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Alexander Clarkson Profile picture
Alexander Clarkson
Lecturer for German and European Studies at King's College London. Opinions my own. RT not always endorsement. Also to be found at @APHClarkson@mastodon.social
@littlegravitas@c.im 🇺🇦 🇪🇺 💙 #FBPE Profile picture Dame Chris🌟🇺🇦😷 #RejoinEU #FBPE #GTTO🔶️ Profile picture প্রদীপ্ত মৈত্র (Pradipto Moitra) Profile picture Birger Leth Profile picture Dario Quintavalle 🇺🇦 Profile picture 10 added to My Authors
Mar 11 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
The geopolitical Putin apologism and social darwinian banter from tech libertarians like Musk and Sacks should have acted as a big red flag when it comes to basic understanding among the Silicon Valley tech and venture capital scene of how political and economic systems work As with Brexiters in the UK, MAGA in the US or Pegida in Germany, a lot of news media that consider themselves pillars of serious analysis need to now ask how much they helped stoke hype around a libertarian tech cult of venture capital whose delusions they will now deplore
Mar 10 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
The "Global South" is a concept devoid of any analytically usable meaning and in fostering oversimplification and Western-centric perspectives actively distorts geopolitical debate There are a lot of different perspectives that need to be engaged with in the EU and US, each with their own specific regional and local perspectives. One thing they have in common is that they're becoming increasingly economically and militarily powerful
Mar 9 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
The German government did what was once declared impossible and ended Germany's dependence on Russian gas in 8 months.

Of course transport is a different challenge, but if France, Germany, Spain and Italy are capable of building high speed rail surely the UK is too? Maybe the Treasury and the rest of the UK government will only realise that an inability to do the basics of transport infrastructure is a bit of a problem for Britain after the East Europeans have finished their high speed rail systems
Mar 9 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Hudapar? Really?? You can guess what Hudapar will ask for in return for its support if Erdogan wins Image
Feb 21 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
This tendency among several analysts and commentators to blame the EU and US for Putin's rise and democracy's failure in Russia is profoundly disingenuous in how it deflects all agency away from Russia's elite and wider population when it comes to the fate of their own country Russia is a typical late stage European empire wandering into disastrous wars with colonies or former colonies that start to destabilise the imperial centre

Russia's elite is particularly delusional in starting a war with a former colony that built alliances with stronger powers
Feb 9 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Anyone who claims that state intervention in the economy to assist in the modernisation of industry and infrastructure only picks losers seems to have missed the first five tutorials of their course on the history of industrialisation After a certain point a kind of dogmatic small state interpretation of economic history stuck somewhere around 1996 conventional wisdom looks increasingly unserious.
Jan 19 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
I don't think Scholz or his team have entirely internalised how much easier it has become for Warsaw to get partners in the EU on side now that the issues generating the rule of law conflict with Brussels have been quietly disposed of by PiS Where things get really tricky for Germany's ability to shape European integration are scenarios where Paris, Madrid and Rome start to get fed up with Berlin too, and now find themselves able to work with Warsaw as PiS's rule of law mess is put to rest
Jan 18 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
We now go for a live response from the Economist's correspondent in Prague RFERL correspondent clarifies Czech electoral law
Jan 18 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
The assumption among those backing the REUL bill that removing all EU law from UK legal systems will be irreversible even if there is a decisive political and cultural shift in UK society towards alignment with the EU is one of the more absurd things I've seen in the past decade Remarkable how far the conviction among many Brexiter MPs and pundits that"real" Brits are inherently pro-Brexit means they default back to assuming any signals to the contrary are essentially fake. It means they don't grasp how much they need to work to keep the public onside
Jan 17 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
Extraordinary how so much hype over China's rise until the late 2010s waved away the possibility that Chinese society was rapidly facing the same demographic dynamics that have affected the trajectory European and Japanese societies before China catches up with EU GDP per capita The EU has a lot of structural challenges of its own to tackle. But too often analysis of Europe defaults to banal cultural pessimism that overplays EU weaknesses and underestimates structural dysfunctions other societies face that hasn't moved on from Spengler's ramblings
Jan 16 • 5 tweets • 1 min read
The irony of this is that if there are no adequate information campaigns, quite a few people turned away will be in demographics that vote for the Tory Party, especially those that were mobilised to help Tory victories in "Red Wall" communities Some pensioners might go back home to get valid ID. Others will shrug and not go back to the polling station. Other people have limited time windows to vote because they need to go to work. Especially if they work as tradesmen, manufacturing or retail
Jan 15 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
Or internal cohesion of the Russian state is pushed to the limit and it is forced to withdraw to avoid further internal collapse just as France as a nuclear armed state had to withdraw from territory in Algeria that was legally part of Metropolitan France.

That's the precedent. The war in Algeria was deemed existential by a succession of French governments until the events of May 1958 forced a realisation that pursuing the war might collapse the stability of the state and lead to something close to civil conflict
Jan 15 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
On the NHS and so much else, Keir Starmer continues to party as if it is still 1999 Discussing NHS reform may put some useful ideas and some think tank brainfarts into play, but after a while it just looks like Starmer wants to avoid facing the need for a huge surge of funding needed to prevent public services from collapsing and all that means for tax rises
Jan 3 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
As someone who wandered through Chaostage and a few other afternoons of youthful excitement in the 1990s I find the sudden discovery in German debate that young males can find various cultural pretexts to be violent dickheads towards police and bystanders rather bemusing Watching Böllergate play out among Germany's political class it comes across as if everyone has forgotten anything that ever happened before the arrival of social media
Jan 3 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
One of the more interesting aspects of debates in the UK on Brexit is how far senior figures in the Tory Party as well as Labour struggle to grasp how much credibility the UK has lost among counterparts in the EU when it comes to policy on trade, manufacturing, services, borders You'll get accounts of meetings where people on the UK side whether from Labour or among Tories will say "well at least they were sympathetic" and then people on the EU side say "JFC these people are not serious"
Dec 11, 2022 • 5 tweets • 2 min read
If you look at European debate from the 1950s onwards you'll find a lot of evidence of Europeans focusing on hardnosed geopolitical power as a driver for integration. The people that got most hooked on romantic interpretations of European integration were Europhiles in US and UK There is a deep streak of Gaullism embedded in the DNA of European integration that many in the US and UK feel deeply uncomfortable with and tend to gloss over. Interesting thing is how CEE, Ukraine, Italy want to harness and redirect "Gaullist" impulses rather than reject them
Dec 10, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
A lot of dead canary in the mine news emerging from the UK transport network at the moment. Suspect it will be much more systemic than rows over HS2:
"Bucks train line suspended 'until further notice' after firm collapses" buckinghamshirelive.com/news/buckingha… You can have entire rail lines grind to a halt because the subcontractor of a subcontractor for a private rail franchisee running a service ends up bankrupt, short of workers or facing strikes.
Dec 8, 2022 • 6 tweets • 2 min read
It's almost as if a large swathe of Westminster and Whitehall seem incapable of reading basic demographic data on Europe that has been signalling risks of severe labour shortages for the UK for over a decade Never could get certain audiences to take Polish or Romanian birthrate and inward migration powerpoint slides seriously
Dec 7, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
If you're wondering why Orban is getting increasingly desperate in attempts to blackmail the rest of the EU into releasing funds for the Hungarian government Even if Orban were to fall tomorrow, keeping the Hungarian economy from completely cratering because of his legacy of mismanagement, corruption and incompetence will be a huge mess to deal with for the EU Commission.
Dec 4, 2022 • 6 tweets • 1 min read
An ahistorical talking point you got from many Russia-based or Russia analysts in the 2010s was the idea that East European EU states gloried in giving Russia the middle finger which ignored how much those states including Poland tried build good relations with Russia until 2007 In all current debates about NATO or EU expansion I find it remarkable how the efforts many governments in Bucharest, Warsaw, Helsinki or Prague went to between 1990 and 2008 to build good strategic and trade relations with Moscow have been completely memory holed in discussion
Dec 3, 2022 • 4 tweets • 1 min read
The last time Russia fought a war over due respect it ended up losing even more of it at Tsushima Moscow's definition of due respect was Ukraine not aligning with the EU system, not developing a strong army and subordinating itself to every Moscow-led geopolitical structure. Demands for due respect enforced by military threats are part of the usual components of imperialism