The next domino? – politicalbetting.com
The next domino? – politicalbetting.com
In 2019 the US President decided to withdraw US troops from the Syrian-Turkish border, a move seen by many – and certainly the Kurds, who were heavily involved in fighting and defeating IS in Iraq – as a betrayal.
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However I suspect we would never know because Israel probably doesn't cost the US that much nowadays - the support is really political rather than money..
On America the question is where does their perceived circle of influence now extend? They have had overseas military bases since WWII to project their power and ideology. It wasn't always like that, less than a century since America was insular and disinterested in global affairs.
If the "why should we send our boys overseas to die" sentiment is more universal than just Afghanistan then its party time for Russia and China. And probably the end of NATO as a functioning military alliance.
If Johnson really ever was expecting a tasty trade deal from the US, he can forget it now. Just as Brexit embedded an ‘England First’ mode, he is now up against a wall of ‘America First’.
The one thing we do know is that the UK acting as the world's policeman is over and that NATO seems to have become wholly impotent
Everything has changed in a matter of a few days, and maybe it is a good thing that the UK has to accept that it must avoid foreign interventions and invest in its intelligence and security services at home
I would assume any future military intervention in Afghanistan, if it was necessary, would be from a distance and by precision bombing. Re entering Afghanistan is just not going to happen
And I posted this on the last thread
Good morning
I only listened to Boris, Starmer and May in yesterday's debate as I had to go out, but would affirm that Boris was appalling, embarrassingly so, and if it does not wake up his colleagues that he needs to go then I do question just how bad he has to get
Starmer's speech was pitch perfect and statesman like as I commented at the time, but he went on and spoiled it with exaggeration and petty point scoring
May is carrying a huge vendetta against Boris and while she may have appealed to some conservative backbenchers, her idea Nato and assorted allies could have remained in Afghanistan is idiotic especially without the US
Yesterday's mail poll had just 2% blaming Boris and had he performed at the dispatch box he would have had a better chance of defecting a lot of the criticism that came his way
And some of you will be interested to know I have made the decisions to lapse my conservative membership due in October, (as has my wife) notwithstanding I lose my vote for the next leader, as I cannot continue to attack Boris, Patel and Williamson freely as a member
I would just make this clear however, I support HMG over covid, the economy and brexit and of course Boris will not be there forever either
Biden doesn't want to do endless corruption-breeding troop-killing counter-insurgency things. The Americans didn't want to do any such things before Bush-Cheney, and they didn't get themselves into any new ones after Bush-Cheney. These wars were a mistake, and they've known this for well over a decade, but given the likely clusterfuck that would follow it was always easier to stay a bit longer than leave.
That doesn't mean they don't want to spend ungodly sums of money on impressive weapon systems and fight glorious overseas military campaigns from the air or the sea. If anything Biden will be on the look out for someone to bomb to repair his relationship with the blob.
Has anyone heard from the EU who I understand now have a problem of refugees crossing into the EU from Belarus
It isn't petty when lives are lost through inaction.
As for a future UK military role, I go back to the comments from the senior general quoted in the debate yesterday about the Tory defence cuts having "filleted" the army to the point where we couldn't deploy to a new Afghanistan even if we wanted to.
So much for "Global Britain". Afghanistan has started to wake people up to the reality that we are now a regional power at best.
The UK made a strategic error when it abandoned its independent nuclear deterrent and became dependent on US goodwill. That goodwill was always going to run out some day.
How else could the UK deliver nuclear warheads?
- heavy bombers?
- tank rounds?
- mortar rounds?
- drone?
- Boris Bikes?
Difficult for any outside government to accept losses for countries which aren't.
Countries such as Afghanistan.
We in the UK are lucky, because we have no enemies close by, and so, we can always shrug and let free states be gobbled up by unfree states or insurgencies. If Taiwan, or South Korea, or the Baltic states go under, well, we can just say “what a pity” and trade with whoever takes over.
But, it would be a pity to see unfree states multiply around the world simply because we don’t care.
That'll show the Dutch what British turnips are made of (I understand they call him Dominic Raap - the Dutch word for turnip)
The idea that without the defence cuts meant that we could have remained on our own in Afghanistan is nonsense and as I said our role as the Worlds policeman is over
I too allowed my membership of a centre-right party to lapse (the Swedish Moderates), at the end of 2018. No big fuss, no strop, no falling out, I just quietly didn’t pay the renewal invoice when it arrived. I fully intended to still vote M when a new election turned up, but the funny thing is that something changes when you are a free agent, and I now consider myself to be a genuine floating voter, for the first time in my life. It is fantastic! And quite daunting.
The Afghanistan issue is whether the "Coalition" have a moral obligation to the country on a "you occupy it, you own it" basis.
There has been no sustained direct military attack from a state actor on NATO territory since its inception. (If I am wrong lots of people are going to tell me quite quickly).
It is probably a daft idea but would it be any good to expand the principle of NATO to a NATO+ organisation in which a much larger range of countries agreed that an attack on one was an attack on all. NATO has worked so far.
BTW among the more absurd features of the EU was (and is) its embracing both NATO and non NATO countries. What is the Estonian or German or EU response going to be to an attack on Finland or Ireland?
But it is an issue with actors who get involved in politics particularly since we know their job is faking emotion.
A trip around one of the Tunnel Boring Machines currently boring HS2 tunnels under the Chilterns.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=izLHTYaJrho
What surprised me is how clean everything is. True, they haven't driven too far yet, but everything seems remarkably spick-and-span compared to ye olde time TBMs.
https://twitter.com/SebastianEPayne/status/1428259271091830791?s=20
The world is a dangerous place, with powerful ideologies completely incompatible with the one that lets us live generally pleasant lives in the West. Chinese Communism being one, Wahhabism another. Don’t rule out Russian nationalism either. And there will be more birthed.
If we are now in an era where America has vacated moral leadership of the world, do not be surprised how little time it takes for someone else to try and fill the gap. Indeed China already is but most remain blind to this. Most pertinently by European governments (including in the UK), who still take a wholly transactional approach to understanding Xi’s China.
That video Leon played last night (“are we now solely relying on diplomacy with the Taliban?”) was one of the worst clips I’ve ever seen. It showed the US military up as impotent, chaotic and with more than a whiff of the keystone cops.
I’ve never been more afraid for the world being left to my children as I have this week.
How many EU members were involved in Afghanistan by the way and more importantly just how many EU countries are going to accept refugees, how is the commission going to organise that, and how are they going to deal with the mass arrival of Afghans at their borders
It also applies to the westernised middle class of Kabul.
https://www.army.mod.uk/deployments/baltics/
… halted from late 1997 to 2005, and resulted in large cost over-runs. The project was finished in December 2015, over 23 years after start of construction.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hallandsås_Tunnel
We need to go back to bombs. You can't fire strategic weapons without provoking a strategic response. Can Russia or China afford to wait until they know that our missiles aren't aimed at them? No such problem with a bomb. And we have the capability to deploy such weapons with our new carriers and aircraft.
As America has decided to go home and take its toys with it, we need to consider the role of our military, its requirements and our allies. Tories have both "filleted" the military and scrapped our alliances outside of a NATO that is withering on the vine.
Their suggestion for bio security next term? Outside lessons.
https://www.tes.com/news/covid-outdoor-lessons-idea-total-fudge-dfe-told
This on the day Cambridge University has threatened to withdraw from teacher training because the new arrangements are a rushed shambles.
My favourite was Denmark's Storebaelt Link tunnel. The one where they drove it into the seabed (or at least a lens of super-saturated sand), flooding the tunnels.
"A series of calamities plagued the project from the beginning. Some of the problems encountered were:
- Because of design modifications the TBMs arrived on site up to 10 months behind schedule and incomplete, and were very late being commissioned.
- Shortly after they commenced driving the tunnels, impurities in their hydraulic systems caused a malfunction that resulted in the replacement of the cutterhead drive motors.
- The two tunnels on the Sprogo Island side were accidentally flooded in October1991, inundating the TBMs around 300 metres from the tunnels entrance portals.
- The bearing seals on the TBM screw conveyors (that removed the excavated muck from the tunnel face) failed, causing 6 months further delay.
- The cutterheads on the Halsskov (Zeeland) side wore out prematurely due to the extremely abrasive ground, and were replaced at a cost of 9 months delay
- Ground freezing was required twice in order to repair the TBMs
- To cap it all, in June 1994 with just 1% of the tunnel left to complete, a devastating fire occurred on Dania TBM which nearly destroyed 36 metres of the concrete tunnel lining closest to the face. Following another long delay required for making safe and repairing the damage, the tunnels were completed with the final segment being placed on 7th April 1995 after nearly 5 years of tunnelling."
https://sites.google.com/site/constructivedevelopments/storebaelt-tunnels
When these projects go wrong, they really go wrong. Something Musk will find out sometime.
Laughable. I know you want to try and find a pro-Brexit angle, but really. As for refugees, check the number taken by non-UK EU states, then how many we have. For all that we have this "crisis" of migration we take far less than France or Germany. As you well know.
Plainly, the UK has nothing like the resources to be a hegemonic power, and the European nations definitely don’t have the will to be, collectively. But we should at least be boosting our defence expenditure, to something like 3% of GDP.
Then again, they'd probably put up John Redwood again. Or Desmond Swayne...
You could start with France
It's hard to move people to go quietly in the top jobs since its impossible to pretend all but a few posts are demotions, and they may have too much pride.
I did wonder if he'd lost the First Secretary title - clips his wings without making another enemy.
The domino analogy wasn't valid back in the Cold War days, and was more a piece of rhetoric to justify intervention than it was a serious analysis.
Having said that, @Cyclefree is quite right to raise the question. People from various US allies have asked exactly the same thing. The US government needs to make very clear the distinction between what it has done in Afghanistan (whatever we might think of that), and the strategic commitments it believes are important to it - Taiwan most urgently.
A question I do have about him is whether he's being wise after the event. He is chair of the Commons Foreign Affairs Select Committee.
I posted yesterday a link to the House of Lords select committee report from January this year, which is comprehensive, and in some respect prescient about what subsequently happened:
https://publications.parliament.uk/pa/ld5801/ldselect/ldintrel/208/20802.htm
I've searched back, and can find nothing of significance from either the Defence or Foreign Affairs committees of the Commons in the last two years.
I'm also not sure whether he made any comment at all on the Trump deal last year (our Defence Minister welcomed it at the time). Prior to the debate, I can find him speaking in the HoC on Afghanistan only twice in the last two years (April and July this year).
Countries that uses principally Pfizer are going to have a better autumn and winter.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvim4rsNHkQ
As opposed to the belief that 10,000 pages of analysis proves Nothing Can Wrong.
Thst is, the rerun of the Wiltshire Police and Crime Commissioner election.
http://chartsbin.com/view/nnu
Israel - Has a policy that if it goes down, it will "rm -rf *.*" everyone involved. And has the weapons to do it.
South Korea - large, effective army, with a history of fighting like hell. Strong, effective government, with lost of buy in from the population
Taiwan - Similar to South Korea.
Japan - An interesting question. But again, strong, well structured military. In the middle of a build up.
SK, Taiwan and Japan can go nuclear in days, if they choose. Isreal.....
There's no such thing as 'overseas Metropolitan France'. The phrase refers to l'Hexagone plus Corse. Les DOM-TOMs are not part of it.
Although Pfizer initially has greater effectiveness, this declines more quickly and after four to five months both vaccines offer similar levels of protection.
And after six or seven or eight months ...
Musk is a man of contrasts. A hero who can deliver amazing technology. A nasty shyster who continuously lies (Musk time is very often an excuse hiding a lie). A PR supremo who has eschewed traditional forms of PR, who has idiots hanging onto his every word (not anyone on here, obviously).
IMO Hyperloop and TBC are two projects that are doomed to failure, because he is not as much of a genus as he pretends he is.
I like him and dislike him for different reasons. At the moment, the dislike is at the fore.
My understanding however is Macron for one saw the writing on the wall and pulled his embassy before the fun started. So when it comes to aportioning blame where were Johnson and Raab when the French saw the light?
Your defence of Johnson is one of, "but this is Biden's omnishambles", and it is, but I can't vote Biden's incompetence out of office, I can Johnson's.
I have a certain sympathy for both Biden and Johnson, because to a degree they were made hostages to fortune by Doha. Nonetheless, in both cases utterly shambolic execution of the cluster**** occurred on their watches.
But that being said Australia is not easy to get to, and the numbers for Germany/France and Sweden are so much higher it suggests the above factor is not major. I am surprised even with hostile policies it is that low.
However if the sovereignty of independent Japan or South Korea were threatened then the US would have to intervene or the whole of the Far East would be under threat.
Israel as it has shown before can support itself, though the US would be more likely to intervene to protect Israael than Taiwan.
Taiwan would likely need nuclear weapons to support itself
It raises about £5bn a year. That is approx 0.6% of UK Govt tax raised.
By comparison £30bn a year is spaffed each year on making house price rises into free money for the house owners.
Though I suspect they have fewer people there and were under fewer delusions about the merits of the Afghan army.
...The ongoing presence of UK troops in Afghanistan depends on the deployment decisions of the US. We were disappointed by the lack of analysis of the implications of the planned US withdrawal from Afghanistan provided by ministers in their evidence. We ask the Government to provide to us its assessment of the US’s policy.
Accepting that the US is no longer the reliable friend it was pre Trump.
Accepting that as a result NATO is a busted flush and can no longer be the central strand of our defence.
accepting that we therefore have to look to our own capabilities, however restricted these might be.
Accepting that we have to operate within those restrictions.
Accepting that what we think is of very little importance to anyone else and vice versa. Focus on our real interests, act rarely but make sure when we do it is within our capabilities.
On the 9.33 from Salisbury to Portsmouth. Can only see one person not wearing a mask and the train is fairly full.
No sign at all of the PCC elections in Salisbury. Sorry @kle4
https://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/general_politics/august_2021/election_regrets_most_wouldn_t_vote_to_reelect_biden
https://www.consilium.europa.eu/en/press/press-releases/2021/08/17/afghanistan-declaration-by-the-high-representative-on-behalf-of-the-european-union/