for 3 years? So be it
Etc. Not pretty, but maybe needed
It won't kill the US-French relationship.
The French are players. They are making massive scene out of this, so that the Americans throw them a bone in some other area.
I'm not so sure that will happen. The Biden administration has continually sidelined Europe. I just don't think they care and don't see any EU country as a potential ally in the looming cold war against China. I wrote out my thoughts just now, the world has realised that the EU is happy to kowtow to China for fear of losing money.
I think you're wrong on this. For a start, I think it would be a catastrophic mistake to cleave the Western European democracies (most of whom don't really want to "kowtow" to China) off from the Anglosphere.
Re the French, I'm thinking more of them getting US support for a French candidate to be next General Secretary of the United Nations, that kind of thing. It's the kind of quid pro quo that the French are very good at getting.
Indeed, especially as Putin is more of a direct threat to us than Xi is and we need French support within NATO for containing Russia.
Jihadi terrorism is also a direct threat to us we need French intelligence cooperation on
The narrative is moving on and I doubt NATO as we know it will be recognisable soon
You simply do not see that the threat is China not Russia, and as far as France is concerned while they will not be in the tripartite agreement, both France and Canada and others will have a role to play in the South China seas
Why should we be fannying around in the South China Sea? I doubt we'd want the Chinese navy steaming up and down the English Channel. This kind of imperial delusion is embarrassing, and will only end in tears like it always does. It's like Suez, or for that matter Iraq, never happened. If we've got money to waste on these stupid dick-waving exercises, how about we pay our nurses properly, or fund education adequately, or don't cut universal credit?
Because the South China Sea matters for our own economy and the entire global trading system and does not belong to China. The English Channel is our territorial waters.
We aren't messing around in Chinese waters but we sure as hell need to ensure that international waters through which our 21st century trading system is built upon is kept free and open for all to use.
If Taiwan falls and the microchips they export are seized by China and blocked from export our entire economic system could collapse. Then we couldn't pay a fraction of what we pay now to our nurses, or teachers, or welfare.
Are you going to sign up then so you can do your duty and defend Taiwan? Why would China want to collapse the global economy, which they rely on far more than we do?
No need to sign up since if we do this right there will be no actual fighting. That's the point of a Cold War in fact, to avoid the actual fighting. Containment works better through deterrence than through conflict and we and our allies have professionals to do that much better than you or I ever could.
China is a paranoid Communist dictatorship that has been flexing its muscles not a liberal free market democracy. Forgive me if I won't put my faith in China's goodwill.
Goodwill and self interest are two different things. Xi is a repulsive scumbag but his party's hold on power relies on delivering stability and prosperity, and he's not going to jeopardise that by doing anything crazy. Historically speaking we are a far more aggressive, violent, murderous and expansionary culture than China is. They should be more afraid of us than vice versa.
Imagine if China, Russia and Myanmar announced a “tech sharing defence alliance” focused on nuclear subs.
If they were liberal democracies, I wouldn't be worried. The problem is they are dictatorships that brutalize their own citizens, so are clearly pretty prone to violence which can also be directed externally.
Yeah, democracies like the US and UK would never direct any violence externally, by for instance illegally invading another country and killing thousands of its citizens on the basis of made up "intelligence" and lies about links to 9/11.
And those events prevent criticism or action, of any kind, against or in opposition to regimes who are, even with those examples, far far worse?
Former French Ambassador to the US seems pretty chilled about the whole thing. Exuding Gallic sangfroid and a sense of "meh"
"“The US has trampled our national interest. What the US has done to our national interest is a hostile act,” he said.
"“What we were doing with the Australians was a strategic choice and this strategic choice has been swept away not only by the Australians but also by the Americans.”
"He said the British involvement was immaterial because they were “poodles of the Americans, as usual”."
Biden has single-handedly taken a wrecking ball to the western alliances. Putin and Xi must wondering why the hell they bothered with that amateur Trump.
Biden has gone up, a lot, in my estimation. He instinctively senses that NATO is over. And it is
Russia is not a strategic threat to the West. It just isn't. Its economy is too small and its people too drunk
They might try another Crimea on the Baltics, but I doubt it. They export virtually nothing but conventional oil, which is increasingly worthless, as energy gets cheaper, because renewables, shale, etc.
Xi Jinping's China, by contrast, is the greatest "threat" the West has faced in a couple of centuries. Worse than Nazi Germany
All that matters is containing her (we cannot "defeat" her). And that means rock-solid alliances with close friends ensuring that we stand together, whatever. That is how you beat bullies
Yes, even though I think his economic policies are turning into a disaster and he is obviously losing his capabilities, when it comes to foreign affairs I have a lot of grudging respect for the fact that Biden has turned out to be so fundamentally ruthless and willing to break the cosy consensus. I’d be interested to see how long Blinken stays around
Yep. I think he is a bit senile, and foolish in some respects, but when it comes to foreign policy he has clear instincts and wise opinions: as to what is in America's interest, and he has a certain heartless brutality in seeing them done. If you want to boss a superpower, I guess that is important
So this will kill 100,000 Afghans? So be it. So this will kill off our relationship with France for 3 years? So be it
Etc. Not pretty, but maybe needed
It won't kill the US-French relationship.
The French are players. They are making massive scene out of this, so that the Americans throw them a bone in some other area.
I'm not so sure that will happen. The Biden administration has continually sidelined Europe. I just don't think they care and don't see any EU country as a potential ally in the looming cold war against China. I wrote out my thoughts just now, the world has realised that the EU is happy to kowtow to China for fear of losing money.
I think you're wrong on this. For a start, I think it would be a catastrophic mistake to cleave the Western European democracies (most of whom don't really want to "kowtow" to China) off from the Anglosphere.
Re the French, I'm thinking more of them getting US support for a French candidate to be next General Secretary of the United Nations, that kind of thing. It's the kind of quid pro quo that the French are very good at getting.
Indeed, especially as Putin is more of a direct threat to us than Xi is and we need French support within NATO for containing Russia.
Jihadi terrorism is also a direct threat to us we need French intelligence cooperation on
The narrative is moving on and I doubt NATO as we know it will be recognisable soon
You simply do not see that the threat is China not Russia, and as far as France is concerned while they will not be in the tripartite agreement, both France and Canada and others will have a role to play in the South China seas
Why should we be fannying around in the South China Sea? I doubt we'd want the Chinese navy steaming up and down the English Channel. This kind of imperial delusion is embarrassing, and will only end in tears like it always does. It's like Suez, or for that matter Iraq, never happened. If we've got money to waste on these stupid dick-waving exercises, how about we pay our nurses properly, or fund education adequately, or don't cut universal credit?
Because the South China Sea matters for our own economy and the entire global trading system and does not belong to China. The English Channel is our territorial waters.
We aren't messing around in Chinese waters but we sure as hell need to ensure that international waters through which our 21st century trading system is built upon is kept free and open for all to use.
If Taiwan falls and the microchips they export are seized by China and blocked from export our entire economic system could collapse. Then we couldn't pay a fraction of what we pay now to our nurses, or teachers, or welfare.
Are you going to sign up then so you can do your duty and defend Taiwan? Why would China want to collapse the global economy, which they rely on far more than we do?
No need to sign up since if we do this right there will be no actual fighting. That's the point of a Cold War in fact, to avoid the actual fighting. Containment works better through deterrence than through conflict and we and our allies have professionals to do that much better than you or I ever could.
China is a paranoid Communist dictatorship that has been flexing its muscles not a liberal free market democracy. Forgive me if I won't put my faith in China's goodwill.
But you ARE agreeing with Boris? in his answer to May he didn’t rule out UK troops dying to defend Taiwan - yet at the same time you don’t want to see the people selling our state infrastructure to China, making money in the lobby selling our nations assets to China, end up in jail? To engineer a Cold War whilst selling your country’s assets to the “enemy” smells more like Treason to me. Not to you?
Former French Ambassador to the US seems pretty chilled about the whole thing. Exuding Gallic sangfroid and a sense of "meh"
"“The US has trampled our national interest. What the US has done to our national interest is a hostile act,” he said.
"“What we were doing with the Australians was a strategic choice and this strategic choice has been swept away not only by the Australians but also by the Americans.”
"He said the British involvement was immaterial because they were “poodles of the Americans, as usual”."
Biden has single-handedly taken a wrecking ball to the western alliances. Putin and Xi must wondering why the hell they bothered with that amateur Trump.
Biden has gone up, a lot, in my estimation. He instinctively senses that NATO is over. And it is
Russia is not a strategic threat to the West. It just isn't. Its economy is too small and its people too drunk
They might try another Crimea on the Baltics, but I doubt it. They export virtually nothing but conventional oil, which is increasingly worthless, as energy gets cheaper, because renewables, shale, etc.
Xi Jinping's China, by contrast, is the greatest "threat" the West has faced in a couple of centuries. Worse than Nazi Germany
All that matters is containing her (we cannot "defeat" her). And that means rock-solid alliances with close friends ensuring that we stand together, whatever. That is how you beat bullies
Yes, even though I think his economic policies are turning into a disaster and he is obviously losing his capabilities, when it comes to foreign affairs I have a lot of grudging respect for the fact that Biden has turned out to be so fundamentally ruthless and willing to break the cosy consensus. I’d be interested to see how long Blinken stays around
Yep. I think he is a bit senile, and foolish in some respects, but when it comes to foreign policy he has clear instincts and wise opinions: as to what is in America's interest, and he has a certain heartless brutality in seeing them done. If you want to boss a superpower, I guess that is important
So this will kill 100,000 Afghans? So be it. So this will kill off our relationship with France for 3 years? So be it
Etc. Not pretty, but maybe needed
It won't kill the US-French relationship.
The French are players. They are making massive scene out of this, so that the Americans throw them a bone in some other area.
I'm not so sure that will happen. The Biden administration has continually sidelined Europe. I just don't think they care and don't see any EU country as a potential ally in the looming cold war against China. I wrote out my thoughts just now, the world has realised that the EU is happy to kowtow to China for fear of losing money.
I think you're wrong on this. For a start, I think it would be a catastrophic mistake to cleave the Western European democracies (most of whom don't really want to "kowtow" to China) off from the Anglosphere.
Re the French, I'm thinking more of them getting US support for a French candidate to be next General Secretary of the United Nations, that kind of thing. It's the kind of quid pro quo that the French are very good at getting.
Indeed, especially as Putin is more of a direct threat to us than Xi is and we need French support within NATO for containing Russia.
Jihadi terrorism is also a direct threat to us we need French intelligence cooperation on
The narrative is moving on and I doubt NATO as we know it will be recognisable soon
You simply do not see that the threat is China not Russia, and as far as France is concerned while they will not be in the tripartite agreement, both France and Canada and others will have a role to play in the South China seas
Why should we be fannying around in the South China Sea? I doubt we'd want the Chinese navy steaming up and down the English Channel. This kind of imperial delusion is embarrassing, and will only end in tears like it always does. It's like Suez, or for that matter Iraq, never happened. If we've got money to waste on these stupid dick-waving exercises, how about we pay our nurses properly, or fund education adequately, or don't cut universal credit?
Because the South China Sea matters for our own economy and the entire global trading system and does not belong to China. The English Channel is our territorial waters.
We aren't messing around in Chinese waters but we sure as hell need to ensure that international waters through which our 21st century trading system is built upon is kept free and open for all to use.
If Taiwan falls and the microchips they export are seized by China and blocked from export our entire economic system could collapse. Then we couldn't pay a fraction of what we pay now to our nurses, or teachers, or welfare.
Are you going to sign up then so you can do your duty and defend Taiwan? Why would China want to collapse the global economy, which they rely on far more than we do?
No need to sign up since if we do this right there will be no actual fighting. That's the point of a Cold War in fact, to avoid the actual fighting. Containment works better through deterrence than through conflict and we and our allies have professionals to do that much better than you or I ever could.
China is a paranoid Communist dictatorship that has been flexing its muscles not a liberal free market democracy. Forgive me if I won't put my faith in China's goodwill.
Goodwill and self interest are two different things. Xi is a repulsive scumbag but his party's hold on power relies on delivering stability and prosperity, and he's not going to jeopardise that by doing anything crazy. Historically speaking we are a far more aggressive, violent, murderous and expansionary culture than China is. They should be more afraid of us than vice versa.
Imagine if China, Russia and Myanmar announced a “tech sharing defence alliance” focused on nuclear subs.
If they were liberal democracies, I wouldn't be worried. The problem is they are dictatorships that brutalize their own citizens, so are clearly pretty prone to violence which can also be directed externally.
Sure.
I’m just trying to get Pbers to flip the perspective a bit.
I kowtow to nobody in my China-skepticism, but this is not China aggressing the West, but the West asserting a posture toward China.
It isn't happening in a vacuum. Have you seen the posturing diplomacy China engages in? Tit for tat is not in itself justification for measures, and in a proper context warning against some new cold war type situation is not inherently a bad thing, but it's not as though the West has just woken up on the wrong side of the bed and decided to assert a posture toward China for no reason, China is not sitting there minding their own business or of no concern to anyone else in a diplomatic or international relations sense. It wants to be a major player, understandably, and major players face opposition.
@RochdalePioneers I don’t know much about the Tees Area. But Historic England granted the “Dorman Long Tower” Grade II listing to prevent demolition 3 days ago.
According to Twitter, Nadine Dorries has rescinded this tonight, and demolition will proceed on Sunday.
Can't someone tell her it's a staute- preferably of someone who happened to get rich around the time that the slave trade was legal and profitable?
Former French Ambassador to the US seems pretty chilled about the whole thing. Exuding Gallic sangfroid and a sense of "meh"
"“The US has trampled our national interest. What the US has done to our national interest is a hostile act,” he said.
"“What we were doing with the Australians was a strategic choice and this strategic choice has been swept away not only by the Australians but also by the Americans.”
"He said the British involvement was immaterial because they were “poodles of the Americans, as usual”."
Biden has single-handedly taken a wrecking ball to the western alliances. Putin and Xi must wondering why the hell they bothered with that amateur Trump.
Biden has gone up, a lot, in my estimation. He instinctively senses that NATO is over. And it is
Russia is not a strategic threat to the West. It just isn't. Its economy is too small and its people too drunk
They might try another Crimea on the Baltics, but I doubt it. They export virtually nothing but conventional oil, which is increasingly worthless, as energy gets cheaper, because renewables, shale, etc.
Xi Jinping's China, by contrast, is the greatest "threat" the West has faced in a couple of centuries. Worse than Nazi Germany
All that matters is containing her (we cannot "defeat" her). And that means rock-solid alliances with close friends ensuring that we stand together, whatever. That is how you beat bullies
Yes, even though I think his economic policies are turning into a disaster and he is obviously losing his capabilities, when it comes to foreign affairs I have a lot of grudging respect for the fact that Biden has turned out to be so fundamentally ruthless and willing to break the cosy consensus. I’d be interested to see how long Blinken stays around
Yep. I think he is a bit senile, and foolish in some respects, but when it comes to foreign policy he has clear instincts and wise opinions: as to what is in America's interest, and he has a certain heartless brutality in seeing them done. If you want to boss a superpower, I guess that is important
So this will kill 100,000 Afghans? So be it. So this will kill off our relationship with France for 3 years? So be it
Etc. Not pretty, but maybe needed
It won't kill the US-French relationship.
The French are players. They are making massive scene out of this, so that the Americans throw them a bone in some other area.
I'm not so sure that will happen. The Biden administration has continually sidelined Europe. I just don't think they care and don't see any EU country as a potential ally in the looming cold war against China. I wrote out my thoughts just now, the world has realised that the EU is happy to kowtow to China for fear of losing money.
I think you're wrong on this. For a start, I think it would be a catastrophic mistake to cleave the Western European democracies (most of whom don't really want to "kowtow" to China) off from the Anglosphere.
Re the French, I'm thinking more of them getting US support for a French candidate to be next General Secretary of the United Nations, that kind of thing. It's the kind of quid pro quo that the French are very good at getting.
Indeed, especially as Putin is more of a direct threat to us than Xi is and we need French support within NATO for containing Russia.
Jihadi terrorism is also a direct threat to us we need French intelligence cooperation on
The narrative is moving on and I doubt NATO as we know it will be recognisable soon
You simply do not see that the threat is China not Russia, and as far as France is concerned while they will not be in the tripartite agreement, both France and Canada and others will have a role to play in the South China seas
Why should we be fannying around in the South China Sea? I doubt we'd want the Chinese navy steaming up and down the English Channel. This kind of imperial delusion is embarrassing, and will only end in tears like it always does. It's like Suez, or for that matter Iraq, never happened. If we've got money to waste on these stupid dick-waving exercises, how about we pay our nurses properly, or fund education adequately, or don't cut universal credit?
Because the South China Sea matters for our own economy and the entire global trading system and does not belong to China. The English Channel is our territorial waters.
We aren't messing around in Chinese waters but we sure as hell need to ensure that international waters through which our 21st century trading system is built upon is kept free and open for all to use.
If Taiwan falls and the microchips they export are seized by China and blocked from export our entire economic system could collapse. Then we couldn't pay a fraction of what we pay now to our nurses, or teachers, or welfare.
Are you going to sign up then so you can do your duty and defend Taiwan? Why would China want to collapse the global economy, which they rely on far more than we do?
No need to sign up since if we do this right there will be no actual fighting. That's the point of a Cold War in fact, to avoid the actual fighting. Containment works better through deterrence than through conflict and we and our allies have professionals to do that much better than you or I ever could.
China is a paranoid Communist dictatorship that has been flexing its muscles not a liberal free market democracy. Forgive me if I won't put my faith in China's goodwill.
Goodwill and self interest are two different things. Xi is a repulsive scumbag but his party's hold on power relies on delivering stability and prosperity, and he's not going to jeopardise that by doing anything crazy. Historically speaking we are a far more aggressive, violent, murderous and expansionary culture than China is. They should be more afraid of us than vice versa.
Imagine if China, Russia and Myanmar announced a “tech sharing defence alliance” focused on nuclear subs.
If they were liberal democracies, I wouldn't be worried. The problem is they are dictatorships that brutalize their own citizens, so are clearly pretty prone to violence which can also be directed externally.
Yeah, democracies like the US and UK would never direct any violence externally, by for instance illegally invading another country and killing thousands of its citizens on the basis of made up "intelligence" and lies about links to 9/11.
And those events prevent criticism or action, of any kind, against or in opposition to regimes who are, even with those examples, far far worse?
No, but it does weaken the "The problem is they are dictatorships ... so are clearly pretty prone to violence which can also be directed externally" aspect of the point. You gotta love living in a democracy. But if you are the victim of a foreign invasion, seeing your wedding blown up or your cousin disappeared to some torture dungeon in the middle of the night, you don't really care if it's a democracy doing it or a dictatorship. I wonder whether democracies are better neighbours than anyone else.
Former French Ambassador to the US seems pretty chilled about the whole thing. Exuding Gallic sangfroid and a sense of "meh"
"“The US has trampled our national interest. What the US has done to our national interest is a hostile act,” he said.
"“What we were doing with the Australians was a strategic choice and this strategic choice has been swept away not only by the Australians but also by the Americans.”
"He said the British involvement was immaterial because they were “poodles of the Americans, as usual”."
Biden has single-handedly taken a wrecking ball to the western alliances. Putin and Xi must wondering why the hell they bothered with that amateur Trump.
Biden has gone up, a lot, in my estimation. He instinctively senses that NATO is over. And it is
Russia is not a strategic threat to the West. It just isn't. Its economy is too small and its people too drunk
They might try another Crimea on the Baltics, but I doubt it. They export virtually nothing but conventional oil, which is increasingly worthless, as energy gets cheaper, because renewables, shale, etc.
Xi Jinping's China, by contrast, is the greatest "threat" the West has faced in a couple of centuries. Worse than Nazi Germany
All that matters is containing her (we cannot "defeat" her). And that means rock-solid alliances with close friends ensuring that we stand together, whatever. That is how you beat bullies
Yes, even though I think his economic policies are turning into a disaster and he is obviously losing his capabilities, when it comes to foreign affairs I have a lot of grudging respect for the fact that Biden has turned out to be so fundamentally ruthless and willing to break the cosy consensus. I’d be interested to see how long Blinken stays around
Yep. I think he is a bit senile, and foolish in some respects, but when it comes to foreign policy he has clear instincts and wise opinions: as to what is in America's interest, and he has a certain heartless brutality in seeing them done. If you want to boss a superpower, I guess that is important
So this will kill 100,000 Afghans? So be it. So this will kill off our relationship with France for 3 years? So be it
Etc. Not pretty, but maybe needed
It won't kill the US-French relationship.
The French are players. They are making massive scene out of this, so that the Americans throw them a bone in some other area.
I'm not so sure that will happen. The Biden administration has continually sidelined Europe. I just don't think they care and don't see any EU country as a potential ally in the looming cold war against China. I wrote out my thoughts just now, the world has realised that the EU is happy to kowtow to China for fear of losing money.
I think you're wrong on this. For a start, I think it would be a catastrophic mistake to cleave the Western European democracies (most of whom don't really want to "kowtow" to China) off from the Anglosphere.
Re the French, I'm thinking more of them getting US support for a French candidate to be next General Secretary of the United Nations, that kind of thing. It's the kind of quid pro quo that the French are very good at getting.
As I've been saying for a while, I take no joy from the fracturing of the western alliance. However, we need to be realistic. Germany controls the EU and Germany is a mercantile state, it is for sale to the highest bidder. They simply don't care to whom they sell BMWs or dishwashers as long as the bill is paid and Germans get jobs out of it.
I'm sure there will be grand words in a few months but the direction of travel has been clear for a while, even Obama was very sceptical of the "old world" as he termed it. What's changed is that with Brexit we've also become sceptical of the very same old world and now our interests are much more aligned with the US and looking towards the looming cold war with China in a way that Europe won't.
I'm sorry, I completely disagree.
Germany is not one thing, any more than the UK is one thing. It is grossly simplistic and demeaning to cast aside a Democratic country, with the rule of law, as somehow to sale for the highest bidder.
Ultimately, Merkel thought it was a good idea to get on stage with Xi and denounce the US. It was a huge error on their part but also gave us all incredible insight as to where Germany's interests lie. They will deal with the devil to do god's work, and for them god's work is the enrichment of the German state and people. Germany is a nation that will not take any economic hardship to pursue foreign policy goals. We know this. How can we rely on them as an ally when they've already been so unreliable. As long as they can make money and keep Germans employed by selling goods to China we have to count them out and, IMO, the rest of the EU.
I think you are diagnosing the wrong cause. Germany's overriding lesson they took from the 20th Century is to not upset any great powers. Get on with everyone important. Avoid wars through dialogue.
Are they not able to differentiate between liberal democratic powers like the UK and USA, and authoritarian regimes like China?
Former French Ambassador to the US seems pretty chilled about the whole thing. Exuding Gallic sangfroid and a sense of "meh"
"“The US has trampled our national interest. What the US has done to our national interest is a hostile act,” he said.
"“What we were doing with the Australians was a strategic choice and this strategic choice has been swept away not only by the Australians but also by the Americans.”
"He said the British involvement was immaterial because they were “poodles of the Americans, as usual”."
Biden has single-handedly taken a wrecking ball to the western alliances. Putin and Xi must wondering why the hell they bothered with that amateur Trump.
Biden has gone up, a lot, in my estimation. He instinctively senses that NATO is over. And it is
Russia is not a strategic threat to the West. It just isn't. Its economy is too small and its people too drunk
They might try another Crimea on the Baltics, but I doubt it. They export virtually nothing but conventional oil, which is increasingly worthless, as energy gets cheaper, because renewables, shale, etc.
Xi Jinping's China, by contrast, is the greatest "threat" the West has faced in a couple of centuries. Worse than Nazi Germany
All that matters is containing her (we cannot "defeat" her). And that means rock-solid alliances with close friends ensuring that we stand together, whatever. That is how you beat bullies
Yes, even though I think his economic policies are turning into a disaster and he is obviously losing his capabilities, when it comes to foreign affairs I have a lot of grudging respect for the fact that Biden has turned out to be so fundamentally ruthless and willing to break the cosy consensus. I’d be interested to see how long Blinken stays around
Yep. I think he is a bit senile, and foolish in some respects, but when it comes to foreign policy he has clear instincts and wise opinions: as to what is in America's interest, and he has a certain heartless brutality in seeing them done. If you want to boss a superpower, I guess that is important
So this will kill 100,000 Afghans? So be it. So this will kill off our relationship with France for 3 years? So be it
Etc. Not pretty, but maybe needed
It won't kill the US-French relationship.
The French are players. They are making massive scene out of this, so that the Americans throw them a bone in some other area.
I'm not so sure that will happen. The Biden administration has continually sidelined Europe. I just don't think they care and don't see any EU country as a potential ally in the looming cold war against China. I wrote out my thoughts just now, the world has realised that the EU is happy to kowtow to China for fear of losing money.
I think you're wrong on this. For a start, I think it would be a catastrophic mistake to cleave the Western European democracies (most of whom don't really want to "kowtow" to China) off from the Anglosphere.
Re the French, I'm thinking more of them getting US support for a French candidate to be next General Secretary of the United Nations, that kind of thing. It's the kind of quid pro quo that the French are very good at getting.
Indeed, especially as Putin is more of a direct threat to us than Xi is and we need French support within NATO for containing Russia.
Jihadi terrorism is also a direct threat to us we need French intelligence cooperation on
The narrative is moving on and I doubt NATO as we know it will be recognisable soon
You simply do not see that the threat is China not Russia, and as far as France is concerned while they will not be in the tripartite agreement, both France and Canada and others will have a role to play in the South China seas
Why should we be fannying around in the South China Sea? I doubt we'd want the Chinese navy steaming up and down the English Channel. This kind of imperial delusion is embarrassing, and will only end in tears like it always does. It's like Suez, or for that matter Iraq, never happened. If we've got money to waste on these stupid dick-waving exercises, how about we pay our nurses properly, or fund education adequately, or don't cut universal credit?
Because the South China Sea matters for our own economy and the entire global trading system and does not belong to China. The English Channel is our territorial waters.
We aren't messing around in Chinese waters but we sure as hell need to ensure that international waters through which our 21st century trading system is built upon is kept free and open for all to use.
If Taiwan falls and the microchips they export are seized by China and blocked from export our entire economic system could collapse. Then we couldn't pay a fraction of what we pay now to our nurses, or teachers, or welfare.
Are you going to sign up then so you can do your duty and defend Taiwan? Why would China want to collapse the global economy, which they rely on far more than we do?
No need to sign up since if we do this right there will be no actual fighting. That's the point of a Cold War in fact, to avoid the actual fighting. Containment works better through deterrence than through conflict and we and our allies have professionals to do that much better than you or I ever could.
China is a paranoid Communist dictatorship that has been flexing its muscles not a liberal free market democracy. Forgive me if I won't put my faith in China's goodwill.
Goodwill and self interest are two different things. Xi is a repulsive scumbag but his party's hold on power relies on delivering stability and prosperity, and he's not going to jeopardise that by doing anything crazy. Historically speaking we are a far more aggressive, violent, murderous and expansionary culture than China is. They should be more afraid of us than vice versa.
Imagine if China, Russia and Myanmar announced a “tech sharing defence alliance” focused on nuclear subs.
If they were liberal democracies, I wouldn't be worried. The problem is they are dictatorships that brutalize their own citizens, so are clearly pretty prone to violence which can also be directed externally.
Sure.
I’m just trying to get Pbers to flip the perspective a bit.
I kowtow to nobody in my China-skepticism, but this is not China aggressing the West, but the West asserting a posture toward China.
It isn't happening in a vacuum. Have you seen the posturing diplomacy China engages in? Tit for tat is not in itself justification for measures, and in a proper context warning against some new cold war type situation is not inherently a bad thing, but it's not as though the West has just woken up on the wrong side of the bed and decided to assert a posture toward China for no reason, China is not sitting there minding their own business or of no concern to anyone else in a diplomatic or international relations sense. It wants to be a major player, understandably, and major players face opposition.
Nonsense. This can only be about protecting the UKs interests in the long term.
So how does simultaneously allowing China to buy up our nations assets and be owner of our debt achieve that?
At the moment the governments position is merely hypocrisy.
Former French Ambassador to the US seems pretty chilled about the whole thing. Exuding Gallic sangfroid and a sense of "meh"
"“The US has trampled our national interest. What the US has done to our national interest is a hostile act,” he said.
"“What we were doing with the Australians was a strategic choice and this strategic choice has been swept away not only by the Australians but also by the Americans.”
"He said the British involvement was immaterial because they were “poodles of the Americans, as usual”."
Biden has single-handedly taken a wrecking ball to the western alliances. Putin and Xi must wondering why the hell they bothered with that amateur Trump.
Biden has gone up, a lot, in my estimation. He instinctively senses that NATO is over. And it is
Russia is not a strategic threat to the West. It just isn't. Its economy is too small and its people too drunk
They might try another Crimea on the Baltics, but I doubt it. They export virtually nothing but conventional oil, which is increasingly worthless, as energy gets cheaper, because renewables, shale, etc.
Xi Jinping's China, by contrast, is the greatest "threat" the West has faced in a couple of centuries. Worse than Nazi Germany
All that matters is containing her (we cannot "defeat" her). And that means rock-solid alliances with close friends ensuring that we stand together, whatever. That is how you beat bullies
Yes, even though I think his economic policies are turning into a disaster and he is obviously losing his capabilities, when it comes to foreign affairs I have a lot of grudging respect for the fact that Biden has turned out to be so fundamentally ruthless and willing to break the cosy consensus. I’d be interested to see how long Blinken stays around
Yep. I think he is a bit senile, and foolish in some respects, but when it comes to foreign policy he has clear instincts and wise opinions: as to what is in America's interest, and he has a certain heartless brutality in seeing them done. If you want to boss a superpower, I guess that is important
So this will kill 100,000 Afghans? So be it. So this will kill off our relationship with France for 3 years? So be it
Etc. Not pretty, but maybe needed
It won't kill the US-French relationship.
The French are players. They are making massive scene out of this, so that the Americans throw them a bone in some other area.
I'm not so sure that will happen. The Biden administration has continually sidelined Europe. I just don't think they care and don't see any EU country as a potential ally in the looming cold war against China. I wrote out my thoughts just now, the world has realised that the EU is happy to kowtow to China for fear of losing money.
I think you're wrong on this. For a start, I think it would be a catastrophic mistake to cleave the Western European democracies (most of whom don't really want to "kowtow" to China) off from the Anglosphere.
Re the French, I'm thinking more of them getting US support for a French candidate to be next General Secretary of the United Nations, that kind of thing. It's the kind of quid pro quo that the French are very good at getting.
As I've been saying for a while, I take no joy from the fracturing of the western alliance. However, we need to be realistic. Germany controls the EU and Germany is a mercantile state, it is for sale to the highest bidder. They simply don't care to whom they sell BMWs or dishwashers as long as the bill is paid and Germans get jobs out of it.
I'm sure there will be grand words in a few months but the direction of travel has been clear for a while, even Obama was very sceptical of the "old world" as he termed it. What's changed is that with Brexit we've also become sceptical of the very same old world and now our interests are much more aligned with the US and looking towards the looming cold war with China in a way that Europe won't.
I'm sorry, I completely disagree.
Germany is not one thing, any more than the UK is one thing. It is grossly simplistic and demeaning to cast aside a Democratic country, with the rule of law, as somehow to sale for the highest bidder.
Ultimately, Merkel thought it was a good idea to get on stage with Xi and denounce the US. It was a huge error on their part but also gave us all incredible insight as to where Germany's interests lie. They will deal with the devil to do god's work, and for them god's work is the enrichment of the German state and people. Germany is a nation that will not take any economic hardship to pursue foreign policy goals. We know this. How can we rely on them as an ally when they've already been so unreliable. As long as they can make money and keep Germans employed by selling goods to China we have to count them out and, IMO, the rest of the EU.
I think you are diagnosing the wrong cause. Germany's overriding lesson they took from the 20th Century is to not upset any great powers. Get on with everyone important. Avoid wars through dialogue.
Are they not able to differentiate between liberal democratic powers like the UK and USA, and authoritarian regimes like China?
What about the authoritarian regime known as Saudi Arabia who we seem to have no problem with when buying their oil?
Former French Ambassador to the US seems pretty chilled about the whole thing. Exuding Gallic sangfroid and a sense of "meh"
"“The US has trampled our national interest. What the US has done to our national interest is a hostile act,” he said.
"“What we were doing with the Australians was a strategic choice and this strategic choice has been swept away not only by the Australians but also by the Americans.”
"He said the British involvement was immaterial because they were “poodles of the Americans, as usual”."
Biden has single-handedly taken a wrecking ball to the western alliances. Putin and Xi must wondering why the hell they bothered with that amateur Trump.
Biden has gone up, a lot, in my estimation. He instinctively senses that NATO is over. And it is
Russia is not a strategic threat to the West. It just isn't. Its economy is too small and its people too drunk
They might try another Crimea on the Baltics, but I doubt it. They export virtually nothing but conventional oil, which is increasingly worthless, as energy gets cheaper, because renewables, shale, etc.
Xi Jinping's China, by contrast, is the greatest "threat" the West has faced in a couple of centuries. Worse than Nazi Germany
All that matters is containing her (we cannot "defeat" her). And that means rock-solid alliances with close friends ensuring that we stand together, whatever. That is how you beat bullies
Yes, even though I think his economic policies are turning into a disaster and he is obviously losing his capabilities, when it comes to foreign affairs I have a lot of grudging respect for the fact that Biden has turned out to be so fundamentally ruthless and willing to break the cosy consensus. I’d be interested to see how long Blinken stays around
Yep. I think he is a bit senile, and foolish in some respects, but when it comes to foreign policy he has clear instincts and wise opinions: as to what is in America's interest, and he has a certain heartless brutality in seeing them done. If you want to boss a superpower, I guess that is important
So this will kill 100,000 Afghans? So be it. So this will kill off our relationship with France for 3 years? So be it
Etc. Not pretty, but maybe needed
It won't kill the US-French relationship.
The French are players. They are making massive scene out of this, so that the Americans throw them a bone in some other area.
I'm not so sure that will happen. The Biden administration has continually sidelined Europe. I just don't think they care and don't see any EU country as a potential ally in the looming cold war against China. I wrote out my thoughts just now, the world has realised that the EU is happy to kowtow to China for fear of losing money.
I think you're wrong on this. For a start, I think it would be a catastrophic mistake to cleave the Western European democracies (most of whom don't really want to "kowtow" to China) off from the Anglosphere.
Re the French, I'm thinking more of them getting US support for a French candidate to be next General Secretary of the United Nations, that kind of thing. It's the kind of quid pro quo that the French are very good at getting.
Indeed, especially as Putin is more of a direct threat to us than Xi is and we need French support within NATO for containing Russia.
Jihadi terrorism is also a direct threat to us we need French intelligence cooperation on
You need to catch up with the 21st century, Putin is not the threat to us.
Putin is like a spotty 4chan Incel troll in comparison to Xi.
He does have the ability to create mischief, though, and does need to be opposed. In particular, the Russian funding and support for groups that oppose fracking in the UK (to use one example) should be exposed. We cannot allow them to interfere in our democratic systems for their own benefit.
Putin has been quiet for a number of years now when it comes to the West and even the Ukraine. He has issues on the domestic front which are more pressing.
He’s also got issues on the Eastern front with China. That relationship is not as close as some assume.
If the question is: is Russia a poor country, with enormous challenges, and terrible deographics, whose major export is fucked by technology?
Then the answer is yes.
Russia's total exports are lower than Belgium's. And it's all oil and gas and coal.
But they have worked tirelessly to spread disinformation, especially around fracking, and have managed to effectively stall it completely in the UK, as well as maanging to get it banned in a bunch of resource poor countries in Europe. And they've done this via a combination of ways.
Now, one can say "of course they have, they are dependent on exporting energy and if people don't import energy then they're fucked."
But that doesn't excuse their behaviour - which (in Austria) reached the level of bribing politicians. And we do need to stand up to it. Just because they're not the number one problem doesn't mean we should pretend they are somehow OK.
Former French Ambassador to the US seems pretty chilled about the whole thing. Exuding Gallic sangfroid and a sense of "meh"
"“The US has trampled our national interest. What the US has done to our national interest is a hostile act,” he said.
"“What we were doing with the Australians was a strategic choice and this strategic choice has been swept away not only by the Australians but also by the Americans.”
"He said the British involvement was immaterial because they were “poodles of the Americans, as usual”."
Biden has single-handedly taken a wrecking ball to the western alliances. Putin and Xi must wondering why the hell they bothered with that amateur Trump.
Biden has gone up, a lot, in my estimation. He instinctively senses that NATO is over. And it is
Russia is not a strategic threat to the West. It just isn't. Its economy is too small and its people too drunk
They might try another Crimea on the Baltics, but I doubt it. They export virtually nothing but conventional oil, which is increasingly worthless, as energy gets cheaper, because renewables, shale, etc.
Xi Jinping's China, by contrast, is the greatest "threat" the West has faced in a couple of centuries. Worse than Nazi Germany
All that matters is containing her (we cannot "defeat" her). And that means rock-solid alliances with close friends ensuring that we stand together, whatever. That is how you beat bullies
Yes, even though I think his economic policies are turning into a disaster and he is obviously losing his capabilities, when it comes to foreign affairs I have a lot of grudging respect for the fact that Biden has turned out to be so fundamentally ruthless and willing to break the cosy consensus. I’d be interested to see how long Blinken stays around
Yep. I think he is a bit senile, and foolish in some respects, but when it comes to foreign policy he has clear instincts and wise opinions: as to what is in America's interest, and he has a certain heartless brutality in seeing them done. If you want to boss a superpower, I guess that is important
So this will kill 100,000 Afghans? So be it. So this will kill off our relationship with France for 3 years? So be it
Etc. Not pretty, but maybe needed
It won't kill the US-French relationship.
The French are players. They are making massive scene out of this, so that the Americans throw them a bone in some other area.
I'm not so sure that will happen. The Biden administration has continually sidelined Europe. I just don't think they care and don't see any EU country as a potential ally in the looming cold war against China. I wrote out my thoughts just now, the world has realised that the EU is happy to kowtow to China for fear of losing money.
I think you're wrong on this. For a start, I think it would be a catastrophic mistake to cleave the Western European democracies (most of whom don't really want to "kowtow" to China) off from the Anglosphere.
Re the French, I'm thinking more of them getting US support for a French candidate to be next General Secretary of the United Nations, that kind of thing. It's the kind of quid pro quo that the French are very good at getting.
Indeed, especially as Putin is more of a direct threat to us than Xi is and we need French support within NATO for containing Russia.
Jihadi terrorism is also a direct threat to us we need French intelligence cooperation on
The narrative is moving on and I doubt NATO as we know it will be recognisable soon
You simply do not see that the threat is China not Russia, and as far as France is concerned while they will not be in the tripartite agreement, both France and Canada and others will have a role to play in the South China seas
Why should we be fannying around in the South China Sea? I doubt we'd want the Chinese navy steaming up and down the English Channel. This kind of imperial delusion is embarrassing, and will only end in tears like it always does. It's like Suez, or for that matter Iraq, never happened. If we've got money to waste on these stupid dick-waving exercises, how about we pay our nurses properly, or fund education adequately, or don't cut universal credit?
Because the South China Sea matters for our own economy and the entire global trading system and does not belong to China. The English Channel is our territorial waters.
We aren't messing around in Chinese waters but we sure as hell need to ensure that international waters through which our 21st century trading system is built upon is kept free and open for all to use.
If Taiwan falls and the microchips they export are seized by China and blocked from export our entire economic system could collapse. Then we couldn't pay a fraction of what we pay now to our nurses, or teachers, or welfare.
Are you going to sign up then so you can do your duty and defend Taiwan? Why would China want to collapse the global economy, which they rely on far more than we do?
No need to sign up since if we do this right there will be no actual fighting. That's the point of a Cold War in fact, to avoid the actual fighting. Containment works better through deterrence than through conflict and we and our allies have professionals to do that much better than you or I ever could.
China is a paranoid Communist dictatorship that has been flexing its muscles not a liberal free market democracy. Forgive me if I won't put my faith in China's goodwill.
Goodwill and self interest are two different things. Xi is a repulsive scumbag but his party's hold on power relies on delivering stability and prosperity, and he's not going to jeopardise that by doing anything crazy. Historically speaking we are a far more aggressive, violent, murderous and expansionary culture than China is. They should be more afraid of us than vice versa.
Imagine if China, Russia and Myanmar announced a “tech sharing defence alliance” focused on nuclear subs.
If they were liberal democracies, I wouldn't be worried. The problem is they are dictatorships that brutalize their own citizens, so are clearly pretty prone to violence which can also be directed externally.
Yeah, democracies like the US and UK would never direct any violence externally, by for instance illegally invading another country and killing thousands of its citizens on the basis of made up "intelligence" and lies about links to 9/11.
And those events prevent criticism or action, of any kind, against or in opposition to regimes who are, even with those examples, far far worse?
No, but it does weaken the "The problem is they are dictatorships ... so are clearly pretty prone to violence which can also be directed externally" aspect of the point. You gotta love living in a democracy. But if you are the victim of a foreign invasion, seeing your wedding blown up or your cousin disappeared to some torture dungeon in the middle of the night, you don't really care if it's a democracy doing it or a dictatorship. I wonder whether democracies are better neighbours than anyone else.
I think its important to reflect on the moral failings that still exist under or from democracies, else we won't improve. But I do think too much navel gazing on it results in a kind of false equivalence, or nonchalance, toward some truly truly despicable regimes, and hesitation in confronting them in anyway or by thinking there is no real difference between them. I think they'd love for us, and their people, to think none of that really matters, which is not your intent I know, but can result from too much pondering our own culture's failings.
Former French Ambassador to the US seems pretty chilled about the whole thing. Exuding Gallic sangfroid and a sense of "meh"
"“The US has trampled our national interest. What the US has done to our national interest is a hostile act,” he said.
"“What we were doing with the Australians was a strategic choice and this strategic choice has been swept away not only by the Australians but also by the Americans.”
"He said the British involvement was immaterial because they were “poodles of the Americans, as usual”."
Biden has single-handedly taken a wrecking ball to the western alliances. Putin and Xi must wondering why the hell they bothered with that amateur Trump.
Biden has gone up, a lot, in my estimation. He instinctively senses that NATO is over. And it is
Russia is not a strategic threat to the West. It just isn't. Its economy is too small and its people too drunk
They might try another Crimea on the Baltics, but I doubt it. They export virtually nothing but conventional oil, which is increasingly worthless, as energy gets cheaper, because renewables, shale, etc.
Xi Jinping's China, by contrast, is the greatest "threat" the West has faced in a couple of centuries. Worse than Nazi Germany
All that matters is containing her (we cannot "defeat" her). And that means rock-solid alliances with close friends ensuring that we stand together, whatever. That is how you beat bullies
Yes, even though I think his economic policies are turning into a disaster and he is obviously losing his capabilities, when it comes to foreign affairs I have a lot of grudging respect for the fact that Biden has turned out to be so fundamentally ruthless and willing to break the cosy consensus. I’d be interested to see how long Blinken stays around
Yep. I think he is a bit senile, and foolish in some respects, but when it comes to foreign policy he has clear instincts and wise opinions: as to what is in America's interest, and he has a certain heartless brutality in seeing them done. If you want to boss a superpower, I guess that is important
So this will kill 100,000 Afghans? So be it. So this will kill off our relationship with France for 3 years? So be it
Etc. Not pretty, but maybe needed
It won't kill the US-French relationship.
The French are players. They are making massive scene out of this, so that the Americans throw them a bone in some other area.
I'm not so sure that will happen. The Biden administration has continually sidelined Europe. I just don't think they care and don't see any EU country as a potential ally in the looming cold war against China. I wrote out my thoughts just now, the world has realised that the EU is happy to kowtow to China for fear of losing money.
I think you're wrong on this. For a start, I think it would be a catastrophic mistake to cleave the Western European democracies (most of whom don't really want to "kowtow" to China) off from the Anglosphere.
Re the French, I'm thinking more of them getting US support for a French candidate to be next General Secretary of the United Nations, that kind of thing. It's the kind of quid pro quo that the French are very good at getting.
As I've been saying for a while, I take no joy from the fracturing of the western alliance. However, we need to be realistic. Germany controls the EU and Germany is a mercantile state, it is for sale to the highest bidder. They simply don't care to whom they sell BMWs or dishwashers as long as the bill is paid and Germans get jobs out of it.
I'm sure there will be grand words in a few months but the direction of travel has been clear for a while, even Obama was very sceptical of the "old world" as he termed it. What's changed is that with Brexit we've also become sceptical of the very same old world and now our interests are much more aligned with the US and looking towards the looming cold war with China in a way that Europe won't.
I'm sorry, I completely disagree.
Germany is not one thing, any more than the UK is one thing. It is grossly simplistic and demeaning to cast aside a Democratic country, with the rule of law, as somehow to sale for the highest bidder.
Ultimately, Merkel thought it was a good idea to get on stage with Xi and denounce the US. It was a huge error on their part but also gave us all incredible insight as to where Germany's interests lie. They will deal with the devil to do god's work, and for them god's work is the enrichment of the German state and people. Germany is a nation that will not take any economic hardship to pursue foreign policy goals. We know this. How can we rely on them as an ally when they've already been so unreliable. As long as they can make money and keep Germans employed by selling goods to China we have to count them out and, IMO, the rest of the EU.
I think you are diagnosing the wrong cause. Germany's overriding lesson they took from the 20th Century is to not upset any great powers. Get on with everyone important. Avoid wars through dialogue.
Are they not able to differentiate between liberal democratic powers like the UK and USA, and authoritarian regimes like China?
What about the authoritarian regime known as Saudi Arabia who we seem to have no problem with when buying their oil?
Back from hospital. Still not sorted. ENT people in Morecambe. Apparently they wander round the North West like travelling minstrels.
Barrow Hospital seemingly unable to look down Husband's throat. They seem to think it a mere scratch but since he spits bits of walnut out every time he chokes and can feel the bloody thing in his throat they are talking out of their arse. Which is what he will be doing soon at this rate. He still can't swallow or eat food. So is surviving on Buscopan and tea.
Been referred to ENT and as he can't eat let's hope they get round to do their laying on of hands or dispensing of blessings with some degree of urgency.
Himself commented that one of the other patients was an extremely fat girl, the sort of fatness, he said, where you can't tell where one limb ends and another begins. She had a rucksack with her, from which she proceeded to take out chocolate lollies and eat them.
After heroically restraining myself from killing the annoying children in the nearby cafe, I burst into tears out of sheer tiredness and frustration in the supermarket and a very kind lady was very nice to me and asked me if my husband had dementia.
Former French Ambassador to the US seems pretty chilled about the whole thing. Exuding Gallic sangfroid and a sense of "meh"
"“The US has trampled our national interest. What the US has done to our national interest is a hostile act,” he said.
"“What we were doing with the Australians was a strategic choice and this strategic choice has been swept away not only by the Australians but also by the Americans.”
"He said the British involvement was immaterial because they were “poodles of the Americans, as usual”."
Biden has single-handedly taken a wrecking ball to the western alliances. Putin and Xi must wondering why the hell they bothered with that amateur Trump.
Biden has gone up, a lot, in my estimation. He instinctively senses that NATO is over. And it is
Russia is not a strategic threat to the West. It just isn't. Its economy is too small and its people too drunk
They might try another Crimea on the Baltics, but I doubt it. They export virtually nothing but conventional oil, which is increasingly worthless, as energy gets cheaper, because renewables, shale, etc.
Xi Jinping's China, by contrast, is the greatest "threat" the West has faced in a couple of centuries. Worse than Nazi Germany
All that matters is containing her (we cannot "defeat" her). And that means rock-solid alliances with close friends ensuring that we stand together, whatever. That is how you beat bullies
Yes, even though I think his economic policies are turning into a disaster and he is obviously losing his capabilities, when it comes to foreign affairs I have a lot of grudging respect for the fact that Biden has turned out to be so fundamentally ruthless and willing to break the cosy consensus. I’d be interested to see how long Blinken stays around
Yep. I think he is a bit senile, and foolish in some respects, but when it comes to foreign policy he has clear instincts and wise opinions: as to what is in America's interest, and he has a certain heartless brutality in seeing them done. If you want to boss a superpower, I guess that is important
So this will kill 100,000 Afghans? So be it. So this will kill off our relationship with France for 3 years? So be it
Etc. Not pretty, but maybe needed
It won't kill the US-French relationship.
The French are players. They are making massive scene out of this, so that the Americans throw them a bone in some other area.
I'm not so sure that will happen. The Biden administration has continually sidelined Europe. I just don't think they care and don't see any EU country as a potential ally in the looming cold war against China. I wrote out my thoughts just now, the world has realised that the EU is happy to kowtow to China for fear of losing money.
I think you're wrong on this. For a start, I think it would be a catastrophic mistake to cleave the Western European democracies (most of whom don't really want to "kowtow" to China) off from the Anglosphere.
Re the French, I'm thinking more of them getting US support for a French candidate to be next General Secretary of the United Nations, that kind of thing. It's the kind of quid pro quo that the French are very good at getting.
Indeed, especially as Putin is more of a direct threat to us than Xi is and we need French support within NATO for containing Russia.
Jihadi terrorism is also a direct threat to us we need French intelligence cooperation on
The narrative is moving on and I doubt NATO as we know it will be recognisable soon
You simply do not see that the threat is China not Russia, and as far as France is concerned while they will not be in the tripartite agreement, both France and Canada and others will have a role to play in the South China seas
Why should we be fannying around in the South China Sea? I doubt we'd want the Chinese navy steaming up and down the English Channel. This kind of imperial delusion is embarrassing, and will only end in tears like it always does. It's like Suez, or for that matter Iraq, never happened. If we've got money to waste on these stupid dick-waving exercises, how about we pay our nurses properly, or fund education adequately, or don't cut universal credit?
Because the South China Sea matters for our own economy and the entire global trading system and does not belong to China. The English Channel is our territorial waters.
We aren't messing around in Chinese waters but we sure as hell need to ensure that international waters through which our 21st century trading system is built upon is kept free and open for all to use.
If Taiwan falls and the microchips they export are seized by China and blocked from export our entire economic system could collapse. Then we couldn't pay a fraction of what we pay now to our nurses, or teachers, or welfare.
Are you going to sign up then so you can do your duty and defend Taiwan? Why would China want to collapse the global economy, which they rely on far more than we do?
No need to sign up since if we do this right there will be no actual fighting. That's the point of a Cold War in fact, to avoid the actual fighting. Containment works better through deterrence than through conflict and we and our allies have professionals to do that much better than you or I ever could.
China is a paranoid Communist dictatorship that has been flexing its muscles not a liberal free market democracy. Forgive me if I won't put my faith in China's goodwill.
Goodwill and self interest are two different things. Xi is a repulsive scumbag but his party's hold on power relies on delivering stability and prosperity, and he's not going to jeopardise that by doing anything crazy. Historically speaking we are a far more aggressive, violent, murderous and expansionary culture than China is. They should be more afraid of us than vice versa.
Imagine if China, Russia and Myanmar announced a “tech sharing defence alliance” focused on nuclear subs.
If they were liberal democracies, I wouldn't be worried. The problem is they are dictatorships that brutalize their own citizens, so are clearly pretty prone to violence which can also be directed externally.
Sure.
I’m just trying to get Pbers to flip the perspective a bit.
I kowtow to nobody in my China-skepticism, but this is not China aggressing the West, but the West asserting a posture toward China.
It isn't happening in a vacuum. Have you seen the posturing diplomacy China engages in? Tit for tat is not in itself justification for measures, and in a proper context warning against some new cold war type situation is not inherently a bad thing, but it's not as though the West has just woken up on the wrong side of the bed and decided to assert a posture toward China for no reason, China is not sitting there minding their own business or of no concern to anyone else in a diplomatic or international relations sense. It wants to be a major player, understandably, and major players face opposition.
Nonsense. This can only be about protecting the UKs interests in the long term.
So how does simultaneously allowing China to buy up our nations assets and be owner of our debt achieve that?
At the moment the governments position is merely hypocrisy.
I've not said anything about this not being about protecting the UKs interests. I assume that's what all our foreign policy is about. My point was that talk of this not being China aggressing the West but the West asserting a posture seems to ignore that everyone is asserting postures all the time, and responding to the postures of others. This latest move is in response to China's own, which was in response to ours, which was in response to theirs, etc etc. Whereas the bit I responded to makes it seem like an action without context.
Back from hospital. Still not sorted. ENT people in Morecambe. Apparently they wander round the North West like travelling minstrels.
Barrow Hospital seemingly unable to look down Husband's throat. They seem to think it a mere scratch but since he spits bits of walnut out every time he chokes and can feel the bloody thing in his throat they are talking out of their arse. Which is what he will be doing soon at this rate. He still can't swallow or eat food. So is surviving on Buscopan and tea.
Been referred to ENT and as he can't eat let's hope they get round to do their laying on of hands or dispensing of blessings with some degree of urgency.
Himself commented that one of the other patients was an extremely fat girl, the sort of fatness, he said, where you can't tell where one limb ends and another begins. She had a rucksack with her, from which she proceeded to take out chocolate lollies and eat them.
After heroically restraining myself from killing the annoying children in the nearby cafe, I burst into tears out of sheer tiredness and frustration in the supermarket and a very kind lady was very nice to me and asked me if my husband had dementia.
Which sort of sums up the last 36 hours.
😢
Sounds fucking awful. Really sorry to hear. The extremely fat girl anecdote is mildly amusing, though.
Back from hospital. Still not sorted. ENT people in Morecambe. Apparently they wander round the North West like travelling minstrels.
Barrow Hospital seemingly unable to look down Husband's throat. They seem to think it a mere scratch but since he spits bits of walnut out every time he chokes and can feel the bloody thing in his throat they are talking out of their arse. Which is what he will be doing soon at this rate. He still can't swallow or eat food. So is surviving on Buscopan and tea.
Been referred to ENT and as he can't eat let's hope they get round to do their laying on of hands or dispensing of blessings with some degree of urgency.
Himself commented that one of the other patients was an extremely fat girl, the sort of fatness, he said, where you can't tell where one limb ends and another begins. She had a rucksack with her, from which she proceeded to take out chocolate lollies and eat them.
After heroically restraining myself from killing the annoying children in the nearby cafe, I burst into tears out of sheer tiredness and frustration in the supermarket and a very kind lady was very nice to me and asked me if my husband had dementia.
Former French Ambassador to the US seems pretty chilled about the whole thing. Exuding Gallic sangfroid and a sense of "meh"
"“The US has trampled our national interest. What the US has done to our national interest is a hostile act,” he said.
"“What we were doing with the Australians was a strategic choice and this strategic choice has been swept away not only by the Australians but also by the Americans.”
"He said the British involvement was immaterial because they were “poodles of the Americans, as usual”."
Biden has single-handedly taken a wrecking ball to the western alliances. Putin and Xi must wondering why the hell they bothered with that amateur Trump.
Biden has gone up, a lot, in my estimation. He instinctively senses that NATO is over. And it is
Russia is not a strategic threat to the West. It just isn't. Its economy is too small and its people too drunk
They might try another Crimea on the Baltics, but I doubt it. They export virtually nothing but conventional oil, which is increasingly worthless, as energy gets cheaper, because renewables, shale, etc.
Xi Jinping's China, by contrast, is the greatest "threat" the West has faced in a couple of centuries. Worse than Nazi Germany
All that matters is containing her (we cannot "defeat" her). And that means rock-solid alliances with close friends ensuring that we stand together, whatever. That is how you beat bullies
Yes, even though I think his economic policies are turning into a disaster and he is obviously losing his capabilities, when it comes to foreign affairs I have a lot of grudging respect for the fact that Biden has turned out to be so fundamentally ruthless and willing to break the cosy consensus. I’d be interested to see how long Blinken stays around
Yep. I think he is a bit senile, and foolish in some respects, but when it comes to foreign policy he has clear instincts and wise opinions: as to what is in America's interest, and he has a certain heartless brutality in seeing them done. If you want to boss a superpower, I guess that is important
So this will kill 100,000 Afghans? So be it. So this will kill off our relationship with France for 3 years? So be it
Etc. Not pretty, but maybe needed
It won't kill the US-French relationship.
The French are players. They are making massive scene out of this, so that the Americans throw them a bone in some other area.
I'm not so sure that will happen. The Biden administration has continually sidelined Europe. I just don't think they care and don't see any EU country as a potential ally in the looming cold war against China. I wrote out my thoughts just now, the world has realised that the EU is happy to kowtow to China for fear of losing money.
I think you're wrong on this. For a start, I think it would be a catastrophic mistake to cleave the Western European democracies (most of whom don't really want to "kowtow" to China) off from the Anglosphere.
Re the French, I'm thinking more of them getting US support for a French candidate to be next General Secretary of the United Nations, that kind of thing. It's the kind of quid pro quo that the French are very good at getting.
As I've been saying for a while, I take no joy from the fracturing of the western alliance. However, we need to be realistic. Germany controls the EU and Germany is a mercantile state, it is for sale to the highest bidder. They simply don't care to whom they sell BMWs or dishwashers as long as the bill is paid and Germans get jobs out of it.
I'm sure there will be grand words in a few months but the direction of travel has been clear for a while, even Obama was very sceptical of the "old world" as he termed it. What's changed is that with Brexit we've also become sceptical of the very same old world and now our interests are much more aligned with the US and looking towards the looming cold war with China in a way that Europe won't.
I'm sorry, I completely disagree.
Germany is not one thing, any more than the UK is one thing. It is grossly simplistic and demeaning to cast aside a Democratic country, with the rule of law, as somehow to sale for the highest bidder.
Ultimately, Merkel thought it was a good idea to get on stage with Xi and denounce the US. It was a huge error on their part but also gave us all incredible insight as to where Germany's interests lie. They will deal with the devil to do god's work, and for them god's work is the enrichment of the German state and people. Germany is a nation that will not take any economic hardship to pursue foreign policy goals. We know this. How can we rely on them as an ally when they've already been so unreliable. As long as they can make money and keep Germans employed by selling goods to China we have to count them out and, IMO, the rest of the EU.
I think you are diagnosing the wrong cause. Germany's overriding lesson they took from the 20th Century is to not upset any great powers. Get on with everyone important. Avoid wars through dialogue.
Are they not able to differentiate between liberal democratic powers like the UK and USA, and authoritarian regimes like China?
What about the authoritarian regime known as Saudi Arabia who we seem to have no problem with when buying their oil?
Especially if we can recoup a large chunk of it by flogging off megadeath weaponry for use on their weaker, poorer neighbours
The gravity theory of trace is still highly explanatory in terms of explaining how likely you are to trade goods with another country, and a bit less but still pretty good for explaining trade in services.
I’m all for the CPTPP, but we’re kind of stuck with 50+% of our trade being with EEA countries for quite some time.
That'd be a good point.
Except its already below that. And falling. And that's before post-Brexit adjustments.
Also, contra your batshit rhapsody upthread, Britain traded mostly with what is now the EEA even during the imperial preference era.
You can’t beat gravity.
The EU was <45% and falling share of our exports in 2017. That's pre-pandemic.
Imperial preference era doesn't negate my point, it emphasises it. Europe in the imperial preference era absolutely dominated the global economy so of course it was the bulk of our trade then. Plus technology has moved on much more than a touch since then. 🤦♂️
The European share of the global economy has collapsed since then, and its share of our trade has accordingly. Because "gravity" is not the be-all and end-all which is why the majority of our exports already go beyond the EU.
Former French Ambassador to the US seems pretty chilled about the whole thing. Exuding Gallic sangfroid and a sense of "meh"
"“The US has trampled our national interest. What the US has done to our national interest is a hostile act,” he said.
"“What we were doing with the Australians was a strategic choice and this strategic choice has been swept away not only by the Australians but also by the Americans.”
"He said the British involvement was immaterial because they were “poodles of the Americans, as usual”."
Biden has single-handedly taken a wrecking ball to the western alliances. Putin and Xi must wondering why the hell they bothered with that amateur Trump.
Biden has gone up, a lot, in my estimation. He instinctively senses that NATO is over. And it is
Russia is not a strategic threat to the West. It just isn't. Its economy is too small and its people too drunk
They might try another Crimea on the Baltics, but I doubt it. They export virtually nothing but conventional oil, which is increasingly worthless, as energy gets cheaper, because renewables, shale, etc.
Xi Jinping's China, by contrast, is the greatest "threat" the West has faced in a couple of centuries. Worse than Nazi Germany
All that matters is containing her (we cannot "defeat" her). And that means rock-solid alliances with close friends ensuring that we stand together, whatever. That is how you beat bullies
Yes, even though I think his economic policies are turning into a disaster and he is obviously losing his capabilities, when it comes to foreign affairs I have a lot of grudging respect for the fact that Biden has turned out to be so fundamentally ruthless and willing to break the cosy consensus. I’d be interested to see how long Blinken stays around
Yep. I think he is a bit senile, and foolish in some respects, but when it comes to foreign policy he has clear instincts and wise opinions: as to what is in America's interest, and he has a certain heartless brutality in seeing them done. If you want to boss a superpower, I guess that is important
So this will kill 100,000 Afghans? So be it. So this will kill off our relationship with France for 3 years? So be it
Etc. Not pretty, but maybe needed
It won't kill the US-French relationship.
The French are players. They are making massive scene out of this, so that the Americans throw them a bone in some other area.
I'm not so sure that will happen. The Biden administration has continually sidelined Europe. I just don't think they care and don't see any EU country as a potential ally in the looming cold war against China. I wrote out my thoughts just now, the world has realised that the EU is happy to kowtow to China for fear of losing money.
I think you're wrong on this. For a start, I think it would be a catastrophic mistake to cleave the Western European democracies (most of whom don't really want to "kowtow" to China) off from the Anglosphere.
Re the French, I'm thinking more of them getting US support for a French candidate to be next General Secretary of the United Nations, that kind of thing. It's the kind of quid pro quo that the French are very good at getting.
Indeed, especially as Putin is more of a direct threat to us than Xi is and we need French support within NATO for containing Russia.
Jihadi terrorism is also a direct threat to us we need French intelligence cooperation on
The narrative is moving on and I doubt NATO as we know it will be recognisable soon
You simply do not see that the threat is China not Russia, and as far as France is concerned while they will not be in the tripartite agreement, both France and Canada and others will have a role to play in the South China seas
Why should we be fannying around in the South China Sea? I doubt we'd want the Chinese navy steaming up and down the English Channel. This kind of imperial delusion is embarrassing, and will only end in tears like it always does. It's like Suez, or for that matter Iraq, never happened. If we've got money to waste on these stupid dick-waving exercises, how about we pay our nurses properly, or fund education adequately, or don't cut universal credit?
Because the South China Sea matters for our own economy and the entire global trading system and does not belong to China. The English Channel is our territorial waters.
We aren't messing around in Chinese waters but we sure as hell need to ensure that international waters through which our 21st century trading system is built upon is kept free and open for all to use.
If Taiwan falls and the microchips they export are seized by China and blocked from export our entire economic system could collapse. Then we couldn't pay a fraction of what we pay now to our nurses, or teachers, or welfare.
Are you going to sign up then so you can do your duty and defend Taiwan? Why would China want to collapse the global economy, which they rely on far more than we do?
No need to sign up since if we do this right there will be no actual fighting. That's the point of a Cold War in fact, to avoid the actual fighting. Containment works better through deterrence than through conflict and we and our allies have professionals to do that much better than you or I ever could.
China is a paranoid Communist dictatorship that has been flexing its muscles not a liberal free market democracy. Forgive me if I won't put my faith in China's goodwill.
Goodwill and self interest are two different things. Xi is a repulsive scumbag but his party's hold on power relies on delivering stability and prosperity, and he's not going to jeopardise that by doing anything crazy. Historically speaking we are a far more aggressive, violent, murderous and expansionary culture than China is. They should be more afraid of us than vice versa.
Imagine if China, Russia and Myanmar announced a “tech sharing defence alliance” focused on nuclear subs.
If they were liberal democracies, I wouldn't be worried. The problem is they are dictatorships that brutalize their own citizens, so are clearly pretty prone to violence which can also be directed externally.
Yeah, democracies like the US and UK would never direct any violence externally, by for instance illegally invading another country and killing thousands of its citizens on the basis of made up "intelligence" and lies about links to 9/11.
And those events prevent criticism or action, of any kind, against or in opposition to regimes who are, even with those examples, far far worse?
I merely offered it as a counterexample to the argument that liberal democracies can't be violent and dangerous, that's all. I am as big a fan of liberal democracy as you will find here. I even go so far as to advocate that we should practice it properly in this country, which is more than most of the China hawks on here do.
Back from hospital. Still not sorted. ENT people in Morecambe. Apparently they wander round the North West like travelling minstrels.
Barrow Hospital seemingly unable to look down Husband's throat. They seem to think it a mere scratch but since he spits bits of walnut out every time he chokes and can feel the bloody thing in his throat they are talking out of their arse. Which is what he will be doing soon at this rate. He still can't swallow or eat food. So is surviving on Buscopan and tea.
Been referred to ENT and as he can't eat let's hope they get round to do their laying on of hands or dispensing of blessings with some degree of urgency.
Himself commented that one of the other patients was an extremely fat girl, the sort of fatness, he said, where you can't tell where one limb ends and another begins. She had a rucksack with her, from which she proceeded to take out chocolate lollies and eat them.
After heroically restraining myself from killing the annoying children in the nearby cafe, I burst into tears out of sheer tiredness and frustration in the supermarket and a very kind lady was very nice to me and asked me if my husband had dementia.
Which sort of sums up the last 36 hours.
😢
Hope things get better. Sending a virtual hug and best wishes.
@RochdalePioneers I don’t know much about the Tees Area. But Historic England granted the “Dorman Long Tower” Grade II listing to prevent demolition 3 days ago.
According to Twitter, Nadine Dorries has rescinded this tonight, and demolition will proceed on Sunday.
Have you seen the Dorman Long tower? It's hideous.
Would it bring you cheer seeing that out of your front door every day? Really?
Former French Ambassador to the US seems pretty chilled about the whole thing. Exuding Gallic sangfroid and a sense of "meh"
"“The US has trampled our national interest. What the US has done to our national interest is a hostile act,” he said.
"“What we were doing with the Australians was a strategic choice and this strategic choice has been swept away not only by the Australians but also by the Americans.”
"He said the British involvement was immaterial because they were “poodles of the Americans, as usual”."
Biden has single-handedly taken a wrecking ball to the western alliances. Putin and Xi must wondering why the hell they bothered with that amateur Trump.
Biden has gone up, a lot, in my estimation. He instinctively senses that NATO is over. And it is
Russia is not a strategic threat to the West. It just isn't. Its economy is too small and its people too drunk
They might try another Crimea on the Baltics, but I doubt it. They export virtually nothing but conventional oil, which is increasingly worthless, as energy gets cheaper, because renewables, shale, etc.
Xi Jinping's China, by contrast, is the greatest "threat" the West has faced in a couple of centuries. Worse than Nazi Germany
All that matters is containing her (we cannot "defeat" her). And that means rock-solid alliances with close friends ensuring that we stand together, whatever. That is how you beat bullies
Yes, even though I think his economic policies are turning into a disaster and he is obviously losing his capabilities, when it comes to foreign affairs I have a lot of grudging respect for the fact that Biden has turned out to be so fundamentally ruthless and willing to break the cosy consensus. I’d be interested to see how long Blinken stays around
Yep. I think he is a bit senile, and foolish in some respects, but when it comes to foreign policy he has clear instincts and wise opinions: as to what is in America's interest, and he has a certain heartless brutality in seeing them done. If you want to boss a superpower, I guess that is important
So this will kill 100,000 Afghans? So be it. So this will kill off our relationship with France for 3 years? So be it
Etc. Not pretty, but maybe needed
It won't kill the US-French relationship.
The French are players. They are making massive scene out of this, so that the Americans throw them a bone in some other area.
I'm not so sure that will happen. The Biden administration has continually sidelined Europe. I just don't think they care and don't see any EU country as a potential ally in the looming cold war against China. I wrote out my thoughts just now, the world has realised that the EU is happy to kowtow to China for fear of losing money.
I think you're wrong on this. For a start, I think it would be a catastrophic mistake to cleave the Western European democracies (most of whom don't really want to "kowtow" to China) off from the Anglosphere.
Re the French, I'm thinking more of them getting US support for a French candidate to be next General Secretary of the United Nations, that kind of thing. It's the kind of quid pro quo that the French are very good at getting.
Indeed, especially as Putin is more of a direct threat to us than Xi is and we need French support within NATO for containing Russia.
Jihadi terrorism is also a direct threat to us we need French intelligence cooperation on
You need to catch up with the 21st century, Putin is not the threat to us.
Putin is like a spotty 4chan Incel troll in comparison to Xi.
He does have the ability to create mischief, though, and does need to be opposed. In particular, the Russian funding and support for groups that oppose fracking in the UK (to use one example) should be exposed. We cannot allow them to interfere in our democratic systems for their own benefit.
Putin has been quiet for a number of years now when it comes to the West and even the Ukraine. He has issues on the domestic front which are more pressing.
He’s also got issues on the Eastern front with China. That relationship is not as close as some assume.
If the question is: is Russia a poor country, with enormous challenges, and terrible deographics, whose major export is fucked by technology?
Then the answer is yes.
Russia's total exports are lower than Belgium's. And it's all oil and gas and coal.
But they have worked tirelessly to spread disinformation, especially around fracking, and have managed to effectively stall it completely in the UK, as well as maanging to get it banned in a bunch of resource poor countries in Europe. And they've done this via a combination of ways.
Now, one can say "of course they have, they are dependent on exporting energy and if people don't import energy then they're fucked."
But that doesn't excuse their behaviour - which (in Austria) reached the level of bribing politicians. And we do need to stand up to it. Just because they're not the number one problem doesn't mean we should pretend they are somehow OK.
Which is why the current links between Russian funds and the Conservatives is a scandal. But look! China.
Former French Ambassador to the US seems pretty chilled about the whole thing. Exuding Gallic sangfroid and a sense of "meh"
"“The US has trampled our national interest. What the US has done to our national interest is a hostile act,” he said.
"“What we were doing with the Australians was a strategic choice and this strategic choice has been swept away not only by the Australians but also by the Americans.”
"He said the British involvement was immaterial because they were “poodles of the Americans, as usual”."
Biden has single-handedly taken a wrecking ball to the western alliances. Putin and Xi must wondering why the hell they bothered with that amateur Trump.
Biden has gone up, a lot, in my estimation. He instinctively senses that NATO is over. And it is
Russia is not a strategic threat to the West. It just isn't. Its economy is too small and its people too drunk
They might try another Crimea on the Baltics, but I doubt it. They export virtually nothing but conventional oil, which is increasingly worthless, as energy gets cheaper, because renewables, shale, etc.
Xi Jinping's China, by contrast, is the greatest "threat" the West has faced in a couple of centuries. Worse than Nazi Germany
All that matters is containing her (we cannot "defeat" her). And that means rock-solid alliances with close friends ensuring that we stand together, whatever. That is how you beat bullies
Yes, even though I think his economic policies are turning into a disaster and he is obviously losing his capabilities, when it comes to foreign affairs I have a lot of grudging respect for the fact that Biden has turned out to be so fundamentally ruthless and willing to break the cosy consensus. I’d be interested to see how long Blinken stays around
Yep. I think he is a bit senile, and foolish in some respects, but when it comes to foreign policy he has clear instincts and wise opinions: as to what is in America's interest, and he has a certain heartless brutality in seeing them done. If you want to boss a superpower, I guess that is important
So this will kill 100,000 Afghans? So be it. So this will kill off our relationship with France for 3 years? So be it
Etc. Not pretty, but maybe needed
It won't kill the US-French relationship.
The French are players. They are making massive scene out of this, so that the Americans throw them a bone in some other area.
I'm not so sure that will happen. The Biden administration has continually sidelined Europe. I just don't think they care and don't see any EU country as a potential ally in the looming cold war against China. I wrote out my thoughts just now, the world has realised that the EU is happy to kowtow to China for fear of losing money.
I think you're wrong on this. For a start, I think it would be a catastrophic mistake to cleave the Western European democracies (most of whom don't really want to "kowtow" to China) off from the Anglosphere.
Re the French, I'm thinking more of them getting US support for a French candidate to be next General Secretary of the United Nations, that kind of thing. It's the kind of quid pro quo that the French are very good at getting.
Indeed, especially as Putin is more of a direct threat to us than Xi is and we need French support within NATO for containing Russia.
Jihadi terrorism is also a direct threat to us we need French intelligence cooperation on
The narrative is moving on and I doubt NATO as we know it will be recognisable soon
You simply do not see that the threat is China not Russia, and as far as France is concerned while they will not be in the tripartite agreement, both France and Canada and others will have a role to play in the South China seas
Why should we be fannying around in the South China Sea? I doubt we'd want the Chinese navy steaming up and down the English Channel. This kind of imperial delusion is embarrassing, and will only end in tears like it always does. It's like Suez, or for that matter Iraq, never happened. If we've got money to waste on these stupid dick-waving exercises, how about we pay our nurses properly, or fund education adequately, or don't cut universal credit?
Because the South China Sea matters for our own economy and the entire global trading system and does not belong to China. The English Channel is our territorial waters.
We aren't messing around in Chinese waters but we sure as hell need to ensure that international waters through which our 21st century trading system is built upon is kept free and open for all to use.
If Taiwan falls and the microchips they export are seized by China and blocked from export our entire economic system could collapse. Then we couldn't pay a fraction of what we pay now to our nurses, or teachers, or welfare.
Are you going to sign up then so you can do your duty and defend Taiwan? Why would China want to collapse the global economy, which they rely on far more than we do?
No need to sign up since if we do this right there will be no actual fighting. That's the point of a Cold War in fact, to avoid the actual fighting. Containment works better through deterrence than through conflict and we and our allies have professionals to do that much better than you or I ever could.
China is a paranoid Communist dictatorship that has been flexing its muscles not a liberal free market democracy. Forgive me if I won't put my faith in China's goodwill.
Goodwill and self interest are two different things. Xi is a repulsive scumbag but his party's hold on power relies on delivering stability and prosperity, and he's not going to jeopardise that by doing anything crazy. Historically speaking we are a far more aggressive, violent, murderous and expansionary culture than China is. They should be more afraid of us than vice versa.
Imagine if China, Russia and Myanmar announced a “tech sharing defence alliance” focused on nuclear subs.
If they were liberal democracies, I wouldn't be worried. The problem is they are dictatorships that brutalize their own citizens, so are clearly pretty prone to violence which can also be directed externally.
Sure.
I’m just trying to get Pbers to flip the perspective a bit.
I kowtow to nobody in my China-skepticism, but this is not China aggressing the West, but the West asserting a posture toward China.
It isn't happening in a vacuum. Have you seen the posturing diplomacy China engages in? Tit for tat is not in itself justification for measures, and in a proper context warning against some new cold war type situation is not inherently a bad thing, but it's not as though the West has just woken up on the wrong side of the bed and decided to assert a posture toward China for no reason, China is not sitting there minding their own business or of no concern to anyone else in a diplomatic or international relations sense. It wants to be a major player, understandably, and major players face opposition.
Nonsense. This can only be about protecting the UKs interests in the long term.
So how does simultaneously allowing China to buy up our nations assets and be owner of our debt achieve that?
At the moment the governments position is merely hypocrisy.
Is that bad? Debts the UK owes China consist of money the Chinese had that they now rely on British goodwill to get back. UK assets owned by China consist of assets the Chinese have that they now rely on British goodwill to protect.
Former French Ambassador to the US seems pretty chilled about the whole thing. Exuding Gallic sangfroid and a sense of "meh"
"“The US has trampled our national interest. What the US has done to our national interest is a hostile act,” he said.
"“What we were doing with the Australians was a strategic choice and this strategic choice has been swept away not only by the Australians but also by the Americans.”
"He said the British involvement was immaterial because they were “poodles of the Americans, as usual”."
Biden has single-handedly taken a wrecking ball to the western alliances. Putin and Xi must wondering why the hell they bothered with that amateur Trump.
Biden has gone up, a lot, in my estimation. He instinctively senses that NATO is over. And it is
Russia is not a strategic threat to the West. It just isn't. Its economy is too small and its people too drunk
They might try another Crimea on the Baltics, but I doubt it. They export virtually nothing but conventional oil, which is increasingly worthless, as energy gets cheaper, because renewables, shale, etc.
Xi Jinping's China, by contrast, is the greatest "threat" the West has faced in a couple of centuries. Worse than Nazi Germany
All that matters is containing her (we cannot "defeat" her). And that means rock-solid alliances with close friends ensuring that we stand together, whatever. That is how you beat bullies
Yes, even though I think his economic policies are turning into a disaster and he is obviously losing his capabilities, when it comes to foreign affairs I have a lot of grudging respect for the fact that Biden has turned out to be so fundamentally ruthless and willing to break the cosy consensus. I’d be interested to see how long Blinken stays around
Yep. I think he is a bit senile, and foolish in some respects, but when it comes to foreign policy he has clear instincts and wise opinions: as to what is in America's interest, and he has a certain heartless brutality in seeing them done. If you want to boss a superpower, I guess that is important
So this will kill 100,000 Afghans? So be it. So this will kill off our relationship with France for 3 years? So be it
Etc. Not pretty, but maybe needed
It won't kill the US-French relationship.
The French are players. They are making massive scene out of this, so that the Americans throw them a bone in some other area.
I'm not so sure that will happen. The Biden administration has continually sidelined Europe. I just don't think they care and don't see any EU country as a potential ally in the looming cold war against China. I wrote out my thoughts just now, the world has realised that the EU is happy to kowtow to China for fear of losing money.
I think you're wrong on this. For a start, I think it would be a catastrophic mistake to cleave the Western European democracies (most of whom don't really want to "kowtow" to China) off from the Anglosphere.
Re the French, I'm thinking more of them getting US support for a French candidate to be next General Secretary of the United Nations, that kind of thing. It's the kind of quid pro quo that the French are very good at getting.
Indeed, especially as Putin is more of a direct threat to us than Xi is and we need French support within NATO for containing Russia.
Jihadi terrorism is also a direct threat to us we need French intelligence cooperation on
You need to catch up with the 21st century, Putin is not the threat to us.
Putin is like a spotty 4chan Incel troll in comparison to Xi.
He does have the ability to create mischief, though, and does need to be opposed. In particular, the Russian funding and support for groups that oppose fracking in the UK (to use one example) should be exposed. We cannot allow them to interfere in our democratic systems for their own benefit.
Putin has been quiet for a number of years now when it comes to the West and even the Ukraine. He has issues on the domestic front which are more pressing.
He’s also got issues on the Eastern front with China. That relationship is not as close as some assume.
If the question is: is Russia a poor country, with enormous challenges, and terrible deographics, whose major export is fucked by technology?
Then the answer is yes.
Russia's total exports are lower than Belgium's. And it's all oil and gas and coal.
But they have worked tirelessly to spread disinformation, especially around fracking, and have managed to effectively stall it completely in the UK, as well as maanging to get it banned in a bunch of resource poor countries in Europe. And they've done this via a combination of ways.
Now, one can say "of course they have, they are dependent on exporting energy and if people don't import energy then they're fucked."
But that doesn't excuse their behaviour - which (in Austria) reached the level of bribing politicians. And we do need to stand up to it. Just because they're not the number one problem doesn't mean we should pretend they are somehow OK.
Oh absolutely agreed and the annoying thing is that is stymied by the "Green" ecomarxists.
It wouldn't surprise me if much of ecomarxism can trace funding back to the Russians who can export dirtier energy if we don't produce our own. But ultimately it is a good reason to get off the dirty stuff altogether, but in the interim it'd be better to be self-sufficient than buy off them. 🤦♂️
Back from hospital. Still not sorted. ENT people in Morecambe. Apparently they wander round the North West like travelling minstrels.
Barrow Hospital seemingly unable to look down Husband's throat. They seem to think it a mere scratch but since he spits bits of walnut out every time he chokes and can feel the bloody thing in his throat they are talking out of their arse. Which is what he will be doing soon at this rate. He still can't swallow or eat food. So is surviving on Buscopan and tea.
Been referred to ENT and as he can't eat let's hope they get round to do their laying on of hands or dispensing of blessings with some degree of urgency.
Himself commented that one of the other patients was an extremely fat girl, the sort of fatness, he said, where you can't tell where one limb ends and another begins. She had a rucksack with her, from which she proceeded to take out chocolate lollies and eat them.
After heroically restraining myself from killing the annoying children in the nearby cafe, I burst into tears out of sheer tiredness and frustration in the supermarket and a very kind lady was very nice to me and asked me if my husband had dementia.
Which sort of sums up the last 36 hours.
😢
Hope things get better. Sending a virtual hug and best wishes.
@RochdalePioneers I don’t know much about the Tees Area. But Historic England granted the “Dorman Long Tower” Grade II listing to prevent demolition 3 days ago.
According to Twitter, Nadine Dorries has rescinded this tonight, and demolition will proceed on Sunday.
Looks half demolished already. I know not everything that is listed is aesthetically pleasing, but why is it worth preserving?
But then I'm a barbarian - I'd try to restore ancient ruins, sympathetically, so they could be used for their original purposes - fights to the death in the Collesseum for example.
Former French Ambassador to the US seems pretty chilled about the whole thing. Exuding Gallic sangfroid and a sense of "meh"
"“The US has trampled our national interest. What the US has done to our national interest is a hostile act,” he said.
"“What we were doing with the Australians was a strategic choice and this strategic choice has been swept away not only by the Australians but also by the Americans.”
"He said the British involvement was immaterial because they were “poodles of the Americans, as usual”."
Biden has single-handedly taken a wrecking ball to the western alliances. Putin and Xi must wondering why the hell they bothered with that amateur Trump.
Biden has gone up, a lot, in my estimation. He instinctively senses that NATO is over. And it is
Russia is not a strategic threat to the West. It just isn't. Its economy is too small and its people too drunk
They might try another Crimea on the Baltics, but I doubt it. They export virtually nothing but conventional oil, which is increasingly worthless, as energy gets cheaper, because renewables, shale, etc.
Xi Jinping's China, by contrast, is the greatest "threat" the West has faced in a couple of centuries. Worse than Nazi Germany
All that matters is containing her (we cannot "defeat" her). And that means rock-solid alliances with close friends ensuring that we stand together, whatever. That is how you beat bullies
Yes, even though I think his economic policies are turning into a disaster and he is obviously losing his capabilities, when it comes to foreign affairs I have a lot of grudging respect for the fact that Biden has turned out to be so fundamentally ruthless and willing to break the cosy consensus. I’d be interested to see how long Blinken stays around
Yep. I think he is a bit senile, and foolish in some respects, but when it comes to foreign policy he has clear instincts and wise opinions: as to what is in America's interest, and he has a certain heartless brutality in seeing them done. If you want to boss a superpower, I guess that is important
So this will kill 100,000 Afghans? So be it. So this will kill off our relationship with France for 3 years? So be it
Etc. Not pretty, but maybe needed
It won't kill the US-French relationship.
The French are players. They are making massive scene out of this, so that the Americans throw them a bone in some other area.
I'm not so sure that will happen. The Biden administration has continually sidelined Europe. I just don't think they care and don't see any EU country as a potential ally in the looming cold war against China. I wrote out my thoughts just now, the world has realised that the EU is happy to kowtow to China for fear of losing money.
I think you're wrong on this. For a start, I think it would be a catastrophic mistake to cleave the Western European democracies (most of whom don't really want to "kowtow" to China) off from the Anglosphere.
Re the French, I'm thinking more of them getting US support for a French candidate to be next General Secretary of the United Nations, that kind of thing. It's the kind of quid pro quo that the French are very good at getting.
Indeed, especially as Putin is more of a direct threat to us than Xi is and we need French support within NATO for containing Russia.
Jihadi terrorism is also a direct threat to us we need French intelligence cooperation on
The narrative is moving on and I doubt NATO as we know it will be recognisable soon
You simply do not see that the threat is China not Russia, and as far as France is concerned while they will not be in the tripartite agreement, both France and Canada and others will have a role to play in the South China seas
Why should we be fannying around in the South China Sea? I doubt we'd want the Chinese navy steaming up and down the English Channel. This kind of imperial delusion is embarrassing, and will only end in tears like it always does. It's like Suez, or for that matter Iraq, never happened. If we've got money to waste on these stupid dick-waving exercises, how about we pay our nurses properly, or fund education adequately, or don't cut universal credit?
Because the South China Sea matters for our own economy and the entire global trading system and does not belong to China. The English Channel is our territorial waters.
We aren't messing around in Chinese waters but we sure as hell need to ensure that international waters through which our 21st century trading system is built upon is kept free and open for all to use.
If Taiwan falls and the microchips they export are seized by China and blocked from export our entire economic system could collapse. Then we couldn't pay a fraction of what we pay now to our nurses, or teachers, or welfare.
Are you going to sign up then so you can do your duty and defend Taiwan? Why would China want to collapse the global economy, which they rely on far more than we do?
No need to sign up since if we do this right there will be no actual fighting. That's the point of a Cold War in fact, to avoid the actual fighting. Containment works better through deterrence than through conflict and we and our allies have professionals to do that much better than you or I ever could.
China is a paranoid Communist dictatorship that has been flexing its muscles not a liberal free market democracy. Forgive me if I won't put my faith in China's goodwill.
Goodwill and self interest are two different things. Xi is a repulsive scumbag but his party's hold on power relies on delivering stability and prosperity, and he's not going to jeopardise that by doing anything crazy. Historically speaking we are a far more aggressive, violent, murderous and expansionary culture than China is. They should be more afraid of us than vice versa.
Imagine if China, Russia and Myanmar announced a “tech sharing defence alliance” focused on nuclear subs.
If they were liberal democracies, I wouldn't be worried. The problem is they are dictatorships that brutalize their own citizens, so are clearly pretty prone to violence which can also be directed externally.
Sure.
I’m just trying to get Pbers to flip the perspective a bit.
I kowtow to nobody in my China-skepticism, but this is not China aggressing the West, but the West asserting a posture toward China.
It isn't happening in a vacuum. Have you seen the posturing diplomacy China engages in? Tit for tat is not in itself justification for measures, and in a proper context warning against some new cold war type situation is not inherently a bad thing, but it's not as though the West has just woken up on the wrong side of the bed and decided to assert a posture toward China for no reason, China is not sitting there minding their own business or of no concern to anyone else in a diplomatic or international relations sense. It wants to be a major player, understandably, and major players face opposition.
Nonsense. This can only be about protecting the UKs interests in the long term.
So how does simultaneously allowing China to buy up our nations assets and be owner of our debt achieve that?
At the moment the governments position is merely hypocrisy.
Is that bad? Debts the UK owes China consist of money the Chinese had that they now rely on British goodwill to get back. UK assets owned by China consist of assets the Chinese have that they now rely on British goodwill to protect.
Yes.
The Chinese don't run Hinckley Point C. They have an economic interest that can be rescinded at a moment's notice.
Former French Ambassador to the US seems pretty chilled about the whole thing. Exuding Gallic sangfroid and a sense of "meh"
"“The US has trampled our national interest. What the US has done to our national interest is a hostile act,” he said.
"“What we were doing with the Australians was a strategic choice and this strategic choice has been swept away not only by the Australians but also by the Americans.”
"He said the British involvement was immaterial because they were “poodles of the Americans, as usual”."
Biden has single-handedly taken a wrecking ball to the western alliances. Putin and Xi must wondering why the hell they bothered with that amateur Trump.
Biden has gone up, a lot, in my estimation. He instinctively senses that NATO is over. And it is
Russia is not a strategic threat to the West. It just isn't. Its economy is too small and its people too drunk
They might try another Crimea on the Baltics, but I doubt it. They export virtually nothing but conventional oil, which is increasingly worthless, as energy gets cheaper, because renewables, shale, etc.
Xi Jinping's China, by contrast, is the greatest "threat" the West has faced in a couple of centuries. Worse than Nazi Germany
All that matters is containing her (we cannot "defeat" her). And that means rock-solid alliances with close friends ensuring that we stand together, whatever. That is how you beat bullies
Yes, even though I think his economic policies are turning into a disaster and he is obviously losing his capabilities, when it comes to foreign affairs I have a lot of grudging respect for the fact that Biden has turned out to be so fundamentally ruthless and willing to break the cosy consensus. I’d be interested to see how long Blinken stays around
Yep. I think he is a bit senile, and foolish in some respects, but when it comes to foreign policy he has clear instincts and wise opinions: as to what is in America's interest, and he has a certain heartless brutality in seeing them done. If you want to boss a superpower, I guess that is important
So this will kill 100,000 Afghans? So be it. So this will kill off our relationship with France for 3 years? So be it
Etc. Not pretty, but maybe needed
It won't kill the US-French relationship.
The French are players. They are making massive scene out of this, so that the Americans throw them a bone in some other area.
I'm not so sure that will happen. The Biden administration has continually sidelined Europe. I just don't think they care and don't see any EU country as a potential ally in the looming cold war against China. I wrote out my thoughts just now, the world has realised that the EU is happy to kowtow to China for fear of losing money.
I think you're wrong on this. For a start, I think it would be a catastrophic mistake to cleave the Western European democracies (most of whom don't really want to "kowtow" to China) off from the Anglosphere.
Re the French, I'm thinking more of them getting US support for a French candidate to be next General Secretary of the United Nations, that kind of thing. It's the kind of quid pro quo that the French are very good at getting.
Indeed, especially as Putin is more of a direct threat to us than Xi is and we need French support within NATO for containing Russia.
Jihadi terrorism is also a direct threat to us we need French intelligence cooperation on
You need to catch up with the 21st century, Putin is not the threat to us.
Putin is like a spotty 4chan Incel troll in comparison to Xi.
He does have the ability to create mischief, though, and does need to be opposed. In particular, the Russian funding and support for groups that oppose fracking in the UK (to use one example) should be exposed. We cannot allow them to interfere in our democratic systems for their own benefit.
Putin has been quiet for a number of years now when it comes to the West and even the Ukraine. He has issues on the domestic front which are more pressing.
He’s also got issues on the Eastern front with China. That relationship is not as close as some assume.
If the question is: is Russia a poor country, with enormous challenges, and terrible deographics, whose major export is fucked by technology?
Then the answer is yes.
Russia's total exports are lower than Belgium's. And it's all oil and gas and coal.
But they have worked tirelessly to spread disinformation, especially around fracking, and have managed to effectively stall it completely in the UK, as well as maanging to get it banned in a bunch of resource poor countries in Europe. And they've done this via a combination of ways.
Now, one can say "of course they have, they are dependent on exporting energy and if people don't import energy then they're fucked."
But that doesn't excuse their behaviour - which (in Austria) reached the level of bribing politicians. And we do need to stand up to it. Just because they're not the number one problem doesn't mean we should pretend they are somehow OK.
Oh absolutely agreed and the annoying thing is that is stymied by the "Green" ecomarxists.
It wouldn't surprise me if much of ecomarxism can trace funding back to the Russians who can export dirtier energy if we don't produce our own. But ultimately it is a good reason to get off the dirty stuff altogether, but in the interim it'd be better to be self-sufficient than buy off them. 🤦♂️
Fair point.
There is maybe an irony that in discouraging fracking, they may have created a worse outcome for themselves.
@RochdalePioneers I don’t know much about the Tees Area. But Historic England granted the “Dorman Long Tower” Grade II listing to prevent demolition 3 days ago.
According to Twitter, Nadine Dorries has rescinded this tonight, and demolition will proceed on Sunday.
Have you seen the Dorman Long tower? It's hideous.
Would it bring you cheer seeing that out of your front door every day? Really?
@RochdalePioneers I don’t know much about the Tees Area. But Historic England granted the “Dorman Long Tower” Grade II listing to prevent demolition 3 days ago.
According to Twitter, Nadine Dorries has rescinded this tonight, and demolition will proceed on Sunday.
Have you seen the Dorman Long tower? It's hideous.
Would it bring you cheer seeing that out of your front door every day? Really?
Former French Ambassador to the US seems pretty chilled about the whole thing. Exuding Gallic sangfroid and a sense of "meh"
"“The US has trampled our national interest. What the US has done to our national interest is a hostile act,” he said.
"“What we were doing with the Australians was a strategic choice and this strategic choice has been swept away not only by the Australians but also by the Americans.”
"He said the British involvement was immaterial because they were “poodles of the Americans, as usual”."
Biden has single-handedly taken a wrecking ball to the western alliances. Putin and Xi must wondering why the hell they bothered with that amateur Trump.
Biden has gone up, a lot, in my estimation. He instinctively senses that NATO is over. And it is
Russia is not a strategic threat to the West. It just isn't. Its economy is too small and its people too drunk
They might try another Crimea on the Baltics, but I doubt it. They export virtually nothing but conventional oil, which is increasingly worthless, as energy gets cheaper, because renewables, shale, etc.
Xi Jinping's China, by contrast, is the greatest "threat" the West has faced in a couple of centuries. Worse than Nazi Germany
All that matters is containing her (we cannot "defeat" her). And that means rock-solid alliances with close friends ensuring that we stand together, whatever. That is how you beat bullies
Yes, even though I think his economic policies are turning into a disaster and he is obviously losing his capabilities, when it comes to foreign affairs I have a lot of grudging respect for the fact that Biden has turned out to be so fundamentally ruthless and willing to break the cosy consensus. I’d be interested to see how long Blinken stays around
Yep. I think he is a bit senile, and foolish in some respects, but when it comes to foreign policy he has clear instincts and wise opinions: as to what is in America's interest, and he has a certain heartless brutality in seeing them done. If you want to boss a superpower, I guess that is important
So this will kill 100,000 Afghans? So be it. So this will kill off our relationship with France for 3 years? So be it
Etc. Not pretty, but maybe needed
It won't kill the US-French relationship.
The French are players. They are making massive scene out of this, so that the Americans throw them a bone in some other area.
I'm not so sure that will happen. The Biden administration has continually sidelined Europe. I just don't think they care and don't see any EU country as a potential ally in the looming cold war against China. I wrote out my thoughts just now, the world has realised that the EU is happy to kowtow to China for fear of losing money.
I think you're wrong on this. For a start, I think it would be a catastrophic mistake to cleave the Western European democracies (most of whom don't really want to "kowtow" to China) off from the Anglosphere.
Re the French, I'm thinking more of them getting US support for a French candidate to be next General Secretary of the United Nations, that kind of thing. It's the kind of quid pro quo that the French are very good at getting.
Indeed, especially as Putin is more of a direct threat to us than Xi is and we need French support within NATO for containing Russia.
Jihadi terrorism is also a direct threat to us we need French intelligence cooperation on
The narrative is moving on and I doubt NATO as we know it will be recognisable soon
You simply do not see that the threat is China not Russia, and as far as France is concerned while they will not be in the tripartite agreement, both France and Canada and others will have a role to play in the South China seas
Why should we be fannying around in the South China Sea? I doubt we'd want the Chinese navy steaming up and down the English Channel. This kind of imperial delusion is embarrassing, and will only end in tears like it always does. It's like Suez, or for that matter Iraq, never happened. If we've got money to waste on these stupid dick-waving exercises, how about we pay our nurses properly, or fund education adequately, or don't cut universal credit?
Because the South China Sea matters for our own economy and the entire global trading system and does not belong to China. The English Channel is our territorial waters.
We aren't messing around in Chinese waters but we sure as hell need to ensure that international waters through which our 21st century trading system is built upon is kept free and open for all to use.
If Taiwan falls and the microchips they export are seized by China and blocked from export our entire economic system could collapse. Then we couldn't pay a fraction of what we pay now to our nurses, or teachers, or welfare.
Are you going to sign up then so you can do your duty and defend Taiwan? Why would China want to collapse the global economy, which they rely on far more than we do?
No need to sign up since if we do this right there will be no actual fighting. That's the point of a Cold War in fact, to avoid the actual fighting. Containment works better through deterrence than through conflict and we and our allies have professionals to do that much better than you or I ever could.
China is a paranoid Communist dictatorship that has been flexing its muscles not a liberal free market democracy. Forgive me if I won't put my faith in China's goodwill.
Goodwill and self interest are two different things. Xi is a repulsive scumbag but his party's hold on power relies on delivering stability and prosperity, and he's not going to jeopardise that by doing anything crazy. Historically speaking we are a far more aggressive, violent, murderous and expansionary culture than China is. They should be more afraid of us than vice versa.
Imagine if China, Russia and Myanmar announced a “tech sharing defence alliance” focused on nuclear subs.
If they were liberal democracies, I wouldn't be worried. The problem is they are dictatorships that brutalize their own citizens, so are clearly pretty prone to violence which can also be directed externally.
Sure.
I’m just trying to get Pbers to flip the perspective a bit.
I kowtow to nobody in my China-skepticism, but this is not China aggressing the West, but the West asserting a posture toward China.
It isn't happening in a vacuum. Have you seen the posturing diplomacy China engages in? Tit for tat is not in itself justification for measures, and in a proper context warning against some new cold war type situation is not inherently a bad thing, but it's not as though the West has just woken up on the wrong side of the bed and decided to assert a posture toward China for no reason, China is not sitting there minding their own business or of no concern to anyone else in a diplomatic or international relations sense. It wants to be a major player, understandably, and major players face opposition.
Nonsense. This can only be about protecting the UKs interests in the long term.
So how does simultaneously allowing China to buy up our nations assets and be owner of our debt achieve that?
At the moment the governments position is merely hypocrisy.
I've not said anything about this not being about protecting the UKs interests. I assume that's what all our foreign policy is about. My point was that talk of this not being China aggressing the West but the West asserting a posture seems to ignore that everyone is asserting postures all the time, and responding to the postures of others. This latest move is in response to China's own, which was in response to ours, which was in response to theirs, etc etc. Whereas the bit I responded to makes it seem like an action without context.
No. This move is slightly different, this is the one which opens Pandora’s Box, spawning a whole load of good questions which the government and its supporters have spent today running away from.
We need strong defence. We need a coherent China policy. We need as many allies as we can, who we trust and who trust us.
The British Government does not have a coherent or sane China policy this evening.
How can the British PM promise the death of our serviceman to the defence of Taiwan from China aggression, whilst simultaneously selling off our Nations assets to China?
The Government and it’s supporters can’t answer this, they are running away from this question. They’ve got themselves into a mess.
If they want to be coherent and serious about this - jail the traitors.
Back from hospital. Still not sorted. ENT people in Morecambe. Apparently they wander round the North West like travelling minstrels.
Barrow Hospital seemingly unable to look down Husband's throat. They seem to think it a mere scratch but since he spits bits of walnut out every time he chokes and can feel the bloody thing in his throat they are talking out of their arse. Which is what he will be doing soon at this rate. He still can't swallow or eat food. So is surviving on Buscopan and tea.
Been referred to ENT and as he can't eat let's hope they get round to do their laying on of hands or dispensing of blessings with some degree of urgency.
Himself commented that one of the other patients was an extremely fat girl, the sort of fatness, he said, where you can't tell where one limb ends and another begins. She had a rucksack with her, from which she proceeded to take out chocolate lollies and eat them.
After heroically restraining myself from killing the annoying children in the nearby cafe, I burst into tears out of sheer tiredness and frustration in the supermarket and a very kind lady was very nice to me and asked me if my husband had dementia.
Former French Ambassador to the US seems pretty chilled about the whole thing. Exuding Gallic sangfroid and a sense of "meh"
"“The US has trampled our national interest. What the US has done to our national interest is a hostile act,” he said.
"“What we were doing with the Australians was a strategic choice and this strategic choice has been swept away not only by the Australians but also by the Americans.”
"He said the British involvement was immaterial because they were “poodles of the Americans, as usual”."
Biden has single-handedly taken a wrecking ball to the western alliances. Putin and Xi must wondering why the hell they bothered with that amateur Trump.
Biden has gone up, a lot, in my estimation. He instinctively senses that NATO is over. And it is
Russia is not a strategic threat to the West. It just isn't. Its economy is too small and its people too drunk
They might try another Crimea on the Baltics, but I doubt it. They export virtually nothing but conventional oil, which is increasingly worthless, as energy gets cheaper, because renewables, shale, etc.
Xi Jinping's China, by contrast, is the greatest "threat" the West has faced in a couple of centuries. Worse than Nazi Germany
All that matters is containing her (we cannot "defeat" her). And that means rock-solid alliances with close friends ensuring that we stand together, whatever. That is how you beat bullies
Yes, even though I think his economic policies are turning into a disaster and he is obviously losing his capabilities, when it comes to foreign affairs I have a lot of grudging respect for the fact that Biden has turned out to be so fundamentally ruthless and willing to break the cosy consensus. I’d be interested to see how long Blinken stays around
Yep. I think he is a bit senile, and foolish in some respects, but when it comes to foreign policy he has clear instincts and wise opinions: as to what is in America's interest, and he has a certain heartless brutality in seeing them done. If you want to boss a superpower, I guess that is important
So this will kill 100,000 Afghans? So be it. So this will kill off our relationship with France for 3 years? So be it
Etc. Not pretty, but maybe needed
It won't kill the US-French relationship.
The French are players. They are making massive scene out of this, so that the Americans throw them a bone in some other area.
I'm not so sure that will happen. The Biden administration has continually sidelined Europe. I just don't think they care and don't see any EU country as a potential ally in the looming cold war against China. I wrote out my thoughts just now, the world has realised that the EU is happy to kowtow to China for fear of losing money.
I think you're wrong on this. For a start, I think it would be a catastrophic mistake to cleave the Western European democracies (most of whom don't really want to "kowtow" to China) off from the Anglosphere.
Re the French, I'm thinking more of them getting US support for a French candidate to be next General Secretary of the United Nations, that kind of thing. It's the kind of quid pro quo that the French are very good at getting.
Indeed, especially as Putin is more of a direct threat to us than Xi is and we need French support within NATO for containing Russia.
Jihadi terrorism is also a direct threat to us we need French intelligence cooperation on
The narrative is moving on and I doubt NATO as we know it will be recognisable soon
You simply do not see that the threat is China not Russia, and as far as France is concerned while they will not be in the tripartite agreement, both France and Canada and others will have a role to play in the South China seas
Why should we be fannying around in the South China Sea? I doubt we'd want the Chinese navy steaming up and down the English Channel. This kind of imperial delusion is embarrassing, and will only end in tears like it always does. It's like Suez, or for that matter Iraq, never happened. If we've got money to waste on these stupid dick-waving exercises, how about we pay our nurses properly, or fund education adequately, or don't cut universal credit?
Because the South China Sea matters for our own economy and the entire global trading system and does not belong to China. The English Channel is our territorial waters.
We aren't messing around in Chinese waters but we sure as hell need to ensure that international waters through which our 21st century trading system is built upon is kept free and open for all to use.
If Taiwan falls and the microchips they export are seized by China and blocked from export our entire economic system could collapse. Then we couldn't pay a fraction of what we pay now to our nurses, or teachers, or welfare.
Are you going to sign up then so you can do your duty and defend Taiwan? Why would China want to collapse the global economy, which they rely on far more than we do?
No need to sign up since if we do this right there will be no actual fighting. That's the point of a Cold War in fact, to avoid the actual fighting. Containment works better through deterrence than through conflict and we and our allies have professionals to do that much better than you or I ever could.
China is a paranoid Communist dictatorship that has been flexing its muscles not a liberal free market democracy. Forgive me if I won't put my faith in China's goodwill.
Goodwill and self interest are two different things. Xi is a repulsive scumbag but his party's hold on power relies on delivering stability and prosperity, and he's not going to jeopardise that by doing anything crazy. Historically speaking we are a far more aggressive, violent, murderous and expansionary culture than China is. They should be more afraid of us than vice versa.
Imagine if China, Russia and Myanmar announced a “tech sharing defence alliance” focused on nuclear subs.
If they were liberal democracies, I wouldn't be worried. The problem is they are dictatorships that brutalize their own citizens, so are clearly pretty prone to violence which can also be directed externally.
Sure.
I’m just trying to get Pbers to flip the perspective a bit.
I kowtow to nobody in my China-skepticism, but this is not China aggressing the West, but the West asserting a posture toward China.
It isn't happening in a vacuum. Have you seen the posturing diplomacy China engages in? Tit for tat is not in itself justification for measures, and in a proper context warning against some new cold war type situation is not inherently a bad thing, but it's not as though the West has just woken up on the wrong side of the bed and decided to assert a posture toward China for no reason, China is not sitting there minding their own business or of no concern to anyone else in a diplomatic or international relations sense. It wants to be a major player, understandably, and major players face opposition.
Nonsense. This can only be about protecting the UKs interests in the long term.
So how does simultaneously allowing China to buy up our nations assets and be owner of our debt achieve that?
At the moment the governments position is merely hypocrisy.
Is that bad? Debts the UK owes China consist of money the Chinese had that they now rely on British goodwill to get back. UK assets owned by China consist of assets the Chinese have that they now rely on British goodwill to protect.
On the other hand, this is a similar model to the one that was once applied to US-Chinese economic and geostrategic relations overall, under the assumption that China wouldn't act to provoke the west. It hasn't quite worked out that way so far.
The EU was less than 45% and falling share of our exports in 2017.
Latest figures are 49% EU. The EU is about 6% of the world's population. It would have to fall a long, long way before the EU was merely punching at its weight in terms of UK trade.
And let's be clear-eyed about this, that huge discrepancy is not because the EU is brilliant or because we've just got no imagination. It's because it's a LOT easier to trade with nearby, legislatively aligned countries than it is to trade with far-off, unaligned ones.
Edit: I had to replace your less than symbol with the words because it wouldn't post otherwise
Former French Ambassador to the US seems pretty chilled about the whole thing. Exuding Gallic sangfroid and a sense of "meh"
"“The US has trampled our national interest. What the US has done to our national interest is a hostile act,” he said.
"“What we were doing with the Australians was a strategic choice and this strategic choice has been swept away not only by the Australians but also by the Americans.”
"He said the British involvement was immaterial because they were “poodles of the Americans, as usual”."
Biden has single-handedly taken a wrecking ball to the western alliances. Putin and Xi must wondering why the hell they bothered with that amateur Trump.
Biden has gone up, a lot, in my estimation. He instinctively senses that NATO is over. And it is
Russia is not a strategic threat to the West. It just isn't. Its economy is too small and its people too drunk
They might try another Crimea on the Baltics, but I doubt it. They export virtually nothing but conventional oil, which is increasingly worthless, as energy gets cheaper, because renewables, shale, etc.
Xi Jinping's China, by contrast, is the greatest "threat" the West has faced in a couple of centuries. Worse than Nazi Germany
All that matters is containing her (we cannot "defeat" her). And that means rock-solid alliances with close friends ensuring that we stand together, whatever. That is how you beat bullies
Yes, even though I think his economic policies are turning into a disaster and he is obviously losing his capabilities, when it comes to foreign affairs I have a lot of grudging respect for the fact that Biden has turned out to be so fundamentally ruthless and willing to break the cosy consensus. I’d be interested to see how long Blinken stays around
Yep. I think he is a bit senile, and foolish in some respects, but when it comes to foreign policy he has clear instincts and wise opinions: as to what is in America's interest, and he has a certain heartless brutality in seeing them done. If you want to boss a superpower, I guess that is important
So this will kill 100,000 Afghans? So be it. So this will kill off our relationship with France for 3 years? So be it
Etc. Not pretty, but maybe needed
It won't kill the US-French relationship.
The French are players. They are making massive scene out of this, so that the Americans throw them a bone in some other area.
I'm not so sure that will happen. The Biden administration has continually sidelined Europe. I just don't think they care and don't see any EU country as a potential ally in the looming cold war against China. I wrote out my thoughts just now, the world has realised that the EU is happy to kowtow to China for fear of losing money.
I think you're wrong on this. For a start, I think it would be a catastrophic mistake to cleave the Western European democracies (most of whom don't really want to "kowtow" to China) off from the Anglosphere.
Re the French, I'm thinking more of them getting US support for a French candidate to be next General Secretary of the United Nations, that kind of thing. It's the kind of quid pro quo that the French are very good at getting.
Indeed, especially as Putin is more of a direct threat to us than Xi is and we need French support within NATO for containing Russia.
Jihadi terrorism is also a direct threat to us we need French intelligence cooperation on
The narrative is moving on and I doubt NATO as we know it will be recognisable soon
You simply do not see that the threat is China not Russia, and as far as France is concerned while they will not be in the tripartite agreement, both France and Canada and others will have a role to play in the South China seas
Why should we be fannying around in the South China Sea? I doubt we'd want the Chinese navy steaming up and down the English Channel. This kind of imperial delusion is embarrassing, and will only end in tears like it always does. It's like Suez, or for that matter Iraq, never happened. If we've got money to waste on these stupid dick-waving exercises, how about we pay our nurses properly, or fund education adequately, or don't cut universal credit?
Because the South China Sea matters for our own economy and the entire global trading system and does not belong to China. The English Channel is our territorial waters.
We aren't messing around in Chinese waters but we sure as hell need to ensure that international waters through which our 21st century trading system is built upon is kept free and open for all to use.
If Taiwan falls and the microchips they export are seized by China and blocked from export our entire economic system could collapse. Then we couldn't pay a fraction of what we pay now to our nurses, or teachers, or welfare.
Are you going to sign up then so you can do your duty and defend Taiwan? Why would China want to collapse the global economy, which they rely on far more than we do?
No need to sign up since if we do this right there will be no actual fighting. That's the point of a Cold War in fact, to avoid the actual fighting. Containment works better through deterrence than through conflict and we and our allies have professionals to do that much better than you or I ever could.
China is a paranoid Communist dictatorship that has been flexing its muscles not a liberal free market democracy. Forgive me if I won't put my faith in China's goodwill.
Goodwill and self interest are two different things. Xi is a repulsive scumbag but his party's hold on power relies on delivering stability and prosperity, and he's not going to jeopardise that by doing anything crazy. Historically speaking we are a far more aggressive, violent, murderous and expansionary culture than China is. They should be more afraid of us than vice versa.
Imagine if China, Russia and Myanmar announced a “tech sharing defence alliance” focused on nuclear subs.
If they were liberal democracies, I wouldn't be worried. The problem is they are dictatorships that brutalize their own citizens, so are clearly pretty prone to violence which can also be directed externally.
Sure.
I’m just trying to get Pbers to flip the perspective a bit.
I kowtow to nobody in my China-skepticism, but this is not China aggressing the West, but the West asserting a posture toward China.
It isn't happening in a vacuum. Have you seen the posturing diplomacy China engages in? Tit for tat is not in itself justification for measures, and in a proper context warning against some new cold war type situation is not inherently a bad thing, but it's not as though the West has just woken up on the wrong side of the bed and decided to assert a posture toward China for no reason, China is not sitting there minding their own business or of no concern to anyone else in a diplomatic or international relations sense. It wants to be a major player, understandably, and major players face opposition.
Nonsense. This can only be about protecting the UKs interests in the long term.
So how does simultaneously allowing China to buy up our nations assets and be owner of our debt achieve that?
At the moment the governments position is merely hypocrisy.
Is that bad? Debts the UK owes China consist of money the Chinese had that they now rely on British goodwill to get back. UK assets owned by China consist of assets the Chinese have that they now rely on British goodwill to protect.
Yes.
The Chinese don't run Hinckley Point C. They have an economic interest that can be rescinded at a moment's notice.
But should it go on whilst we are engineering Cold War against them, and sacrificing British lives defending Taiwan?
Former French Ambassador to the US seems pretty chilled about the whole thing. Exuding Gallic sangfroid and a sense of "meh"
"“The US has trampled our national interest. What the US has done to our national interest is a hostile act,” he said.
"“What we were doing with the Australians was a strategic choice and this strategic choice has been swept away not only by the Australians but also by the Americans.”
"He said the British involvement was immaterial because they were “poodles of the Americans, as usual”."
Biden has single-handedly taken a wrecking ball to the western alliances. Putin and Xi must wondering why the hell they bothered with that amateur Trump.
Biden has gone up, a lot, in my estimation. He instinctively senses that NATO is over. And it is
Russia is not a strategic threat to the West. It just isn't. Its economy is too small and its people too drunk
They might try another Crimea on the Baltics, but I doubt it. They export virtually nothing but conventional oil, which is increasingly worthless, as energy gets cheaper, because renewables, shale, etc.
Xi Jinping's China, by contrast, is the greatest "threat" the West has faced in a couple of centuries. Worse than Nazi Germany
All that matters is containing her (we cannot "defeat" her). And that means rock-solid alliances with close friends ensuring that we stand together, whatever. That is how you beat bullies
Yes, even though I think his economic policies are turning into a disaster and he is obviously losing his capabilities, when it comes to foreign affairs I have a lot of grudging respect for the fact that Biden has turned out to be so fundamentally ruthless and willing to break the cosy consensus. I’d be interested to see how long Blinken stays around
Yep. I think he is a bit senile, and foolish in some respects, but when it comes to foreign policy he has clear instincts and wise opinions: as to what is in America's interest, and he has a certain heartless brutality in seeing them done. If you want to boss a superpower, I guess that is important
So this will kill 100,000 Afghans? So be it. So this will kill off our relationship with France for 3 years? So be it
Etc. Not pretty, but maybe needed
It won't kill the US-French relationship.
The French are players. They are making massive scene out of this, so that the Americans throw them a bone in some other area.
I'm not so sure that will happen. The Biden administration has continually sidelined Europe. I just don't think they care and don't see any EU country as a potential ally in the looming cold war against China. I wrote out my thoughts just now, the world has realised that the EU is happy to kowtow to China for fear of losing money.
I think you're wrong on this. For a start, I think it would be a catastrophic mistake to cleave the Western European democracies (most of whom don't really want to "kowtow" to China) off from the Anglosphere.
Re the French, I'm thinking more of them getting US support for a French candidate to be next General Secretary of the United Nations, that kind of thing. It's the kind of quid pro quo that the French are very good at getting.
Indeed, especially as Putin is more of a direct threat to us than Xi is and we need French support within NATO for containing Russia.
Jihadi terrorism is also a direct threat to us we need French intelligence cooperation on
You need to catch up with the 21st century, Putin is not the threat to us.
Putin is like a spotty 4chan Incel troll in comparison to Xi.
He does have the ability to create mischief, though, and does need to be opposed. In particular, the Russian funding and support for groups that oppose fracking in the UK (to use one example) should be exposed. We cannot allow them to interfere in our democratic systems for their own benefit.
Putin has been quiet for a number of years now when it comes to the West and even the Ukraine. He has issues on the domestic front which are more pressing.
He’s also got issues on the Eastern front with China. That relationship is not as close as some assume.
If the question is: is Russia a poor country, with enormous challenges, and terrible deographics, whose major export is fucked by technology?
Then the answer is yes.
Russia's total exports are lower than Belgium's. And it's all oil and gas and coal.
But they have worked tirelessly to spread disinformation, especially around fracking, and have managed to effectively stall it completely in the UK, as well as maanging to get it banned in a bunch of resource poor countries in Europe. And they've done this via a combination of ways.
Now, one can say "of course they have, they are dependent on exporting energy and if people don't import energy then they're fucked."
But that doesn't excuse their behaviour - which (in Austria) reached the level of bribing politicians. And we do need to stand up to it. Just because they're not the number one problem doesn't mean we should pretend they are somehow OK.
Oh absolutely agreed and the annoying thing is that is stymied by the "Green" ecomarxists.
It wouldn't surprise me if much of ecomarxism can trace funding back to the Russians who can export dirtier energy if we don't produce our own. But ultimately it is a good reason to get off the dirty stuff altogether, but in the interim it'd be better to be self-sufficient than buy off them. 🤦♂️
Would you suspect Climate Change denial money to stem from a similar source? Which has done more damage that or "ecoMarxism"? And are you in favour of the Tories taking funding from exactly the same place?
Former French Ambassador to the US seems pretty chilled about the whole thing. Exuding Gallic sangfroid and a sense of "meh"
"“The US has trampled our national interest. What the US has done to our national interest is a hostile act,” he said.
"“What we were doing with the Australians was a strategic choice and this strategic choice has been swept away not only by the Australians but also by the Americans.”
"He said the British involvement was immaterial because they were “poodles of the Americans, as usual”."
Biden has single-handedly taken a wrecking ball to the western alliances. Putin and Xi must wondering why the hell they bothered with that amateur Trump.
Biden has gone up, a lot, in my estimation. He instinctively senses that NATO is over. And it is
Russia is not a strategic threat to the West. It just isn't. Its economy is too small and its people too drunk
They might try another Crimea on the Baltics, but I doubt it. They export virtually nothing but conventional oil, which is increasingly worthless, as energy gets cheaper, because renewables, shale, etc.
Xi Jinping's China, by contrast, is the greatest "threat" the West has faced in a couple of centuries. Worse than Nazi Germany
All that matters is containing her (we cannot "defeat" her). And that means rock-solid alliances with close friends ensuring that we stand together, whatever. That is how you beat bullies
Yes, even though I think his economic policies are turning into a disaster and he is obviously losing his capabilities, when it comes to foreign affairs I have a lot of grudging respect for the fact that Biden has turned out to be so fundamentally ruthless and willing to break the cosy consensus. I’d be interested to see how long Blinken stays around
Yep. I think he is a bit senile, and foolish in some respects, but when it comes to foreign policy he has clear instincts and wise opinions: as to what is in America's interest, and he has a certain heartless brutality in seeing them done. If you want to boss a superpower, I guess that is important
So this will kill 100,000 Afghans? So be it. So this will kill off our relationship with France for 3 years? So be it
Etc. Not pretty, but maybe needed
It won't kill the US-French relationship.
The French are players. They are making massive scene out of this, so that the Americans throw them a bone in some other area.
I'm not so sure that will happen. The Biden administration has continually sidelined Europe. I just don't think they care and don't see any EU country as a potential ally in the looming cold war against China. I wrote out my thoughts just now, the world has realised that the EU is happy to kowtow to China for fear of losing money.
I think you're wrong on this. For a start, I think it would be a catastrophic mistake to cleave the Western European democracies (most of whom don't really want to "kowtow" to China) off from the Anglosphere.
Re the French, I'm thinking more of them getting US support for a French candidate to be next General Secretary of the United Nations, that kind of thing. It's the kind of quid pro quo that the French are very good at getting.
Indeed, especially as Putin is more of a direct threat to us than Xi is and we need French support within NATO for containing Russia.
Jihadi terrorism is also a direct threat to us we need French intelligence cooperation on
The narrative is moving on and I doubt NATO as we know it will be recognisable soon
You simply do not see that the threat is China not Russia, and as far as France is concerned while they will not be in the tripartite agreement, both France and Canada and others will have a role to play in the South China seas
Why should we be fannying around in the South China Sea? I doubt we'd want the Chinese navy steaming up and down the English Channel. This kind of imperial delusion is embarrassing, and will only end in tears like it always does. It's like Suez, or for that matter Iraq, never happened. If we've got money to waste on these stupid dick-waving exercises, how about we pay our nurses properly, or fund education adequately, or don't cut universal credit?
Because the South China Sea matters for our own economy and the entire global trading system and does not belong to China. The English Channel is our territorial waters.
We aren't messing around in Chinese waters but we sure as hell need to ensure that international waters through which our 21st century trading system is built upon is kept free and open for all to use.
If Taiwan falls and the microchips they export are seized by China and blocked from export our entire economic system could collapse. Then we couldn't pay a fraction of what we pay now to our nurses, or teachers, or welfare.
Are you going to sign up then so you can do your duty and defend Taiwan? Why would China want to collapse the global economy, which they rely on far more than we do?
No need to sign up since if we do this right there will be no actual fighting. That's the point of a Cold War in fact, to avoid the actual fighting. Containment works better through deterrence than through conflict and we and our allies have professionals to do that much better than you or I ever could.
China is a paranoid Communist dictatorship that has been flexing its muscles not a liberal free market democracy. Forgive me if I won't put my faith in China's goodwill.
Goodwill and self interest are two different things. Xi is a repulsive scumbag but his party's hold on power relies on delivering stability and prosperity, and he's not going to jeopardise that by doing anything crazy. Historically speaking we are a far more aggressive, violent, murderous and expansionary culture than China is. They should be more afraid of us than vice versa.
Imagine if China, Russia and Myanmar announced a “tech sharing defence alliance” focused on nuclear subs.
If they were liberal democracies, I wouldn't be worried. The problem is they are dictatorships that brutalize their own citizens, so are clearly pretty prone to violence which can also be directed externally.
Sure.
I’m just trying to get Pbers to flip the perspective a bit.
I kowtow to nobody in my China-skepticism, but this is not China aggressing the West, but the West asserting a posture toward China.
It isn't happening in a vacuum. Have you seen the posturing diplomacy China engages in? Tit for tat is not in itself justification for measures, and in a proper context warning against some new cold war type situation is not inherently a bad thing, but it's not as though the West has just woken up on the wrong side of the bed and decided to assert a posture toward China for no reason, China is not sitting there minding their own business or of no concern to anyone else in a diplomatic or international relations sense. It wants to be a major player, understandably, and major players face opposition.
Nonsense. This can only be about protecting the UKs interests in the long term.
So how does simultaneously allowing China to buy up our nations assets and be owner of our debt achieve that?
At the moment the governments position is merely hypocrisy.
Is that bad? Debts the UK owes China consist of money the Chinese had that they now rely on British goodwill to get back. UK assets owned by China consist of assets the Chinese have that they now rely on British goodwill to protect.
Yes.
The Chinese don't run Hinckley Point C. They have an economic interest that can be rescinded at a moment's notice.
But should it go on whilst we are engineering Cold War against them, and sacrificing British lives defending Taiwan?
Former French Ambassador to the US seems pretty chilled about the whole thing. Exuding Gallic sangfroid and a sense of "meh"
"“The US has trampled our national interest. What the US has done to our national interest is a hostile act,” he said.
"“What we were doing with the Australians was a strategic choice and this strategic choice has been swept away not only by the Australians but also by the Americans.”
"He said the British involvement was immaterial because they were “poodles of the Americans, as usual”."
Biden has single-handedly taken a wrecking ball to the western alliances. Putin and Xi must wondering why the hell they bothered with that amateur Trump.
Biden has gone up, a lot, in my estimation. He instinctively senses that NATO is over. And it is
Russia is not a strategic threat to the West. It just isn't. Its economy is too small and its people too drunk
They might try another Crimea on the Baltics, but I doubt it. They export virtually nothing but conventional oil, which is increasingly worthless, as energy gets cheaper, because renewables, shale, etc.
Xi Jinping's China, by contrast, is the greatest "threat" the West has faced in a couple of centuries. Worse than Nazi Germany
All that matters is containing her (we cannot "defeat" her). And that means rock-solid alliances with close friends ensuring that we stand together, whatever. That is how you beat bullies
Yes, even though I think his economic policies are turning into a disaster and he is obviously losing his capabilities, when it comes to foreign affairs I have a lot of grudging respect for the fact that Biden has turned out to be so fundamentally ruthless and willing to break the cosy consensus. I’d be interested to see how long Blinken stays around
Yep. I think he is a bit senile, and foolish in some respects, but when it comes to foreign policy he has clear instincts and wise opinions: as to what is in America's interest, and he has a certain heartless brutality in seeing them done. If you want to boss a superpower, I guess that is important
So this will kill 100,000 Afghans? So be it. So this will kill off our relationship with France for 3 years? So be it
Etc. Not pretty, but maybe needed
It won't kill the US-French relationship.
The French are players. They are making massive scene out of this, so that the Americans throw them a bone in some other area.
I'm not so sure that will happen. The Biden administration has continually sidelined Europe. I just don't think they care and don't see any EU country as a potential ally in the looming cold war against China. I wrote out my thoughts just now, the world has realised that the EU is happy to kowtow to China for fear of losing money.
I think you're wrong on this. For a start, I think it would be a catastrophic mistake to cleave the Western European democracies (most of whom don't really want to "kowtow" to China) off from the Anglosphere.
Re the French, I'm thinking more of them getting US support for a French candidate to be next General Secretary of the United Nations, that kind of thing. It's the kind of quid pro quo that the French are very good at getting.
Indeed, especially as Putin is more of a direct threat to us than Xi is and we need French support within NATO for containing Russia.
Jihadi terrorism is also a direct threat to us we need French intelligence cooperation on
You need to catch up with the 21st century, Putin is not the threat to us.
Putin is like a spotty 4chan Incel troll in comparison to Xi.
He does have the ability to create mischief, though, and does need to be opposed. In particular, the Russian funding and support for groups that oppose fracking in the UK (to use one example) should be exposed. We cannot allow them to interfere in our democratic systems for their own benefit.
Putin has been quiet for a number of years now when it comes to the West and even the Ukraine. He has issues on the domestic front which are more pressing.
He’s also got issues on the Eastern front with China. That relationship is not as close as some assume.
If the question is: is Russia a poor country, with enormous challenges, and terrible deographics, whose major export is fucked by technology?
Then the answer is yes.
Russia's total exports are lower than Belgium's. And it's all oil and gas and coal.
But they have worked tirelessly to spread disinformation, especially around fracking, and have managed to effectively stall it completely in the UK, as well as maanging to get it banned in a bunch of resource poor countries in Europe. And they've done this via a combination of ways.
Now, one can say "of course they have, they are dependent on exporting energy and if people don't import energy then they're fucked."
But that doesn't excuse their behaviour - which (in Austria) reached the level of bribing politicians. And we do need to stand up to it. Just because they're not the number one problem doesn't mean we should pretend they are somehow OK.
Which is why the current links between Russian funds and the Conservatives is a scandal. But look! China.
The EU was less than 45% and falling share of our exports in 2017.
Latest figures are 49% EU. The EU is about 6% of the world's population. It would have to fall a long, long way before the EU was merely punching at its weight in terms of UK trade.
And let's be clear-eyed about this, that huge discrepancy is not because the EU is brilliant or because we've just got no imagination. It's because it's a LOT easier to trade with nearby, legislatively aligned countries than it is to trade with far-off, unaligned ones.
Edit: I had to replace your less than symbol with the words because it wouldn't post otherwise
I was just looking up the numbers to rebut you, and was surprised to see that the proportion of the UK's trade that is with the EU actually increased between 2016 and 2020.
See: Brexit boosts trade links. Everyone should be happy.
That being said... I think we should probably wait for the pandemic to recede before we make final judgements. It's fair to say that 2020 was not a normal year.
The EU was less than 45% and falling share of our exports in 2017.
Latest figures are 49% EU. The EU is about 6% of the world's population. It would have to fall a long, long way before the EU was merely punching at its weight in terms of UK trade.
And let's be clear-eyed about this, that huge discrepancy is not because the EU is brilliant or because we've just got no imagination. It's because it's a LOT easier to trade with nearby, legislatively aligned countries than it is to trade with far-off, unaligned ones.
Edit: I had to replace your less than symbol with the words because it wouldn't post otherwise
Absolutely.
Also I deliberately used EEA on my original post, and Philip - consciously misleadingly or not - used EU.
It scares me sometimes that he is apparently a professional economist.
@RochdalePioneers I don’t know much about the Tees Area. But Historic England granted the “Dorman Long Tower” Grade II listing to prevent demolition 3 days ago.
According to Twitter, Nadine Dorries has rescinded this tonight, and demolition will proceed on Sunday.
Have you seen the Dorman Long tower? It's hideous.
Would it bring you cheer seeing that out of your front door every day? Really?
The EU was less than 45% and falling share of our exports in 2017.
Latest figures are 49% EU. The EU is about 6% of the world's population. It would have to fall a long, long way before the EU was merely punching at its weight in terms of UK trade.
And let's be clear-eyed about this, that huge discrepancy is not because the EU is brilliant or because we've just got no imagination. It's because it's a LOT easier to trade with nearby, legislatively aligned countries than it is to trade with far-off, unaligned ones.
Edit: I had to replace your less than symbol with the words because it wouldn't post otherwise
I was just looking up the numbers to rebut you, and was surprised to see that the proportion of trade between the UK and the EU trade has increased between 2016 and 2020.
See: Brexit boosts trade links. Everyone should be happy.
That being said... I think we should probably wait for the pandemic to recede before we make final judgements. It's fair to say that 2020 was not a normal year.
To be clear my point is not meant to be pro-EU. It's just that we need a sense of realism about how easy it is to replace the extremely high share of our trade that we do with our neighbours. If it were up to me, by the way, I wouldn't even focus on trade shares in this binary EU/non EU way. But since that's what Philip wants to talk about, it deserves to be said that even now trade with the EU is huge for solid non-ideological reasons.
Curious one that. Had LD on 10, Green on 9 and others on 8. Can only assume it was an instant reaction to tax rises. This one more in line, and in keeping with where we are I feel. Still. It won CHB his bet.
@RochdalePioneers I don’t know much about the Tees Area. But Historic England granted the “Dorman Long Tower” Grade II listing to prevent demolition 3 days ago.
According to Twitter, Nadine Dorries has rescinded this tonight, and demolition will proceed on Sunday.
Have you seen the Dorman Long tower? It's hideous.
Would it bring you cheer seeing that out of your front door every day? Really?
Well. It prevents a better view of the crap behind it.
Former French Ambassador to the US seems pretty chilled about the whole thing. Exuding Gallic sangfroid and a sense of "meh"
"“The US has trampled our national interest. What the US has done to our national interest is a hostile act,” he said.
"“What we were doing with the Australians was a strategic choice and this strategic choice has been swept away not only by the Australians but also by the Americans.”
"He said the British involvement was immaterial because they were “poodles of the Americans, as usual”."
Biden has single-handedly taken a wrecking ball to the western alliances. Putin and Xi must wondering why the hell they bothered with that amateur Trump.
Biden has gone up, a lot, in my estimation. He instinctively senses that NATO is over. And it is
Russia is not a strategic threat to the West. It just isn't. Its economy is too small and its people too drunk
They might try another Crimea on the Baltics, but I doubt it. They export virtually nothing but conventional oil, which is increasingly worthless, as energy gets cheaper, because renewables, shale, etc.
Xi Jinping's China, by contrast, is the greatest "threat" the West has faced in a couple of centuries. Worse than Nazi Germany
All that matters is containing her (we cannot "defeat" her). And that means rock-solid alliances with close friends ensuring that we stand together, whatever. That is how you beat bullies
Yes, even though I think his economic policies are turning into a disaster and he is obviously losing his capabilities, when it comes to foreign affairs I have a lot of grudging respect for the fact that Biden has turned out to be so fundamentally ruthless and willing to break the cosy consensus. I’d be interested to see how long Blinken stays around
Yep. I think he is a bit senile, and foolish in some respects, but when it comes to foreign policy he has clear instincts and wise opinions: as to what is in America's interest, and he has a certain heartless brutality in seeing them done. If you want to boss a superpower, I guess that is important
So this will kill 100,000 Afghans? So be it. So this will kill off our relationship with France for 3 years? So be it
Etc. Not pretty, but maybe needed
It won't kill the US-French relationship.
The French are players. They are making massive scene out of this, so that the Americans throw them a bone in some other area.
I'm not so sure that will happen. The Biden administration has continually sidelined Europe. I just don't think they care and don't see any EU country as a potential ally in the looming cold war against China. I wrote out my thoughts just now, the world has realised that the EU is happy to kowtow to China for fear of losing money.
I think you're wrong on this. For a start, I think it would be a catastrophic mistake to cleave the Western European democracies (most of whom don't really want to "kowtow" to China) off from the Anglosphere.
Re the French, I'm thinking more of them getting US support for a French candidate to be next General Secretary of the United Nations, that kind of thing. It's the kind of quid pro quo that the French are very good at getting.
Indeed, especially as Putin is more of a direct threat to us than Xi is and we need French support within NATO for containing Russia.
Jihadi terrorism is also a direct threat to us we need French intelligence cooperation on
The narrative is moving on and I doubt NATO as we know it will be recognisable soon
You simply do not see that the threat is China not Russia, and as far as France is concerned while they will not be in the tripartite agreement, both France and Canada and others will have a role to play in the South China seas
Why should we be fannying around in the South China Sea? I doubt we'd want the Chinese navy steaming up and down the English Channel. This kind of imperial delusion is embarrassing, and will only end in tears like it always does. It's like Suez, or for that matter Iraq, never happened. If we've got money to waste on these stupid dick-waving exercises, how about we pay our nurses properly, or fund education adequately, or don't cut universal credit?
Because the South China Sea matters for our own economy and the entire global trading system and does not belong to China. The English Channel is our territorial waters.
We aren't messing around in Chinese waters but we sure as hell need to ensure that international waters through which our 21st century trading system is built upon is kept free and open for all to use.
If Taiwan falls and the microchips they export are seized by China and blocked from export our entire economic system could collapse. Then we couldn't pay a fraction of what we pay now to our nurses, or teachers, or welfare.
Are you going to sign up then so you can do your duty and defend Taiwan? Why would China want to collapse the global economy, which they rely on far more than we do?
No need to sign up since if we do this right there will be no actual fighting. That's the point of a Cold War in fact, to avoid the actual fighting. Containment works better through deterrence than through conflict and we and our allies have professionals to do that much better than you or I ever could.
China is a paranoid Communist dictatorship that has been flexing its muscles not a liberal free market democracy. Forgive me if I won't put my faith in China's goodwill.
Goodwill and self interest are two different things. Xi is a repulsive scumbag but his party's hold on power relies on delivering stability and prosperity, and he's not going to jeopardise that by doing anything crazy. Historically speaking we are a far more aggressive, violent, murderous and expansionary culture than China is. They should be more afraid of us than vice versa.
Imagine if China, Russia and Myanmar announced a “tech sharing defence alliance” focused on nuclear subs.
If they were liberal democracies, I wouldn't be worried. The problem is they are dictatorships that brutalize their own citizens, so are clearly pretty prone to violence which can also be directed externally.
Sure.
I’m just trying to get Pbers to flip the perspective a bit.
I kowtow to nobody in my China-skepticism, but this is not China aggressing the West, but the West asserting a posture toward China.
It isn't happening in a vacuum. Have you seen the posturing diplomacy China engages in? Tit for tat is not in itself justification for measures, and in a proper context warning against some new cold war type situation is not inherently a bad thing, but it's not as though the West has just woken up on the wrong side of the bed and decided to assert a posture toward China for no reason, China is not sitting there minding their own business or of no concern to anyone else in a diplomatic or international relations sense. It wants to be a major player, understandably, and major players face opposition.
Nonsense. This can only be about protecting the UKs interests in the long term.
So how does simultaneously allowing China to buy up our nations assets and be owner of our debt achieve that?
At the moment the governments position is merely hypocrisy.
Is that bad? Debts the UK owes China consist of money the Chinese had that they now rely on British goodwill to get back. UK assets owned by China consist of assets the Chinese have that they now rely on British goodwill to protect.
Government debt is basically where you have been running deficits, not balancing the books, not healthy from point of view of servicing it, hence austerity in the UK. Do you really believe government debt can be infinite without default in the end? Where for example you will have little money to spend, and you owe even that to the Chinese? And you think the risk of being in that situation is okay?
Obviously I don’t know the details of UK or US debt portfolios, how long the maturity profiles I add as caveats, though suspect they are sort of mix of medium and short.
The US, our great friend and ally, lent us money for the Second World War, and it was quite long and painful paying it back.
Former French Ambassador to the US seems pretty chilled about the whole thing. Exuding Gallic sangfroid and a sense of "meh"
"“The US has trampled our national interest. What the US has done to our national interest is a hostile act,” he said.
"“What we were doing with the Australians was a strategic choice and this strategic choice has been swept away not only by the Australians but also by the Americans.”
"He said the British involvement was immaterial because they were “poodles of the Americans, as usual”."
Biden has single-handedly taken a wrecking ball to the western alliances. Putin and Xi must wondering why the hell they bothered with that amateur Trump.
Biden has gone up, a lot, in my estimation. He instinctively senses that NATO is over. And it is
Russia is not a strategic threat to the West. It just isn't. Its economy is too small and its people too drunk
They might try another Crimea on the Baltics, but I doubt it. They export virtually nothing but conventional oil, which is increasingly worthless, as energy gets cheaper, because renewables, shale, etc.
Xi Jinping's China, by contrast, is the greatest "threat" the West has faced in a couple of centuries. Worse than Nazi Germany
All that matters is containing her (we cannot "defeat" her). And that means rock-solid alliances with close friends ensuring that we stand together, whatever. That is how you beat bullies
Yes, even though I think his economic policies are turning into a disaster and he is obviously losing his capabilities, when it comes to foreign affairs I have a lot of grudging respect for the fact that Biden has turned out to be so fundamentally ruthless and willing to break the cosy consensus. I’d be interested to see how long Blinken stays around
Yep. I think he is a bit senile, and foolish in some respects, but when it comes to foreign policy he has clear instincts and wise opinions: as to what is in America's interest, and he has a certain heartless brutality in seeing them done. If you want to boss a superpower, I guess that is important
So this will kill 100,000 Afghans? So be it. So this will kill off our relationship with France for 3 years? So be it
Etc. Not pretty, but maybe needed
It won't kill the US-French relationship.
The French are players. They are making massive scene out of this, so that the Americans throw them a bone in some other area.
I'm not so sure that will happen. The Biden administration has continually sidelined Europe. I just don't think they care and don't see any EU country as a potential ally in the looming cold war against China. I wrote out my thoughts just now, the world has realised that the EU is happy to kowtow to China for fear of losing money.
I think you're wrong on this. For a start, I think it would be a catastrophic mistake to cleave the Western European democracies (most of whom don't really want to "kowtow" to China) off from the Anglosphere.
Re the French, I'm thinking more of them getting US support for a French candidate to be next General Secretary of the United Nations, that kind of thing. It's the kind of quid pro quo that the French are very good at getting.
Indeed, especially as Putin is more of a direct threat to us than Xi is and we need French support within NATO for containing Russia.
Jihadi terrorism is also a direct threat to us we need French intelligence cooperation on
The narrative is moving on and I doubt NATO as we know it will be recognisable soon
You simply do not see that the threat is China not Russia, and as far as France is concerned while they will not be in the tripartite agreement, both France and Canada and others will have a role to play in the South China seas
Why should we be fannying around in the South China Sea? I doubt we'd want the Chinese navy steaming up and down the English Channel. This kind of imperial delusion is embarrassing, and will only end in tears like it always does. It's like Suez, or for that matter Iraq, never happened. If we've got money to waste on these stupid dick-waving exercises, how about we pay our nurses properly, or fund education adequately, or don't cut universal credit?
Because the South China Sea matters for our own economy and the entire global trading system and does not belong to China. The English Channel is our territorial waters.
We aren't messing around in Chinese waters but we sure as hell need to ensure that international waters through which our 21st century trading system is built upon is kept free and open for all to use.
If Taiwan falls and the microchips they export are seized by China and blocked from export our entire economic system could collapse. Then we couldn't pay a fraction of what we pay now to our nurses, or teachers, or welfare.
Are you going to sign up then so you can do your duty and defend Taiwan? Why would China want to collapse the global economy, which they rely on far more than we do?
No need to sign up since if we do this right there will be no actual fighting. That's the point of a Cold War in fact, to avoid the actual fighting. Containment works better through deterrence than through conflict and we and our allies have professionals to do that much better than you or I ever could.
China is a paranoid Communist dictatorship that has been flexing its muscles not a liberal free market democracy. Forgive me if I won't put my faith in China's goodwill.
Goodwill and self interest are two different things. Xi is a repulsive scumbag but his party's hold on power relies on delivering stability and prosperity, and he's not going to jeopardise that by doing anything crazy. Historically speaking we are a far more aggressive, violent, murderous and expansionary culture than China is. They should be more afraid of us than vice versa.
Imagine if China, Russia and Myanmar announced a “tech sharing defence alliance” focused on nuclear subs.
If they were liberal democracies, I wouldn't be worried. The problem is they are dictatorships that brutalize their own citizens, so are clearly pretty prone to violence which can also be directed externally.
Sure.
I’m just trying to get Pbers to flip the perspective a bit.
I kowtow to nobody in my China-skepticism, but this is not China aggressing the West, but the West asserting a posture toward China.
It isn't happening in a vacuum. Have you seen the posturing diplomacy China engages in? Tit for tat is not in itself justification for measures, and in a proper context warning against some new cold war type situation is not inherently a bad thing, but it's not as though the West has just woken up on the wrong side of the bed and decided to assert a posture toward China for no reason, China is not sitting there minding their own business or of no concern to anyone else in a diplomatic or international relations sense. It wants to be a major player, understandably, and major players face opposition.
Nonsense. This can only be about protecting the UKs interests in the long term.
So how does simultaneously allowing China to buy up our nations assets and be owner of our debt achieve that?
At the moment the governments position is merely hypocrisy.
Is that bad? Debts the UK owes China consist of money the Chinese had that they now rely on British goodwill to get back. UK assets owned by China consist of assets the Chinese have that they now rely on British goodwill to protect.
Government debt is basically where you have been running deficits, not balancing the books, not healthy from point of view of servicing it, hence austerity in the UK. Do you really believe government debt can be infinite without default in the end? Where for example you will have little money to spend, and you owe even that to the Chinese? And you think the risk of being in that situation is okay?
Obviously I don’t know the details of UK or US debt portfolios, how long the maturity profiles I add as caveats, though suspect they are sort of mix of medium and short.
The US, our great friend and ally, lent us money for the Second World War, and it was quite long and painful paying it back.
Back from hospital. Still not sorted. ENT people in Morecambe. Apparently they wander round the North West like travelling minstrels.
Barrow Hospital seemingly unable to look down Husband's throat. They seem to think it a mere scratch but since he spits bits of walnut out every time he chokes and can feel the bloody thing in his throat they are talking out of their arse. Which is what he will be doing soon at this rate. He still can't swallow or eat food. So is surviving on Buscopan and tea.
Been referred to ENT and as he can't eat let's hope they get round to do their laying on of hands or dispensing of blessings with some degree of urgency.
Himself commented that one of the other patients was an extremely fat girl, the sort of fatness, he said, where you can't tell where one limb ends and another begins. She had a rucksack with her, from which she proceeded to take out chocolate lollies and eat them.
After heroically restraining myself from killing the annoying children in the nearby cafe, I burst into tears out of sheer tiredness and frustration in the supermarket and a very kind lady was very nice to me and asked me if my husband had dementia.
Which sort of sums up the last 36 hours.
😢
The triage should have been able to tell you no ENT was available and saved you the wait
@RochdalePioneers I don’t know much about the Tees Area. But Historic England granted the “Dorman Long Tower” Grade II listing to prevent demolition 3 days ago.
According to Twitter, Nadine Dorries has rescinded this tonight, and demolition will proceed on Sunday.
Have you seen the Dorman Long tower? It's hideous.
Would it bring you cheer seeing that out of your front door every day? Really?
Well. It prevents a better view of the crap behind it.
I thought we were levelling up the north, not levelling down?
@RochdalePioneers I don’t know much about the Tees Area. But Historic England granted the “Dorman Long Tower” Grade II listing to prevent demolition 3 days ago.
According to Twitter, Nadine Dorries has rescinded this tonight, and demolition will proceed on Sunday.
Have you seen the Dorman Long tower? It's hideous.
Would it bring you cheer seeing that out of your front door every day? Really?
Well. It prevents a better view of the crap behind it.
Tories think they have pulled another culture wars classic, showing up euro lefties and so on.
But actually it shows they have tightly roped their party to the demographic coffin.
Seriously, who under the age of 70 gives a flying fuck about pounds and ounces?
I think most people in this country still use imperial measurements for height, regardless of their age, and perhaps also their weight in terms of stones.
Former French Ambassador to the US seems pretty chilled about the whole thing. Exuding Gallic sangfroid and a sense of "meh"
"“The US has trampled our national interest. What the US has done to our national interest is a hostile act,” he said.
"“What we were doing with the Australians was a strategic choice and this strategic choice has been swept away not only by the Australians but also by the Americans.”
"He said the British involvement was immaterial because they were “poodles of the Americans, as usual”."
Biden has single-handedly taken a wrecking ball to the western alliances. Putin and Xi must wondering why the hell they bothered with that amateur Trump.
Biden has gone up, a lot, in my estimation. He instinctively senses that NATO is over. And it is
Russia is not a strategic threat to the West. It just isn't. Its economy is too small and its people too drunk
They might try another Crimea on the Baltics, but I doubt it. They export virtually nothing but conventional oil, which is increasingly worthless, as energy gets cheaper, because renewables, shale, etc.
Xi Jinping's China, by contrast, is the greatest "threat" the West has faced in a couple of centuries. Worse than Nazi Germany
All that matters is containing her (we cannot "defeat" her). And that means rock-solid alliances with close friends ensuring that we stand together, whatever. That is how you beat bullies
Yes, even though I think his economic policies are turning into a disaster and he is obviously losing his capabilities, when it comes to foreign affairs I have a lot of grudging respect for the fact that Biden has turned out to be so fundamentally ruthless and willing to break the cosy consensus. I’d be interested to see how long Blinken stays around
Yep. I think he is a bit senile, and foolish in some respects, but when it comes to foreign policy he has clear instincts and wise opinions: as to what is in America's interest, and he has a certain heartless brutality in seeing them done. If you want to boss a superpower, I guess that is important
So this will kill 100,000 Afghans? So be it. So this will kill off our relationship with France for 3 years? So be it
Etc. Not pretty, but maybe needed
It won't kill the US-French relationship.
The French are players. They are making massive scene out of this, so that the Americans throw them a bone in some other area.
I'm not so sure that will happen. The Biden administration has continually sidelined Europe. I just don't think they care and don't see any EU country as a potential ally in the looming cold war against China. I wrote out my thoughts just now, the world has realised that the EU is happy to kowtow to China for fear of losing money.
I think you're wrong on this. For a start, I think it would be a catastrophic mistake to cleave the Western European democracies (most of whom don't really want to "kowtow" to China) off from the Anglosphere.
Re the French, I'm thinking more of them getting US support for a French candidate to be next General Secretary of the United Nations, that kind of thing. It's the kind of quid pro quo that the French are very good at getting.
Indeed, especially as Putin is more of a direct threat to us than Xi is and we need French support within NATO for containing Russia.
Jihadi terrorism is also a direct threat to us we need French intelligence cooperation on
The narrative is moving on and I doubt NATO as we know it will be recognisable soon
You simply do not see that the threat is China not Russia, and as far as France is concerned while they will not be in the tripartite agreement, both France and Canada and others will have a role to play in the South China seas
Why should we be fannying around in the South China Sea? I doubt we'd want the Chinese navy steaming up and down the English Channel. This kind of imperial delusion is embarrassing, and will only end in tears like it always does. It's like Suez, or for that matter Iraq, never happened. If we've got money to waste on these stupid dick-waving exercises, how about we pay our nurses properly, or fund education adequately, or don't cut universal credit?
Because the South China Sea matters for our own economy and the entire global trading system and does not belong to China. The English Channel is our territorial waters.
We aren't messing around in Chinese waters but we sure as hell need to ensure that international waters through which our 21st century trading system is built upon is kept free and open for all to use.
If Taiwan falls and the microchips they export are seized by China and blocked from export our entire economic system could collapse. Then we couldn't pay a fraction of what we pay now to our nurses, or teachers, or welfare.
Are you going to sign up then so you can do your duty and defend Taiwan? Why would China want to collapse the global economy, which they rely on far more than we do?
No need to sign up since if we do this right there will be no actual fighting. That's the point of a Cold War in fact, to avoid the actual fighting. Containment works better through deterrence than through conflict and we and our allies have professionals to do that much better than you or I ever could.
China is a paranoid Communist dictatorship that has been flexing its muscles not a liberal free market democracy. Forgive me if I won't put my faith in China's goodwill.
Goodwill and self interest are two different things. Xi is a repulsive scumbag but his party's hold on power relies on delivering stability and prosperity, and he's not going to jeopardise that by doing anything crazy. Historically speaking we are a far more aggressive, violent, murderous and expansionary culture than China is. They should be more afraid of us than vice versa.
Imagine if China, Russia and Myanmar announced a “tech sharing defence alliance” focused on nuclear subs.
If they were liberal democracies, I wouldn't be worried. The problem is they are dictatorships that brutalize their own citizens, so are clearly pretty prone to violence which can also be directed externally.
Sure.
I’m just trying to get Pbers to flip the perspective a bit.
I kowtow to nobody in my China-skepticism, but this is not China aggressing the West, but the West asserting a posture toward China.
It isn't happening in a vacuum. Have you seen the posturing diplomacy China engages in? Tit for tat is not in itself justification for measures, and in a proper context warning against some new cold war type situation is not inherently a bad thing, but it's not as though the West has just woken up on the wrong side of the bed and decided to assert a posture toward China for no reason, China is not sitting there minding their own business or of no concern to anyone else in a diplomatic or international relations sense. It wants to be a major player, understandably, and major players face opposition.
Nonsense. This can only be about protecting the UKs interests in the long term.
So how does simultaneously allowing China to buy up our nations assets and be owner of our debt achieve that?
At the moment the governments position is merely hypocrisy.
Is that bad? Debts the UK owes China consist of money the Chinese had that they now rely on British goodwill to get back. UK assets owned by China consist of assets the Chinese have that they now rely on British goodwill to protect.
Government debt is basically where you have been running deficits, not balancing the books, not healthy from point of view of servicing it, hence austerity in the UK. Do you really believe government debt can be infinite without default in the end? Where for example you will have little money to spend, and you owe even that to the Chinese? And you think the risk of being in that situation is okay?
Obviously I don’t know the details of UK or US debt portfolios, how long the maturity profiles I add as caveats, though suspect they are sort of mix of medium and short.
The US, our great friend and ally, lent us money for the Second World War, and it was quite long and painful paying it back.
@RochdalePioneers I don’t know much about the Tees Area. But Historic England granted the “Dorman Long Tower” Grade II listing to prevent demolition 3 days ago.
According to Twitter, Nadine Dorries has rescinded this tonight, and demolition will proceed on Sunday.
Have you seen the Dorman Long tower? It's hideous.
Would it bring you cheer seeing that out of your front door every day? Really?
Well. It prevents a better view of the crap behind it.
I thought we were levelling up the north, not levelling down?
You raze it all and build on the rubble, that way it's still higher than before. To the harrowing!
Former French Ambassador to the US seems pretty chilled about the whole thing. Exuding Gallic sangfroid and a sense of "meh"
"“The US has trampled our national interest. What the US has done to our national interest is a hostile act,” he said.
"“What we were doing with the Australians was a strategic choice and this strategic choice has been swept away not only by the Australians but also by the Americans.”
"He said the British involvement was immaterial because they were “poodles of the Americans, as usual”."
Biden has single-handedly taken a wrecking ball to the western alliances. Putin and Xi must wondering why the hell they bothered with that amateur Trump.
Biden has gone up, a lot, in my estimation. He instinctively senses that NATO is over. And it is
Russia is not a strategic threat to the West. It just isn't. Its economy is too small and its people too drunk
They might try another Crimea on the Baltics, but I doubt it. They export virtually nothing but conventional oil, which is increasingly worthless, as energy gets cheaper, because renewables, shale, etc.
Xi Jinping's China, by contrast, is the greatest "threat" the West has faced in a couple of centuries. Worse than Nazi Germany
All that matters is containing her (we cannot "defeat" her). And that means rock-solid alliances with close friends ensuring that we stand together, whatever. That is how you beat bullies
Yes, even though I think his economic policies are turning into a disaster and he is obviously losing his capabilities, when it comes to foreign affairs I have a lot of grudging respect for the fact that Biden has turned out to be so fundamentally ruthless and willing to break the cosy consensus. I’d be interested to see how long Blinken stays around
Yep. I think he is a bit senile, and foolish in some respects, but when it comes to foreign policy he has clear instincts and wise opinions: as to what is in America's interest, and he has a certain heartless brutality in seeing them done. If you want to boss a superpower, I guess that is important
So this will kill 100,000 Afghans? So be it. So this will kill off our relationship with France for 3 years? So be it
Etc. Not pretty, but maybe needed
It won't kill the US-French relationship.
The French are players. They are making massive scene out of this, so that the Americans throw them a bone in some other area.
I'm not so sure that will happen. The Biden administration has continually sidelined Europe. I just don't think they care and don't see any EU country as a potential ally in the looming cold war against China. I wrote out my thoughts just now, the world has realised that the EU is happy to kowtow to China for fear of losing money.
I think you're wrong on this. For a start, I think it would be a catastrophic mistake to cleave the Western European democracies (most of whom don't really want to "kowtow" to China) off from the Anglosphere.
Re the French, I'm thinking more of them getting US support for a French candidate to be next General Secretary of the United Nations, that kind of thing. It's the kind of quid pro quo that the French are very good at getting.
Indeed, especially as Putin is more of a direct threat to us than Xi is and we need French support within NATO for containing Russia.
Jihadi terrorism is also a direct threat to us we need French intelligence cooperation on
The narrative is moving on and I doubt NATO as we know it will be recognisable soon
You simply do not see that the threat is China not Russia, and as far as France is concerned while they will not be in the tripartite agreement, both France and Canada and others will have a role to play in the South China seas
Why should we be fannying around in the South China Sea? I doubt we'd want the Chinese navy steaming up and down the English Channel. This kind of imperial delusion is embarrassing, and will only end in tears like it always does. It's like Suez, or for that matter Iraq, never happened. If we've got money to waste on these stupid dick-waving exercises, how about we pay our nurses properly, or fund education adequately, or don't cut universal credit?
Because the South China Sea matters for our own economy and the entire global trading system and does not belong to China. The English Channel is our territorial waters.
We aren't messing around in Chinese waters but we sure as hell need to ensure that international waters through which our 21st century trading system is built upon is kept free and open for all to use.
If Taiwan falls and the microchips they export are seized by China and blocked from export our entire economic system could collapse. Then we couldn't pay a fraction of what we pay now to our nurses, or teachers, or welfare.
Are you going to sign up then so you can do your duty and defend Taiwan? Why would China want to collapse the global economy, which they rely on far more than we do?
No need to sign up since if we do this right there will be no actual fighting. That's the point of a Cold War in fact, to avoid the actual fighting. Containment works better through deterrence than through conflict and we and our allies have professionals to do that much better than you or I ever could.
China is a paranoid Communist dictatorship that has been flexing its muscles not a liberal free market democracy. Forgive me if I won't put my faith in China's goodwill.
Goodwill and self interest are two different things. Xi is a repulsive scumbag but his party's hold on power relies on delivering stability and prosperity, and he's not going to jeopardise that by doing anything crazy. Historically speaking we are a far more aggressive, violent, murderous and expansionary culture than China is. They should be more afraid of us than vice versa.
Imagine if China, Russia and Myanmar announced a “tech sharing defence alliance” focused on nuclear subs.
If they were liberal democracies, I wouldn't be worried. The problem is they are dictatorships that brutalize their own citizens, so are clearly pretty prone to violence which can also be directed externally.
Sure.
I’m just trying to get Pbers to flip the perspective a bit.
I kowtow to nobody in my China-skepticism, but this is not China aggressing the West, but the West asserting a posture toward China.
It isn't happening in a vacuum. Have you seen the posturing diplomacy China engages in? Tit for tat is not in itself justification for measures, and in a proper context warning against some new cold war type situation is not inherently a bad thing, but it's not as though the West has just woken up on the wrong side of the bed and decided to assert a posture toward China for no reason, China is not sitting there minding their own business or of no concern to anyone else in a diplomatic or international relations sense. It wants to be a major player, understandably, and major players face opposition.
Nonsense. This can only be about protecting the UKs interests in the long term.
So how does simultaneously allowing China to buy up our nations assets and be owner of our debt achieve that?
At the moment the governments position is merely hypocrisy.
Is that bad? Debts the UK owes China consist of money the Chinese had that they now rely on British goodwill to get back. UK assets owned by China consist of assets the Chinese have that they now rely on British goodwill to protect.
Government debt is basically where you have been running deficits, not balancing the books, not healthy from point of view of servicing it, hence austerity in the UK. Do you really believe government debt can be infinite without default in the end? Where for example you will have little money to spend, and you owe even that to the Chinese? And you think the risk of being in that situation is okay?
Obviously I don’t know the details of UK or US debt portfolios, how long the maturity profiles I add as caveats, though suspect they are sort of mix of medium and short.
The US, our great friend and ally, lent us money for the Second World War, and it was quite long and painful paying it back.
Tories think they have pulled another culture wars classic, showing up euro lefties and so on.
But actually it shows they have tightly roped their party to the demographic coffin.
Seriously, who under the age of 70 gives a flying fuck about pounds and ounces?
Surely it one of those things that is red meat to Brexity people, but they aren't saying companies need to, so more than likely won't. Its a totally free hit (and free) all for a few lines of text.
I think more useful things are like this digitalising things like MOTs and shareholdings certificates.
Tories think they have pulled another culture wars classic, showing up euro lefties and so on.
But actually it shows they have tightly roped their party to the demographic coffin.
Seriously, who under the age of 70 gives a flying fuck about pounds and ounces?
I think most people in this country still use imperial measurements for height, regardless of their age, and perhaps also their weight in terms of stones.
Most people under the age of 30 use kilos for weight.
Tories think they have pulled another culture wars classic, showing up euro lefties and so on.
But actually it shows they have tightly roped their party to the demographic coffin.
Seriously, who under the age of 70 gives a flying fuck about pounds and ounces?
I think most people in this country still use imperial measurements for height, regardless of their age, and perhaps also their weight in terms of stones.
Yes but they're less likely to give a shit if they can buy sausages by the pound or not.
It'll cause paroxysms of excitement for a tiny few. And they were probably happy anyway.
Former French Ambassador to the US seems pretty chilled about the whole thing. Exuding Gallic sangfroid and a sense of "meh"
"“The US has trampled our national interest. What the US has done to our national interest is a hostile act,” he said.
"“What we were doing with the Australians was a strategic choice and this strategic choice has been swept away not only by the Australians but also by the Americans.”
"He said the British involvement was immaterial because they were “poodles of the Americans, as usual”."
Biden has single-handedly taken a wrecking ball to the western alliances. Putin and Xi must wondering why the hell they bothered with that amateur Trump.
Biden has gone up, a lot, in my estimation. He instinctively senses that NATO is over. And it is
Russia is not a strategic threat to the West. It just isn't. Its economy is too small and its people too drunk
They might try another Crimea on the Baltics, but I doubt it. They export virtually nothing but conventional oil, which is increasingly worthless, as energy gets cheaper, because renewables, shale, etc.
Xi Jinping's China, by contrast, is the greatest "threat" the West has faced in a couple of centuries. Worse than Nazi Germany
All that matters is containing her (we cannot "defeat" her). And that means rock-solid alliances with close friends ensuring that we stand together, whatever. That is how you beat bullies
Yes, even though I think his economic policies are turning into a disaster and he is obviously losing his capabilities, when it comes to foreign affairs I have a lot of grudging respect for the fact that Biden has turned out to be so fundamentally ruthless and willing to break the cosy consensus. I’d be interested to see how long Blinken stays around
Yep. I think he is a bit senile, and foolish in some respects, but when it comes to foreign policy he has clear instincts and wise opinions: as to what is in America's interest, and he has a certain heartless brutality in seeing them done. If you want to boss a superpower, I guess that is important
So this will kill 100,000 Afghans? So be it. So this will kill off our relationship with France for 3 years? So be it
Etc. Not pretty, but maybe needed
It won't kill the US-French relationship.
The French are players. They are making massive scene out of this, so that the Americans throw them a bone in some other area.
I'm not so sure that will happen. The Biden administration has continually sidelined Europe. I just don't think they care and don't see any EU country as a potential ally in the looming cold war against China. I wrote out my thoughts just now, the world has realised that the EU is happy to kowtow to China for fear of losing money.
I think you're wrong on this. For a start, I think it would be a catastrophic mistake to cleave the Western European democracies (most of whom don't really want to "kowtow" to China) off from the Anglosphere.
Re the French, I'm thinking more of them getting US support for a French candidate to be next General Secretary of the United Nations, that kind of thing. It's the kind of quid pro quo that the French are very good at getting.
Indeed, especially as Putin is more of a direct threat to us than Xi is and we need French support within NATO for containing Russia.
Jihadi terrorism is also a direct threat to us we need French intelligence cooperation on
The narrative is moving on and I doubt NATO as we know it will be recognisable soon
You simply do not see that the threat is China not Russia, and as far as France is concerned while they will not be in the tripartite agreement, both France and Canada and others will have a role to play in the South China seas
Why should we be fannying around in the South China Sea? I doubt we'd want the Chinese navy steaming up and down the English Channel. This kind of imperial delusion is embarrassing, and will only end in tears like it always does. It's like Suez, or for that matter Iraq, never happened. If we've got money to waste on these stupid dick-waving exercises, how about we pay our nurses properly, or fund education adequately, or don't cut universal credit?
Because the South China Sea matters for our own economy and the entire global trading system and does not belong to China. The English Channel is our territorial waters.
We aren't messing around in Chinese waters but we sure as hell need to ensure that international waters through which our 21st century trading system is built upon is kept free and open for all to use.
If Taiwan falls and the microchips they export are seized by China and blocked from export our entire economic system could collapse. Then we couldn't pay a fraction of what we pay now to our nurses, or teachers, or welfare.
Are you going to sign up then so you can do your duty and defend Taiwan? Why would China want to collapse the global economy, which they rely on far more than we do?
No need to sign up since if we do this right there will be no actual fighting. That's the point of a Cold War in fact, to avoid the actual fighting. Containment works better through deterrence than through conflict and we and our allies have professionals to do that much better than you or I ever could.
China is a paranoid Communist dictatorship that has been flexing its muscles not a liberal free market democracy. Forgive me if I won't put my faith in China's goodwill.
Goodwill and self interest are two different things. Xi is a repulsive scumbag but his party's hold on power relies on delivering stability and prosperity, and he's not going to jeopardise that by doing anything crazy. Historically speaking we are a far more aggressive, violent, murderous and expansionary culture than China is. They should be more afraid of us than vice versa.
Imagine if China, Russia and Myanmar announced a “tech sharing defence alliance” focused on nuclear subs.
If they were liberal democracies, I wouldn't be worried. The problem is they are dictatorships that brutalize their own citizens, so are clearly pretty prone to violence which can also be directed externally.
Sure.
I’m just trying to get Pbers to flip the perspective a bit.
I kowtow to nobody in my China-skepticism, but this is not China aggressing the West, but the West asserting a posture toward China.
It isn't happening in a vacuum. Have you seen the posturing diplomacy China engages in? Tit for tat is not in itself justification for measures, and in a proper context warning against some new cold war type situation is not inherently a bad thing, but it's not as though the West has just woken up on the wrong side of the bed and decided to assert a posture toward China for no reason, China is not sitting there minding their own business or of no concern to anyone else in a diplomatic or international relations sense. It wants to be a major player, understandably, and major players face opposition.
Nonsense. This can only be about protecting the UKs interests in the long term.
So how does simultaneously allowing China to buy up our nations assets and be owner of our debt achieve that?
At the moment the governments position is merely hypocrisy.
Is that bad? Debts the UK owes China consist of money the Chinese had that they now rely on British goodwill to get back. UK assets owned by China consist of assets the Chinese have that they now rely on British goodwill to protect.
Government debt is basically where you have been running deficits, not balancing the books, not healthy from point of view of servicing it, hence austerity in the UK. Do you really believe government debt can be infinite without default in the end? Where for example you will have little money to spend, and you owe even that to the Chinese? And you think the risk of being in that situation is okay?
Obviously I don’t know the details of UK or US debt portfolios, how long the maturity profiles I add as caveats, though suspect they are sort of mix of medium and short.
The US, our great friend and ally, lent us money for the Second World War, and it was quite long and painful paying it back.
Japan.
I don’t wish to be rude or anything, but have you been at the Vapors?
Tories think they have pulled another culture wars classic, showing up euro lefties and so on.
But actually it shows they have tightly roped their party to the demographic coffin.
Seriously, who under the age of 70 gives a flying fuck about pounds and ounces?
I think most people in this country still use imperial measurements for height, regardless of their age, and perhaps also their weight in terms of stones.
Most people under the age of 30 use kilos for weight.
But most use miles for distance.
Metric measurements/quantities/etc have been taught in British schools since I think the 1970s but most people (until recently at least) didn't use them very much in everyday life.
Former French Ambassador to the US seems pretty chilled about the whole thing. Exuding Gallic sangfroid and a sense of "meh"
"“The US has trampled our national interest. What the US has done to our national interest is a hostile act,” he said.
"“What we were doing with the Australians was a strategic choice and this strategic choice has been swept away not only by the Australians but also by the Americans.”
"He said the British involvement was immaterial because they were “poodles of the Americans, as usual”."
He’s got a point about the poodle thing, hasn’t he?
What’s the material benefit for the U.K. here?
Beyond, you know, deterring that risk of Taiwanese invasion that even cider-addled toddlers are aware of.
One of the many things idiot Remainers like you told us, was this: the USA would now side with the more-important EU, and the UK would be demoted. A sideshow
To be fair to you I think half of elite France, including Macron, believed this bullshit, even though Leavers like me said: NO, America will always, in the end, come down on the side of her English speaking family. And so it is
We were right, you were wrong. It happens
As for being a poodle, no. We are certainly nothing more than the support act to America. We are the drummer. America is the lead guitar and vocalist. Australia has come in to do some keyboard stuff
The main thing is: the band is back together
The EU is in the audience when they expected to be on stage. AUKS
Not AUK.
The Great Auk is extinct. We collected it to death.
@RochdalePioneers I don’t know much about the Tees Area. But Historic England granted the “Dorman Long Tower” Grade II listing to prevent demolition 3 days ago.
According to Twitter, Nadine Dorries has rescinded this tonight, and demolition will proceed on Sunday.
Have you seen the Dorman Long tower? It's hideous.
Would it bring you cheer seeing that out of your front door every day? Really?
Wouldn’t be great living in a post industrial wasteland with apparently no other housing nearby, but yes. Love me a bit of brutalism in the morning.
Comments
I’m just trying to get Pbers to flip the perspective a bit.
I kowtow to nobody in my China-skepticism, but this is not China aggressing the West, but the West asserting a posture toward China.
Has China ever threatened their trade? Let alone constantly? If the current incarnation of the PRC likes one thing it is international trade. They love it. Bloody love it they do.
The USA did it as well for a century.
It isn't a "trick". It is global capitalism. And China has been winning.
I don’t know much about the Tees Area.
But Historic England granted the “Dorman Long Tower” Grade II listing to prevent demolition 3 days ago.
According to Twitter, Nadine Dorries has rescinded this tonight, and demolition will proceed on Sunday.
You gotta love living in a democracy. But if you are the victim of a foreign invasion, seeing your wedding blown up or your cousin disappeared to some torture dungeon in the middle of the night, you don't really care if it's a democracy doing it or a dictatorship. I wonder whether democracies are better neighbours than anyone else.
So how does simultaneously allowing China to buy up our nations assets and be owner of our debt achieve that?
At the moment the governments position is merely hypocrisy.
Then the answer is yes.
Russia's total exports are lower than Belgium's. And it's all oil and gas and coal.
But they have worked tirelessly to spread disinformation, especially around fracking, and have managed to effectively stall it completely in the UK, as well as maanging to get it banned in a bunch of resource poor countries in Europe. And they've done this via a combination of ways.
Now, one can say "of course they have, they are dependent on exporting energy and if people don't import energy then they're fucked."
But that doesn't excuse their behaviour - which (in Austria) reached the level of bribing politicians. And we do need to stand up to it. Just because they're not the number one problem doesn't mean we should pretend they are somehow OK.
Barrow Hospital seemingly unable to look down Husband's throat. They seem to think it a mere scratch but since he spits bits of walnut out every time he chokes and can feel the bloody thing in his throat they are talking out of their arse. Which is what he will be doing soon at this rate. He still can't swallow or eat food. So is surviving on Buscopan and tea.
Been referred to ENT and as he can't eat let's hope they get round to do their laying on of hands or dispensing of blessings with some degree of urgency.
Himself commented that one of the other patients was an extremely fat girl, the sort of fatness, he said, where you can't tell where one limb ends and another begins. She had a rucksack with her, from which she proceeded to take out chocolate lollies and eat them.
After heroically restraining myself from killing the annoying children in the nearby cafe, I burst into tears out of sheer tiredness and frustration in the supermarket and a very kind lady was very nice to me and asked me if my husband had dementia.
Which sort of sums up the last 36 hours.
😢
Really sorry to hear.
The extremely fat girl anecdote is mildly amusing, though.
Imperial preference era doesn't negate my point, it emphasises it. Europe in the imperial preference era absolutely dominated the global economy so of course it was the bulk of our trade then. Plus technology has moved on much more than a touch since then. 🤦♂️
The European share of the global economy has collapsed since then, and its share of our trade has accordingly. Because "gravity" is not the be-all and end-all which is why the majority of our exports already go beyond the EU.
Would it bring you cheer seeing that out of your front door every day? Really?
But look! China.
It wouldn't surprise me if much of ecomarxism can trace funding back to the Russians who can export dirtier energy if we don't produce our own. But ultimately it is a good reason to get off the dirty stuff altogether, but in the interim it'd be better to be self-sufficient than buy off them. 🤦♂️
But then I'm a barbarian - I'd try to restore ancient ruins, sympathetically, so they could be used for their original purposes - fights to the death in the Collesseum for example.
The Chinese don't run Hinckley Point C. They have an economic interest that can be rescinded at a moment's notice.
There is maybe an irony that in discouraging fracking, they may have created a worse outcome for themselves.
Is Gavin Williamson imprisoned in there?
Go on.
We need strong defence. We need a coherent China policy. We need as many allies as we can, who we trust and who trust us.
The British Government does not have a coherent or sane China policy this evening.
How can the British PM promise the death of our serviceman to the defence of Taiwan from China aggression, whilst simultaneously selling off our Nations assets to China?
The Government and it’s supporters can’t answer this, they are running away from this question. They’ve got themselves into a mess.
If they want to be coherent and serious about this - jail the traitors.
https://www.thebureauinvestigates.com/stories/2021-04-24/cameron-exploited-lobbying-loophole-to-discuss-1bn-china-fund-with-treasury
https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/uk-politics/2020/07/china-s-ownership-uk-assets-exposes-britain-s-broken-model
It would have to fall a long, long way before the EU was merely punching at its weight in terms of UK trade.
And let's be clear-eyed about this, that huge discrepancy is not because the EU is brilliant or because we've just got no imagination. It's because it's a LOT easier to trade with nearby, legislatively aligned countries than it is to trade with far-off, unaligned ones.
Edit: I had to replace your less than symbol with the words because it wouldn't post otherwise
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/china-now-owns-ps143bn-in-uk-assets-from-nuclear-power-to-pubs-and-schools-b1841056.html
Conservatives 39% (+6)
Labour 35% (nc)
Liberal Democrats 7% (-3)
See: Brexit boosts trade links. Everyone should be happy.
That being said... I think we should probably wait for the pandemic to recede before we make final judgements. It's fair to say that 2020 was not a normal year.
That makes literally no sense.
Also I deliberately used EEA on my original post, and Philip - consciously misleadingly or not - used EU.
It scares me sometimes that he is apparently a professional economist.
If it were up to me, by the way, I wouldn't even focus on trade shares in this binary EU/non EU way. But since that's what Philip wants to talk about, it deserves to be said that even now trade with the EU is huge for solid non-ideological reasons.
https://twitter.com/steven_swinford/status/1436076040128974854?s=21
https://www.electoralcalculus.co.uk/fcgi-bin/usercode.py?scotcontrol=Y&CON=39&LAB=35&LIB=7&Reform=2&Green=3&UKIP=&TVCON=&TVLAB=&TVLIB=&TVReform=&TVGreen=&TVUKIP=&SCOTCON=23.6&SCOTLAB=19.2&SCOTLIB=6&SCOTReform=0.3&SCOTGreen=1.5&SCOTUKIP=&SCOTNAT=47.5&display=AllChanged&regorseat=(none)&boundary=2019base
Still. It won CHB his bet.
And you think the risk of being in that situation is okay?
Obviously I don’t know the details of UK or US debt portfolios, how long the maturity profiles I add as caveats, though suspect they are sort of mix of medium and short.
The US, our great friend and ally, lent us money for the Second World War, and it was quite long and painful paying it back.
Tories think they have pulled another culture wars classic, showing up euro lefties and so on.
But actually it shows they have tightly roped their party to the demographic coffin.
Seriously, who under the age of 70 gives a flying fuck about pounds and ounces?
I think more useful things are like this digitalising things like MOTs and shareholdings certificates.
But most use miles for distance.
It'll cause paroxysms of excitement for a tiny few. And they were probably happy anyway.
The Great Auk is extinct. We collected it to death.