Category Archives: Nuclear Powers

Another Warning Out of History

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I normally don’t or shouldn’t make particular, targeted appeals to my friends in the USA on matters political. My themes are normally general commentaries, messages of support and overall condemnatory. The rest are left to your good selves.
Here’s one there, short and not so sweet, which originated from this news headline:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4g31n4ey9go 
The expiration of the treaty is not news, and there has been, is and will, be much written about it.
My contribution is based on a warning out of History:
The Reinsurance Treaty of 1887 between the Imperial Powers of Germany and Russia, forged by German Chancellor Bismarck.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reinsurance_Treaty    
In 1890 Bismarck was forced to resign by Kaiser Wilhelm II-

basically because the former was being smarter than the latter (sometimes a few words of flippancy are worth paragraphs of analysis). The Treaty due for renewal was allowed to expire in the same year. A number of historians of World War I cite this as a contributory factor in the growing undercurrents of mutual tensions and suspicions wherein the old diplomatic system failed to operate during the final crisis that erupted in 1914.
That war had a particularly messy ending with an absence of important formal national surrenders; only an jagged Armistice which allowed an extremist conspiracy to foster in Germany which in turn led to World War II. Not that there was much peace between 1918 and 1939.

With this in mind, the next time you have cause to write to any elected official you might want to raise the point concerning the recent expiration. 

Take care everyone
Roger    

 

The War Posts Part III – When Industry Replaced Cavalry and its Arm Grew Long

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Precursor
The warnings had been there. To name but two: The American Civil War and The Franco-Prussian War. The message being the machines of Industry and the advances of Science were being fully harnessed to the carriages of war. Be the conflict on land, sea and now air advances were made, and each one provoked another. The term Arms Race had come of age. Meanwhile in the relative background research was advancing in Atomic Physics and in turn the new field of Nuclear Physics, nothing to really interest the Military and International Political Minds. Meanwhile the delicate system of checks and balances in essentially European and Russian politics contained such events as Germanic expansion and union, Italian unity and Independence and Russia’s messianic mission to free and unite all the Slavs. Empires prevailed, nations prevailed and wars were mostly colonial in nature; events which happened outside of the European sphere were left to the diplomatic core to summon up governmental and some military assistance where and when.

The Seismic Event (WWI)
By the second decade of the 20th Century, the political system was being pressured by variables. National identities as we know them, a product of the 19th Century had by now been given strident voice, having been urged on in preceding years by polemic writers working in the fields of Identity, Race and the more aggressive Philosophies. The web of alliances all based upon deterrents through Military Defence or Defence through aggression gave way and World War I commenced, in which the full potential of the previous decades were released. From now on The Logic of War became mainstay. In this case the Logic had lain out the issues in simple terms. Break the enemy’s armies and break the enemy’s Will. It didn’t really matter in which order.
Although much military thought had gone into what to do with armies and weaponry, amongst the principal powers, of late there had been no practical experience against a similarly weaponised foe. No one truly appreciated the full potential of the Industrial Army when unleashed either in attack or defence. That going to have to be learnt; the hard way. But the Logic of War would continue, because the foe had to be defeated, this was not just a struggle over some portions of land, some king’s ambitions, some passing fervour; the concept of National Survival was there. Thus all means were justifiable. There was no place or times for ethics; there never had been before, why should there now?
Meanwhile in 1917 in Manchester UK, Ernest Rutherford experiments with the first artificial  nuclear reactions. No doubt some would have huffed that these ‘boffins’ should be putting their talents to better uses helping The War Effort.
The war would come to an end, there were a series of military victories by the Allies, but basically the German led Central powers collapsed, the brutal truth being they had collectively lost the will to continue, bled by casualties and of resources, from within they fell. The Logic of War had favoured one side, by a thin margin its Will had prevailed.

Old Lessons Applied With New Tools
There is a line of thought that runs when later centuries’ historians view the first half of the 20th Century, they will place the two wars together. The same issues and with two major changes of sides effectively the same war.
In the interim the nationalistic feelings were fired by ethnic and racial divides, one minority or another being blamed for failures. And losers or those who had minor gains resolved they would do things differently next time. Then there was the dangerous innocence which pretended that if you ignored War it would simply go away, like when dealing with other Human flaws there was much misplaced faith invested in Wishful Thinking.

Meanwhile 1932 Cambridge UK under guidance from Rutherford and others’ discoveries James Chadwick discovers the Neutron. Following on these advances in December 1938 Berlin Germany chemists Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassman in conjunction with physicists Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch enact the process now known as Nuclear Fission. The resultant energy is noted and considered a subject for later research into a cheap form of heating.

Elsewhere the inevitability of a stumbling to conflict continues. The steps, the errors, the hopes, the lies and the confusions need not to be repeated. September 1939 add December 1941 and the world is embraced in a war in which the full efforts of Industry and Science are marshalled into the Logic of War. Axis vs Allies. One aspect is not truly embraced by one Axis side which will have great fatal consequences for one of its allies.
In the USA during October 1939 Hungarian refugee physicists Eugene Wigner and Leo Szilard, while in the UK Otto Frisch and Rudolf Peierls German refugee physicists in March 1940 contact the respective governments alerting them to the potential destructive power of Nuclear Fission and concerns that the German Nazi government could also research this potential. Both governments take this matter seriously. Following the attack on Pearl Harbour in December 1941 and the US entry into WWII the USA uses its industrial capacity to expand the research into a viable weapon. The logic of War has now embraced the nuclear field. No area of weaponry is ever left unexplored.
This is not the only development conducted by the Allies; the side which the Axis  considered decadent and weak, forgetting that Democracies can be as ruthless as any aggressive totalitarian regime. Amongst the many advances the Allies make is to construct vast strategic bomber fleets to take the war to the Axis’ homelands, while in their rush to quick victories the Axis only invested in air forces to support their armies on the ground, they made the mistake of not matching plane for plane the four engined heavy bombers. Germany will make advances in flying bomb and rocket missiles but too little too late for a war in which resources cannot be matched. The allies meanwhile direct resources to that age old target, the population and the foes’ resource’s, crippling Axis efforts to respond. And yet two Axis powers Germany and Japan calculate that the Will to Resist will prevail, as more ground is lost, the tighter is the grip to this belief held by those who have the final authority over their people.
Somewhere within the proliferation of the ideas that the Logic War calls upon, is that lessons are always being learnt and histories recalled. The Allies bear in mind Germany was not occupied or fought over at the end of WWI, and its later regimes made capital of this, Germany was not beaten, just tricked. The current coalition of Allies will not give this regime that wriggle room. Total War until the capacity to fight back is destroyed and surrender is the only option. On the other side of the World the Japanese regime holding to a warped version of a martial code demands and indoctrinates its armies and civilian populations into a fight to the death. And by now the Allies have the capacity to deliver just that.
Thus, there is the unavoidable fact that under the calculations of The Logic of War, if the foe will not surrender and you have the ability to prevail, you will prevail by ensuring the foe cannot continue to defy you. You will not turn your back on a foe which will not bow down in surrender. This is one Logic of War, for at its depths War reasons that death and destruction are the final arbiters.

The Last Military Acts
By the spring of 1945 Germany had surrendered, beaten down by what we refer to as conventional means, and at a high price in both blood and treasure. Across the oceans WWII continued. The USA being the principal allied proponent. In the light of the casualty rate on Okinawa, of 49,000, the next stage being the landing on the main islands of Japan suggested another high casualty surge, particularly as the military government holding sway showed no sign of unconditional surrender.
We now move into an area which in terms of that long history of warfare is not new, and was mentioned earlier. How to force an enemy surrender. The USA had by other motivation now come into possession of a fearfully efficient weapon. The Atomic bomb. This allowed the possibility of one aircraft with one bomb to level an entire city. There was some debate on how to deploy this. Drop it as a demonstration on some isolated place? Suppose the regime did not give way? Half the arsenal would have been used, and only one shot left? Since there had been no testing of the weapons suppose they didn’t work as expected? The regime would be encouraged to continue resistance and the allied casualty rates continue to climb. Meanwhile as the war ran down the alliance naturally was fracturing, The USSR was taking up larger portion of Europe than expected. Had this war best  be finished quickly and as is the case in many a war, face up to the next foe – your previous ally? And above all, a conventional invasion of Japan suggested casualties into of possible 500,000 allied and at least 1,000,000 Japanese.
Finish the war as quickly and conveniently as possible – that was the decision taken. The die was cast. Hiroshima and Nagasaki would take their place in the history books of the 1930s to 1945 wars. Along with Nanking, Warsaw, Leningrad, Stalingrad, London, Tokyo, Hamburg, Berlin; to name but a few. Only in the case of those two cities the results came swiftly, dramatically, and with a new force that scared everyone with its potential. Two cities obliterated, swiftly but leaving an aftermath that unlike the others whose long drawn out suffering were by conventional means, this heralded a new era. Same result though. Same as it ever was,

Four photos named in alphabetical order but not placed so Hamburg (firebombed) Hiroshima (atom bomb), Stalingrad (sustained military action) Tokyo  (firebombed). When I saved these images to my laptop and blog I did not identify them by name, only by the title War, followed by a number to satisfy the computer record. To be honest I am not sure which is which, I think the fourth might be Stalingrad – I could be wrong, it might be the third one.
War- the great equaliser. It kills and destroys because that is what it is there for.
In the aftermath there would be much debate over the use of the atom bombs, military, ethically, politically, socially, eighty years on the debates still continue with intensity. Hamburg and Tokyo do not get the same attention as examples of the horror of war. There’s only one location that seems to generate the same kind (but not volume by any means) of debate that revolves around Hiroshima and Nagasaki and that is the German City of Dresden February 1945
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden

But this was by conventional means and has passed into the annals of the many other acts of WWII.

Nothing frightens or horrifies us so much as Hiroshima and Nagasaki’s bombings. Maybe because of that swiftness and efficiency. Maybe because  it showed no one was safe anymore, War could not just happen ‘somewhere else’. Maybe because we can see exactly where the Logic of War can lead.
Not that the lesson has been truly learnt, ask the millions who were and are in the wrong place and the time since 1945.

The subject of the last post. War Continues,

The War Posts – Part I .An Introduction to War

The War Posts Part II – The Logic of War

The War Posts – Part I .An Introduction to War

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Foreword: The dates of the 6th and 8th of August hold particularly vivid images in the historical narrative. Most readers will be aware of their relevance. The days Nuclear Weaponry was added to the catalogue of weaponry. Thus, arguably these events became the starkest, most fearful indication to a number of people as to the horrors of War. Those who lived in times and places in which they did not personally experience the events and consequences of War. And to everyone how very efficient and finalistic War was now becoming.

Overview
As long as there has been Humanity there has been conflict, as it is with other species. Although as Humanity developed and started its path to civilisation War became more than just one group throwing things at another group. As did everything else War developed too, the logic being weapons had to improve to keep up with everything else; you could hardly conquer in walled city with a host of men armed with sharp pointed stick charging at it and valiantly poking away. Missiles, sieges, mining, poisoning of water courses, throwing in of dead diseased bodies and of course laying waste the land around depriving the foes of resources. Pitched battles could be quite rare at times. There was also the arts of marching and countermarching like chess, and maybe the foe would see no advantage to combat, give up and go home or seek terms. The latter practice carried on into the early 18th century; then with industrialisation war became more focused about destroying armies.

Throughout all this one thing was a constant. That being the suffering of the civilians and the ruination of their livelihoods. The idea of an army marching in good disciplined order with stony faces set of the horizon and their tryst with Fate might make good image on film. Only in the old style propaganda films or political slanted works will you see soldiers treating enemy civilians in sanitised bad ways, you will have to read about the true pillage, multiple gang rapes, random killing, casual cruelty and destruction. You would have to bypass the recent wars quasi-colonial style wars of the latter part of the 20th and thus far in the 21st Century to face the fact that the liberating armies of the Allies moving west through France and into Germany in WWII were not comprised entirely of firm but fair, tough fighting decent lads.

Armies are at best hard, brutal machines trained to expect danger; at worse they are ill-disciplined armed gangs with a smidge of training. And there are the majority, the in-between. Ill-clothed, ill-ed, ill-paid only there because there was no other option.
Civilians are the fodder, either swept up to be part of the violence or to be treated with no more concern than their houses. Either a resource to be used, or one to be destroyed thus depriving the enemy and sapping the general will, another resource.

Reasoning
I can understand that having digested this, the reader would conclude ‘I can see where he is going with this. He is trying to dilute the effects on the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by a sweeping generalisation, that they were nothing special’
It would be a reasonable assumption.
From the perspective of repulsion and the sudden, swift, frightening devastation. A fearful power unleashed, a vision as to how War could now be.
Yes they were special. None of us were now safe. Anywhere. Anyhow. We were all subject to the Dread Logic of War.

War?
Suffering. Terrible, Raw, Suffering. Dealt out with a Logic more terrible than the weapons themselves.

The next part covers The Logic of War

When the Weight Falls On You (Pre and Post Election USA)

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Lost

Following my previous post

A Spectre to be Exorcised (Communal Violence)- A Repeated from 2022

My good and dear Friend Jill nudged me into this based on the extract It may be too late to do anything about what might happen in the USA on and after the 5th of November 2024, and the subsequent ramifications across the world- for you are one of three largest and most globally influential nation states. Jill asked me to look into my ideas as to what that might entail.

Foreword
It has almost become a convention in the lesser books of Military History and certainly useful for the hero in many an action thriller to use the phrase ‘No Plan Survives Contact With The Enemy’. Whereas it may be getting stale in those contexts the meaning behind it remains a bleak warning as to Uncertainty.
The sentiments behind that phrase can be carried forward into a complete overhaul of the words into ‘No Action’s Full Consequences Can Be Predicted’. This can be carried into all manner of life choices- a rich theme for films and books as in the 1998 film ‘Sliding Doors’ , though when this moves into the area World Politics, the myriads of players and the variable circumstances the possibilities are numerous and more than a few ominous.
Sometimes these start with seemingly small local events – The Assassination of Archduke Ferdinand on 28th June 1914 was initially seen in diplomatic circles as a local event, a Hapsburg problem by the 28th July 1914 but a lighted match had been dropped in a tinder dry forest; World War One had started. Sometimes the event can be of the Last Straw type. The Invasion by Germany into Poland on the 1st September 1939 being an example. Others times to march to complete catastrophe is not inevitable such as The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. While others lurk in the shadows of earlier histories: The Sykes-Picot agreement of 1916 between France and Britain was a plan to divide up the Ottoman Empire after World War One and avoid ‘unpleasantness’ between the two – it is a major factor in all Middle East conflicts post 1945.

The following is based on that premise, but I must stress there are no solid predictions here, that would be folly and conceit; herein are conjectures which may happen yet in turn have their own ramifications distant in the murk of International Politics and Internal Dynamics. The reason my writing it is to demonstrate that there is nothing ‘business as usual’ about this American Presidential Election of 2024, for whether a reader likes it or not what happens in the USA, a vast nation with large resources and a myriad of political and diplomatic links will have ramifications in the world as a whole. When large nations move, the rest of the world feels it. Yes, I know you Dear Reader did not ask for this. Circumstances, though.

21st Century and the USA
Currently the USA exists in a world beset by major and inescapable factors. The Russo- Ukrainian War; the replacement of Communist Revolutionary movements with the return of Aggressive forms of Islam as political-military factors; the revitalised China using both commerce and military forces as a means to ensure its continuation as a major power; the unavoidable fact that the Climate is altering due to Human activity. All set against a backdrop of Human unfocused dissatisfaction. In this, the USA to the outside once a seeming monolith able to navigate internal upheavals and yet remain dominant.

To proceed we must start from a base of a prediction that the USA has indeed become a place of communal violence. The mass shootings by disturbed individuals have been replaced by targeted violence through gun, bomb, IED and riots masked as demonstrations. Politicians, commentators, celebrities, campaigners of all stripes are amongst the casualties. This naturally has the following effects:


An extra pressure of resources of internal security forces and an uncertainty on the political loyalty of individuals.
An accelerated greater polarisation of politics at all levels.
A general diminution of confidence in the USA as a partner and in those competitors encouragement to take greater advantage of the situation.

It is in the latter of the three for the purpose of this post we need to focus.

Directly and open hostile groups or nations would be drawn to interfere in this. As examples Russia and its allies are already supporting the Right even a modest increase in support through finance or internet activity would be seen to pay dividends. Islamic groups or possibly Iran would do likewise by playing on the fears of native American Muslims, subject to hostility, an ideal time to plague ‘Great Satan’, though this would likely have another knock on effect into that Gulf State governments and Israel would enter the scene in a very complicated game. And of course where there is chaos and suffering Criminal Elements would seek to profit, the opportunities would be myriad, particularly as they could operate under the guise of a political affiliation.
In addition to the opportunism of direct intervention would be the temptation of other nations to take advantage of American distraction, weakening of abilities and lack of focus.
The survival of Ukraine in its current form would be the first. Should Russia prevail and bring the country to heel, the Baltic states, Finland and Scandinavian nations would be among the first, to take action along with smaller border nations such as Georgia and Moldavia. The rest of Europe would then face possibilities of uniting without the USA, or fracturing in pro and anti-Russian lines. Uncertainty not seen since the early days of the 1950s would return. The UK would likely experience an increase in drawing closer to Europe again, although the anti-American pro-Moscow forces would make a fuss.
Whereas China would prefer a certain amount of stability as it moves along a commercial path to world domination, a USA distracted would increase its desire to bring South East Asia and a large regions of the Pacific under its domination. Taiwan and Philippines being current targets of low key aggression, and Pacific island states soft power.
The USA in terms of material resources has little in the African Continent in the North, The Sahel and the Sub-Saharan nations. As France appears to be on twin paths of rejection and ejection a gradual redrawing is taking place. Russia’s return under the guise of Wagner private army. China’s persistence now with its Belt and Road Initiative. Islamic groupings based on local dissatisfactions. You could be forgiven for wondering if despite a great deal of effort by African nations that nothing changed since the 19th Century ‘Scramble for Africa’ then between Britain and France.
That most unhappy region The Middle East often a victim of US intervention, sometimes well-meaning brokerage would find it would be business as usual, with a US Right encouraging Israel to continue in its wars. However matters are far more complex than Israel vs Hamas / Hezbollah, behind this run struggles between Saudi Arabia and allied nations and Iran recently played out in Yemen. The permutations and possibilities here could fill a series of weekly posts that might make up double figures into the twenties and would then only scratch the surface.

And those are only a few examples. To elaborate on the theme of lack of US influence. Many situations are already running with scant attention by the players to what the USA thinks. There lies India and Pakistan’s continuous conflicts direct or by proxy. In Myanmar the internal struggles against the Military are practically supported by a Crowd Funding system, and far beneath the attention of the nearly the entire Western Activist / Protest movements never mind US policy. There are also myriad of struggles by minority communities through the world. Meanwhile aside from the forays by the main media, yes I am talking about the BBC here, who outside of the UN cares about Sudan? Look into any of those and you’ll get a general idea of what goes on outside of US main policy and how that could be extended if the USA continues to turn inwards on its polarising internal conflicts.

USA- Sorry Folks But It Is An Important Nation
It is a commonalty to find items around the net either blaming the USA for all the world’s ill, or from Americans in angst over how terrible their nation has been. If we take the unarguable fact that no nation or peoples in the long track of history ever have a clean record, then the USA takes its place. However whatever you care to throw at the USA, there will be parallels and far worse in the Past and in The Present. As far as International Politics and History are concerned no one gets a free pass.

This said, the USA being a very big nation, which in the aftermath of WWII was the one stable giant which inherited either by intent or more likely by default a world defining role. This makes that Nation also by default in the eyes of the world The Main Villain, irrespective of what others are up to. Britain, France and Spain to name a few went through it. China and Russia seem to have some undefinable quality never to completely decline and keep coming back, though for some reasons there are always folk willing to make excuses for them; without living within their borders that is. Nonetheless the USA has until recently maintained a solid role of ‘Being There’, a constant unified democracy (bear in mind that the latter word is a moveable and variable term). Take that away and the world becomes a very different place. Add on to that an unsettled and conflicted USA and other nations will see opportunities to ‘buy up bits on the cheap’ either in terms of land, businesses or members of the ruling classes. China and India could tell you a tale or too there. Nations no matter how big do decline.

Of course there is one final issue to consider, some large nations have not gone quietly, they have thrashed out trying to maintain their influence. A bedevilled and internally frustrated USA could well react very quickly and heavily if China did try and take Taiwan. One US government having a very bad day, might decide that Russia really has been getting thing too much its own way; the latter might come as a result of a purge of folk seen having had a history of being too friendly to Russia. When a nation becomes unstable, you cannot tell, which way anyone in government might go. Export the problem, either by design or default. The very big issue here being that very large arsenal of nuclear weapons. By some miracle the decline of the USSR did not result in new small nations playing with the weaponry. Luckily in the USA governors do not have access to nuclear codes. That said instability and a nuclear arsenal are a worrying combination.

Upon the Shoulders This Weighs

Therefore, by another default and most of you did not ask for this in any shape or form, but The World will be watching for the result of the Presidential Election with more than just a passing and deeply invested interest. There will be some holding of breaths, some sleepless nights, some pacing of floors, all depending on the time zone. We know from the last election there are folk some infused with toxic egos or a complete break with Reality who have lost any sense of maturity and responsibility and will over-react no matter what the result. The days of shrugging the shoulders and saying ‘Well it won’t be my fault when things go wrong’ or ‘That’s it. The country is done for! Where’s the remote? I’m gonna watch……..’ they are long gone.

It is too late to influence the result. That is now to be seen. What waits on the horizon is how to deal with the result, how to manage it and repair within the USA a return to stability and rationality. There is the challenge. For you, as an individual. The world waits.

Unfair isn’t it? You didn’t sign up for this. You have my sympathies. For we all bear some responsibility even in microscopic form for the ills of the World. It just so happens folk in the USA have been burdened with a larger piece than most.

About this guy. Vance, Trump’s Running Mate. A View From Across The Pond

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Vance

Of course there has been and is going to be a lot written about anyone who is chosen as a running mate in a US Presidential Election. The only ones that rule doesn’t apply to are incumbent VPs who unless they do or say something singular just get a few lines here and there and the odd photo.

Now Mr. J D Vance. For starters ‘J D’? I mean, that’s fine for a writer of novels ‘Another wonderful addition to the pantheon of work of J D Vance’  Yep, that sounds good. And he did it, didn’t he? ‘Hillbilly Elergy’.  Or front man in an indy band ‘Once more J D Vance’s combination of lyrics and meoldic voice take us to places we can only dream about, I’d buy the album, straight off. But in a politican? I mean what are wrong the names James, David ? Surely those are sound solid all american names? ..JAMES, DAVID...VANCE. Some folk might vote for the ticket on that score alone ‘Truth be known, ah never cared much for the name Don-nald Trrump. Ah mean when y’all get down to it sounds too northern slick. Him a Noo Yorker an’ all. But he’ll be gone soon being in his seventies…An’ then we’ll get a fellah with a real name….James David Vance…Yup. Can’t go wrong with James-David-Vance,’.
Truth be known the name struck a chord in the memory, some sinister and then it came to me this morning….J J Hunsecker the monsterously creepy columinst as played by Burt Lancaster in The Sweet Smell of Success. What an unfortunate association…..No, must be my febrile imagination…Socialism does that to you; apparently.
Anyway, we’re stuck with ‘J.D’ I guess. Maybe it’s all to do with that book. Somehow though for a politician, a class who are supposed to be all about openess and honesty (stop sniggering you lot in the back of there), publically calling yourself ‘J D’ – well jus’ don’t seem right y’all . Sounds like….well…enter-tain-ment.

And there’s that index finger and thumb gesture with the other fingers held delicately forwards
Vance 2

Trump does that all the time, now he’s doing it. I know with the fingers held upwards it means ‘OK’ or ‘Cool’ .But that way? So prissy. Reminds me of a lesser Jane Austen character explaining to a salesman just what sort of toothpick he’s looking for. No, give me a clenched hand firm of purpose. I mean you don’t, see Putin being prissy do you?

Anyway those are the lesser, but physiologically telling niggles out of the way. (What do you mean I am nit picking? The republicans do it all the time? I recall Obama couldn’t wear a flag pin right, according to them anyway). Now let’s get to the important one relevant to the United (sorta) Kingdom anyway. Mr J D Vance’s recent observation about the UK. 

The following is part open letter to J D but dear reader please feel free to take any part you like and use it in any way you care….

No kidding; the guy reckons Britain under Labour might be the first Islamic nation with nuclear weapons…..read this if you don’t believe me

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cn07e2ep20no

Now it is something of a short-sighted and breath-takingly ignorant article of faith amongst british activists all of stripes that all americans are either devious, neurotic or plain stupid. Yet speaking as one brit who has defended the American in general for decades klutzs fellows like Mr J D Vance don’t make the task of defence against the last accusation easy, bearing in mind this guy might be a sneeze or a hamburger away from being President.

Hey J D. I say old chap, a quiet word or two 

OK FIRST POINT J D. Pakistan- islamic country…wait for it….Has nuclear weapons!  Kind of Counts ????? Now I know possession of a politcal or social or militray atlas may be way  down your list of must haves. BUT since you were in the US Marines, and made much of the lessons you were taught. AND were a military journalist I would have thought you might have got the idea of which nations are nuclear powers into your nogging. You having political ambitions of the highest order an’ all.  ‘Pakistan kind of counts’……Jeeeezzz Loooooeeezzzz!!

Now Second point J D. A few stats, as per last census.

Brits who consider themselves Christian (going to church optional) = 46%

Brits who consider themselves aethists and agonostics                 = 39%

Brits who consider themslves Muslim                                              =    6.5%

Now while you are figuring out how 6.5% are going to take over 85+ (others)% with 18 muslim Member of Parliment in the Labour party total of  411 Members of Parliment. Let us look at a background.

  1. The UK muslim electorate has expressed concern if not distrust at Labour (government) for Keir Stammer’s support for Israel’s right to be…. well Israel. Which is uncomfortable for Labour, but since Labour has a majority of  174 and the nation on the whole is focusing on internal issues the Muslim influence on government overseas policy is going to be minimal. 
  2. 4,000,000 folk voted for the extreme Right-Wing party Reform. Convincing those voters to drift back even to the Conservative Party in the hard world of Realpolitik will be a task uppermost in some minds. Now go and work that out for yourself yo-yo.
  3. Immigration is a ‘topic’ in the UK, but the simple idea that there are waves of folk of Muslim faith flooding in and thus taking over the UK. Well you are talking in a million a year J D, over 10 years, maybe . I’ll keep it simple for you….An’t happening

There are other factors which are subtle and work in quiet corners of places folk would rather not talk about in public and probably would go over the head of someone who thinks that Alex Jones is a source of information, so I won’t press you on that. However you are designated Interfering Fool for making an unwise statement which will be only of value to far right-wing thugs like the English Defence League and add another layer of problems for the Muslim population of the UK which suffers enough from intolerance and stupidity

Now we all sound off from time to time and make statements which are either meant to be sarcastic or satirical or just end up being plain wacko because we are either angry or have been ingesting too much of something, but that statement???…. The last time I heard something along those lines was from a very excited teenage London muslim lad who said there would be the Crescent flag flying over ‘Number 10’ (that’s where the PM lives J D), next year…..that was about fifteen years ago.

I suppose (big sigh), being on the side of US politics you are still fixed with that idea that Labour is an authoritarian, police-state, censorship, state imposition sort of party….like the 2025 agenda thing you guys have got going over there….Did I get that right? Or, like you, did I just make a stunningly inaccurate generalisation about politics in a nation I do not, nor have ever resided in.

Look J D  buddy, if you want to hold that VP cum hopeful President post, you better do your homework on the nations you will be dealing with, otherwise, well somewhere down the road Europe is going to close its doors on the USA and quite frankly you are not big enough to stand alone, not up against Russia, China, Iran, North Korea, and a few other states who will climb on board. Well not unless you want to use those nuclear weapons? Now there’s an ironic thought, a religious fundementalist faith-based neo theocracy with access to nuclear weapons. Britain?…… 

Nope- Guess  again.

Closing note: Honestly dear reader, Realpolitik Roger can comprehend and accept with hostility, hardened professionals doing what they do on the International scene, whether I like them or not, that’s part of History, sadly. What I cannot abide is half-baked Amatuers with  perceptions so blinkered they make walking near a cliff edge in a fog with just a key ring torch a sensible move. Now they are the real danger.

J D Vance- Vice President….Could make some folk wanna wish Trump a long life- yep if you ask me…. that bad! (Proves there’s always someone worse y’know)

Take care all of you. We live in the Age of Yo-Yos