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Jan 24 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
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A brief thread of essays and blogs that can provide a thinking person an overview of the forces at play in Ukraine.

The first is Peter Hitchens (@ClarkeMicah) on NATO expansion, in a post on his blog in 2017.

1/4
hitchensblog.mailonsunday.co.uk/2017/02/lemmin…
The second is an extraordinarily prescient essay from 1997, written by Rodric Braithwaite, Britain's last ambassador to the Soviet Union. 2/4

prospectmagazine.co.uk/magazine/bring…
The third is a superb piece from Rob Lee (@RALee85) on the current military buildup on the Ukrainian borders and what might come next. I also recommend following his Twitter feed, which is cataloguing the build-up in real time.

3/4
fpri.org/article/2022/0…
The final piece offers a way out: application of the Minsk II agreement. This might be unpalatable to Ukrainians West of the Dnieper, and Ukrainian nationalists elsewhere, but it seems better than Russia imposing something worse for Ukraine by war.

4/4
thenation.com/article/world/…

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More from @admcollingwood

Collingwood 🇬🇧 Profile picture
Jan 24
🧵A while ago, I wrote a thread, 'the Hypernormalisation of Britain'. Surprisingly, it has been received well, with almost 450 retweets so far.

This is a THREAD about the Agents of #Hypernormalisation in Britain. It will try to explain how we reached our current state. 1/n
Our story centres on three events in 1955-56. Two are barely known and the third is misunderstood, but they created modern Britain. The first event was the publication of The Future of Socialism by Anthony Crosland, the Oxford academic and Labour MP. No book has had more... 2/n
...influence on postwar British society. In it, Crosland argued that the Labour Party should stop focusing solely on economic policy as a means to achieve its socialist ends: there was more than one way to skin a cat. Instead of attempting to control the commanding...3/n Image
Read 39 tweets
Collingwood 🇬🇧 Profile picture
Jan 24
🧵 WHY YOU ARE TOO BLASÉ ABOUT WAR 🧵

For the last 20 years, the Western Alliance has focused its warfighting capacity on Counter Insurgency Warfare. Driven by reckless engagements in the Middle East, the Hindu Kush and North Africa, our thinking, equipment procurement...1/n
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Collingwood 🇬🇧 Profile picture
Jan 19
Saturday Night Space: the unfolding Russo-Ukraine situation.

🌐Grand strategy
🇷🇺🇺🇦What forces are at play?
🇺🇸Can US negotiators strike a deal?
🇪🇺What of Macron's EU offer?
🇬🇧What are Britain's interests?

++Set a Reminder
++Retweet
++Join
++Have a say
twitter.com/i/spaces/1yoJM…
The below thread is the sort of thing we might talk about, for instance.

People might also like to take ten minutes to listen to the below podcast, which offers an insight into Russia's vulnerability to sanctions, and thus Western leverage.

Read 6 tweets
Collingwood 🇬🇧 Profile picture
Jan 19
Oh my. Macron offers Russia talks about new security deal with EU. The pieces on the chessboard are moving so quickly.

reuters.com/world/europe/m…
Some random thoughts about this.

🇪🇺 This is the sort of 'strategic autonomy' Macron (and many in Brussels) want: deciding European issues to the exclusion of the US. It's exactly what they *should* be doing if that's what they want.
🇷🇺 If not handled carefully, it might...2/n
...allow Russia to triangulate and weaken everybody's negotiating position.
🇪🇺 It must have infuriated the EU that the US was deciding on the affairs of the EU's near abroad but excluding Brussels, Paris and Berlin.
🇪🇺 This is likely to help France cleave closer to Germany...3/n
Read 6 tweets
Collingwood 🇬🇧 Profile picture
Jan 19
Is sending arms to Ukraine a move of deep geostrategic wisdom by the Foreign Office? A THREAD mostly aimed at @JezzaCorncob and @DominicLawson.

If the EU could ever get its act together and form a unified military, it would pose an existential risk to Britain. Such an... 1/n
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...relations with the EU on EU terms. It is therefore crucial (from a realpolitik perspective) that the UK does not allow this to happen. The traditional means for this has been to sow discord and act as a swing power to balance European powers against eachother...3/n
Read 15 tweets
Collingwood 🇬🇧 Profile picture
Jan 7
A THREAD about the #Hypernormalisation of Britain.

In his 2016 documentary film, HyperNormalisation, Adam Curtis explains that by the 1980s, Soviet leaders had realised that their vision for a socialist society had failed. They could not predict accurately and could not...1/n
...micromanage everything. However, they were so involved the system they had built that they could not think of any alternatives. So instead, they pretended that things were getting better as they traveled along the road to a socialist utopia. Aleksi Yurchak...2/n
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Read 25 tweets

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