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Arnaud Bertrand

@RnaudBertrand

Sep 10, 2023 • 29 tweets • 14 min read • Read on X

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I get asked this all the time, so I am reposting my famous thread of all the top strategic thinkers - from Kissinger to Chomsky - who warned for years that war was coming if we pursued NATO expansion, yet had their advice ignored (which begs the question: why?).

The first one is George Kennan, arguably America's greatest ever foreign policy strategist, the architect of the U.S. cold war strategy. As soon as 1998 he warned that NATO expansion was a "tragic mistake" that ought to ultimately provoke a "bad reaction from Russia".

Then there's Kissinger, in 2014 ⬇️ He warned that "to Russia, Ukraine can never be just a foreign country" and that it therefore needs a policy that is aimed at "reconciliation". He was also adamant that "Ukraine should not join NATO".

This is John Mearsheimer - probably the leading geopolitical scholar in the US today - in 2015: "The West is leading Ukraine down the primrose path and the end result is that Ukraine is going to get wrecked [...] What we're doing is in fact encouraging that outcome."

This is Jack F. Matlock Jr., US Ambassador to the Soviet Union from 1987-1991, warning in 1997 that NATO expansion was "the most profound strategic blunder, [encouraging] a chain of events that could produce the most serious security threat [...] since the Soviet Union collapsed"

This is Clinton's defense secretary William Perry explaining in his memoir that to him NATO enlargement is the cause of "the rupture in relations with Russia" and that in 1996 he was so opposed to it that "in the strength of my conviction, I considered resigning".

This is Noam Chomsky in 2015, saying that "the idea that Ukraine might join a Western military alliance would be quite unacceptable to any Russian leader" and that Ukraine's desire to join NATO "is not protecting Ukraine, it is threatening Ukraine with major war."

Stephen Cohen, a famed scholar of Russian studies, warned in 2014 that "if we move NATO forces toward Russia's borders [...] it's obviously gonna militarize the situation [and] Russia will not back off, this is existential"

Whole video worth watching:

This is famous Russian-American journalist Vladimir Pozner, in 2018, who says that NATO expansion in Ukraine is unacceptable to the Russian, that there has to be a compromise where "Ukraine, guaranteed, will not become a member of NATO."

This is famous economist Jeffrey Sachs writing right before war broke out a column in the FT warning that "NATO enlargement is utterly misguided and risky. True friends of Ukraine, and of global peace, should be calling for a US and NATO compromise with Russia."

This is CIA director Bill Burns in 2008: "Ukrainian entry into NATO is the brightest of all redlines for [Russia]" and "I have yet to find anyone who views Ukraine in NATO as anything other than a direct challenge to Russian interests"

This is Malcolm Fraser, 22nd prime minister of Australia, warning in 2014 that "the move east [by NATO is] provocative, unwise and a very clear signal to Russia". He adds that this leads to a "difficult and extraordinarily dangerous problem"
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

This is Paul Keating, 24th prime minister of Australia, writing in 1997 that expanding NATO is "an error which may rank in the end with the strategic miscalculations which prevented Germany from taking its full place in the international system [in early 20th]"

This is former US defense secretary Bob Gates in his 2015 memoirs: "Moving so quickly [to expand NATO] was a mistake. [...] Trying to bring Georgia and Ukraine into NATO was truly overreaching [and] an especially monumental provocation"

This is Sir Roderic Lyne, former British ambassador to Russia, warning one year before the war that " [pushing] Ukraine into NATO [...] is stupid on every level."

He adds "if you want to start a war with Russia, that's the best way of doing it."

This is Pat Buchanan - assistant and special consultant to U.S. presidents Nixon, Ford, and Reagan - writing in his 1999 book A Republic, Not an Empire: "By moving NATO onto Russia's front porch, we have scheduled a twenty-first-century confrontation."

This 2008 Wikileaks cable by Bill Burns - now CIA Director - entitled "NYET MEANS NYET: RUSSIA'S NATO ENLARGEMENT REDLINES" warns that "Russia [viewed] continued eastward expansion of NATO, particularly to Ukraine... as a potential military threat".
wikileaks.org/plusd/cables/0…

This is British journalist @Itwitius, former Sky News foreign affairs editor, in his 2015 book Prisoners of Geography: for Russia "a pro-Western Ukraine with ambitions to join [EU or NATO] could not stand" and "could spark a war".

In 1997, 50 prominent foreign policy experts (former senators, military officers, diplomats, etc.) sent an open letter to Clinton outlining their opposition to NATO expansion.

It's a "policy error of historic proportions" they write.
armscontrol.org/act/1997-06/ar…

This is George Beebe who used to be the CIA's top Russia analyst who in December 2021 linked Russia's actions in Ukraine directly to NATO expansion, explaining that Russia "feels threatened" and "inaction on [the Kremlin’s] part is risky"

This is Ted Galen Carpenter, Cato Institute's senior fellow for defense and foreign policy studies, who wrote in a 1994 book that NATO expansion “would constitute a needless provocation of Russia.”

Today he adds "we are now paying the price for the US’s arrogance".

This is Frank Blackaby, former director of SIPRI, writing in 1996 that "any Russian Government will react, militarily as well as politically to [NATO’s expansion]" and that it makes "Europe drift [...] towards Cold War II".

This is legendary journalist @johnpilger who wrote this article in 2014.

He describes Ukraine as having become a "CIA theme park", a situation that he foresaw would lead to "a Nato-run guerrilla war"
theguardian.com/commentisfree/…

This is Shiping Tang, one of China's foremost International Relations scholars, writing in 2009 that the "EU must put a stop to [the] U.S./NATO way of approaching European affairs", especially with regards to Ukraine, otherwise it'll "permanently divid[e] Europe".

This is Ukrainian presidential advisor Oleksiy Arestovych in 2015.

He says that if Ukraine continues down the path of joining NATO "it will prompt Russia to launch a large scale military operation [...] before we join NATO", "with a probability of 99.9%", likely "in 2021-2022".

Even legendary Soviet dissident Solzhenitsyn saw NATO expansion as "an effort to encircle Russia and destroy its sovereignty".

He said Russia should "in no way dare betray the multi-million Russian population in Ukraine".(nytimes.com/2006/05/03/new… and noblit.ru/node/1041 )

And of course just 3 days ago we now have NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg pretty much admitting that war started because of NATO expansion since he revealed Putin proposed not to invade Ukraine if NATO promised no more enlargement, which "of course we didn't sign"... He also said text blank that Russia "went to war to prevent NATO, more NATO, close to his borders".

There you go. This might be the war in history that's been the most foreseen by the most experts - from so many countries - for the longest time.

Incredibly, they were almost universally advocating a clear and feasible way to prevent the war: a commitment to no more NATO enlargement and a neutral Ukraine, like Finland (or Austria) was.

Yet we didn't do that. It really, really makes you wonder...

This also probably belongs here, the then Secretary General of NATO showing an understanding in 1990 that a move eastward was threatening to Russia, and saying that therefore NATO "was ready" not to do it...

https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1800888434749587761?t=xCf6TcqZvrFcO7yIZcuW1A&s=19

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Arnaud Bertrand

@RnaudBertrand

Dec 12

This strange square 👇 is undoubtedly the most extraordinary work of literature in human history. Yet, unfortunately, barely anyone in the West has ever heard of it.

There was this woman poet in 4th century China called Su Hui (蘇蕙), a child genius who had reportedly mastered Chinese characters by age 3.

At 21 years old, heartbroken by her husband who left her for another woman, she decided to encode her feelings in a structure so intricate, so beautiful, so intellectually staggering that it still baffles scholars to this day.

Came to be known as the Xuanji Tu (璇璣圖) - the "Star Gauge" or "Map of the Armillary Sphere" - it's a 29 by 29 grid of 841 characters that can produce over 4,000 different poems.

Read it forward. Read it backward. Read it horizontally, vertically, diagonally. Read it spiraling outward from the center. Read it in circles around the outer edge. Each path through the grid produces a different poem - all of them coherent, all of them beautiful, all of them rhyming, all of them expressing variations on the same themes of longing, betrayal, regret, and undying love.

The outer ring of 112 characters forms a single circular poem - believed to be both the first and longest of its kind ever written. The interior grid produces 2,848 different four-line poems of seven characters each. In addition, there are hundreds of other smaller and longer poems, depending on the reading method.

At the center a single character she left implied but unwritten: 心 (xin) - "heart." Later copyists would add it explicitly, but in Su Hui's original the meaning was even more beautiful: 4,000 poems, all orbiting the space where her heart used to be.

Take for instance the outer red grid of the Star Gauge. Starting from the top right corner and reading down, you get this seven-character quatrain:
仁智懷德聖虞唐，
貞志篤終誓穹蒼，
欽所感想妄淫荒，
心憂增慕懷慘傷。

In pinyin, it is:
Rén zhì huái dé shèng yú táng,
zhēnzhì dǔ zhōng shì qióng cāng,
qīn suǒ gǎnxiǎng wàng yín huāng,
xīn yōu zēng mù huái cǎn shāng.

Notice how it rhymes? táng / cāng / huāng / shāng

The rough translation in English is: "The benevolent and wise cherish virtue, like the sage-kings Yao and Shun, With steadfast will I swear to the heavens above, What I revere and feel - how could it be wanton or dissolute? My heart's sorrow grows, longing brings only grief."

Now read it from the bottom to the top and you get this entirely different seven-character quatrain:
傷慘懷慕增憂心，
荒淫妄想感所欽，
蒼穹誓終篤志貞，
唐虞聖德懷智仁。

The pinyin:
Shāng cǎn huái mù zēng yōu xīn,
huāngyín wàngxiǎng gǎn suǒ qīn,
cāngqióng shì zhōng dǔzhì zhēn,
táng yúshèngdé huái zhì rén.

It rhymes too: xīn and qīn, zhēn and rén

And the meaning is just as beautiful and coherent: "Grief and sorrow, longing fills my worried heart, Wanton and dissolute fantasies - is that what you revere? I swear to the heavens my constancy is true, May we embody the sage-kings' virtue, wisdom, and benevolence."

That's just 2 poems out of the over 4,000 you can construct from the Xuanji Tu!

At the very center of the grid, the 8 red characters wrapped around the central heart, she "signed" her poem with a hidden message:

詩圖璇玑，始平蘇氏。 "The poem-picture of the Armillary Sphere, by Su of Shiping."

Or reversed:
蘇氏詩圖，璇玑始平。 "Su's poem-picture - the Armillary Sphere begins in peace."

Many scholars, and even emperors, throughout Chinese history have been completely obsessed by Su Hui's puzzle.

For instance, in the Ming dynasty, a scholar named Kang Wanmin (康萬民) devoted his entire life to the poems (kangshiw.com/contents/461/2…), ending up documenting twelve different reading methods - forward, backward, diagonal, radiating, corner-to-corner, spiraling - and extracting 4,206 poems. His book on the subject ("Reading Methods for the Xuanji Tu Poems", 璇璣圖詩讀法) runs to hundreds of pages.

Empress Wu Zetian herself, the legendary woman emperor of the Tang dynasty, wrote a preface to the Xuanji Tu around 692 CE (baike.baidu.com/item/%E7%BB%87…).

Incredibly, there's even far more complexity to the Xuanji Tu than just the poems:

- The name 璇玑 (Xuanji) - Armillary Sphere - is astronomical in meaning and the way the poems can be read mirrors the way celestial bodies orbit around a fixed center. It's a model of the heavens.

- Her original work, with the characters woven on silk brocade, was in five colors (red, black, blue/green, purple, and yellow) which correspond to the Five Elements (五行) - the foundational Chinese philosophical system that explains how the universe operates. So it's also a model of the entire cosmic order according to ancient Chinese philosophy.

- It's also of course deeply mathematical with this 29 x 29 perfect square grid, with sub-squares, lines and rectangles, and a structure which allows for symmetrical reading patterns in all directions

- Last but not least, the content of the poems themselves contain multiple registers. On top of expressing her personal grief and longing for her husband, it's also filled with accusations against the concubine (Zhao Yangtai) he left her for, reflections on politics (with many references to sage-kings) and philosophical reflections.

So the Star Gauge is simultaneously:
- A love letter (expressing personal longing)
- A legal brief (arguing her case against her rival)
- A cosmological model (structured like the heavens)
- A Five Element diagram (encoding the fundamental structure of the world according to ancient Chinese philosophy)
- A mathematical construction with perfect symmetry and precision

And yet, for all this complexity, we should not forget this was all ultimately in service of the simplest human message imaginable: a 21-year-old woman asking the love of her life "come back to me".

Her husband did, eventually. According to what empress Wu Zetian herself wrote in her preface to the Xuanji Tu, when he received Su's brocade he was so "moved by its supreme beauty" that he sent away his concubine and returned to his wife. As the story goes, they lived together until old age.

The heart at the center was filled after all.

https://x.com/i/status/1999343911702266048

🤣

https://x.com/i/status/1999343911702266048

https://x.com/neoncognitron/status/1999343155293094210?s=20

True, it's first and foremost an incredible love story!

https://x.com/neoncognitron/status/1999343155293094210?s=20

Read 4 tweets

Arnaud Bertrand

@RnaudBertrand

Dec 5

This is big. The final U.S. National Security Strategy was just published and the refocus on the Western Hemisphere (i.e. the Americas) is confirmed.

The document clearly establishes this as the U.S.'s number 1 priority, saying that the U.S. will now "assert and enforce a 'Trump Corollary' to the Monroe Doctrine."

In terms of military presence, they write that this means "a readjustment of our global military presence to address urgent threats in our Hemisphere, and away from theaters whose relative import to American national security has declined in recent decades or years."

On China, a couple of points.

The most striking aspect to me is that China is NOT anymore defined as "the" primary threat, "most consequential challenge," "pacing threat," or similar formulations used in previous such documents.

It's clearly downgraded as a priority. Based on the document's structure and emphasis, the top U.S. priorities could be characterized as:
1) Homeland security and borders (migration, cartels, etc.)
2) Western Hemisphere (Monroe Doctrine restoration)
3) Economic security (reindustrialization, supply chains)
4) China and Indo-Pacific

To be clear they don't define China as an ally or a partner in any shape or form but primarily as 1) an economic competitor, 2) a source of supply chain vulnerabilities (but also a trading partner) and 3) a player who regional dominance should be "ideally" denied because it "has major implications for the U.S. economy."

Interestingly, I believe for the first time ever, they mention the possibility of being overmatched militarily by China:
- They write that "deterring a conflict over Taiwan, ideally by preserving military overmatch, is a priority": "ideally" clearly means that it's ideal, but not necessarily a given. The fact that they call deterring conflict over Taiwan merely "a priority" also suggests, by definition, that it's no more a top strategic priority, or a vital interest.
- On Taiwan they also clearly imply that if the U.S.'s "First Island Chain allies" don't "step up and spend - and more importantly do - much more for collective defense", then there might be "a balance of forces so unfavorable to us as to make defending that island impossible."

They still maintain that "the United States does not support any unilateral change to the status quo in the Taiwan Strait" but, clearly, there's a widening gap between what the US says it opposes and what it's actually willing to do about it.

Interestingly as well, contrary to previous such document, there is zero ideological dimension in the document when it comes to China. No "democracy vs. autocracy" framing, no "rules-based international order" to defend, no values-based crusade. China is treated as a practical issue to be managed, not an ideological adversary to be defeated.

In fact the document explicitly mentions, I think for the first time ever as well, that US policy is now:
- "not grounded in traditional, political ideology"
- that they "seek good relations and peaceful commercial relations with the nations of the world without imposing on them democratic or other social change that differs widely from their traditions and histories"
- and that they seek "good relations with nations whose governing systems differ from ours."

Which is quite a stunning departure from the rhetoric of the past few decades. We all knew this but it's now amply clear that the era of missionary liberal internationalism in US foreign policy is dead and buried.

The competition with China is primarily described in economic terms, explicitly so: they write the competition is about "winning the economic future" and that economics are "the ultimate stakes."

Notably, they admit that the tariffs approach "that began in 2017" when it comes to China essentially failed because "China adapted" and has "strengthened its hold on supply chains."

The new strategy, as described in the document, is to build an economic coalition against China that can exert more leverage than the US economy alone - a tacit admission that America just isn't powerful enough on its own anymore.

The contradiction is however obvious: unclear how you build an economic coalition against China while simultaneously waging trade wars against your coalition partners, demanding they shoulder more of their own defense, and treating every allied relationship as a deal to be renegotiated in America's favor.

At some point these "allies" will be asking a very obvious question: why sacrifice our economic interests to prop up an America that can no longer compete on its own - and that offers us less and less in return?

The document can be found here: whitehouse.gov/wp-content/upl…

Good summary for the lazy readers 😊

https://x.com/BobgonzaleBob/status/1996832802113831071?t=qjDFHyjCmIxonlENhIosmA&s=19

This part is also incredible: "We massively f*cked up by trying to be a global empire"

Read 4 tweets

Arnaud Bertrand

@RnaudBertrand

Nov 20

In a normal world, this should be an immense scandal in Europe.

Le Monde has a long article (lemonde.fr/international/…) describing the hellish life of Nicolas Guillou, a French judge at the ICC in The Hague, due to U.S. sanctions punishing him for authorizing arrest warrants against Netanyahu and Gallant for war crimes in Gaza.

Guillou's daily existence has been transformed into a Kafkaesque nightmare. He cannot: open or maintain accounts with Google, Amazon, Apple, or any US company; make hotel reservations (Expedia canceled his booking in France hours after he made it); conduct online commerce, since he can't know if the packaging is American; use any major credit card (Visa, Mastercard, Amex are all American); access normal banking services, even with non-American banks, as banks worldwide close sanctioned accounts; conduct virtually any financial transaction.

He describes it as being "economically banned across most of the planet," including in his own country, France, and where he works, the Netherlands.

That's the real shocking aspect of this: the Americans are:
- punishing a European citizen
- for doing his job in Europe
- applying laws Europe officially supports
- at an institution based in Europe
- that Europe helped create and fund

and Europe is not only doing essentially nothing to protect him, they're actively enforcing America's sanctions against their own citizen - European banks closing his accounts, European companies refusing him service, European institutions standing by while Washington destroys a European judge's life on European soil.

Again, in a normal world, European leaders and citizens should be absolutely outraged about this. But we've so normalized the hollowing out of European sovereignty that the sight of a European citizen being economically executed on European soil for upholding European law is treated, at best, as an unfortunate technical complication in transatlantic relations.

https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1957865502631428327?s=20

I already wrote about this when I visited the ICC this summer 👇

https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1957865502631428327?s=20

https://x.com/bagofhurt/status/1991356616248348807?s=20

Yup, only option is to use apps from the actual free world

https://x.com/bagofhurt/status/1991356616248348807?s=20

Read 5 tweets

Arnaud Bertrand

@RnaudBertrand

Nov 20

We're on the edge of Europe's most humiliating moment in history.

The White House is apparently about to achieve a comprehensive peace deal with Russia which Kirill Dmitriev, the Russian negotiator, say is "a much broader framework [than just a ceasefire agreement], basically saying, 'How do we really bring, finally, lasting security to Europe, not just Ukraine.'"

So in effect it looks like this is an agreement which redraws the entire European security architecture.

The thing, however, is that Europeans are NOT part of the discussions and, when asked about them, the White House replied: “We don't really care about the Europeans.”

This would make it probably the first time EVER in history that Europe's security is decided completely by outside forces, as a proxy with zero say in its own fate (indeed with explicit contempt for its input).

I actually looked into this for my August article "Not at the table: Europe's colonial moment" (arnaudbertrand.substack.com/p/not-at-the-t…). The only comparable parallel I could find is the fall of Constantinople in 1453. But even this was a somewhat “classic” military defeat where the victor simply dictated terms. At the time, there wasn't another external power negotiating with the Ottomans about how to carve up Byzantine territory - it was at least a straightforward conquest.

Don't misunderstand me. I'll be the first to applaud if the Ukraine war comes to an end. It was, as I have argued since day 1 (x.com/RnaudBertrand/…), one of the most predictable and therefore one of the most avoidable wars in history.

BUT, and this is a huge "but", having your continent's security architecture redesigned without you sets a catastrophic precedent: it defines Europe as nothing more than geography to be bargained over by others.

This is the natural consequence of decades of appalling strategic choices by Europeans, starting with the fundamental decision to outsource their security to NATO - effectively to Washington - rather than building genuine strategic autonomy. This shaped how Europe dealt with both Russia and Ukraine: following hawkish US policy, dictated by its own interests to keep Eurasia divided ("divide and conquer"), as opposed to Europe's own interests which clearly lay in continental integration and stability.

Now we see the wages of these choices: a continent whose opinion literally doesn't matter when its security is being negotiated.

Src for the screenshot: politico.com/playbook

Caveat: Tass (Russia's official news agency) says "Russia has no OFFICIAL information from US about some 'agreements'" 👇
x.com/imetatronink/s…

The emphasis on "official" is mine because this means there is *unofficial* information, which is indeed the case here given that the talks between Steve Witkoff (Trump envoy) and Kirill Dmitriev (who runs Russia's sovereign wealth fund) are backchannel negotiations.

My point still stands of course: the White House - backchannel or not - is negotiating with Russia without Europe at the table and they did say they "don't really care about the Europeans." Europe wasn't at the table either during Trump's *official* discussion with Putin in Alaska this summer.

Which means that even if this particular deal falls through or the timeline is premature, the pattern is clear: Europe's security is something the U.S. and Russia discuss between themselves and Europe isn't a participant in these conversations - it's the subject matter.

https://x.com/michaeldweiss/status/1991160611456024612?s=20

This is hilarious:

Witkoff posted as a public tweet which he undoubtedly meant as PM (and that he since deleted) that the story must have been leaked by "K", which could refer to the Russian negotiator Kirill Dmitriev or Keith Kellogg, Trump's special envoy for Ukraine.

https://x.com/michaeldweiss/status/1991160611456024612?s=20

Read 4 tweets

Arnaud Bertrand

@RnaudBertrand

Nov 6

This is a genuinely incredible story: China found in U.S. archives an energy source that could power its entire future for 20,000 years - and they just made it work.

I'm not exaggerating. In the 1960s the U.S. - specifically Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Tennessee - invented a revolutionary type of nuclear reactor that could run on thorium instead of uranium (much more abundant and cheaper), with no meltdown risk, generating 50x less waste, and requiring no water. Then, due to messy politics, they killed the program in 1969 and fired the visionary behind it.

Afterwards the declassified blueprints for the project sat forgotten in archives for decades. That is until Chinese scientists found them and decided in 2011 to run an experimental project in the Gansu desert to see if they could make it work.

A few days ago, after 14 years of work, they finally did.

I spent many days researching this and wrote the full story - how the technology works, the bureaucratic politics that killed it in America, and why this could genuinely be game-changing.

Here's the link to the article: open.substack.com/pub/arnaudbert…

Preempting many similar "China stole IP" type comments

https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1986676660117418474

Small addition regarding the many comments I received on corrosion problems in Molten Salt Reactors

https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1986676660117418474

Read 5 tweets

Arnaud Bertrand

@RnaudBertrand

Nov 3

https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1984767831095779662

300 million tourists a year, free to roam everywhere unimpeded in Xinjiang, and still not a single photo evidence of this so-called "Uyghur genocide" 🤔

On the contrary you do get an overwhelming amount of photo evidence of Uyghurs just living normal lives.

Compare and contrast this with Gaza: zero tourist (or journalist, or anyone) allowed in and you still get overwhelming photo evidence.

Because, guess what, in the age of social when people are actually being mistreated and mass murdered, you can't hide it.

You can't hide it in a place that's completely blockaded, you can hide it even less in a place that's fully open to anyone (many foreigners, like almost all European countries, don't even need a visa nowadays to enter China and Xinjiang).

The BBC - which previously pushed the Xinjiang narrative hard - is trying hard to square this circle by claiming "there's a side of Xinjiang" that these 300 million tourists "don't see."

And what is that "side they don't see" according to the article? That even though the Uyghurs are there and Uyghur culture is everywhere, that's apparently not "the real Uyghur culture" because, as they claim, old towns were rebuilt for tourism and tourists see made-for-tourism ethnic performances.

Except this is literally how tourism development works everywhere in China (and pretty much everywhere in the world, frankly). Heck, this is how development - period - works: no-one wants to see the "real" old town from 1970s China because, guess what, it was completely run down and poor AF.

I partially grew up myself in a street of Paris called "rue Mouffetard" in the extremely touristic 5th arrondissement. The name of the street comes from the old French verb "mouffeter", which means to stink: this street used to be famous for smelling like shit because it was a very poor area of Paris back in the old days. Should it have been left as such so that people get to experience the "real" Paris instead of the heavily gentrified "Emily in Paris" version you get today? Anyone with a brain can see how idiotic that is.

Anyhow that's the new - utterly ridiculous - narrative: "the visible Uyghur culture doesn't count because things got redeveloped and updated."

Well, at least the Western media narrative seems to have been downgraded from crimes against humanity to "we don't like their tourism development model" - progress, I guess...

https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1984767831095779662

Correction for the French purists ☺️

https://x.com/RnaudBertrand/status/1985295364233347319?t=np1UDe5j_Os0whCXn-pDaQ&s=19

👇

https://x.com/GFPhilosophy/status/1985320206001184780?t=p_hgWCinai5HW1mjWSGh5Q&s=19

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