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Alexander Clarkson Profile picture
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14 Sep, 4 tweets, 1 min read
This zero-sum logic only makes sense if you assume the UK had any structural freedom of action to diverge from the EU in the first place
10 months ago now 🤷‍♂️
It was clear the UK had manoeuvred itself into a shit position which gave the EU overwhelming leverage five years ago. Westminster rules do not apply to geopolitical power struggles.
You may not be interested in GDP, but GDP is interested in you

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More from @APHClarkson

Alexander Clarkson Profile picture
14 Sep
AEP is good at anticipating where the conventional wisdom of the Right in the US and UK is heading
Lol. Kevin Kühnert is as great a danger to Western capitalism as a vegan fat free soya latte
Sounds like the post-Brexit Tory Party
Read 9 tweets
Alexander Clarkson Profile picture
13 Sep
A Malian military regime that has entrenched itself through two recent coups may alternately be using the threat or arrival of Wagner as a bargaining chip to generate leverage towards French, EU, US and regional states that want the junta to stick to transition back to democracy
The problem with trying to use Wagner as leverage towards France and the other EU states is that it may just backfire with them saying "fine, use Wagner then" and reduce presence further with the Malian government and Russians faced with policing a vast terrain alone
Worth keeping in mind that for all the hype, Wagner got trounced in its attempt to help Haftar seize Tripolitania, is facing a merc forever war in CAR and ended up pulling out of Mozambique after a fiasco in the field
Read 4 tweets
Alexander Clarkson Profile picture
12 Sep
Where elite praetorianism of SOF culture at its worst that is problematic in US or EU militaries can have a disastrous impact on states in Africa and elsewhere in which US and EU operations are focused on counter-terrorism

Good piece by Chris Ogunmodede
worldpoliticsreview.com/trend-lines/29…
So many challenges around terrorist insurgency and banditry linked with it hinge on law enforcement and public order tasks that need solid local police backed up by well-trained gendarmeries.

Yet an often counter-productive cult of SOF dominates US and European CT efforts.
The cult of SOF is a kind of strategic stimulant that gives CT campaigns and training efforts in places like the Sahel a quick short term high often at the expense of the much more complicated struggle to help build law enforcement capacity that enjoys local legitimacy
Read 6 tweets
Alexander Clarkson Profile picture
11 Sep
So trying to get in and out of London by train today was well...
The fact that no one at Gatwick seemed bothered about checking whether I'd taken that €60 test or not you need for Green List arrivals was a nice touch.
The sheer pointlessness of a travel COVID testing regime where either no one checks when you arrive at a UK airport or UK airports are so understaffed checks immediately cause massive queues and delays
Read 6 tweets
Alexander Clarkson Profile picture
11 Sep
There is a more fundamental issue Connelly doesn't grapple with. It looks like the UK still can't get systems up to run checks on goods from the EU for the foreseeable future.

The UK state may simply be institutionally incapable of running the NIP even if it wanted to.
So focusing on the points of principle with the NIP probably suits the UK government if it distracts from structural dysfunctions that may make it institutionally incapable of running any coherent trade border regime on goods to and from EU or NI at all.
And for this UK government under Boris Johnson to admit structural weaknesses in the UK state and ask the EU for help would be politically fatal. Not just over Northern Ireland's borders but also England's borders with the EU, as we can see every day in the Channel
Read 6 tweets
Alexander Clarkson Profile picture
10 Sep
This brings us back to the absurdity of debate anchored in political assumptions of 2007 declaring the age of intervention over even as US and European militaries adapted forms of intervention in ways that make them a direct presence in far more societies than a decade ago
The lessons learned by US and European militaries since 2011 were that if you keep a special operations presence below a certain threshold or declare a presence a policing matter to be handled by gendarmeries you can keep these operations below the radar of public attention
The key shift was Libya 2011, whose post-conflict dysfunctions arose from supposed lessons learned from Iraq that led to focus on airpower, a light SOF footprint and heavy reliance on local partners (aka militias) and regional powers who "know the culture" (aka Qatar and UAE)
Read 6 tweets

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