David Blagden
@blagden_david
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Senior Lecturer @SSI_Exeter @exeterpolitics @UniofExeter . Half-baked views on international relations, defence, UK politics. RT ≠ endorsement, etc.
University of Exeter, UK
Joined March 2015
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Look what finally landed! My volume (co-edited with
@soulpatch68
) on 'Games: Conflict, Competition, and Cooperation'. Available from
@CambridgeUP
: (and a large, well-known online retailer). Intro available free here: . Featuring...
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It’d be very ‘HM Treasury’ to deny Harland & Wolff a bailout based on narrow measures of cost-effectiveness…then wonder in 5 years why (a) it has nowhere to build/refit large ships, (b) Belfast’s welfare bill has soared, and (c) NI politics has swung towards populist extremists.
🇩🇪German govt to nationalise cruise ship builder Meyer Werft to avoid bankruptcy.
Meanwhile UK govt refuses to bail out
@HarlandWolffplc
critical to naval shipbuilding.
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“We told Land Rover it could only charge £9250 for its cars. But if they go bust, that’s on them; just the market at work.”
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Education Minister Jacqui Smith is asked by
@cathynewman
if she is "willing to see a university go bust" because of "massive funding problems".
She says: "Yes, if it were necessary. Yes, that would have to be the situation."
Read here:
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You can argue he had a privileged military career that was really just part of the apprenticeship for the main event. But to argue that flying helicopters off an aircraft carrier - among the more dangerous life choices - and commanding a warship aren’t “real” is just daft.
Anyone else cringe when they saw King Charles with a chest full of medals addressing real heroes at the D Day Anniversary Memorial?
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“Let’s sell our national steel production capacity to non-allied great powers. Such staples can just be bought on the open market, because globalisation. And anyway, there’ll never again be wars or arms races that require lots of ships, tanks, and missiles, because globalisation”
Tata Steel confirms plans to cut about 3,000 jobs across UK and close blast furnaces at its plant in Port Talbot
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Starmer’s motorcade sweeping through Admiralty Arch - a public asset and symbol of UK heritage that Osborne flogged to a foreign hotel chain - is a fitting epitaph to the Conservatives’ time in office. Maybe if they’d actually conserved stuff, they wouldn’t be where they are now.
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This is what happens when you underpay people, overwork people, scrap the perks that helped to offset that low pay, burden people with unnecessary admin w*nk, and generally diminish what it means to be part of unique historic fighting Service.
.
@Telegraph
@SheridanDani
reporting HMS Argyll as well as HMS Westminster to be scrapped due to RN personnel shortage.
HMS Argyll began refit in the shed at Devonport in August 2022 and was supposed to rejoin the fleet in late 2023.
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UK Twitter takes on the EU right now: “Ah-ha! I always told you they were the baddies!” vs “OMG! I thought they were this benign cosmopolitan social movement!”
Guys, any realist could’ve told you they’re neither a good *nor* bad actor. They’re just using their relative... 1/?
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It really shouldn’t need saying, but apparently it does: if the state is going to cap the price of a good below a break-even point, it also needs a plan to subsidise the provision of that good. Otherwise the good will be systematically under-supplied (in quantity and/or quality).
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As someone who’s taught at both “Ox” and “bridge” - and also at two other Russell Groups - can confirm: this is spot on.
Yes, there are a few other variables at work. But this is the biggest single thing.
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A friend did her Masters at UCL and was just blown away by how easy it was / how low the workload expectations were. They actually told you which pages to read.
I'm convinced that most of the "oxbridge dominance" thing is just massive undergrad humanities workloads vs peers.
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Yep, nothing to see. Just the wholesale retirement of RN amphibious capability, because a country of >67mn can’t contrive adequate personnel policies meet a ~30k manpower target.
Exclusive: HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark are to be mothballed under government plans to make up for a severe sailor shortage
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UK intergenerational politics, distilled in one chart.
“But you people have cheap clothes, travel, and tech that our generation could only dream of!”
“But you people had affordable housing and living costs that our generation can only dream of!”
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Quite.
If, this morning, you are looking for a definition of ‘shameless Etonian chutzpah’, then look no further:
Starmer is in danger of weakening UK’s defences, says Cameron.
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Modi’s hyper-nationalist troll army who rove the internet, raging at anyone with the temerity to question Indian policy, presumably think they’re serving the national interest. In fact, they remind others that states with such bellicose domestic sentiment need hedging against.
Pretty standard reply these days when discussing anything India related. No point reporting it as it never violates this site's rules.
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Actually, nuclear deterrence has had a compelling year. Russia has deterred us from direct military intervention (even as they’ve brutalised a non-NATO ally), we’ve deterred Russia from striking arms supply depots in NATO (even as we’ve poured weapons into thwarting their war).
If we’re really honest, nuclear weapons don’t seem to deter any real war and conflict situations, they only possibly deter hypothetical abstract scenarios in people’s mind. (not having a hypothetical world war 3 isn’t evidence)
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Not right at all. But after HMG removed public support for uni teaching, then capped domestic tuition fees below the break-even point, then decreed that universities are mere businesses that will be allowed to go bust if they don’t turn a profit, what did y’all expect to happen?
Getting into York. AAA for U.K. students. BBC for foreign students. Just not right.
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You can have a free market. Or you can have state-set price controls. There are cases for both. But you cannot have a market *with* price control and still expect a supply (quantity+quality) that satisfies demand.
The previous govt’s doing. But now this govt’s problem to unpick.
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The Foreign Office has - and should have - no mission beyond advancing the national interest. There’s a rich debate about how widely to conceive of that (e.g. if enough Britons care about humanitarian relief, has it become an interest?). But the “Dept for a Nicer World” it ain’t.
Absolutely staggering clip from this interview; part of the criticism levelled at the Foreign Office is that it is ‘very focussed on national interest.’
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The UN functions in line with its design, i.e. as a forum for dialogue among sovereign states pursuing oft-rivalrous interests. It’s never going to deliver what any party to any dispute would like from it.* But it’s good that it exists, and if it didn’t, we’d have to invent it.
Is there a more useless organisation in the world than the UN?
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Wait until people discover it’ll be smaller than Italy’s…*
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And in response to several points: yes, govt-backed student loans - that are usurious on some, but will never be paid back by others - are a form of subsidy…*to the demand side*. They do nothing to ease costs on the supply side (and may increase those costs in a few ways).
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Aren’t you glad social media didn’t exist during the Cuban Missile Crisis? Imagine Kennedy agreeing to withdraw the Jupiters - which would’ve inevitably been leaked - while the Twitterati shrieked at each other about Munich..
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A timely reminder that the group with the proportionally worst access to UK higher education - and all the life advantages that it brings - are white males from low-income backgrounds. If we’re going to talk equality, we need to talk class.
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Unfortunate, yes - and also, Rishi Sunak’s doing.
1) The new PM had to be at the opening of Parliament
2) Sunak scheduled the election (and thus Parliament’s opening) in full knowledge of the upcoming NATO Summit
3) It wasn’t possible to get from one to the start of the other.
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But when it comes to “why do Oxbridge graduates get the best jobs/scholarships/etc?”, demonstrated ability to turn content into output is the main thing. Yes, you know they’ll be fairly bright. Yes, they’ll likely be quite engaged. But demonstrated graft under pressure is
#1
.
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Jonny’s right, of course. But it’s still funny/depressing [delete as preferred] how quickly we forget that this is the very same guy who oversaw the 2010 ‘Strategic’ Defence and Security Review that gutted the UK Armed Forces in ways they still haven’t recovered from.
Aspiring politicians take note. This is how to communicate. Whatever your view of Cameron, there’s no denying his skill as a messenger. I hardly watch any government clips to the end these days, but this one had me hooked.
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That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best way to learn. The high-end US postgrad model of reading ~2 books a week - but thoroughly, and getting a participation mark based on how well you debate the specific content in class - forces deeper engagement than Oxbridge skimming.
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The funniest things about this recurrent dumb take is the misunderstanding of nuclear command+control it betrays.
UK Trident has no Permissive Action Link: So, never mind “Washington’s permission”. UK SSBNs don’t even need London’s permission to fire.
British people often have the mistaken impression that they are somehow above dependence on the American security protectorate. That this is a continental problem.
The reality is the UK is extremely dependent (they can't even launch their nukes without 🇺🇸)
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Sometimes you really *should* meet your heroes, because they’re kinder and cleverer than you could’ve even imagined… RIP, Bob Jervis: a brilliant intellect, riveting interlocutor, and generous man.
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The Rules-Based Liberal Order (RBLO™️) is now in favour of cluster munitions, which is quite the volte-face. Almost like there weren’t really “rules” to begin with, other than the imperative to survive in an anarchic international system structured by relative material power…
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I wish those mooting a No Fly Zone would reflect that the Battle of Britain was an effort to enforce a No Fly Zone. That’s what it looks like between major powers. So imagine that, but with nuclear war at the end if one side starts losing badly.
Like how do you write this paragraph without noting that these actions might bring about a nuclear apocalypse
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...power to advance their interests, like any state/bloc (especially one with substantial economic wherewithal facing a security crisis). The UK made its choice to be outside - which is fine, because there were costs to being inside - but shouldn’t now be surprised that a... 2/?
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Anyone notice how the Iranians launched a modest, suppressable strike that stopped well short of threatening their adversary’s survival? It’s almost like they’re terrified of - one could even say “deterred by” - some retaliatory capability at Israel’s disposal…
But nuclear weapons deter attacks so this must be fake news, right?
Either that, or nuclear deterrence is exposed for what it is: an abstract theory that’s touted to justify clinging onto weapons of mass murder.
Nukes are a scam. Pass it on.
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That the Conservatives “always” used to resource the armed forces expansively is a popular misconception. In fact, they’ve overseen most major post-1945 reductions, as
@thinkdefence
usefully highlights.
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Once you could say what you liked about Conservative governments, but they always looked after the armed forces. Not any more, which is a damn shame because we need them now more than at any point since the Cold War
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Have heard this idea - the UK joining dual-key operation of US tactical nukes - voiced by smart people in and beyond Whitehall recently.
My reservations are different to
@pinstripedline
’s. Namely: you don’t hedge against US abandonment by taking on more US dependence.
1/25(!!)
Simply put - 'NO'! The challenge of certification and mounting nuclear QRA would absorb people, resources and airframes in a nugatory task that NATO as a burden sharing Alliance can do, while the UK maintains SSBNs. Its a solution in search of a problem.
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Doing a PhD in International Relations during the COIN years was an oft-baffling experience. A lot of smart people really did believe that great power politics was ‘over’ for good, and that the future of Western security really did lie in transforming M.East/C.Asia into Denmark.
People forget how absolutely insane the COIN craze was. Why wasn’t this just immediately laughed out of the room?
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...big power is acting like all big powers ever. Short of towing the British Isles to the US Eastern Seaboard or the Asia-Pacific, as some seem to imagine is possible by proclaiming a slogan, the prudent realpolitikal choice remains preservation of cooperation with an... 3/?
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(Of course, there are also all the earlier-life inequalities that result in certain groups being more likely to get into Oxbridge than others, and those should be actively addressed. But that’s a separate question than the performance signal an Oxbridge degree conveys)
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..economic regional hegemon capable of making our lives much harder, if it chooses to, but with which we also have many common interests. Meanwhile, in Moscow, Beijing, and (whisper it) Washington, plenty will be delighted to see the European powers tearing strips off each other.
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“The night belonged to” a boorish moron who just lobbed a limp insult at two people who’ve put themselves forward to try to help their country? Bad take,
@BBCBreakfast
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Interested in:
- The offence-defence balance
- Realism
- Security dilemmas
- Deterrence
- Escalation
- Military technology
- Geopolitics
- Strategic stability
- Sea power
- Land warfare, or
- Nuclear counterforce?
Check out my latest in
@Journal_of_GSS
!
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I know it’s sad, but teenage me read
@TheEconomist
avidly; it nurtured the budding interest in understanding politics/economics that led me to what I do now. So, disproportionately excited to appear in the hallowed pages: . Thanks
@shashj
!
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UK Defence, 1982: converts a container ship into a helicopter carrier in six days
UK Defence, ~2022: “sorry that shower cubicle’s been broken for ten months; we’re obliged to wait for the private contractor that holds the site maintenance rights”
June 7th 1982: MV Astronomer leaves Devonport for the Falklands. In just six days, she has been converted into a helicopter carrier; fitted with a leased US ARAPAHO containerised aircraft handling system, RAS equipment, additional accommodation & comms equipment...
(continues)
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One thing the heroic Ukrainians are reminding us: nationalism is potent for a reason. Yes, it can lead to xenophobic jingoism. But when the chips are down, there’s still no better communal protection than the nation-state…and people will fight to defend theirs when it’s menaced.
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There’s actually a smart version of this policy to be had, ironically: time portering for the NHS, conserving for the Enviro Agency, etc, *or* in the Forces, in exchange for uni fees (or similar perk) plus a basic wage+qualification. But that’s muddied by this panicked botch.
Rishi Sunak’s plan for compulsory national service is the most insane policy proposal ever launched in an election campaign by a major political party.
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Any Whitehall sort who heads into the forthcoming Strategic Defence Review with the same old “the Americans will protect us” assumptions simply isn’t paying attention.
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Living proof that operational experience does not a strategic mind make.
"It does mean war with Russia..."
General Sir Richard Barrons, ex-head of Joint Forces Command, says continued Russian aggression may result in no fly zones, conceding that this could mean war with Russia
#Newsnight
|
@markurban01
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Most responses to this predictably “loool, what idiots!”
People: a nuclear-armed rival - especially a paranoid one - having a glitchy early-warning system in which they have little confidence, and info from which they’re not sure how to interpret, is *not* a good thing.
1/ Rampant corruption is reported to have rendered Russia's ballistic missile early warning system virtually useless. Scams by contractors are said to have led to unsuitable foreign-made components being used on a wide scale. ⬇️
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A reminder that Britain's 2010 and 2015 National Security Risk Assessments identified a flu-like pandemic as a top-tier national danger. But we halved funding for our epidemiology authorities nonetheless.
Pandemics / Public Health Crises were recognised as 'Tier 1' risks in the UK's 2010 (, p.1) and 2015 (, p.87) National Security Risk Assessments. But public health services were run into the ground anyway ().
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The UK really is a very tolerant place. A devolved authority takes UK taxpayers’ pounds - on a favourable basis, via Barnett - and spends them on working to break-up the UK.* If Texas or Corsica were spending federal funds on a secession department, DC or Paris would…have views.
Our
#ANewScotland
paper sets out how an independent Scotland could be a good global citizen:
🔵 promoting and protects human rights
🔵 acting based on values and principles
🔵 building partnerships to address global challenges
ℹ️
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Indefensible that the same voter ID options will be permitted for the old but denied for the young (e.g. the regular adult vs the 60+ Oyster Card). Any UK government should think very carefully before introducing perceptions of bias into our generally-trusted electoral system.
Long-awaited details of the government’s voter ID scheme have now been released, including details of which IDs will be accepted at the polling station. The list contains plenty of options for older voters, but few for younger voters.
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Conservative-LibDem Coalition, 2013: “universities are just businesses; if they can’t turn a profit, they should expect to go bust!”
Conservatives, 2023: “why are universities addicted to high-paying foreign students?!”
Another attack on Britain's universities from exactly the same political camp that's crippled them. When are universities going to answer and fight back?
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The United States (and its major Western allies) should militarily abandon the Middle East. Not fudge, not tinker, not finesse; just leave.
...argue
@PatPorter76
and I, forthcoming in
@SecStudies_Jrnl
. Accepted abstract below.
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A position still fraught with danger. Any significant NATO conventional strike on Russia must face probability of Russian retaliation; not necessarily in-kind, but with real hurt attached, e.g. a NATO warship torpedoed with all hands lost. Then what…?
Important, high-stakes signalling. “Two other western officials said that a nuclear strike against Ukraine would be unlikely to spark a retaliation in kind but would instead trigger conventional military responses from western states to punish Russia.”
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I have invented a radical pedagogy called “Blended Learning”:
1. You will be told some basic info by a lecturer, but
2. You will primarily learn by reading books/articles by yourself,
3. At the end, we will assess how much you understand with an essay/exam.
It’s utterly novel.
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The University brass, in their charity, have seen fit to promote me to Senior Lecturer. I can only presume it was to excuse an increasing incidence of “senior moments”. Nonetheless, many thanks to everyone who has helped me in this weird life called academia!
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Thought experiment: if the IRA had just killed ~10.6k* UK civilians in a surprise attack prepared under cover of the peace process, but (say) France - following domestic pressure - was demanding UK stop trying to eradicate IRA in response, where would the median UK voter sit?
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A key lesson is that no state - certainly not one in the UK’s position - should build total reliance on a foreign power into its strategic posture. Cooperate, yes. But be prepared to help yourself.
This has always been true, of course. But the reminders now come thick and fast.
So depressing to wake up to the news that Biden flunked the debate.
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Increasingly convinced that Derek Trotter was actually a senior leader in UK Defence: “this time next year, Rodney, we’ll be millionaires.”
Whether it’s the RAF with “yes, we only have 6 working aircraft at the mo, but there’ll be the SuperPlane™️ next decade”, or the RN with…
"The
@BritishArmy
will be the most modern and most lethal army in Europe by the end of this decade".
In an exclusive interview with Forces News, General Sir Patrick Sanders said within the next 6 to 7 years the Army will look "radically different".
👉
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This is pithy, but wrong (in a number of ways).
1. The smart critique of Mearsheimer is that his theory and policy advocacy are contradictory. In offensive realism, states can never be sure of others’ intentions, so the only way to secure their interests is to seize as much…
Thing is, the offensive realists NEED Russia to win. Their whole theory is basically “the strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must” - as if Thucydides offered that as a prescription rather than a condemnation - and it doesn’t work if Ukraine holds its own.
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(And while there may be some in HM Treasury who don’t really care if Belfast residents are annoyed at Westminster - since they mostly don’t vote for GB political parties - they ought to know that the ascent of populist extremists in NI can very much become a pan-UK problem…)
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Indeed. I wonder *why* a foreign power hasn’t landed for 200 years? 🤔
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A good end to a tough week - acceptance of a long-tortured article with
@Journal_of_GSS
. Many thanks indeed to the editors, anonymous reviewers, and the scores of you who’ve read/commented on versions of this over the years. I’m off for a beer.
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International law actually is “opt in, opt out” - not normatively, but empirically. It’s one unfortunate consequence of an anarchic international system.
We have to hope states will opt in, even when responding to aggression. But there’s no World Police to make them.
“The horror is so far from what I could have imagined, it's appalling… but humanitarian law is not opt in, opt out.”
@aliciakearns
says Britain has a duty to be “tough with our friends” and any response to Hamas should be spoken about as counter-terrorism.
@lewis_goodall
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When Russia murdered Britons on UK soil in 2018, Canada backed UK in imposing serious costs on Moscow (degrading its intelligence capability by expelling “diplomats”). We may now see whether the favour’s repaid, or whether India’s deemed too strategically/economically important.
"Earlier this year, Canada began pushing its closest allies, the members of the Five Eyes intelligence ... to raise Nijjar’s killing with India at the highest levels of government and issue a joint statement condemning the act."
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The same people responsible for Britain’s demoralised and directionless Foreign Office lamenting those conditions. Then pretending that a new-build office block designed to apologise for the country’s history, strategic position, and national identity will somehow fix it all.
"The Foreign Office should be abolished and replaced by a new Department for International Affairs with "fewer colonial era pictures on the wall"."
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This *isn’t* just about being fair to a few MPs (“who likes MPs anyway?!”, goes the refrain). What it *is* about is the franchise of millions of Britons; if your MP can’t participate, how are you democratically represented? It’s indefensible chicanery.
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The UK did this once. Then it discovered it was off to fight a big naval/air battle, followed by risky amphibious reconquest, in a place many citizens had never heard of.
The Armed Forces got it done, of course. But four RN ships now lie at the bottom of the South Atlantic.
Australia according to the Department of Defence.
Not a single mention of our External Territories or Antarctica in the entire National Defence Strategy.
Seriously?
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Thank God we haven’t systematically neglected our manufacturing sector over the past 40 years in the belief that we’d simply buy everything “just in time” from eager-to-please foreigners using all that money we’d made from financial services and property development.
Hancock says UK has 5,000 ventilators but needs many more times that amount. Asks “anyone who can” to “turn their engineering minds and production lines to making them... We need to produce more”
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Very sad to hear about the passing of the great
@NunoPMonteiro1
, gone far too young this week. Nuno was my preceptor - a sort of PhD student mentor and co-supervisor to a batch of MA students - during our time shared
@UChicagoCIR
. Twitter doesn’t do him justice, but I’ll try...
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If they knew what the military does on a daily basis, there’d be a public outcry for at least two new medals, starting with the MODNet Cross (“for chivalrously retaining sanity while awaiting login”) and the JPA Star (“for heroic patience while awaiting expenses reimbursement”).
New research suggests 69% of people in the UK have little idea what the military does on a daily basis.
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My question for advocates of this posture is: what’s your causal theory of how sailing one of our scarce, costly aircraft carriers through the South China Sea increases net UK security?
That’s all it comes down to. But you have to have one.
Interesting to chart how heavily China has featured in speeches by British Defence chiefs in recent weeks, ahead of Integrated Review.
Ben Wallace yesterday suggested UK could send carrier to South China Sea to conduct freedom of navigation patrols & invite allies to join.
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This confusion has become pervasive throughout UK foreign/security policy. The number of officials, politicians, officers, and analysts who seem to think ‘soft’ power is “anything that’s not directly bombing an enemy” is 🤯
Let's pause to note that the former head of Britain’s diplomatic service seems to have absolutely no idea what soft power means.
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A treat(ish..) for your weekend! My article, “Roleplay, Realpolitik, and ‘Great Powerness’: The Logical Distinction between Survival and Social Performance in Grand Strategy”, is now out - and free(!!) to access - in
@EuroJournIR
(27:4). Give it a click!
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This is a genuinely absurd logic trap.
1. “We want to improve policy by engaging with experts.”
2. Experts can do that by pointing out flaws in current policy.
3. But, that would be criticism of existing policy.
4. So, “we can’t engage with those particular experts”.
Here's literally what a UK government official sent to me in an email.
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This doesn’t make sense, unfortunately. The credibility of US deterrence over Taiwan will be determined by Chinese assessments of (a) how much capability the US can bring to bear *to defend Taiwan* and (b) how much the US cares *about Taiwan*.
1/7
You nailed it. The best method to deter China from further exploring military options re Taiwan is for the US to demonstrate strategic resolve and determination re Ukraine. Washington must not allow RUS or China to believe AFG was only the beginning of US global retreat.
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The US - and major Western allies, such as the UK (fn.13) - should withdraw from the Middle East. Doing so would conserve scarce resources for more pressing tasks and reduce damage to our domestic order.
@PatPorter76
and I make the case in
@SecStudies_Jrnl
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This map - which is just a gift that keeps giving - includes:
- France = larger nuclear arsenal
- Russia = *much* larger arsenal + affects that “safety” claim
- 5 states that host US nuclear weapons
- NATO, with its extended-deterrent guarantees
- A tellingly bisected Ukraine.
I actually have to live in a country where a supposedly serious political party makes arguments like this.
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Relax, UK pundits. Biden won’t restore “rules-based liberal order”, because it never existed. And he doesn’t spell the death of US-UK “friendship”, because ditto. He’ll advance US interests, like any US President. And if we’re smart, we can harness those interests to serve ours.
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We should indeed think carefully about pre-empting Russian intervention. And we should conclude that NATO involvement would (a) weaken the protesters (they’d be painted as foreign powers’ agents), b) give Moscow pretext, and (c) risk major war over somewhere we care little about.
BELARUS:
Incredible footage of the KGB attempting the lift a protestor -but the people have other ideas. Tensions are rising.
The UK does not recognise Lukashenko’s presidency - as the situation escalates the West should think carefully about pre-empting any Russian aggression.
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So we’re now munching through central bank reserves to counter not a pandemic, or an oil shock, or a global banking crisis, but…our own government’s* fever dream of somehow becoming Singapore**
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Mandelson is right about this. MPs have a public mandate, owe a duty of representation to the whole electorate, and can be held accountable for their choices via the ballot box. Whereas party members - who pay to join a privileged selectorate - bring none of those things.
‘I think, frankly, if we want better politics and we want our country better led… it would be better to transfer the responsibility of selecting our leaders and prime ministers back to MPs.’
- Peter Mandleson speaking on the latest ‘How to win an election’ with
@MattChorley
.
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One answer is that the UK doesn’t have all that much to give. Constant hollowing out of Defence and the industrial base that supplies it - and indeed, the overall economy - has left the cupboard bare. If only someone with the power of government could’ve done something about it.
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Just because certain Western pundits say silly things like “we don’t need to be at all deterred by Russia” in search of ‘likes’ doesn’t negate that their govts manifestly *are* deterred - and likewise on the Russian side.
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A case can be made for nuclear disarmament, *if* one has enough faith in multilateral agreements and verification safeguards. But simply denying that nuclear deterrence exists - when it so obviously, intuitively, and manifestly does - is not the way to do it.
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@Rekt57v
The total withdrawal of all subsidy *and* all price caps would indeed be one route to a market-clearing price. It’d mean only the richest few could go to university, but if the polity decided that’s what they wanted, it’s an available route.
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The Littoral Combat Ships have indeed been a disaster. But analytically, they also tell us much about a hegemon’s combo of hubris and insecurity at the height of the ‘unipolar moment’.
The assumption that the seas would remain US-dominated lakes, free of great-power rivals…
1/2
The 🇺🇸US Navy’s lack of frigates means no Atlantic convoys in the event of war.
The decision to build useless Littoral Combat Ships instead of frigates was a disaster. Labour shortage in US Shipyards means new Constellation class frigates will be further delayed.
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Also, the likes of Finland, Sweden, and Ukraine are now hammering at NATO’s door, asking to be let into a nuclear-armed alliance. So those most exposed to Russian hostility clearly recognise that nuclear deterrence is a thing.
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A key flaw in the European plan to keep relying on the US electorate for our security - rather than spending on our own defence - is that mainstream forces within the US electorate now think this is fine.
1/2
Attendees at a Kansas Republican Party event on Friday paid to punched and kicked an effigy of President Biden on Friday.
This is not normal.
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When people on the left *or* right say you can’t have a UK government that is progressive on domestic socio-economic affairs yet coldly realistic in foreign policy, remember that these two - with colleagues - created *both* the NHS *and* the UK’s nuclear deterrent.
“He was the greatest trade union leader of his generation, a great Foreign Secretary and a man of outstanding character and ability. To me also he was a most dear friend and loyal comrade.”
Clement Attlee on Ernest Bevin, who died
#OnThisDay
1951.
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Anyone’d think the Salmond Inquiry had become a train-wreck and her party had descended into civil war, hence a bit of cost-free Anglo-baiting to rally the troops and provoke the English into saying/doing something escalatory..
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For anyone interested, I have a (pre-referendum) take on how a federalising EU might coerce the UK () and a (post-ref) summary of various possible security consequences (). Also this in
@ip_palgrave
on both: .
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It’s almost like - heretical thought - the state should provide infrastructure it deems essential to its future security (of energy supply, in this case).
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Unscholarly take. If Mearsheimer and Walt’s theories/evidence were worthy of engagement previously, then they remain so even if you disagree with their policy advocacy. And if their theory/evidence wasn’t worthy of engagement previously, why was it on your syllabus to begin with?
Walt and Mearsheimer don't care about you dunking on them on Twitter. They care about being among the first five names IR students (especially in the US) learn. If you wanna hit them where it hurts then move their articles and theory waaaay further down your syllabi.
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Ok, since you asked… Remember that part where NATO heroically rode to the rescue, pulverised Russia’s inferior conventional forces, and liberated Ukraine back in March 2022? Yeah, it didn’t happen.
Tell me again about how nuclear weapons deter conventional attacks ...
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And when Moscow retaliates against this (conventional) attack on Russia with a (conventional) attack on NATO - when, say, a US warship has been sunk with all hands - what then? Does Capitol Hill demand further escalation? Alas, the game doesn’t stop after one turn each. 1/2
On this point, my vote on the jury is: Russian use of a non-strategic nuclear weapon should result in an overwhelming conventional response by the West on Ukraine's side to eject Russia from all Ukraine that could include attacks on Russian positions in Russia. No need for nukes.
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We did it. The worst per-capita death toll *and* the worst economic contraction in the G7. We feared there was a trade-off to be made, but why choose?! You can f*** up both!
For our next trick, we’re going impose economic sanctions on ourself in ~4 months, just to make sure..
It’s official.
Not only is the UK now formally in recession.
It’s the deepest recession in UK history.
The deepest of any G7 economy.
The deepest since the invention of Gross Domestic Product.
GDP shrank by 20.4% in Q2, acc to
@ONS
. Follows a 2.2% fall in Q1
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Or put differently, who caused the virus to enter the human population, hushed it up while it spread, and is now far enough through - thanks to a combination of mass house arrest and attrition among at-risk demographics - that it can spare some ventilators to patch up its image?
China has reacted to the outbreak of coronavirus in Italy by sending aid. The US has reacted by suspending flights. Who is the superpower?
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