Ask Skroe what nukes have to do with the importance of a country in international questions.
You were saying that the UK are as unimportant as Turkey. I disagree, this is not true, the UK are much more important than Turkey. Partly because of nukes. (But there's also GDP, which I mentioned, and ten other things, which I didn't.)
I wrote about this way, way long ago. This isn't about nukes. It's not about anything military specifically. It's about the entire menu of tools that this, or any country, has in order to influence global affairs. Military stuff is one tool (and an increasingly important one in the new era we're in). A well staffed, well funded, professional foreign service/diplomatic corps is another. An expansive and empowered trade office is a third. Foreign aid is a fourth. Countires have different names for these things.
My entire point of even bringing it up is to point out how illogical UK behavior is, beyond the obvious. Brexit would make a kind of sense (still a terrible kind of sense) if the UK pivoted to massive investment in all the things I listed above. You know... doubling the size of the military and foreign office. Quintupling foreign aid. Nailing two big bilateral trade deals by the end of 2019. If it was gonna leave, it has to go big.
Instead the opposite is likely to happen. The budget will get squeezed further, and the UK won't raise taxes. So out goes another 20,000 troops, 10 ships and 30 aircraft. Out goes another 500 diplomats. Out goes twenty consulates, which will be shuttered and some of the staff sent to embassies. These are variations of things the UK has done since 2008.
Like this is mindboggling. National suicide is quite right. Is it really their wish to be 60 million people with a NHS and a giant moat around them? Are they going to be the healthcared hermit nation? I mean, if so fine... that's their right... but the pretense that Brexiters offer that a Brexited UK will be a liberated, empowered UK is entirely ridiculous without levels of investment they're not even close to giving.
That's why staying in the EU has been the only decision that has ever made sense from the angle of foreign relations and UK global power. Besides the fact that being the US's man inside the EU made it invaluable to us, plainly, the UK wasn't and isn't ready to spend to offset what not having the EU entails, and EU is a something (a very good something) that is a lot better than a nothing.
The only word that comes to mind here is "pointless".
Agreed, nukes alone serves no purpose other than most likely preventing an invasion, they serve no negotiation purpose in the west. Something Russia still havent learned.
My point in regards to Turkey, is that Erdogan has the ability to influence the EU in a far more costly economical and politically way than the UK does after a possible hard brexit. Does that mean that england is an english speaking turkey (haha), of course not.
Last edited by Crispin; 2019-05-24 at 12:31 PM.
Sure, I agree that's not about nukes, it's about everything, my point was the same. It was just a side question. Yes, the UK will be more important than Turkey, sure, let's not get crazy here, but that's not a big point.
On the big point and the leave. I was supporting Brexit originally, but I was damn not prepared that the UK were not actually ready to do anything there and were basically playing with fire asking their population whether they should exit the EU or not. I thought they were prepared, and I was thinking that this is good, because yes, there are tons of problems with the EU and I thought the UK on their own could do a better job than the EU did. But alas, like I said, they weren't actually doing this seriously. So even though I think that the EU has huge issues that are very hard to fix and that they are mostly not trying to fix, even though I think that the EU is mostly a dead-end and the UK (or any developed country really) would be better off alone, even with all that, I will say that the UK politicians were nuts to have a vote regarding the leave without being serious about it and without being prepared to do it. They did a terrible thing. So, in that sense, I agree with you, since the UK was just toying with the remain / leave, they should have just stayed in the EU.
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OK, this helped, thanks. I see the point about Erdogan being able to inflict a lot of harm easier.
As a Canadian, I'm loading popcorn into the microwave, ready to watch PM Boris Johnson rampage through the china shop.
So Theresa May, who gambled her parliamentary majority on an early election and failed miserably, I think we'll remember the fox hunting episode for many many years from now, has cried as she left office...well goodbye.
I'm sure WWE would offer more seriousness then these damned fools have. What's happening makes me wonder if an actual circus would.
Oh it's even better then that, the next PM after the next elections is likely to be this guy.
Last edited by CostinR; 2019-05-24 at 01:03 PM.
"Life is one long series of problems to solve. The more you solve, the better a man you become.... Tribulations spawn in life and over and over again we must stand our ground and face them."
LOL. Totally. Let's join all countries together because it's going to be better that way. We are generalizing everything, right? So, this seems to be your logic.
No, me thinking that the UK would be better off outside of the EU does not mean that I think any particular state in the US would be better off outside of the US. The circumstances are different.
The only difference is how long they have been together.
Practically every nation in the EU is better of in it than out of it. Are there stupid things in the EU that needs reform? Ofcourse, there's tonnes. Were somethings Go-ho as hell? Yeah, just look at how bad the Euro rollout was (had it been good, Greece would never have gotten on it).
But in a global world you need to be in a bloc bigger than the fucking tiny little insignificant UK is. More so if you want to dictate terms to said world.
- Lars
Because that's the logic of sanity. No EU nation alone is going to be able to make any kind of diplomatic deal that is of equal value for us as it will be for the US/China/India. In the near future add Brazil, Indonesia, or any nation that's over 100m people. Here I am only talking about the big 3 (UK, France, Germany.). Add to that the other european nations you can go further down the list of countries that will out compete it in a 1 v 1 method.
Europe together though will compete and when it comes together has out played the US when it comes to trade deals with 3rd parties. It's put in clauses that gives them the top deals and if anyone else gets a better deal then the 3rd country has to match it with the EU.
We live too much in a world where country sizes range from multi continent spanning or holding hundreds of millions to over a billion people. To those with tens of thousands to tens of millions. Those in the latter groups have been making blocks because simply put in a global world your voice matters and no one at the negotiating table is going to take those with few people. Little resorces seriously. No EU country has the people or the resources to be taken seriously alone.