Article to read in Foreign Policy

[Herainestold]

https://foreignpolicy.com/2022/01/19/uk ... illusions/

[Stranger Mouse]

Can I suggest that this post is either put in a more general thread of that the thread title is amended to give some clue what the area of discussion is. Otherwise we may end up with dozens of threads marked “article in ****” with no way to distinguish them.

I’ve read the article and it’s bollocks in my opinion as is much of the other stuff the guy has written but I really can’t be bothered to go through a point by point refutation.

[IvanV]

This is another article that is on the basis that it is reasonable for large powers to have spheres of influence, regardless of the opinion of countries or regions so imposed upon. So Russia talks to the USA and China, who agree, yes, Ukraine is yours to tell what to do. Of course Russia would not invade Crimea, Donbas or Ukraine if such an arrangement meant it already controlled it via a puppet tyrant like it does Belarus, Abkhazia, South Ossetia, Transnistria, etc.

Does this view of the world advocate abandoning Taiwan to its fate, and giving up the South China Sea to China? Abandoning the entire FSU to Putin?

Why is this different from Germany, Britain, France and Italy turning up at Munich in 1938 to give Germany a free hand in Czechoslovakia?

Yes, the author is right that this is not the liberal view of the world. It's how tyrants view the world.

There is a similar situation around China. China has successfully annexed of most its claimed mainland "sphere of influence" in East Turkestan (Xinjiang), Tibet, and the bits of northern India it grabbed when they weren't looking, early in the days of India's statehood, when India hadn't worked out what bastards they were. Doesn't stop it. It claims most of the South China Sea on the grounds of its "sphere of influence", and has been building military bases there to defend its claim. It has repeatedly tried to expand across the borders of India and Nepal to extend further into areas it considers its sphere of influence.

I really don't think acknowledging spheres of influence is a route to a peaceful world. It's really what we hoped we had got rid of when the Cold War ended.

[bjn]

What Ivan said. I couldn’t have put it better.

[Herainestold]

At least you read it and offered your criticisms rather than just dismissing it.

[plodder]

I haven't read it and probably won't because life is too short to simply drop everything for no good reason. Not sure if that's constructive criticism or not. It feels like there's potentially a lesson there for someone.

[Stranger Mouse]

At least you read it and offered your criticisms rather than just dismissing it.

I read it and, as I am not immortal and have limited time on this planet, didn’t want to spend valuable minutes writing up a detailed critique when you couldn’t be bothered to write anything about why you thought it was worthy of note in the first place. You couldn’t even be bothered to say what the article was about in the thread title or the opening post.

The article could be summarised as what a Putin mouthpiece said the other day “Great powers do as great powers do” and at least that statement was clearer and quicker to read.

ETA Thanks to Ivan who did kindly spend his time laying out perfectly why the article was balls.we don’t deserve him.

[Gfamily]

+1

ETA Thanks to Ivan who did kindly spend his time laying out perfectly why the article was balls.we don’t deserve him.

There's others we don't deserve too, but from the other direction

[noggins]

Its half a coherent article.

The other half should be about how the Right have, long story story short, sucked Putin’s cock.

[jimbob]

Can I suggest that this post is either put in a more general thread of that the thread title is amended to give some clue what the area of discussion is. Otherwise we may end up with dozens of threads marked “article in ****” with no way to distinguish them.

I’ve read the article and it’s bollocks in my opinion as is much of the other stuff the guy has written but I really can’t be bothered to go through a point by point refutation.

It was a seagull post.

[Stranger Mouse]

Can I suggest that this post is either put in a more general thread of that the thread title is amended to give some clue what the area of discussion is. Otherwise we may end up with dozens of threads marked “article in ****” with no way to distinguish them.

I’ve read the article and it’s bollocks in my opinion as is much of the other stuff the guy has written but I really can’t be bothered to go through a point by point refutation.

It was a seagull post.

Errr?

[noggins]

A Fly-by sh.tting

[Stranger Mouse]

A Fly-by sh.tting

New slang to Chekhov my list

[jimbob]

A Fly-by sh.tting

Yup. Often done by proponents of pigeon-chess

[sTeamTraen]

I'd heard of mushroom management ("They keep me in the dark and feed me b.llsh.t") in the 1970s , but in the 2000s I learned about "seagull management", or more accurately "seagull managers", as it's more of a per-person thing. The seagull manager comes into your room shrieking, flaps around terrifying everybody, and leaves an unpleasant surprise on your desk to clear up.

[Bird on a Fire]

I like seagulls.

[plodder]

I like seagulls.

There's no such thing as a seagull and you're supposed to be an ecologist.

[basementer]

Something something gullible

[Bird on a Fire]

I like seagulls.

There's no such thing as a seagull and you're supposed to be an ecologist.

I mean, there's such a thing as a gull for sure, and in common parlance they are often called seagulls, probably because most species are at least loosely associated with the sea.

Much maligned animals, seagulls.

[plodder]

I like seagulls.

There's no such thing as a seagull and you're supposed to be an ecologist.

I mean, there's such a thing as a gull for sure, and in common parlance they are often called seagulls, probably because most species are at least loosely associated with the sea.

Much maligned animals, seagulls.

For good reason. The herring gulls down here are massive, bold lunatics. My local pub has a beware of the gull sign in the beer garden and people laugh and then get startled and upset when three of the bastards land on the table and start pecking at the chips on the table. The greater black-backed gulls are genuinely scary when they do this, you see grown men waving trays about trying to protect their wailing children.

Lol.

[Bird on a Fire]

There's no such thing as a seagull and you're supposed to be an ecologist.

I mean, there's such a thing as a gull for sure, and in common parlance they are often called seagulls, probably because most species are at least loosely associated with the sea.

Much maligned animals, seagulls.

For good reason. The herring gulls down here are massive, bold lunatics. My local pub has a beware of the gull sign in the beer garden and people laugh and then get startled and upset when three of the bastards land on the table and start pecking at the chips on the table. The greater black-backed gulls are genuinely scary when they do this, you see grown men waving trays about trying to protect their wailing children.

Lol.

The only big scar I've got from birds directly is from a Great Black-backed. I started it though tbf.

Not sure I'd want to share a pint with one.

[insignificant]

I mean, there's such a thing as a gull for sure, and in common parlance they are often called seagulls, probably because most species are at least loosely associated with the sea.

Much maligned animals, seagulls.

For good reason. The herring gulls down here are massive, bold lunatics. My local pub has a beware of the gull sign in the beer garden and people laugh and then get startled and upset when three of the bastards land on the table and start pecking at the chips on the table. The greater black-backed gulls are genuinely scary when they do this, you see grown men waving trays about trying to protect their wailing children.

Lol.

The only big scar I've got from birds directly is from a Great Black-backed. I started it though tbf.

Not sure I'd want to share a pint with one.

I've stayed somewhere, a tidal island with a guest house and a warden, where the gulls ignore you when you have food because they haven't made the association between people and food, anyone littering or caught offering food to the birds will be asked to leave and unlikely to be allowed back

The great black-backs are still scary, but they're hassling other birds instead of you

Interesting thing, but not a surprise to you obvs, is that several locations where gulls will associate people with food are less than a couple of miles away, so they don't think that people will always provide food once they've learned that some do