Tag Archives: Russia

China in the World: Chapter 3 Sino-US relations – a stable instability.

There is a paradox at the heart of Sino-US relations: as Professor Yan Xuetong has written, they are inherently unstable;[1] yet the structure in which their relations is cast is very stable indeed. They are stable in the sense that … Continue reading

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Germany on top, Europe in trouble. Discuss. Part 2. European Disintegration?

Douglas Webber’s is a very different book, but it is also very complimentary to Bulmer’s and Paterson’s Germany and the European Union. Both hold a question mark in the title, and both place Germany centre stage, but Webber’s subject is … Continue reading

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British ideas of Europe: PART 3. The European Union in Crisis.

In his book, COLLAPSE : Europe after the European Union,(Biteback, 2018) Ian Kearns issues a warning to Euro-optimists to cease dreaming of a brighter future. Get real, learn about your continent’s history, and smell the coffee. The fate of the continent … Continue reading

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America and the World: Part II. American century or Asian century?

How fares the American Century  is a common question running through our three books. Joseph Nye, in Is The American Century Over?  locates its starting date from February 1941, when Henry Luce, editor and owner of Life magazine, wrote an … Continue reading

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America and the world: Part I.

The key words in this cluster of books, focusing on the US, are emerging , retreat, closing and anger. Pankaj Mishra, in Age of Anger: A History of the Present, says that the paranoid hatreds of the present world have … Continue reading

Posted in Asia, China, Europe, France and Germany, India, Italy, Oil, the Mid East and Gulf, Russia, The United States, United Kingdom, World politics, business and economics | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 5 Comments

Did Chamberlain do the right thing?A debate.

It is interesting to observe how people in the UK judge the two world wars in retrospect. I have placed the two debates on my blog because both of them have been asking the question whether either war could have … Continue reading

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Realpolitik and the European Union. Final Chapter: Part 2. The true challenge facing the Merkel-Macron tandem.

The UK’s certain idea of Europe. A USE maybe attainable. But the hurdles along the path towards it are innumerable, and as likely as not unknown. Not the least of these is that a USE would be at the very … Continue reading

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Realpolitik and the European Union. Chapter 11. Europe in the World. Part II. Russia, energy, demography.

The theme of Chapters 10 and 11 is the tension between a shrinking Europe living in an expanding world of nation states, while all the while seeking to dis-establish European nation states which experience global developments differentially. Chapter 10 discusses … Continue reading

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Realpolitik and the European Union. Chapter 8. Germany learns to say Nein.

Germany learns to say Nein. The salient feature of the events of the first decade of the new millenium was Germany’s assertion of  its position as the pivotal power in Europe. The novelty lies not in the fact of German … Continue reading

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A Letter to Cameron on Brexit: why Plan B=Plan A.

The Times of February 17, 2016 holds a lead article on Brexit, whose title has Cameron quoted as saying  ‘Don’t push us into Brexit’. The PM was said to be very stressed that European leaders would water down the results of … Continue reading

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