Politics, The Final Frontier (Politics)

[Mick Harper]

A Neo-Con Speaks

[Wile E. Coyote]

For all those that are concerned that BRICS is going to be a threat to western hegemony.....

Xi has just snubbed Modhi by not even attending the G20 because it's being hosted by India.

BTW is it just me, but it rather takes the fun out of these foreign visits when the PM and wife actually look look good wearing pink garlands. I will have to vote Starmer.

[Mick Harper]

Not to mention the two of them were actually fighting a war a coupla years ago. It's like the USA and the Soviet Union setting up a mutual admiration society in the fifties. Xi was correct not to attend the G20, as unwieldy as BRICS will be when they let in their candidate-applicants. He's not up for re-election so what would be the point?

What is required, in my view is an end to all these jamborees. Instead, there would be a no-frills, no-publicity building somewhere that houses senior people (not politicians) in permanent session, keeping ongoing problems in play round the table and flying kites with one another in a deniable sort of way. Membership should be strictly un-PC, confined to countries that actually matter. The first rule of fight club will be no throwing people out for fighting.

The head jobs can come along from time to time to ratify this or that.

[Mick Harper]

Grand Strategy Question of the Week

[Boreades]

[Mick Harper]

Yes. If you are going to correct me, you have to be more specific. Northern China has indirect access to the Pacific via the Bohai and Yellow Seas, though even that used to be hindered by Russo-Japanese machinations in the days of Port Arthur. South China has indirect access via the... wait for it... South China Sea.

This is an application of the 'four-colour cartography problem': when applying different colours to distinguish countries, it has been found only four colours are ever needed because five countries cannot abut one another. The fifth country can always be coloured the same as the first. The 'problem' arises from nobody being able to come up with a 'proof'. In this case it is that if country A abuts country B along a littoral, there is no room for country C.

[Wile E. Coyote]

[Boreades]

[Mick Harper]

You illustrate the problem nicely. All states with a coastline have access to anywhere in the world because all the oceans in the world share connectivity. The strategic challenge arises from how useful which part of their coastline connects to the World Sea. For instance, the Germans built the Kiel Canal to ensure their Baltic fleet could reach the North Sea without going round Denmark because the Skagerrak and the Sound can be closed in wartime. They could do nothing about having to traverse the North Sea and English Channel to get anywhere useful.

As you say, Russia has always had the severest problems reaching anywhere useful. They built an ice-free port at Murmansk because their main port at Archangel was useless for several months of the year. As an illustration of the North Korea/Russia dodge, they nicked a piece of Finnish territory at the end of the war to ensure Russia abuts Norway, thereby closing off Finland/Sweden/anyone from the south in the future from access to the North Atlantic.

Thereby inadvertently opening a land border with NATO, in the future, so it isn't always plain sailing.

[Mick Harper]

[Mick Harper]

The French continue to tie themselves into Sahelian knots. They decided to interfere in Niger's internal politics by robustly opposing the military coup. The coup leaders unsurprisingly told the French they could get the hell out of Dodge. The French riposted that their embassy staff and the several hundred French soldiers guarding them were going nowhere because they were accredited to and had been invited in by the previous regime and France did not recognise the present one. "Bien sûr," said the new government, and the locals organised nightly street parties outside the embassy compound with the general theme of Allez, France!

After a few weeks the food and water started to run out and President Macron said, "Oh, all right then, s'il vous voulez."

[Wile E. Coyote]

In Sweden, the government is bringing in the army to deal with criminal gangs..

They will get tough on crime eh?

The number of bombings, grenade(!) and gun attacks has reached crazy levels in Malmo as gangs fight it out.

Yesterday

[Mick Harper]

For Ukraine, read Armenia

Certain countries get given favourable treatment by the western media and not necessarily because they are western-oriented. Ukraine brought many of its troubles on itself when, in the 1990's, it became independent and exploited its 'darling' status vis a vis a prostrate Russia to hammer out borders that were unrealistically maximalist. When Russia returned to its normal state, Ukraine doubled down by refusing to make concessions to its Russian minorities in the Donetsk.

Though the mess was created by the Soviet Union and it has been 'dealt with' in a deplorable manner by the Russian successor-state, it cannot be denied that Uraine behaved both foolishly and chauvinistically. But throughout the period, the west kept quiet about Ukrainian failings and then took Ukraine's side unconditionally when her chickens came home to roost.

The USSR similarly created a ludicrous situation in the Armenia/Azerbaijan region by placing Armenian-speaking Nagorno-Karabakh inside the Azerbaijan SSR. With the demise of the Soviet Union both Armenia and Azerbaijan gained their independence but, as usual, both countries followed maximalist territorial policies. Azerbaijan refused all entreaties about Nagorno-Karabakh, so Armenia -- then the stronger of the two -- simply invaded Azerbaijan and not only annexed Nagorno-Karabakh but incorporated a great many further, Azeri-speaking, districts as well 'to round out' the Armenian state. It took no great pains to reassure their new Azeri citizens they would prosper under Armenian administration.

Naturally, as soon as Azerbaijan became strong enough it simply reversed the process. Following a brief war in 2020 it essentially returned the situation to its pre-1991 borders and made completely sure that the Armenians inside the enclave understood who was master. Just a few weeks ago it too doubled down by militarily occupying Nagorno-Karabakh sending (so far) a third of its Armenian inhabitants fleeing for Armenia and the rest -- we can be fairly sure -- will soon follow. Ironically, this will probably 'solve' the problem for all time.

The western attitude was summed up on Channel 4 News when an apparently neutral academic from a neutral sounding think tank was asked whether Armenia's bad behaviour in the 1990's contributed to their troubles, she simply ignored the question and was allowed to do so by her interlocutor. We must have our heroes and villains untarnished.

[Wile E. Coyote]

I am not sure this is the case. I don't think Armenia ever annexed, ie claimed, sovereignty of Nagorno Karabech, in fact I don't think they even recoginised the Republic of Artsakh or the belt of surrounding land.

[Mick Harper]