leicsmac

This could well end up being rather a farce.

Entertaining match!

... well, yes. But the lack of any kind of other silverware is a little Spursy.

You know more about this than I do; are this French team really bucking the trend for being mercurial then?

Well, yeah, the Welsh are juggling the ball on the touchline like the finest in the circus tent but Scotland are still being clinical. If England can beat the French then I'm thinking the Scots can, though they're playing away from home.

Scotland could give the French pause for thought next week on this form.

Just want to say that I hugely appreciate the standard of discourse there's been on here in the last few pages. Excellent stuff.

Hopefully that doesn't become an issue. But then if it does, it will have to be hoped that the smart diplomatic minds come up with a third option and the choice isn't starkly between letting it roll with all the consequences that entails, or choosing to stop them and their tech progress with all the consequences that entails. Because that will be an incredibly ugly choice.

Well, both Britain and France could theoretically do something about either of those situations - it would just mean that everyone loses. But away from that, if the world really is immutably that way and there's nothing to be done we may as well fold it all up and run the series finale of Terran Shore right now because at some point in the near future that's going to happen anyway. If some folks want to believe there's nothing but darkness ahead and use it as a justification for failing to act now, then that's between them and their own conscience. But speaking personally, I'm not about to tell people trying to make the future a better place that things are fruitless. Do what we can until we cannot.

I've said before about there must be some line in The Art of War concerning winning while having to do not much at all; that's exactly what the Chinese are doing now.

They certainly do seem eager to trade. When it comes to energy infrastructure though, the methods don't bother me as much as the solution, for the rather simple reason that the penalty for not applying the solution is in all likelihood worse than any method to apply it could ever be.

Agreed. People can say what they like about the Chinese governmental method (and a lot of it may well be true), but on this matter they're setting the trend that the world really needs to follow. They're also exporting the tech to other places, as well. However, that also does carry the risk of a form of "soft imperialism" based on those places being in debt to the Chinese, so that needs to be considered, too.

Anyone who relies on fossil fuels for energy generation as the basis of their economy is not playing the long game well tbh. In that regard, civilisation changes, or civilisation collapses. And the clock is ticking.

And then you have a significant amount of the "global South" that don't have to use oil and gas for energy generation at all - thanks in large part to the Chinese. Which is not a bad thing because if the countries you speak of and elsewhere continue to use fossil fuels for that purpose, the only thing growing for them and for everyone else will be incidents of flooding, drought and other extreme weather, and the count of death and suffering. I wonder how useful their growing economy will be for them then. Our species really does have an issue with the long game, and it's deeply frustrating to see that and have a damn good idea of where it leads.

And even if it isn't Ukraine, it could - and likely will - be other places.

Agreed, but I guess we'll find out.

I find it difficult to see how such a crisis will be averted in the future at all to be honest, whether this or something else or a combination of factors causes it.

They tend to be except when Trump is directly involved, which is odd. In any case, it's way too early to tell how this will affect Reform going into election season in four years time, so much can happen between now and then. NB. WRT the farmers, I wonder if the help Reform would give them would include mitigation and prevention measures for the increasing incidents of extreme weather that I hear about causing massive problems from those same farmers on Countryfile every week.

The French stayed out of NATO for a lot of the Cold War and some of that was through The Moscow Criterion - you don't have to have a lot of nuclear weapons if you know the ones you have will get through and cause enough damage to make the bigger guy not use his. I would say that France and the UK do have that guarantee. Like you, I am interested in seeing what happens here beyond mere talk, though.

2nd consecutive new model Starship that became scrap metal not long after launch. Hopefully this isn't setting a trend.

Sadly, I think @bovril has it about right above. I would also add that British authoritarianism just takes a different form; genuflecting to "class", not the state. Think of the British class hierarchical history.

I wouldn't go as far as generalising that much regarding inherent qualities, but you make a good case.

The only similarity in governance between Putins Russia and the USSR is the semblance of absolute power concentrated near the top. Pretty much everything else about their guiding philosophy is different. Think Tsar Nicholas, not Stalin.

One of the core tenets of fascism is a Nietzschesque form of nihilism - if you can't be the best and dominate all others, then it's all for nothing and you are nothing too.

There should be no negotiation with someone so keen to use blackmail and so blatantly view people's lives and health as something expendable to be bought and sold. If he and his sycophants really want "America First", then they can have it. But in every possible matter, it will then be "America Only". Though they're the biggest global player, the isolation will hurt them more than the rest of the world. Edit: of course, if that happens the Russians won't turn him away and who knows what the Chinese might do, but hey.