Xavier Bertrand, one of Barnier's rivals for the Republicans nomination, says that France should respond by opening talks with China and Russia to avoid being America's valet.
Yes. There's another tweet (I'll try and find it) where a senior French journalist quotes a top French mandarin at the Quai d'Orsay who says "It is time for us to consider an alliance with the Chinese, though there is a problem with the nature of the Chinese regime"
I mean, WTAF. "A problem?" There's nationalist pique and then there is moral insanity
To be fair to the French, this tweet was followed by hundreds of French people saying Shut up you stupid cretins, deal with the humiliation, China is horrible
Sensible French people are not joining in this madness
One of my colleagues on Friday (the French one who pointed out that France insisting everything be in French would be a sticking point) was adamant that this wouldn't lead to France going down the antagonist role or any alliance with Russia or China. He's right. There's some understandable anger over having this deal nicked from them, anger over being left out of what is the most significant military alliance since the foundation of NATO and fear that they, along with the EU, are being sidelined by the US because EU foreign policy wrt China is a mess of German appeasement vs France's more muscular stance. The latter, IMO, is the big one. The anger over lost money subsides, the fear won't go away.
I think they are pissed about the alliance, but they are more furious about the submarine order.
€90bn is almost 4% of French GDP. It's equivalent to FOUR YEARS of Thales revenues.
I'm with Max, I don't think it's the lost euros that are sending them mad
If you dig into the deal it wasn't all going to France (a lot, ironically, was going to Lockheed Martin in the USA) and of course it was going to be spread over decades. It's not tens of billions vaporising in a day
The loss of the deal will sting, but France has a big defence industry, and they can absorb this. Maybe some jobs will be lost, they will recover
The thing that is making them behave so oddly is the idea they will be completely cut out of the New World Order. France will be without a global role as the West finally aligns against China. That goes against every French instinct. They've had a role in major power politics for 10 centuries
It's why they will eventually calm down and seek an associate membership status allied to Aukus but with special privileges, saving their pride. Or they will finally succeed in persuading the EU to lock and load?
Those are their choices, I can't see them "allying with Putin or Xi" even if they are still blisteringly angry and humiliated as of today
Not only that of course but it hurts their pride that the "isolated" Royaume-Uni whom Macron was open mocking at the G7, with claims that Biden was taking their side, were the ones who co-ordinated and arranged this at the time of the G7.
Yes, that definitely stings. While Macron was banging on about sausages and yet another insular EU squabble the grown ups were making plans to take on China.
That's what Macron's biggest fear and his main source of anger. France wasn't in the room. No one thought to invite them. Biden is supposed to be punishing the UK, America is supposed to be conducting it's transatlantic relationship via Paris/Brussels. France's post-Brexit world view is being shattered and Macron just doesn't know what to do about it. This is another Suez for them.
The Economist agrees with you.
"Another Suez". But this time Britain is on the *winning* or at least not-humiliated side.
Yep, what stings France isn't the loss of the deal, but what the loss of the deal represents. In 2016 France saw an opportunity to end two centuries of Anglo dominance of the Western order, they did that via promoting the EU as a body with a foreign policy and by trying to peel away US-UK allies. Up until maybe the past week it looked like it was working, now it very certainly isn't.
Their dream was to have an EU, led by France, be at the very least, equal with the US, whereas the fact that no-one thought to invite them puts them back in their box.
EDIT: This extract from the Guinad article on the cancelled UK-Frog summit is also hilarious.
British defence sources argued that it was left to the Australians to break the news to the French, but it seemed there were divisions in Canberra about the best way of going about it. “Some Australians wanted to ring up one week, and say we’re so sorry, we’re putting out the diesel submarine contract, and ring up the next week, and say we just want you to know that we found a better submarine and it’s British,” the defence source said. “There was another school of thought that said: don’t do it like that. They’ll see through it and it will be worse because it will look duplicitous.” In the end, neither side won. The French were not told before details began to leak to the Australian and US media on Wednesday morning. The UK has argued that it simply was responding to a request from Australia to seek secret nuclear propulsion technology for its submarines in March this year, technology shared between Britain and the US under a defence agreement that dates back to 1958. The defence source said that having secured British support, the Australians then went to the Biden administration. But the claim of relative British passivity is undermined by other briefings from Downing Street, which have said that Johnson was eager to widen the nuclear submarine deal into something deeper in the aftermath of the UK’s exit from the European Union.
Downing Street briefs that the Muscly Magnificent was muscly and magnificent. Well I never.
The Americans have been saying much the same all weekend. Biden was initially only up for the submarine deal, Boris went for the big victory and negotiated it up to a defence pact that has redrawn the western alliance.
In the long term it could give form to a less US-dominated Anglosphere. Aukus is inherently more balanced and future-oriented than the needy ‘special relationship’.
Only in the sense that it includes Quantum Computing and AI, the latter in particular being a British strength. We're still very many years off that being strategically important, however, and the vast disparities vis-a-vis the US's capacities to face off against China are the same as all other ones post-Suez. In the main this is a US-Australian resource sharing deal that Johnson has shown some rare cunning in jumping into the middle of. In the long-run it will be poor news for the western alliance, unless one or more key continental countries become involved.
What "western alliance" are you talking about?
The strength of NATO has always been the USA and the UK first and second. With the rest of Europe either too small to make much difference but trying to pull its weight (rare), or large enough to do so but not bothering (France and Germany).
Yes France had a major military, unlike Germany, but they were never engaged with NATO that strongly. De Gaulle effectively pulled them out in the sixties and they only rejoined in 2009. So hardly reliable partners even during the Cold War we coped without them being key players.
If the 'worst that happens' is that France returns to its isolationist nature it maintained for over four decades, while the 'best that happens' is that the USA, UK, Aus and ultimately other likeminded nations cooperate closer than we were doing in recent years then that is extremely good for our alliances.
That alliance just won't be very Europe-centric.
It doesn't work like that, I'm afraid. France and Germany are simply the key democratic powers across a vast Eurasian landmass. If their relationship with North America weakens, other powers across this huge area are strengthened.
It doesn't work like that, I'm afraid.
France and Germany are the key democratic powers over a tiny fraction of the global landmass. If they stop engaging with the world, the world will move on without them.
We can't compel European countries to pull their own weight. They haven't for decades; pretty much the only thing uniting Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden was pointing this out.
We need to stop overly worrying about what a bunch of freeloading nations that want to take the benefits of freedom but not spend their treasure and blood defending it think - and pay more attention to those who are willing to fight for - and fight against - what we hold dear.
This is the sort of cheerful, slightly parochial fantasy which reminds me of Donald Rumsfeld's, in which France and Germany simply represent stasis and "blocks to progress". The unavoidable fact is that they are the key players in the EU, whose borders stretch to Ukraine and the Black Sea, and whose support for and doubling up by a US presence is key to the whole landmass.
Rumsfeld was right.
It doesn't matter if they are "key players in the EU", the EU is a piddly little corner of the globe. The EU's landmass is not even 60% of Australia's landmass.
If the EU nations don't want to fight for the free world, we need to rely on partners who will.
The EU is a substantial chunk of the free world in itself, in economic, cultural, demographic, and diplomatic terms. It will decide who it wants to co-operate with, not anyone else.
Xavier Bertrand, one of Barnier's rivals for the Republicans nomination, says that France should respond by opening talks with China and Russia to avoid being America's valet.
Yes. There's another tweet (I'll try and find it) where a senior French journalist quotes a top French mandarin at the Quai d'Orsay who says "It is time for us to consider an alliance with the Chinese, though there is a problem with the nature of the Chinese regime"
I mean, WTAF. "A problem?" There's nationalist pique and then there is moral insanity
To be fair to the French, this tweet was followed by hundreds of French people saying Shut up you stupid cretins, deal with the humiliation, China is horrible
Sensible French people are not joining in this madness
One of my colleagues on Friday (the French one who pointed out that France insisting everything be in French would be a sticking point) was adamant that this wouldn't lead to France going down the antagonist role or any alliance with Russia or China. He's right. There's some understandable anger over having this deal nicked from them, anger over being left out of what is the most significant military alliance since the foundation of NATO and fear that they, along with the EU, are being sidelined by the US because EU foreign policy wrt China is a mess of German appeasement vs France's more muscular stance. The latter, IMO, is the big one. The anger over lost money subsides, the fear won't go away.
I think they are pissed about the alliance, but they are more furious about the submarine order.
€90bn is almost 4% of French GDP. It's equivalent to FOUR YEARS of Thales revenues.
I'm with Max, I don't think it's the lost euros that are sending them mad
If you dig into the deal it wasn't all going to France (a lot, ironically, was going to Lockheed Martin in the USA) and of course it was going to be spread over decades. It's not tens of billions vaporising in a day
The loss of the deal will sting, but France has a big defence industry, and they can absorb this. Maybe some jobs will be lost, they will recover
The thing that is making them behave so oddly is the idea they will be completely cut out of the New World Order. France will be without a global role as the West finally aligns against China. That goes against every French instinct. They've had a role in major power politics for 10 centuries
It's why they will eventually calm down and seek an associate membership status allied to Aukus but with special privileges, saving their pride. Or they will finally succeed in persuading the EU to lock and load?
Those are their choices, I can't see them "allying with Putin or Xi" even if they are still blisteringly angry and humiliated as of today
Not only that of course but it hurts their pride that the "isolated" Royaume-Uni whom Macron was open mocking at the G7, with claims that Biden was taking their side, were the ones who co-ordinated and arranged this at the time of the G7.
Yes, that definitely stings. While Macron was banging on about sausages and yet another insular EU squabble the grown ups were making plans to take on China.
That's what Macron's biggest fear and his main source of anger. France wasn't in the room. No one thought to invite them. Biden is supposed to be punishing the UK, America is supposed to be conducting it's transatlantic relationship via Paris/Brussels. France's post-Brexit world view is being shattered and Macron just doesn't know what to do about it. This is another Suez for them.
The Economist agrees with you.
"Another Suez". But this time Britain is on the *winning* or at least not-humiliated side.
Yep, what stings France isn't the loss of the deal, but what the loss of the deal represents. In 2016 France saw an opportunity to end two centuries of Anglo dominance of the Western order, they did that via promoting the EU as a body with a foreign policy and by trying to peel away US-UK allies. Up until maybe the past week it looked like it was working, now it very certainly isn't.
Their dream was to have an EU, led by France, be at the very least, equal with the US, whereas the fact that no-one thought to invite them puts them back in their box.
EDIT: This extract from the Guinad article on the cancelled UK-Frog summit is also hilarious.
British defence sources argued that it was left to the Australians to break the news to the French, but it seemed there were divisions in Canberra about the best way of going about it. “Some Australians wanted to ring up one week, and say we’re so sorry, we’re putting out the diesel submarine contract, and ring up the next week, and say we just want you to know that we found a better submarine and it’s British,” the defence source said. “There was another school of thought that said: don’t do it like that. They’ll see through it and it will be worse because it will look duplicitous.” In the end, neither side won. The French were not told before details began to leak to the Australian and US media on Wednesday morning. The UK has argued that it simply was responding to a request from Australia to seek secret nuclear propulsion technology for its submarines in March this year, technology shared between Britain and the US under a defence agreement that dates back to 1958. The defence source said that having secured British support, the Australians then went to the Biden administration. But the claim of relative British passivity is undermined by other briefings from Downing Street, which have said that Johnson was eager to widen the nuclear submarine deal into something deeper in the aftermath of the UK’s exit from the European Union.
Downing Street briefs that the Muscly Magnificent was muscly and magnificent. Well I never.
The Americans have been saying much the same all weekend. Biden was initially only up for the submarine deal, Boris went for the big victory and negotiated it up to a defence pact that has redrawn the western alliance.
In the long term it could give form to a less US-dominated Anglosphere. Aukus is inherently more balanced and future-oriented than the needy ‘special relationship’.
Only in the sense that it includes Quantum Computing and AI, the latter in particular being a British strength. We're still very many years off that being strategically important, however, and the vast disparities vis-a-vis the US's capacities to face off against China are the same as all other ones post-Suez. In the main this is a US-Australian resource sharing deal that Johnson has shown some rare cunning in jumping into the middle of. In the long-run it will be poor news for the western alliance, unless one or more key continental countries become involved.
What "western alliance" are you talking about?
The strength of NATO has always been the USA and the UK first and second. With the rest of Europe either too small to make much difference but trying to pull its weight (rare), or large enough to do so but not bothering (France and Germany).
Yes France had a major military, unlike Germany, but they were never engaged with NATO that strongly. De Gaulle effectively pulled them out in the sixties and they only rejoined in 2009. So hardly reliable partners even during the Cold War we coped without them being key players.
If the 'worst that happens' is that France returns to its isolationist nature it maintained for over four decades, while the 'best that happens' is that the USA, UK, Aus and ultimately other likeminded nations cooperate closer than we were doing in recent years then that is extremely good for our alliances.
That alliance just won't be very Europe-centric.
It doesn't work like that, I'm afraid. France and Germany are simply the key democratic powers across a vast Eurasian landmass. If their relationship with North America weakens, other powers across this huge area are strengthened.
It doesn't work like that, I'm afraid.
France and Germany are the key democratic powers over a tiny fraction of the global landmass. If they stop engaging with the world, the world will move on without them.
We can't compel European countries to pull their own weight. They haven't for decades; pretty much the only thing uniting Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden was pointing this out.
We need to stop overly worrying about what a bunch of freeloading nations that want to take the benefits of freedom but not spend their treasure and blood defending it think - and pay more attention to those who are willing to fight for - and fight against - what we hold dear.
This is the sort of cheerful, slightly parochial fantasy which reminds me of Donald Rumsfeld's, in which France and Germany simply represent stasis and "blocks to progress". The unavoidable fact is that they are the key players in the EU, whose borders stretch to Ukraine and the Black Sea, and whose support for and doubling up by a US presence is key to the whole landmass.
Rumsfeld was right.
It doesn't matter if they are "key players in the EU", the EU is a piddly little corner of the globe. The EU's landmass is not even 60% of Australia's landmass.
If the EU nations don't want to fight for the free world, we need to rely on partners who will.
The EU is a chunk of the free world itself, in economic, cultural, demographic, and diplomatic terms. It will decide who it wants to co-operate with, not anyone else.
It will decide who it wants to co-operate with.
And if it wants to co-operate with China, or Russia, then it can prioritise mercantilism over liberty.
The rest of us can and will move on without them if so. And thank goodness we're not tied down to such a deadweight anymore.
Xavier Bertrand, one of Barnier's rivals for the Republicans nomination, says that France should respond by opening talks with China and Russia to avoid being America's valet.
Yes. There's another tweet (I'll try and find it) where a senior French journalist quotes a top French mandarin at the Quai d'Orsay who says "It is time for us to consider an alliance with the Chinese, though there is a problem with the nature of the Chinese regime"
I mean, WTAF. "A problem?" There's nationalist pique and then there is moral insanity
To be fair to the French, this tweet was followed by hundreds of French people saying Shut up you stupid cretins, deal with the humiliation, China is horrible
Sensible French people are not joining in this madness
One of my colleagues on Friday (the French one who pointed out that France insisting everything be in French would be a sticking point) was adamant that this wouldn't lead to France going down the antagonist role or any alliance with Russia or China. He's right. There's some understandable anger over having this deal nicked from them, anger over being left out of what is the most significant military alliance since the foundation of NATO and fear that they, along with the EU, are being sidelined by the US because EU foreign policy wrt China is a mess of German appeasement vs France's more muscular stance. The latter, IMO, is the big one. The anger over lost money subsides, the fear won't go away.
I think they are pissed about the alliance, but they are more furious about the submarine order.
€90bn is almost 4% of French GDP. It's equivalent to FOUR YEARS of Thales revenues.
I'm with Max, I don't think it's the lost euros that are sending them mad
If you dig into the deal it wasn't all going to France (a lot, ironically, was going to Lockheed Martin in the USA) and of course it was going to be spread over decades. It's not tens of billions vaporising in a day
The loss of the deal will sting, but France has a big defence industry, and they can absorb this. Maybe some jobs will be lost, they will recover
The thing that is making them behave so oddly is the idea they will be completely cut out of the New World Order. France will be without a global role as the West finally aligns against China. That goes against every French instinct. They've had a role in major power politics for 10 centuries
It's why they will eventually calm down and seek an associate membership status allied to Aukus but with special privileges, saving their pride. Or they will finally succeed in persuading the EU to lock and load?
Those are their choices, I can't see them "allying with Putin or Xi" even if they are still blisteringly angry and humiliated as of today
Not only that of course but it hurts their pride that the "isolated" Royaume-Uni whom Macron was open mocking at the G7, with claims that Biden was taking their side, were the ones who co-ordinated and arranged this at the time of the G7.
Yes, that definitely stings. While Macron was banging on about sausages and yet another insular EU squabble the grown ups were making plans to take on China.
That's what Macron's biggest fear and his main source of anger. France wasn't in the room. No one thought to invite them. Biden is supposed to be punishing the UK, America is supposed to be conducting it's transatlantic relationship via Paris/Brussels. France's post-Brexit world view is being shattered and Macron just doesn't know what to do about it. This is another Suez for them.
The Economist agrees with you.
"Another Suez". But this time Britain is on the *winning* or at least not-humiliated side.
Yep, what stings France isn't the loss of the deal, but what the loss of the deal represents. In 2016 France saw an opportunity to end two centuries of Anglo dominance of the Western order, they did that via promoting the EU as a body with a foreign policy and by trying to peel away US-UK allies. Up until maybe the past week it looked like it was working, now it very certainly isn't.
Their dream was to have an EU, led by France, be at the very least, equal with the US, whereas the fact that no-one thought to invite them puts them back in their box.
EDIT: This extract from the Guinad article on the cancelled UK-Frog summit is also hilarious.
British defence sources argued that it was left to the Australians to break the news to the French, but it seemed there were divisions in Canberra about the best way of going about it. “Some Australians wanted to ring up one week, and say we’re so sorry, we’re putting out the diesel submarine contract, and ring up the next week, and say we just want you to know that we found a better submarine and it’s British,” the defence source said. “There was another school of thought that said: don’t do it like that. They’ll see through it and it will be worse because it will look duplicitous.” In the end, neither side won. The French were not told before details began to leak to the Australian and US media on Wednesday morning. The UK has argued that it simply was responding to a request from Australia to seek secret nuclear propulsion technology for its submarines in March this year, technology shared between Britain and the US under a defence agreement that dates back to 1958. The defence source said that having secured British support, the Australians then went to the Biden administration. But the claim of relative British passivity is undermined by other briefings from Downing Street, which have said that Johnson was eager to widen the nuclear submarine deal into something deeper in the aftermath of the UK’s exit from the European Union.
Downing Street briefs that the Muscly Magnificent was muscly and magnificent. Well I never.
The Americans have been saying much the same all weekend. Biden was initially only up for the submarine deal, Boris went for the big victory and negotiated it up to a defence pact that has redrawn the western alliance.
In the long term it could give form to a less US-dominated Anglosphere. Aukus is inherently more balanced and future-oriented than the needy ‘special relationship’.
Only in the sense that it includes Quantum Computing and AI, the latter in particular being a British strength. We're still very many years off that being strategically important, however, and the vast disparities vis-a-vis the US's capacities to face off against China are the same as all other ones post-Suez. In the main this is a US-Australian resource sharing deal that Johnson has shown some rare cunning in jumping into the middle of. In the long-run it will be poor news for the western alliance, unless one or more key continental countries become involved.
What "western alliance" are you talking about?
The strength of NATO has always been the USA and the UK first and second. With the rest of Europe either too small to make much difference but trying to pull its weight (rare), or large enough to do so but not bothering (France and Germany).
Yes France had a major military, unlike Germany, but they were never engaged with NATO that strongly. De Gaulle effectively pulled them out in the sixties and they only rejoined in 2009. So hardly reliable partners even during the Cold War we coped without them being key players.
If the 'worst that happens' is that France returns to its isolationist nature it maintained for over four decades, while the 'best that happens' is that the USA, UK, Aus and ultimately other likeminded nations cooperate closer than we were doing in recent years then that is extremely good for our alliances.
That alliance just won't be very Europe-centric.
It doesn't work like that, I'm afraid. France and Germany are simply the key democratic powers across a vast Eurasian landmass. If their relationship with North America weakens, other powers across this huge area are strengthened.
It doesn't work like that, I'm afraid.
France and Germany are the key democratic powers over a tiny fraction of the global landmass. If they stop engaging with the world, the world will move on without them.
We can't compel European countries to pull their own weight. They haven't for decades; pretty much the only thing uniting Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden was pointing this out.
We need to stop overly worrying about what a bunch of freeloading nations that want to take the benefits of freedom but not spend their treasure and blood defending it think - and pay more attention to those who are willing to fight for - and fight against - what we hold dear.
This is the sort of cheerful, slightly parochial fantasy which reminds me of Donald Rumsfeld's, in which France and Germany simply represent stasis and "blocks to progress". The unavoidable fact is that they are the key players in the EU, whose borders stretch to Ukraine and the Black Sea, and whose support for and doubling up by a US presence is key to the whole landmass.
Rumsfeld was right.
It doesn't matter if they are "key players in the EU", the EU is a piddly little corner of the globe. The EU's landmass is not even 60% of Australia's landmass.
If the EU nations don't want to fight for the free world, we need to rely on partners who will.
The EU is a chunk of the free world itself, in economic, cultural, demographic, and diplomatic terms. It will decide who it wants to co-operate with, not anyone else.
It will decide who it wants to co-operate with.
And if it wants to co-operate with China, or Russia, then it can prioritise mercantilism over liberty.
The rest of us can and will move on without them if so. And thank goodness we're not tied down to such a deadweight anymore.
Civilisationally, compared to most of the world, they are "us".
Xavier Bertrand, one of Barnier's rivals for the Republicans nomination, says that France should respond by opening talks with China and Russia to avoid being America's valet.
Yes. There's another tweet (I'll try and find it) where a senior French journalist quotes a top French mandarin at the Quai d'Orsay who says "It is time for us to consider an alliance with the Chinese, though there is a problem with the nature of the Chinese regime"
I mean, WTAF. "A problem?" There's nationalist pique and then there is moral insanity
To be fair to the French, this tweet was followed by hundreds of French people saying Shut up you stupid cretins, deal with the humiliation, China is horrible
Sensible French people are not joining in this madness
One of my colleagues on Friday (the French one who pointed out that France insisting everything be in French would be a sticking point) was adamant that this wouldn't lead to France going down the antagonist role or any alliance with Russia or China. He's right. There's some understandable anger over having this deal nicked from them, anger over being left out of what is the most significant military alliance since the foundation of NATO and fear that they, along with the EU, are being sidelined by the US because EU foreign policy wrt China is a mess of German appeasement vs France's more muscular stance. The latter, IMO, is the big one. The anger over lost money subsides, the fear won't go away.
I think they are pissed about the alliance, but they are more furious about the submarine order.
€90bn is almost 4% of French GDP. It's equivalent to FOUR YEARS of Thales revenues.
I'm with Max, I don't think it's the lost euros that are sending them mad
If you dig into the deal it wasn't all going to France (a lot, ironically, was going to Lockheed Martin in the USA) and of course it was going to be spread over decades. It's not tens of billions vaporising in a day
The loss of the deal will sting, but France has a big defence industry, and they can absorb this. Maybe some jobs will be lost, they will recover
The thing that is making them behave so oddly is the idea they will be completely cut out of the New World Order. France will be without a global role as the West finally aligns against China. That goes against every French instinct. They've had a role in major power politics for 10 centuries
It's why they will eventually calm down and seek an associate membership status allied to Aukus but with special privileges, saving their pride. Or they will finally succeed in persuading the EU to lock and load?
Those are their choices, I can't see them "allying with Putin or Xi" even if they are still blisteringly angry and humiliated as of today
Not only that of course but it hurts their pride that the "isolated" Royaume-Uni whom Macron was open mocking at the G7, with claims that Biden was taking their side, were the ones who co-ordinated and arranged this at the time of the G7.
Yes, that definitely stings. While Macron was banging on about sausages and yet another insular EU squabble the grown ups were making plans to take on China.
That's what Macron's biggest fear and his main source of anger. France wasn't in the room. No one thought to invite them. Biden is supposed to be punishing the UK, America is supposed to be conducting it's transatlantic relationship via Paris/Brussels. France's post-Brexit world view is being shattered and Macron just doesn't know what to do about it. This is another Suez for them.
The Economist agrees with you.
"Another Suez". But this time Britain is on the *winning* or at least not-humiliated side.
Yep, what stings France isn't the loss of the deal, but what the loss of the deal represents. In 2016 France saw an opportunity to end two centuries of Anglo dominance of the Western order, they did that via promoting the EU as a body with a foreign policy and by trying to peel away US-UK allies. Up until maybe the past week it looked like it was working, now it very certainly isn't.
Their dream was to have an EU, led by France, be at the very least, equal with the US, whereas the fact that no-one thought to invite them puts them back in their box.
EDIT: This extract from the Guinad article on the cancelled UK-Frog summit is also hilarious.
British defence sources argued that it was left to the Australians to break the news to the French, but it seemed there were divisions in Canberra about the best way of going about it. “Some Australians wanted to ring up one week, and say we’re so sorry, we’re putting out the diesel submarine contract, and ring up the next week, and say we just want you to know that we found a better submarine and it’s British,” the defence source said. “There was another school of thought that said: don’t do it like that. They’ll see through it and it will be worse because it will look duplicitous.” In the end, neither side won. The French were not told before details began to leak to the Australian and US media on Wednesday morning. The UK has argued that it simply was responding to a request from Australia to seek secret nuclear propulsion technology for its submarines in March this year, technology shared between Britain and the US under a defence agreement that dates back to 1958. The defence source said that having secured British support, the Australians then went to the Biden administration. But the claim of relative British passivity is undermined by other briefings from Downing Street, which have said that Johnson was eager to widen the nuclear submarine deal into something deeper in the aftermath of the UK’s exit from the European Union.
Downing Street briefs that the Muscly Magnificent was muscly and magnificent. Well I never.
The Americans have been saying much the same all weekend. Biden was initially only up for the submarine deal, Boris went for the big victory and negotiated it up to a defence pact that has redrawn the western alliance.
In the long term it could give form to a less US-dominated Anglosphere. Aukus is inherently more balanced and future-oriented than the needy ‘special relationship’.
Only in the sense that it includes Quantum Computing and AI, the latter in particular being a British strength. We're still very many years off that being strategically important, however, and the vast disparities vis-a-vis the US's capacities to face off against China are the same as all other ones post-Suez. In the main this is a US-Australian resource sharing deal that Johnson has shown some rare cunning in jumping into the middle of. In the long-run it will be poor news for the western alliance, unless one or more key continental countries become involved.
What "western alliance" are you talking about?
The strength of NATO has always been the USA and the UK first and second. With the rest of Europe either too small to make much difference but trying to pull its weight (rare), or large enough to do so but not bothering (France and Germany).
Yes France had a major military, unlike Germany, but they were never engaged with NATO that strongly. De Gaulle effectively pulled them out in the sixties and they only rejoined in 2009. So hardly reliable partners even during the Cold War we coped without them being key players.
If the 'worst that happens' is that France returns to its isolationist nature it maintained for over four decades, while the 'best that happens' is that the USA, UK, Aus and ultimately other likeminded nations cooperate closer than we were doing in recent years then that is extremely good for our alliances.
That alliance just won't be very Europe-centric.
It doesn't work like that, I'm afraid. France and Germany are simply the key democratic powers across a vast Eurasian landmass. If their relationship with North America weakens, other powers across this huge area are strengthened.
It doesn't work like that, I'm afraid.
France and Germany are the key democratic powers over a tiny fraction of the global landmass. If they stop engaging with the world, the world will move on without them.
We can't compel European countries to pull their own weight. They haven't for decades; pretty much the only thing uniting Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden was pointing this out.
We need to stop overly worrying about what a bunch of freeloading nations that want to take the benefits of freedom but not spend their treasure and blood defending it think - and pay more attention to those who are willing to fight for - and fight against - what we hold dear.
This is the sort of cheerful, slightly parochial fantasy which reminds me of Donald Rumsfeld's, in which France and Germany simply represent stasis and "blocks to progress". The unavoidable fact is that they are the key players in the EU, whose borders stretch to Ukraine and the Black Sea, and whose support for and doubling up by a US presence is key to the whole landmass.
Rumsfeld was right.
It doesn't matter if they are "key players in the EU", the EU is a piddly little corner of the globe. The EU's landmass is not even 60% of Australia's landmass.
If the EU nations don't want to fight for the free world, we need to rely on partners who will.
The EU is a chunk of the free world itself, in economic, cultural, demographic, and diplomatic terms. It will decide who it wants to co-operate with, not anyone else.
It will decide who it wants to co-operate with.
And if it wants to co-operate with China, or Russia, then it can prioritise mercantilism over liberty.
The rest of us can and will move on without them if so. And thank goodness we're not tied down to such a deadweight anymore.
Civilisationally, compared to most of the world, they are "us".
Not as much as Australia and others that we co-operate more with.
If they wish to prioritise selling dishwashers to Beijing over taking sides in conflicts then that's their prerogative. They're a fraction of the globe that we happen to coincidentally be located close to, our closest friends and allies are spread all over the planet.
And in the 21st century this small planet of ours is all interconnected so parochial concerns over geography don't matter. A few thousand miles distance doesn't provide any shelter in this day and age.
My solution is individual toilet cubicles everywhere (floor to ceiling). Safe space if you want it with others, or private space for yourself. Toilet/changing room problem solved.
Massively reduces capacity
We solved it at my gaff by departing the urinals into a different room, making the gents cubicles unisex and keeping the ladies as they were
Don't know much about this, but the exit poll suggests 45% for UR. Would I be wrong in thinking that is a pretty dismal result for Vlad?
I've often been fascinated with the idea of how much effort various despotic or authoritarian regimes put into elections, which may depend in part on how much genuine support they are able to muster (some will manage to have a fair amount). But do you just hound opposition or proscribe laws to make it difficult for them, ballot stuff, or just make up results entirely, and if so how much do you give to yourself, how much can you practically influence or control things if you are making the effort for some amount of actual voting?
Don't know much about this, but the exit poll suggests 45% for UR. Would I be wrong in thinking that is a pretty dismal result for Vlad?
I've often been fascinated with the idea of how much effort various despotic or authoritarian regimes put into elections, which may depend in part on how much genuine support they are able to muster (some will manage to have a fair amount). But do you just hound opposition or proscribe laws to make it difficult for them, ballot stuff, or just make up results entirely, and if so how much do you give to yourself, how much can you practically influence or control things if you are making the effort for some amount of actual voting?
It does seem curious. According to that exit poll they have fallen from 54 to 45 %. Which is a bit of a slap for the regime.Why not just fix it to say 51%? They clearly have some support. After banning and jailing opponents. So why take the hit?
Xavier Bertrand, one of Barnier's rivals for the Republicans nomination, says that France should respond by opening talks with China and Russia to avoid being America's valet.
Yes. There's another tweet (I'll try and find it) where a senior French journalist quotes a top French mandarin at the Quai d'Orsay who says "It is time for us to consider an alliance with the Chinese, though there is a problem with the nature of the Chinese regime"
I mean, WTAF. "A problem?" There's nationalist pique and then there is moral insanity
To be fair to the French, this tweet was followed by hundreds of French people saying Shut up you stupid cretins, deal with the humiliation, China is horrible
Sensible French people are not joining in this madness
One of my colleagues on Friday (the French one who pointed out that France insisting everything be in French would be a sticking point) was adamant that this wouldn't lead to France going down the antagonist role or any alliance with Russia or China. He's right. There's some understandable anger over having this deal nicked from them, anger over being left out of what is the most significant military alliance since the foundation of NATO and fear that they, along with the EU, are being sidelined by the US because EU foreign policy wrt China is a mess of German appeasement vs France's more muscular stance. The latter, IMO, is the big one. The anger over lost money subsides, the fear won't go away.
I think they are pissed about the alliance, but they are more furious about the submarine order.
€90bn is almost 4% of French GDP. It's equivalent to FOUR YEARS of Thales revenues.
I'm with Max, I don't think it's the lost euros that are sending them mad
If you dig into the deal it wasn't all going to France (a lot, ironically, was going to Lockheed Martin in the USA) and of course it was going to be spread over decades. It's not tens of billions vaporising in a day
The loss of the deal will sting, but France has a big defence industry, and they can absorb this. Maybe some jobs will be lost, they will recover
The thing that is making them behave so oddly is the idea they will be completely cut out of the New World Order. France will be without a global role as the West finally aligns against China. That goes against every French instinct. They've had a role in major power politics for 10 centuries
It's why they will eventually calm down and seek an associate membership status allied to Aukus but with special privileges, saving their pride. Or they will finally succeed in persuading the EU to lock and load?
Those are their choices, I can't see them "allying with Putin or Xi" even if they are still blisteringly angry and humiliated as of today
Not only that of course but it hurts their pride that the "isolated" Royaume-Uni whom Macron was open mocking at the G7, with claims that Biden was taking their side, were the ones who co-ordinated and arranged this at the time of the G7.
Yes, that definitely stings. While Macron was banging on about sausages and yet another insular EU squabble the grown ups were making plans to take on China.
That's what Macron's biggest fear and his main source of anger. France wasn't in the room. No one thought to invite them. Biden is supposed to be punishing the UK, America is supposed to be conducting it's transatlantic relationship via Paris/Brussels. France's post-Brexit world view is being shattered and Macron just doesn't know what to do about it. This is another Suez for them.
The Economist agrees with you.
"Another Suez". But this time Britain is on the *winning* or at least not-humiliated side.
Yep, what stings France isn't the loss of the deal, but what the loss of the deal represents. In 2016 France saw an opportunity to end two centuries of Anglo dominance of the Western order, they did that via promoting the EU as a body with a foreign policy and by trying to peel away US-UK allies. Up until maybe the past week it looked like it was working, now it very certainly isn't.
Their dream was to have an EU, led by France, be at the very least, equal with the US, whereas the fact that no-one thought to invite them puts them back in their box.
EDIT: This extract from the Guinad article on the cancelled UK-Frog summit is also hilarious.
British defence sources argued that it was left to the Australians to break the news to the French, but it seemed there were divisions in Canberra about the best way of going about it. “Some Australians wanted to ring up one week, and say we’re so sorry, we’re putting out the diesel submarine contract, and ring up the next week, and say we just want you to know that we found a better submarine and it’s British,” the defence source said. “There was another school of thought that said: don’t do it like that. They’ll see through it and it will be worse because it will look duplicitous.” In the end, neither side won. The French were not told before details began to leak to the Australian and US media on Wednesday morning. The UK has argued that it simply was responding to a request from Australia to seek secret nuclear propulsion technology for its submarines in March this year, technology shared between Britain and the US under a defence agreement that dates back to 1958. The defence source said that having secured British support, the Australians then went to the Biden administration. But the claim of relative British passivity is undermined by other briefings from Downing Street, which have said that Johnson was eager to widen the nuclear submarine deal into something deeper in the aftermath of the UK’s exit from the European Union.
Downing Street briefs that the Muscly Magnificent was muscly and magnificent. Well I never.
The Americans have been saying much the same all weekend. Biden was initially only up for the submarine deal, Boris went for the big victory and negotiated it up to a defence pact that has redrawn the western alliance.
In the long term it could give form to a less US-dominated Anglosphere. Aukus is inherently more balanced and future-oriented than the needy ‘special relationship’.
Only in the sense that it includes Quantum Computing and AI, the latter in particular being a British strength. We're still very many years off that being strategically important, however, and the vast disparities vis-a-vis the US's capacities to face off against China are the same as all other ones post-Suez. In the main this is a US-Australian resource sharing deal that Johnson has shown some rare cunning in jumping into the middle of. In the long-run it will be poor news for the western alliance, unless one or more key continental countries become involved.
What "western alliance" are you talking about?
The strength of NATO has always been the USA and the UK first and second. With the rest of Europe either too small to make much difference but trying to pull its weight (rare), or large enough to do so but not bothering (France and Germany).
Yes France had a major military, unlike Germany, but they were never engaged with NATO that strongly. De Gaulle effectively pulled them out in the sixties and they only rejoined in 2009. So hardly reliable partners even during the Cold War we coped without them being key players.
If the 'worst that happens' is that France returns to its isolationist nature it maintained for over four decades, while the 'best that happens' is that the USA, UK, Aus and ultimately other likeminded nations cooperate closer than we were doing in recent years then that is extremely good for our alliances.
That alliance just won't be very Europe-centric.
It doesn't work like that, I'm afraid. France and Germany are simply the key democratic powers across a vast Eurasian landmass. If their relationship with North America weakens, other powers across this huge area are strengthened.
It doesn't work like that, I'm afraid.
France and Germany are the key democratic powers over a tiny fraction of the global landmass. If they stop engaging with the world, the world will move on without them.
We can't compel European countries to pull their own weight. They haven't for decades; pretty much the only thing uniting Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden was pointing this out.
We need to stop overly worrying about what a bunch of freeloading nations that want to take the benefits of freedom but not spend their treasure and blood defending it think - and pay more attention to those who are willing to fight for - and fight against - what we hold dear.
This is the sort of cheerful, slightly parochial fantasy which reminds me of Donald Rumsfeld's, in which France and Germany simply represent stasis and "blocks to progress". The unavoidable fact is that they are the key players in the EU, whose borders stretch to Ukraine and the Black Sea, and whose support for and doubling up by a US presence is key to the whole landmass.
Rumsfeld was right.
It doesn't matter if they are "key players in the EU", the EU is a piddly little corner of the globe. The EU's landmass is not even 60% of Australia's landmass.
If the EU nations don't want to fight for the free world, we need to rely on partners who will.
The EU is a chunk of the free world itself, in economic, cultural, demographic, and diplomatic terms. It will decide who it wants to co-operate with, not anyone else.
It will decide who it wants to co-operate with.
And if it wants to co-operate with China, or Russia, then it can prioritise mercantilism over liberty.
The rest of us can and will move on without them if so. And thank goodness we're not tied down to such a deadweight anymore.
Civilisationally, compared to most of the world, they are "us".
Not as much as Australia and others that we co-operate more with.
If they wish to prioritise selling dishwashers to Beijing over taking sides in conflicts then that's their prerogative. They're a fraction of the globe that we happen to coincidentally be located close to, our closest friends and allies are spread all over the planet.
And in the 21st century this small planet of ours is all interconnected so parochial concerns over geography don't matter. A few thousand miles distance doesn't provide any shelter in this day and age.
Collectively the AUKUS nations represent 11.731 million square km of landmass, 420 million people, $25.66 trillion of GDP and the world's foremost military and espionage expertise.
Collectively the EU nations represent 4.476 million square km of landmass, 446 million people, $15.17 trillion of GDP and besides France who are self-engaged at best very little in the way of credible military expertise.
Only someone so incredibly parochial as to only pay attention to the closest section of the map would not realise that AUKUS is far more serious than the EU ever could be when it comes to our Defence.
Its rather tragic finding leavers so desperate to cling to the life raft of this submarine deal which is basically just benefiting the USA but clearly they are still digging around for an alleged benefit of Brexit .
Xavier Bertrand, one of Barnier's rivals for the Republicans nomination, says that France should respond by opening talks with China and Russia to avoid being America's valet.
Yes. There's another tweet (I'll try and find it) where a senior French journalist quotes a top French mandarin at the Quai d'Orsay who says "It is time for us to consider an alliance with the Chinese, though there is a problem with the nature of the Chinese regime"
I mean, WTAF. "A problem?" There's nationalist pique and then there is moral insanity
To be fair to the French, this tweet was followed by hundreds of French people saying Shut up you stupid cretins, deal with the humiliation, China is horrible
Sensible French people are not joining in this madness
One of my colleagues on Friday (the French one who pointed out that France insisting everything be in French would be a sticking point) was adamant that this wouldn't lead to France going down the antagonist role or any alliance with Russia or China. He's right. There's some understandable anger over having this deal nicked from them, anger over being left out of what is the most significant military alliance since the foundation of NATO and fear that they, along with the EU, are being sidelined by the US because EU foreign policy wrt China is a mess of German appeasement vs France's more muscular stance. The latter, IMO, is the big one. The anger over lost money subsides, the fear won't go away.
I think they are pissed about the alliance, but they are more furious about the submarine order.
€90bn is almost 4% of French GDP. It's equivalent to FOUR YEARS of Thales revenues.
I'm with Max, I don't think it's the lost euros that are sending them mad
If you dig into the deal it wasn't all going to France (a lot, ironically, was going to Lockheed Martin in the USA) and of course it was going to be spread over decades. It's not tens of billions vaporising in a day
The loss of the deal will sting, but France has a big defence industry, and they can absorb this. Maybe some jobs will be lost, they will recover
The thing that is making them behave so oddly is the idea they will be completely cut out of the New World Order. France will be without a global role as the West finally aligns against China. That goes against every French instinct. They've had a role in major power politics for 10 centuries
It's why they will eventually calm down and seek an associate membership status allied to Aukus but with special privileges, saving their pride. Or they will finally succeed in persuading the EU to lock and load?
Those are their choices, I can't see them "allying with Putin or Xi" even if they are still blisteringly angry and humiliated as of today
Not only that of course but it hurts their pride that the "isolated" Royaume-Uni whom Macron was open mocking at the G7, with claims that Biden was taking their side, were the ones who co-ordinated and arranged this at the time of the G7.
Yes, that definitely stings. While Macron was banging on about sausages and yet another insular EU squabble the grown ups were making plans to take on China.
That's what Macron's biggest fear and his main source of anger. France wasn't in the room. No one thought to invite them. Biden is supposed to be punishing the UK, America is supposed to be conducting it's transatlantic relationship via Paris/Brussels. France's post-Brexit world view is being shattered and Macron just doesn't know what to do about it. This is another Suez for them.
The Economist agrees with you.
"Another Suez". But this time Britain is on the *winning* or at least not-humiliated side.
Yep, what stings France isn't the loss of the deal, but what the loss of the deal represents. In 2016 France saw an opportunity to end two centuries of Anglo dominance of the Western order, they did that via promoting the EU as a body with a foreign policy and by trying to peel away US-UK allies. Up until maybe the past week it looked like it was working, now it very certainly isn't.
Their dream was to have an EU, led by France, be at the very least, equal with the US, whereas the fact that no-one thought to invite them puts them back in their box.
EDIT: This extract from the Guinad article on the cancelled UK-Frog summit is also hilarious.
British defence sources argued that it was left to the Australians to break the news to the French, but it seemed there were divisions in Canberra about the best way of going about it. “Some Australians wanted to ring up one week, and say we’re so sorry, we’re putting out the diesel submarine contract, and ring up the next week, and say we just want you to know that we found a better submarine and it’s British,” the defence source said. “There was another school of thought that said: don’t do it like that. They’ll see through it and it will be worse because it will look duplicitous.” In the end, neither side won. The French were not told before details began to leak to the Australian and US media on Wednesday morning. The UK has argued that it simply was responding to a request from Australia to seek secret nuclear propulsion technology for its submarines in March this year, technology shared between Britain and the US under a defence agreement that dates back to 1958. The defence source said that having secured British support, the Australians then went to the Biden administration. But the claim of relative British passivity is undermined by other briefings from Downing Street, which have said that Johnson was eager to widen the nuclear submarine deal into something deeper in the aftermath of the UK’s exit from the European Union.
Downing Street briefs that the Muscly Magnificent was muscly and magnificent. Well I never.
The Americans have been saying much the same all weekend. Biden was initially only up for the submarine deal, Boris went for the big victory and negotiated it up to a defence pact that has redrawn the western alliance.
In the long term it could give form to a less US-dominated Anglosphere. Aukus is inherently more balanced and future-oriented than the needy ‘special relationship’.
Only in the sense that it includes Quantum Computing and AI, the latter in particular being a British strength. We're still very many years off that being strategically important, however, and the vast disparities vis-a-vis the US's capacities to face off against China are the same as all other ones post-Suez. In the main this is a US-Australian resource sharing deal that Johnson has shown some rare cunning in jumping into the middle of. In the long-run it will be poor news for the western alliance, unless one or more key continental countries become involved.
What "western alliance" are you talking about?
The strength of NATO has always been the USA and the UK first and second. With the rest of Europe either too small to make much difference but trying to pull its weight (rare), or large enough to do so but not bothering (France and Germany).
Yes France had a major military, unlike Germany, but they were never engaged with NATO that strongly. De Gaulle effectively pulled them out in the sixties and they only rejoined in 2009. So hardly reliable partners even during the Cold War we coped without them being key players.
If the 'worst that happens' is that France returns to its isolationist nature it maintained for over four decades, while the 'best that happens' is that the USA, UK, Aus and ultimately other likeminded nations cooperate closer than we were doing in recent years then that is extremely good for our alliances.
That alliance just won't be very Europe-centric.
It doesn't work like that, I'm afraid. France and Germany are simply the key democratic powers across a vast Eurasian landmass. If their relationship with North America weakens, other powers across this huge area are strengthened.
It doesn't work like that, I'm afraid.
France and Germany are the key democratic powers over a tiny fraction of the global landmass. If they stop engaging with the world, the world will move on without them.
We can't compel European countries to pull their own weight. They haven't for decades; pretty much the only thing uniting Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden was pointing this out.
We need to stop overly worrying about what a bunch of freeloading nations that want to take the benefits of freedom but not spend their treasure and blood defending it think - and pay more attention to those who are willing to fight for - and fight against - what we hold dear.
This is the sort of cheerful, slightly parochial fantasy which reminds me of Donald Rumsfeld's, in which France and Germany simply represent stasis and "blocks to progress". The unavoidable fact is that they are the key players in the EU, whose borders stretch to Ukraine and the Black Sea, and whose support for and doubling up by a US presence is key to the whole landmass.
Rumsfeld was right.
It doesn't matter if they are "key players in the EU", the EU is a piddly little corner of the globe. The EU's landmass is not even 60% of Australia's landmass.
If the EU nations don't want to fight for the free world, we need to rely on partners who will.
So we've reached the "mine's bigger than yours" stage of this now? In that case, New Zealand > United Kingdom.
Xavier Bertrand, one of Barnier's rivals for the Republicans nomination, says that France should respond by opening talks with China and Russia to avoid being America's valet.
Yes. There's another tweet (I'll try and find it) where a senior French journalist quotes a top French mandarin at the Quai d'Orsay who says "It is time for us to consider an alliance with the Chinese, though there is a problem with the nature of the Chinese regime"
I mean, WTAF. "A problem?" There's nationalist pique and then there is moral insanity
To be fair to the French, this tweet was followed by hundreds of French people saying Shut up you stupid cretins, deal with the humiliation, China is horrible
Sensible French people are not joining in this madness
One of my colleagues on Friday (the French one who pointed out that France insisting everything be in French would be a sticking point) was adamant that this wouldn't lead to France going down the antagonist role or any alliance with Russia or China. He's right. There's some understandable anger over having this deal nicked from them, anger over being left out of what is the most significant military alliance since the foundation of NATO and fear that they, along with the EU, are being sidelined by the US because EU foreign policy wrt China is a mess of German appeasement vs France's more muscular stance. The latter, IMO, is the big one. The anger over lost money subsides, the fear won't go away.
I think they are pissed about the alliance, but they are more furious about the submarine order.
€90bn is almost 4% of French GDP. It's equivalent to FOUR YEARS of Thales revenues.
I'm with Max, I don't think it's the lost euros that are sending them mad
If you dig into the deal it wasn't all going to France (a lot, ironically, was going to Lockheed Martin in the USA) and of course it was going to be spread over decades. It's not tens of billions vaporising in a day
The loss of the deal will sting, but France has a big defence industry, and they can absorb this. Maybe some jobs will be lost, they will recover
The thing that is making them behave so oddly is the idea they will be completely cut out of the New World Order. France will be without a global role as the West finally aligns against China. That goes against every French instinct. They've had a role in major power politics for 10 centuries
It's why they will eventually calm down and seek an associate membership status allied to Aukus but with special privileges, saving their pride. Or they will finally succeed in persuading the EU to lock and load?
Those are their choices, I can't see them "allying with Putin or Xi" even if they are still blisteringly angry and humiliated as of today
Not only that of course but it hurts their pride that the "isolated" Royaume-Uni whom Macron was open mocking at the G7, with claims that Biden was taking their side, were the ones who co-ordinated and arranged this at the time of the G7.
Yes, that definitely stings. While Macron was banging on about sausages and yet another insular EU squabble the grown ups were making plans to take on China.
That's what Macron's biggest fear and his main source of anger. France wasn't in the room. No one thought to invite them. Biden is supposed to be punishing the UK, America is supposed to be conducting it's transatlantic relationship via Paris/Brussels. France's post-Brexit world view is being shattered and Macron just doesn't know what to do about it. This is another Suez for them.
The Economist agrees with you.
"Another Suez". But this time Britain is on the *winning* or at least not-humiliated side.
Yep, what stings France isn't the loss of the deal, but what the loss of the deal represents. In 2016 France saw an opportunity to end two centuries of Anglo dominance of the Western order, they did that via promoting the EU as a body with a foreign policy and by trying to peel away US-UK allies. Up until maybe the past week it looked like it was working, now it very certainly isn't.
Their dream was to have an EU, led by France, be at the very least, equal with the US, whereas the fact that no-one thought to invite them puts them back in their box.
EDIT: This extract from the Guinad article on the cancelled UK-Frog summit is also hilarious.
British defence sources argued that it was left to the Australians to break the news to the French, but it seemed there were divisions in Canberra about the best way of going about it. “Some Australians wanted to ring up one week, and say we’re so sorry, we’re putting out the diesel submarine contract, and ring up the next week, and say we just want you to know that we found a better submarine and it’s British,” the defence source said. “There was another school of thought that said: don’t do it like that. They’ll see through it and it will be worse because it will look duplicitous.” In the end, neither side won. The French were not told before details began to leak to the Australian and US media on Wednesday morning. The UK has argued that it simply was responding to a request from Australia to seek secret nuclear propulsion technology for its submarines in March this year, technology shared between Britain and the US under a defence agreement that dates back to 1958. The defence source said that having secured British support, the Australians then went to the Biden administration. But the claim of relative British passivity is undermined by other briefings from Downing Street, which have said that Johnson was eager to widen the nuclear submarine deal into something deeper in the aftermath of the UK’s exit from the European Union.
Downing Street briefs that the Muscly Magnificent was muscly and magnificent. Well I never.
The Americans have been saying much the same all weekend. Biden was initially only up for the submarine deal, Boris went for the big victory and negotiated it up to a defence pact that has redrawn the western alliance.
In the long term it could give form to a less US-dominated Anglosphere. Aukus is inherently more balanced and future-oriented than the needy ‘special relationship’.
Only in the sense that it includes Quantum Computing and AI, the latter in particular being a British strength. We're still very many years off that being strategically important, however, and the vast disparities vis-a-vis the US's capacities to face off against China are the same as all other ones post-Suez. In the main this is a US-Australian resource sharing deal that Johnson has shown some rare cunning in jumping into the middle of. In the long-run it will be poor news for the western alliance, unless one or more key continental countries become involved.
What "western alliance" are you talking about?
The strength of NATO has always been the USA and the UK first and second. With the rest of Europe either too small to make much difference but trying to pull its weight (rare), or large enough to do so but not bothering (France and Germany).
Yes France had a major military, unlike Germany, but they were never engaged with NATO that strongly. De Gaulle effectively pulled them out in the sixties and they only rejoined in 2009. So hardly reliable partners even during the Cold War we coped without them being key players.
If the 'worst that happens' is that France returns to its isolationist nature it maintained for over four decades, while the 'best that happens' is that the USA, UK, Aus and ultimately other likeminded nations cooperate closer than we were doing in recent years then that is extremely good for our alliances.
That alliance just won't be very Europe-centric.
It doesn't work like that, I'm afraid. France and Germany are simply the key democratic powers across a vast Eurasian landmass. If their relationship with North America weakens, other powers across this huge area are strengthened.
It doesn't work like that, I'm afraid.
France and Germany are the key democratic powers over a tiny fraction of the global landmass. If they stop engaging with the world, the world will move on without them.
We can't compel European countries to pull their own weight. They haven't for decades; pretty much the only thing uniting Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden was pointing this out.
We need to stop overly worrying about what a bunch of freeloading nations that want to take the benefits of freedom but not spend their treasure and blood defending it think - and pay more attention to those who are willing to fight for - and fight against - what we hold dear.
This is the sort of cheerful, slightly parochial fantasy which reminds me of Donald Rumsfeld's, in which France and Germany simply represent stasis and "blocks to progress". The unavoidable fact is that they are the key players in the EU, whose borders stretch to Ukraine and the Black Sea, and whose support for and doubling up by a US presence is key to the whole landmass.
Rumsfeld was right.
It doesn't matter if they are "key players in the EU", the EU is a piddly little corner of the globe. The EU's landmass is not even 60% of Australia's landmass.
If the EU nations don't want to fight for the free world, we need to rely on partners who will.
So we've reached the "mine's bigger than yours" stage of this now? In that case, New Zealand > United Kingdom.
Oops.
And NZ aren't willing to stand up to China etc which is why they're getting ignored and left behind and why AUKUS has been set up rather than doing this within Five Eyes.
Just the same as the EU, Germany etc being bystanders to the world moving on without them too.
Xavier Bertrand, one of Barnier's rivals for the Republicans nomination, says that France should respond by opening talks with China and Russia to avoid being America's valet.
Yes. There's another tweet (I'll try and find it) where a senior French journalist quotes a top French mandarin at the Quai d'Orsay who says "It is time for us to consider an alliance with the Chinese, though there is a problem with the nature of the Chinese regime"
I mean, WTAF. "A problem?" There's nationalist pique and then there is moral insanity
To be fair to the French, this tweet was followed by hundreds of French people saying Shut up you stupid cretins, deal with the humiliation, China is horrible
Sensible French people are not joining in this madness
One of my colleagues on Friday (the French one who pointed out that France insisting everything be in French would be a sticking point) was adamant that this wouldn't lead to France going down the antagonist role or any alliance with Russia or China. He's right. There's some understandable anger over having this deal nicked from them, anger over being left out of what is the most significant military alliance since the foundation of NATO and fear that they, along with the EU, are being sidelined by the US because EU foreign policy wrt China is a mess of German appeasement vs France's more muscular stance. The latter, IMO, is the big one. The anger over lost money subsides, the fear won't go away.
I think they are pissed about the alliance, but they are more furious about the submarine order.
€90bn is almost 4% of French GDP. It's equivalent to FOUR YEARS of Thales revenues.
I'm with Max, I don't think it's the lost euros that are sending them mad
If you dig into the deal it wasn't all going to France (a lot, ironically, was going to Lockheed Martin in the USA) and of course it was going to be spread over decades. It's not tens of billions vaporising in a day
The loss of the deal will sting, but France has a big defence industry, and they can absorb this. Maybe some jobs will be lost, they will recover
The thing that is making them behave so oddly is the idea they will be completely cut out of the New World Order. France will be without a global role as the West finally aligns against China. That goes against every French instinct. They've had a role in major power politics for 10 centuries
It's why they will eventually calm down and seek an associate membership status allied to Aukus but with special privileges, saving their pride. Or they will finally succeed in persuading the EU to lock and load?
Those are their choices, I can't see them "allying with Putin or Xi" even if they are still blisteringly angry and humiliated as of today
Not only that of course but it hurts their pride that the "isolated" Royaume-Uni whom Macron was open mocking at the G7, with claims that Biden was taking their side, were the ones who co-ordinated and arranged this at the time of the G7.
Yes, that definitely stings. While Macron was banging on about sausages and yet another insular EU squabble the grown ups were making plans to take on China.
That's what Macron's biggest fear and his main source of anger. France wasn't in the room. No one thought to invite them. Biden is supposed to be punishing the UK, America is supposed to be conducting it's transatlantic relationship via Paris/Brussels. France's post-Brexit world view is being shattered and Macron just doesn't know what to do about it. This is another Suez for them.
The Economist agrees with you.
"Another Suez". But this time Britain is on the *winning* or at least not-humiliated side.
Yep, what stings France isn't the loss of the deal, but what the loss of the deal represents. In 2016 France saw an opportunity to end two centuries of Anglo dominance of the Western order, they did that via promoting the EU as a body with a foreign policy and by trying to peel away US-UK allies. Up until maybe the past week it looked like it was working, now it very certainly isn't.
Their dream was to have an EU, led by France, be at the very least, equal with the US, whereas the fact that no-one thought to invite them puts them back in their box.
EDIT: This extract from the Guinad article on the cancelled UK-Frog summit is also hilarious.
British defence sources argued that it was left to the Australians to break the news to the French, but it seemed there were divisions in Canberra about the best way of going about it. “Some Australians wanted to ring up one week, and say we’re so sorry, we’re putting out the diesel submarine contract, and ring up the next week, and say we just want you to know that we found a better submarine and it’s British,” the defence source said. “There was another school of thought that said: don’t do it like that. They’ll see through it and it will be worse because it will look duplicitous.” In the end, neither side won. The French were not told before details began to leak to the Australian and US media on Wednesday morning. The UK has argued that it simply was responding to a request from Australia to seek secret nuclear propulsion technology for its submarines in March this year, technology shared between Britain and the US under a defence agreement that dates back to 1958. The defence source said that having secured British support, the Australians then went to the Biden administration. But the claim of relative British passivity is undermined by other briefings from Downing Street, which have said that Johnson was eager to widen the nuclear submarine deal into something deeper in the aftermath of the UK’s exit from the European Union.
Downing Street briefs that the Muscly Magnificent was muscly and magnificent. Well I never.
The Americans have been saying much the same all weekend. Biden was initially only up for the submarine deal, Boris went for the big victory and negotiated it up to a defence pact that has redrawn the western alliance.
In the long term it could give form to a less US-dominated Anglosphere. Aukus is inherently more balanced and future-oriented than the needy ‘special relationship’.
Only in the sense that it includes Quantum Computing and AI, the latter in particular being a British strength. We're still very many years off that being strategically important, however, and the vast disparities vis-a-vis the US's capacities to face off against China are the same as all other ones post-Suez. In the main this is a US-Australian resource sharing deal that Johnson has shown some rare cunning in jumping into the middle of. In the long-run it will be poor news for the western alliance, unless one or more key continental countries become involved.
What "western alliance" are you talking about?
The strength of NATO has always been the USA and the UK first and second. With the rest of Europe either too small to make much difference but trying to pull its weight (rare), or large enough to do so but not bothering (France and Germany).
Yes France had a major military, unlike Germany, but they were never engaged with NATO that strongly. De Gaulle effectively pulled them out in the sixties and they only rejoined in 2009. So hardly reliable partners even during the Cold War we coped without them being key players.
If the 'worst that happens' is that France returns to its isolationist nature it maintained for over four decades, while the 'best that happens' is that the USA, UK, Aus and ultimately other likeminded nations cooperate closer than we were doing in recent years then that is extremely good for our alliances.
That alliance just won't be very Europe-centric.
It doesn't work like that, I'm afraid. France and Germany are simply the key democratic powers across a vast Eurasian landmass. If their relationship with North America weakens, other powers across this huge area are strengthened.
It doesn't work like that, I'm afraid.
France and Germany are the key democratic powers over a tiny fraction of the global landmass. If they stop engaging with the world, the world will move on without them.
We can't compel European countries to pull their own weight. They haven't for decades; pretty much the only thing uniting Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden was pointing this out.
We need to stop overly worrying about what a bunch of freeloading nations that want to take the benefits of freedom but not spend their treasure and blood defending it think - and pay more attention to those who are willing to fight for - and fight against - what we hold dear.
This is the sort of cheerful, slightly parochial fantasy which reminds me of Donald Rumsfeld's, in which France and Germany simply represent stasis and "blocks to progress". The unavoidable fact is that they are the key players in the EU, whose borders stretch to Ukraine and the Black Sea, and whose support for and doubling up by a US presence is key to the whole landmass.
Rumsfeld was right.
It doesn't matter if they are "key players in the EU", the EU is a piddly little corner of the globe. The EU's landmass is not even 60% of Australia's landmass.
If the EU nations don't want to fight for the free world, we need to rely on partners who will.
So we've reached the "mine's bigger than yours" stage of this now? In that case, New Zealand > United Kingdom.
Oops.
And NZ aren't willing to stand up to China etc which is why they're getting ignored and left behind and why AUKUS has been set up rather than doing this within Five Eyes.
Just the same as the EU, Germany etc being bystanders to the world moving on without them too.
So you're backing away from the size thing now you've discovered that Ardern is packing more Johnson than Johnson?
My solution is individual toilet cubicles everywhere (floor to ceiling). Safe space if you want it with others, or private space for yourself. Toilet/changing room problem solved.
Impose a new cost on businesses because men in dresses are upset. Great.
Thanks for your unhelpful, immature, and inflammatory input on the debate. You’re just as bad as Twitter trans-activists.
That's what this is. Men, mostly white, have decided they want access to female only spaces and are trampling over women's rights to get there. As we know white men don't understand the concept of not getting their way in life so here we are with this ridiculous situation of suggesting lesbians are bigots for not wanting suck cocks or thinking that blokes who put on a dress and tell everyone else they're actually women can waltz into female only spaces.
Sex and gender are different. This is the kind of bullshit that makes the British left unfit for government.
I stand by my original comment. You can argue “sex and gender are different” without resorting to anti-trans slurs
Nope, I'm fed up of it. I'm fed up of women being harassed by the men in dresses because they want to preserve female only spaces. I'm fed up of the death threats to women who speak out, disgusted that an elected representative was unable to attend their own party conference because they feared physical violence from the men in dresses.
There's no middle way here. Women's rights must be preserved at any cost. They are hard won and the men in dresses need to deal with it by taking off the dress or committing to the sex change process. Self ID gender recognition is wrong and it's another expression of white male privilege trampling over hard won women's rights, reversing decades of progress.
Shame that no one came out to help the Catholic adoption centres when they were forced to choose between providing adoption services to gay couples and closing.
Spoiler: they closed. And lots of kids were worse off.
Xavier Bertrand, one of Barnier's rivals for the Republicans nomination, says that France should respond by opening talks with China and Russia to avoid being America's valet.
Yes. There's another tweet (I'll try and find it) where a senior French journalist quotes a top French mandarin at the Quai d'Orsay who says "It is time for us to consider an alliance with the Chinese, though there is a problem with the nature of the Chinese regime"
I mean, WTAF. "A problem?" There's nationalist pique and then there is moral insanity
To be fair to the French, this tweet was followed by hundreds of French people saying Shut up you stupid cretins, deal with the humiliation, China is horrible
Sensible French people are not joining in this madness
One of my colleagues on Friday (the French one who pointed out that France insisting everything be in French would be a sticking point) was adamant that this wouldn't lead to France going down the antagonist role or any alliance with Russia or China. He's right. There's some understandable anger over having this deal nicked from them, anger over being left out of what is the most significant military alliance since the foundation of NATO and fear that they, along with the EU, are being sidelined by the US because EU foreign policy wrt China is a mess of German appeasement vs France's more muscular stance. The latter, IMO, is the big one. The anger over lost money subsides, the fear won't go away.
I think they are pissed about the alliance, but they are more furious about the submarine order.
€90bn is almost 4% of French GDP. It's equivalent to FOUR YEARS of Thales revenues.
I'm with Max, I don't think it's the lost euros that are sending them mad
If you dig into the deal it wasn't all going to France (a lot, ironically, was going to Lockheed Martin in the USA) and of course it was going to be spread over decades. It's not tens of billions vaporising in a day
The loss of the deal will sting, but France has a big defence industry, and they can absorb this. Maybe some jobs will be lost, they will recover
The thing that is making them behave so oddly is the idea they will be completely cut out of the New World Order. France will be without a global role as the West finally aligns against China. That goes against every French instinct. They've had a role in major power politics for 10 centuries
It's why they will eventually calm down and seek an associate membership status allied to Aukus but with special privileges, saving their pride. Or they will finally succeed in persuading the EU to lock and load?
Those are their choices, I can't see them "allying with Putin or Xi" even if they are still blisteringly angry and humiliated as of today
Not only that of course but it hurts their pride that the "isolated" Royaume-Uni whom Macron was open mocking at the G7, with claims that Biden was taking their side, were the ones who co-ordinated and arranged this at the time of the G7.
Yes, that definitely stings. While Macron was banging on about sausages and yet another insular EU squabble the grown ups were making plans to take on China.
That's what Macron's biggest fear and his main source of anger. France wasn't in the room. No one thought to invite them. Biden is supposed to be punishing the UK, America is supposed to be conducting it's transatlantic relationship via Paris/Brussels. France's post-Brexit world view is being shattered and Macron just doesn't know what to do about it. This is another Suez for them.
The Economist agrees with you.
"Another Suez". But this time Britain is on the *winning* or at least not-humiliated side.
Yep, what stings France isn't the loss of the deal, but what the loss of the deal represents. In 2016 France saw an opportunity to end two centuries of Anglo dominance of the Western order, they did that via promoting the EU as a body with a foreign policy and by trying to peel away US-UK allies. Up until maybe the past week it looked like it was working, now it very certainly isn't.
Their dream was to have an EU, led by France, be at the very least, equal with the US, whereas the fact that no-one thought to invite them puts them back in their box.
EDIT: This extract from the Guinad article on the cancelled UK-Frog summit is also hilarious.
British defence sources argued that it was left to the Australians to break the news to the French, but it seemed there were divisions in Canberra about the best way of going about it. “Some Australians wanted to ring up one week, and say we’re so sorry, we’re putting out the diesel submarine contract, and ring up the next week, and say we just want you to know that we found a better submarine and it’s British,” the defence source said. “There was another school of thought that said: don’t do it like that. They’ll see through it and it will be worse because it will look duplicitous.” In the end, neither side won. The French were not told before details began to leak to the Australian and US media on Wednesday morning. The UK has argued that it simply was responding to a request from Australia to seek secret nuclear propulsion technology for its submarines in March this year, technology shared between Britain and the US under a defence agreement that dates back to 1958. The defence source said that having secured British support, the Australians then went to the Biden administration. But the claim of relative British passivity is undermined by other briefings from Downing Street, which have said that Johnson was eager to widen the nuclear submarine deal into something deeper in the aftermath of the UK’s exit from the European Union.
Downing Street briefs that the Muscly Magnificent was muscly and magnificent. Well I never.
The Americans have been saying much the same all weekend. Biden was initially only up for the submarine deal, Boris went for the big victory and negotiated it up to a defence pact that has redrawn the western alliance.
In the long term it could give form to a less US-dominated Anglosphere. Aukus is inherently more balanced and future-oriented than the needy ‘special relationship’.
Only in the sense that it includes Quantum Computing and AI, the latter in particular being a British strength. We're still very many years off that being strategically important, however, and the vast disparities vis-a-vis the US's capacities to face off against China are the same as all other ones post-Suez. In the main this is a US-Australian resource sharing deal that Johnson has shown some rare cunning in jumping into the middle of. In the long-run it will be poor news for the western alliance, unless one or more key continental countries become involved.
What "western alliance" are you talking about?
The strength of NATO has always been the USA and the UK first and second. With the rest of Europe either too small to make much difference but trying to pull its weight (rare), or large enough to do so but not bothering (France and Germany).
Yes France had a major military, unlike Germany, but they were never engaged with NATO that strongly. De Gaulle effectively pulled them out in the sixties and they only rejoined in 2009. So hardly reliable partners even during the Cold War we coped without them being key players.
If the 'worst that happens' is that France returns to its isolationist nature it maintained for over four decades, while the 'best that happens' is that the USA, UK, Aus and ultimately other likeminded nations cooperate closer than we were doing in recent years then that is extremely good for our alliances.
That alliance just won't be very Europe-centric.
It doesn't work like that, I'm afraid. France and Germany are simply the key democratic powers across a vast Eurasian landmass. If their relationship with North America weakens, other powers across this huge area are strengthened.
It doesn't work like that, I'm afraid.
France and Germany are the key democratic powers over a tiny fraction of the global landmass. If they stop engaging with the world, the world will move on without them.
We can't compel European countries to pull their own weight. They haven't for decades; pretty much the only thing uniting Bush, Obama, Trump and Biden was pointing this out.
We need to stop overly worrying about what a bunch of freeloading nations that want to take the benefits of freedom but not spend their treasure and blood defending it think - and pay more attention to those who are willing to fight for - and fight against - what we hold dear.
This is the sort of cheerful, slightly parochial fantasy which reminds me of Donald Rumsfeld's, in which France and Germany simply represent stasis and "blocks to progress". The unavoidable fact is that they are the key players in the EU, whose borders stretch to Ukraine and the Black Sea, and whose support for and doubling up by a US presence is key to the whole landmass.
Rumsfeld was right.
It doesn't matter if they are "key players in the EU", the EU is a piddly little corner of the globe. The EU's landmass is not even 60% of Australia's landmass.
If the EU nations don't want to fight for the free world, we need to rely on partners who will.
So we've reached the "mine's bigger than yours" stage of this now? In that case, New Zealand > United Kingdom.
Oops.
And NZ aren't willing to stand up to China etc which is why they're getting ignored and left behind and why AUKUS has been set up rather than doing this within Five Eyes.
Just the same as the EU, Germany etc being bystanders to the world moving on without them too.
So you're backing away from the size thing now you've discovered that Ardern is packing more Johnson than Johnson?
No don't be stupid. The point was not that 'size' matters, just that the EU doesn't even have 'size' on its side. The EU don't have anything on their side when it comes to geopolitics.
My solution is individual toilet cubicles everywhere (floor to ceiling). Safe space if you want it with others, or private space for yourself. Toilet/changing room problem solved.
Impose a new cost on businesses because men in dresses are upset. Great.
Thanks for your unhelpful, immature, and inflammatory input on the debate. You’re just as bad as Twitter trans-activists.
That's what this is. Men, mostly white, have decided they want access to female only spaces and are trampling over women's rights to get there. As we know white men don't understand the concept of not getting their way in life so here we are with this ridiculous situation of suggesting lesbians are bigots for not wanting suck cocks or thinking that blokes who put on a dress and tell everyone else they're actually women can waltz into female only spaces.
Sex and gender are different. This is the kind of bullshit that makes the British left unfit for government.
I stand by my original comment. You can argue “sex and gender are different” without resorting to anti-trans slurs
Nope, I'm fed up of it. I'm fed up of women being harassed by the men in dresses because they want to preserve female only spaces. I'm fed up of the death threats to women who speak out, disgusted that an elected representative was unable to attend their own party conference because they feared physical violence from the men in dresses.
There's no middle way here. Women's rights must be preserved at any cost. They are hard won and the men in dresses need to deal with it by taking off the dress or committing to the sex change process. Self ID gender recognition is wrong and it's another expression of white male privilege trampling over hard won women's rights, reversing decades of progress.
Shame that no one came out to help the Catholic adoption centres when they were forced to choose between providing adoption services to gay couples and closing.
Spoiler: they closed. And lots of kids were worse off.
Echos of Niemoller
They could have chosen to provide adoption services without being discriminatory bigots. That was an option.
My solution is individual toilet cubicles everywhere (floor to ceiling). Safe space if you want it with others, or private space for yourself. Toilet/changing room problem solved.
Impose a new cost on businesses because men in dresses are upset. Great.
Thanks for your unhelpful, immature, and inflammatory input on the debate. You’re just as bad as Twitter trans-activists.
That's what this is. Men, mostly white, have decided they want access to female only spaces and are trampling over women's rights to get there. As we know white men don't understand the concept of not getting their way in life so here we are with this ridiculous situation of suggesting lesbians are bigots for not wanting suck cocks or thinking that blokes who put on a dress and tell everyone else they're actually women can waltz into female only spaces.
Sex and gender are different. This is the kind of bullshit that makes the British left unfit for government.
I stand by my original comment. You can argue “sex and gender are different” without resorting to anti-trans slurs
Nope, I'm fed up of it. I'm fed up of women being harassed by the men in dresses because they want to preserve female only spaces. I'm fed up of the death threats to women who speak out, disgusted that an elected representative was unable to attend their own party conference because they feared physical violence from the men in dresses.
There's no middle way here. Women's rights must be preserved at any cost. They are hard won and the men in dresses need to deal with it by taking off the dress or committing to the sex change process. Self ID gender recognition is wrong and it's another expression of white male privilege trampling over hard won women's rights, reversing decades of progress.
Shame that no one came out to help the Catholic adoption centres when they were forced to choose between providing adoption services to gay couples and closing.
You've lost me there....is there evidence of gay couples abusing the privileges of adoption?
In 1951 the US excluded UK from its treaty with Australia and New Zealand saying it would be a "white man's pact" whilst Canberra thought London offered nothing to defend the continent. Times have changed...
...One reason US used to exclude UK from ANZUS was "then we will have to include France." On this one policy Boris Johnson has righted one of Winston Churchill's greatest and most painful post-war defeats by getting the UK involved in US-Australia security....
It's so striking because there are few metrics where you see the 21st century UK becoming *more important* to a commonwealth country's security than it was under post-war Churchill. You are forced to admit British nuclear capacity builders would be proud:
I can't be the only person distraught that Farron isn't the LibDem leader right now.
We all remember how he got himself into knots over homosexuality, I would love to see him get into similar... issues... over trans rights.
IIRC the knot Farron got into scuppered the entire liberal edifice. The big point about liberalism is that it allows a huge public space for difference of opinion while maximally allowing people to act feely and minimising the number of things that are either compulsory or forbidden by law.
Farron, while not wanting to criminalise gay sexual activity, personally had a difficulty with it on the same religious grounds that millions, probably billions, of people do (though not me). Curiously liberals found this difficult. Liberals really seem to struggle with liberalism.
Thing is, you can deduce from the NT that God hates queers, but it's not easy. Gotta know what you are looking for
Matthew 25:34-46 is pretty specific about what behaviour gets you sent to heaven, and what to... the other place.
Edit to add. The people who get to go to heaven are:
For I was hungry and you gave me something to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me something to drink, I was a stranger and you invited me in, I needed clothes and you clothed me, I was sick and you looked after me, I was in prison and you came to visit me.
Basically, be good to people less fortunate than yourself.
Since I still seem to be here, and we are talking about Oz wine, and approaching cheese-on-toast and wine time.
I only buy about 40-50 bottles a year, and currently I have pivoted my Laithwaites order away from Europe to new world.
Any more recommendations for new world wines?
General and not a specific recommendation but I have long enjoyed Australian Shiraz but in the last couple of years have come to really enjoy Argentinian Malbecs too. Not a specific brand or bottle recommendation, but if you've not tried it then I'd recommend trying it.
A problem is that the best wine from unusual/surprising places in not exported. I've had stunning Chardonnays in Bulgaria, but you can't get them outside Bulgaria....
I was given a very nice magnum of Bulgarian Stallion… surprisingly good
Nice work by Boris Johnson - screwing the relationship with France so that he can help Australia serve the USA by fighting China.
Meanwhile the British media is at pains to point out that the submarines will be nuclear-powered, not nuclear-armed. I haven't seen one mainstream news site point out yet that giving nuclear weapons to a non-nuclear power is a breach of the "international rules-based order", specifically of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty - but maybe the word "proliferation" has gone on on the index now?
And Tory idiots are saying hey Macron, here's "Global Britain" in your face. Talk about Ruritania and fighting a past war.
They're also saying that Australia was really brave to join the losing side in Vietnam. And they're saying this about five minutes after the British withdrew from Afghanistan, finally admitting there was no chance of them saving Afghanistan from the Afghans.
Nice money for defence contractors, though - and as Keynes said, in the long run everyone's dead.
The only good side to this is that it might mean the end of NATO, which would hardly be untimely given that that alliance has just suffered the biggest military humiliation in its entire ignoble history.
But anything "Australian", cough cough, goes down a treat in the Daily Mail.
Hello PutinBot123, welcome to the community. At least you're not pushing antivaxx memes.
Calling me a Putin bot is one of the silliest things I've ever seen here. It's not exactly difficult to suss who the long-term fake personas are on boards of this type.
One or two even use the age-old technique that also works well if you want to go and do something in a shop and not be remembered clearly. Wear an unusual hat that everyone remembers.
But never mind that. On the matter in hand: AUKUS 2021 has made Putin happier than he has been since a) the US declared war on Afghanistan in 2001, and b) Brexit won the referendum in 2016.
Do I have to spell it out? Oh all right. Here goes...
1) Does Russia want good or bad relations between China and the US?
2) Does Russia want good or bad relations between Britain and the EU?
And yet, Philip the Tory bot says I'm the one who should get back to Russia because I'm aware of these excruciatingly obvious points.
Let's not forget that a short while ago it was common knowledge that Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson was considered a huge security risk:
Comments
And if it wants to co-operate with China, or Russia, then it can prioritise mercantilism over liberty.
The rest of us can and will move on without them if so. And thank goodness we're not tied down to such a deadweight anymore.
If they wish to prioritise selling dishwashers to Beijing over taking sides in conflicts then that's their prerogative. They're a fraction of the globe that we happen to coincidentally be located close to, our closest friends and allies are spread all over the planet.
And in the 21st century this small planet of ours is all interconnected so parochial concerns over geography don't matter. A few thousand miles distance doesn't provide any shelter in this day and age.
We solved it at my gaff by departing the urinals into a different room, making the gents cubicles unisex and keeping the ladies as they were
They clearly have some support. After banning and jailing opponents. So why take the hit?
Collectively the EU nations represent 4.476 million square km of landmass, 446 million people, $15.17 trillion of GDP and besides France who are self-engaged at best very little in the way of credible military expertise.
Only someone so incredibly parochial as to only pay attention to the closest section of the map would not realise that AUKUS is far more serious than the EU ever could be when it comes to our Defence.
In that case, New Zealand > United Kingdom.
Oops.
Just the same as the EU, Germany etc being bystanders to the world moving on without them too.
Said, of course, with admiration and affection
Spoiler: they closed. And lots of kids were worse off.
Echos of Niemoller
...One reason US used to exclude UK from ANZUS was "then we will have to include France." On this one policy Boris Johnson has righted one of Winston Churchill's greatest and most painful post-war defeats by getting the UK involved in US-Australia security....
It's so striking because there are few metrics where you see the 21st century UK becoming *more important* to a commonwealth country's security than it was under post-war Churchill. You are forced to admit British nuclear capacity builders would be proud:
https://twitter.com/b_judah/status/1439670627615580163?s=20