Russia Defeated: A Thought Experiment | Firas Modad
Let us imagine that it is now 2025 or 2030. Russia has been defeated in Ukraine – despite its threats, it baulked at using nuclear weapons and accepted that it must surrender all Ukrainian territory it seized.
President Vladimir Putin has been overthrown, and a more hardline, insular and autarkic regime that is incapable of projecting power abroad is left standing.
Britain must prepare for a global food crisis | Dominic Lawson
If the British government is serious about “levelling up” and intends for this to be a real policy rather than a slogan to be regurgitated by a thousand midwit journalists, it should develop our agricultural sector as a priority. This will be the job of permanent experts, not politicians, who are far too dependent on five year plans and the minutiae of the media cycle to push for any policies which will cost in the near term but benefit us further down the line.
Ukraine and British Grand Strategy | Dominic Lawson
Asked several months ago whether Putin would order an invasion, I would have said no, but the scale of the forces arrayed on the Ukrainian border and the long list of demands publicly issued by Moscow, most of which NATO cannot accept, suggests that Putin has not found an offramp and may now believe that a short sharp attack against Ukraine to preferable to a slow degradation of Russian influence over the country
What really happened with Afghanistan evacuation? | Dominic Lawson
The accusations are as follows; that the Prime Minister intruded into the operation to evacuate Afghan civilians to prioritise the animals and personnel within Pen Farthing’s animal charity, called Nowzad, at the behest of his wife, Carrie.
Let Afghanistan be the last liberal crusade | Dominic Lawson
The Afghan debacle provides very real and painful examples of what happens when foreign policy is directed by ideological arrogance completely removed from both the facts on the ground and the truths of human nature and civilisational conflict. To understand this, we need to return to the original casus belli of the conflict.
The McNamara fallacy is the West’s major Achilles’ heel | Daniel Hardaker
Due to the ease at which the training can be gamed, and the vagueness of its messages, the majority undertaking the training will not pay attention to the videos. Not, however, that doing so would make behaviour any safer. Nonetheless, the psychology of ‘completing’ safety training leads one to neglect intuition and alertness in favour of trusting in the machine, with predictable consequences. The whole network of data, checklists, and quotas creates an illusion, an alternate reality that does not correspond to the six inches in front of one’s nose. It drags both the individual and the society into a make-believe much more absurd than that which is frequently the target of derision by those driving the new world forward, religious devotion. As Western society becomes drowned in surplus information and metrics, the effect increases.
Africa in the world to come | Dominic Lawson
Now, the Trans-Saharan trade routes are re-emerging in the modern world, and the pioneering groups who are forging them are international criminal syndicates. The new trade routes which run throughout the region link a vast informal economy of drugs and weaponry. After the toppling of Qaddafi and the transformation of Libya from relatively well functioning to “Somalia on the Mediterranean,” replete with terrorism, slavery and disorder, the region is also a major transit route of illegal mass migration into the European continent.
The G7 has outlived its purpose | Orthodox Conservatives
The structural flaws would be enough to make many international organisations ineffective, but with the G7 this is only the tip of the accursed iceberg. The G7 has been used as a platform for progressive liberal policies for decades and seems to be far more effective at prosecuting these goals rather than carrying out any significant economic or diplomatic initiatives. For example, the Prime Minister called for a “more feminine and gender-neutral” recovery to the COVID pandemic at the most recent summit. Similarly, aid to the developing world has been a top priority of the group, even as members face declining living standards in the working class due to globalisation and production offshoring. For the average citizen of the US or UK, the tangible benefits of G7 membership are close to zero.
Trump’s unlikely torchbearer | OC Comment
With regards to China, Biden has achieved “essential continuity” with the Trump administration’s policy... It is no surprise that Toshihiro Nakayama from Keio university describes this approach as adding “smartness to Trumpian toughness”. The wording is key; instead of reversing or replacing Trump’s policy direction, Biden is bringing his experience and tactfulness to bear on essential Trump-era objectives.