Strategic Culture

Washington’s combination of military confrontation and economic sanctions in its campaign against Russia has no moral basis, Brian Cloughley writes.

Washington broke Afghanistan, but there’s no way it is prepared to repair it by helping its refugees, Brian Cloughley writes.

Many of us imagined that with the ignominious exit of National Security Adviser John Bolton there might be reason to relax, but Pompeo has always been a sabre-rattler, and recently turned his menacingly mercenary gaze on the Arctic.

It seems that Western governments are given to condemning referendums when they don’t suit their purpose and ignoring UN Resolutions to hold them when that action would be embarrassingly inconvenient for the country involved.

Trump insulted two generations of Europeans by playing golf rather than commemorating the outbreak of the World War II. Nobody knows where he stands concerning US foreign policy. What is clear, however, is that nobody can trust him

The Washington of Trump Augustus continues to do its utmost to berate and intimidate Russia and China with the aim of portraying them as being intent on the world domination that is so obviously being exercised by the US which has “established more than 400 military bases on every continent except Antarctica.”

If Johnson and Trump are so supportive of democracy, why do they not protest about mass arrests and detentions and cancellation of democratic elections in Indian-administered Kashmir?

From menacing a Russian airliner in international airspace, to manipulating a news item about a Russian aircraft accident, the western establishment is demonstrating its taste for confrontation rather than conciliation. But it is time to think more positively.

India and Pakistan continue to claim the whole of Kashmir, but neither can seriously believe that any mediation tribunal would judge this to be appropriate. Compromise is needed – one that India and Pakistan are incapable of reaching on their own.

Britain is on its way out of the European Union, so has no say in EU policy, but in any case it wouldn’t agree about criticism of Israel because the governing Conservative Party fosters an organisation called ‘Conservative Friends of Israel’ (CFI) whose members constitute some eighty per cent of Conservative Members of Parliament.