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21 December 2017




Dear Colonel,

Having seen an interesting interview with the historian, Alfred McCoy (google or youtube can find him for the interested), it is telling how few "friends" we could bring along in this case (and others). To translate "friends" as "nations pursuing their own interests", suggests a continuing shift in the countries that define their interests as from poorly to grossly misaligned with US interests.

IMO, the reality is that the brutish (as in degrading diplomacy to proclamations) Foreign Policy of the Trump administration is bringing into the clear the divergence in interests as the US economy continues to lose toChina (after WW2, when the US was the world economy, many nations interests were much more "naturally" or "pragmatically" aligned).

Equally brutish is our ongoing efforts to infect the world with our financialized (derivatized) economic model. When it blows up the economy, the US solution - print trillions of $$ - is unavailable to any other nation. It also has accelerated the tendency to US wealth inequality (and elsewhere). Historically, inequality drives societal instability, often violent. It is notable that China remains one of the least unequal societies despite having grown in fifty years from a neofeudal-peasant society to the largest in the world by some measures.


The way out of that fix is for Egypt and Jordan to embrace market economy and reduce corruption and bureaucracy to a less harmful level.

Follow the path of China and the US will have to add quite a few billions to bribing the state leaders. In 1978 China started to experiment of capitalism, and today their economy has the size to become the center of a global network of alliances to counter the USA's alliance network.

In 1978 China's GDP per capita was $307 (in fixed 2000-prices (World Bank)), and Egypt's GDP per capita was $1,073.
In 2016 China's reached $6,894 per capita and Egypt's was $2,724.

China reached the $1,000 level per capita in 1993. So if Egypt had followed that path 1 billion dollars would be petty cash.
Would the US tax payers accept annual "gifts" of 40-50 billion dollars?

All that the Arab leaders need to do is focus on economic development. Yes, here and now they can do nothing to Israel but in 60-70 years that a whole different question.


to John F and walrus:

No kidding. Why I brought it up!

Add that to the EU invoking their article 7 (or whatever it is) against the Polish Justice Party regarding independence of the judiciary and you have a periphery v interior dynamic as per back in the day. So, far more is going on than misreading of history. Those of you can read the Financial Times today will see the Brits are damned spooked about some other things.



Russia is, in an indirect way, practically a part of the Perso-Turko Civilization after all, y'know. The Mongol "yoke" did tie them to Central Asia much more than the "European" Russia might want to admit.


Ultra Brexiteer's.

They hold that Britain can exit the EU, while keeping all the economic and influence benifit's of EU Membership, get all the money back the UK has paid into the EU, and the EU will pay all the costs of the UK leaving the EU.



Canada abstained.

We were going to support the US, but that was before the threats.

English Outsider

Brunswick - these issues you mention are little issues:- "They hold that Britain can exit the EU, while keeping all the economic and influence benefit's of EU Membership, get all the money back the UK has paid into the EU, and the EU will pay all the costs of the UK leaving the EU."

Dealing with all that is merely a matter of horsetrading. Quite ugly horsetrading sometimes, and we'll be lucky to get out of it with our shirts still on our backs given the relative size of the two units, but essentially peripheral.

The central issue is as ever sovereignty.

A problem is that there's no consensus in the Brexit movement, if it can truly be called that, as to what should be done with that sovereignty if it's recovered. Sarrazin-type cheap labour globalists rub shoulders with anti-cheap labour deplorables, cronies rub shoulders with those who identify cronyism as one of our more serious problems, extreme Free Traders with Protectionists. It's a mess. Doesn't matter. From that mess could emerge something more viable than we have at present and it could only emerge if we are free of the European straitjacket.

That term, "The European straitjacket", is not used tendentiously. The EU has serious problems to solve if it's not to disintegrate. It's a trading empire set up for overtly ideological and political ends but it's still au fond a trading empire; and many of those living on the periphery of that empire are disadvantaged, are dissatisfied, and will get more so. Whatever solution they might find to that would not be a solution that will address our own severe problems. It would make a solution to our own problems more difficult. That is why the two units need to be separated.

Babak Makkinejad

Yes, that is what I have tried to explain to both Iranians and Russians, that they have a lot more in common than with the Western Diocletean Civilization - with little success.

blue peacock

The single biggest problem is the common currency and monetary policy for disparate regions with differing productivity. Of course they also lack a common fiscal regime, which is what it is because Germany is not too keen on funding France, Spain, Italy & Portugal.

EU may have to revert to a common trading system. But that would imply less cheese for the eurocrats in Brussels.




He's Brexiteer.

English Outsider

He's a good man, as is his father, the impressive and dauntingly well-informed Dr Richard North. At a guess I'd say, however, that they're towards the Sarrazin-type cheap labour globalist end of the spectrum.

I say at a guess because I don't think I have seen either discuss such matters. Both, from what I have seen, are good people of the sort we certainly can't do without when it comes to telling us how to get there, but not to help us with the debate about what "there" is.

I expect you know Dr North's site, but here's the link if you don't. It's the reverse of Christmassy, as you might expect from a site dealing with such a cheerless subject as EU negotiations, so I'll make up for that by wishing you a Merry Christmas and a Happy new Year.



Guatemala has also taken the plunge to curry favor with the White House.


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