Why does the US organise a missile wall for Israel, but not Ukraine?
And not just the US — France, and Arab states were also involved.

🧵 2/ Obama ran his foreign policy policy on the principle: “don’t do stupid stuff”.

Biden’s is “don’t allow stupid stuff to get out of hand”

How do you solve a problem like Robert Fico?

🧵 2/ Fico's SMER party topped the poll in the weekend's elections in Slovakia, giving him the first choice to form a government

Why has Britain been in decline in the last few years. This graph provides a clue. 🧵 2/ Everyone knows Britain has a two-party majoritarian system. The aim is to bring together about 40% of the vote and win more than your opponents in enough constituencies to govern.

Orbán's Hungary has vetoed the latest EU aid to Ukraine €18 billion.

What can be done about it? Thread. 2/ Hungary already has a procedure against it, under Article 7 of the EU treaties, for violating the EU's founding values, including democracy and the rule of law

.@UKSupremeCourt rules the Scottish Parliament doesn’t have the power to hold an advisory referendum on Scottish independence.

I’m preparing a paper for @MartensCentre on Brexit and Scotland that addresses it, here is a thread on its political implications

1/ 2/ The court didn’t buy the argument that only the purely legal effect of the referendum should be considered in applying its judgement. It argued that political effects mattered too.

Setting aside Brexit, the Truss govt has an excellent* policy agenda including increased defence spending, increased immigration, enterprise zones , even hints of planning reform. Why did it all go wrong so fast?🧵

*excellent = things I’ve called for in my @conhome columns, ofc 2/ Labour supporters say it went wrong because it lowered taxes on the rich; others promote bizarre conspiracy theories about hedge fund manager tory donors engineering a run on the pound so they can short it.

Amnesty and Perfidy

A thread on how Amnesty’s Ukraine investigation, carried out against the opposition of its own local branch(!), gets the law of armed conflict wrong. 1/

https://twitter.com/amnesty/status/1555102962623594496

2/ How do you regulate something as inherently violent as war? What does it even mean, cynics will ask? “War is Hell” said General Sherman (and he went on to burn Atlanta)

Since 9/11 we’ve learnt think to think about how to react to terrorists’ provocations. Because they want an overreaction, it’s usually wise to reply with minimum necessary force

This thinking’s disastrous when applied to autocratic aggression.

🧵On Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan 2/ Unlike terrorists, aggressive dictatorships don’t want to provoke - their game is to use this “provocation theory” intimidate us into paralysis.

As Macron, Draghi and Scholz are on their way to Kyiv, it’s worth thinking about peace, victory
and the desire for a quiet life.

Our desire for a quiet life, symbolised by Chamberlain, is Vladimir Putin’s greatest friend. 🧵 A quiet life is what Europe is supposed to be about. Enough fighting and destruction. Enough war, military parades, and glory. We want peace, comfort and our children not to have
to risk their lives for our freedom.

When I was hired to work at Tory Central Office (that long ago, before it was rebranded CCHQ) the first question one of my bosses asked me was "how do we get out of the European convention of human rights?"

Here are several reasons why it's a bad idea 🧵

https://twitter.com/AnnaJerzewska/status/1537064810059268096

1/ The convention, spearheaded by a certain Winston Churchill, exists to protect individual rights, which is what the Conservatives once stood for. It gives signatory states' judiciaries a large margin of freedom to interpret it.

You can’t unilaterally amend an international treaty by changing domestic law. If you could there’d be no point in having treaties. It get to the heart of the difference between two ideas of Brexit.

Thread. 2/ One kind of brexit, let’s call it May’s Brexit, is about redefining the arrangements the UK has with the EU. Those different arrangements, agreed by the UK and EU would then be understood as binding on both parties.

Good that this message is getting though. But UK’s tanks won’t be enough. French and American tanks also needed to make up the numbers.

https://twitter.com/paulwaugh/status/1517456986362847233

You can watch the @CNN interview where I introduced the idea here.

https://twitter.com/article7news/status/1515640439805722628

At the #presidentielles2022 debate last night Marine Le Pen showed a print-out of an old tweet.

My team at @article7news have been looking into Rassamblement National officials' tweets over the last few years...

There's a lot in there she wouldn't want us to see 🧵 2/ Let's start with ones on Ukraine. Here's Jean-Michael Cadenas, calling #Euromaidan a coup - on 24 February, as Russian paratroopers were trying to seize Hostomel airport

The UK's Ukraine record is decidedly mixed.

Extremely good from the MoD, which understands the nature of Putin's strategic threat, sent weapons early enough to make some of a differences and is now apparently sending more. (gov.uk/government/new…) 1/ But it is terrible on two other areas:
- Sanctioning oligarchs
- Welcoming Ukrainian refugees

What do these two have in common? 2/

On 31 Jan I argued that the West had to shed its illusions about Russia.

How has it done so far. A SITREP. 🧵

foreignpolicy.com/2022/01/31/eur… 🇩🇪
Accepted need to rearm and send weapons to Ukraine

But still not reopening nuclear plants or avoiding imports of Russian gas

I could be wrong, but the SPD hasn't even expelled Schröder, have they?

Should the West impose full sanctions on Russia now, or hold them in reserve, as the Biden Administration and EU Commission appear to be suggesting?🧵 2/The argument for holding fire, and limiting sanctions to specific individuals or entities, empahsises sanctions as a deterrent. Once used, their deterrent effect is gone.

There’s growing evidence of a lack of quality control in Russian operations, which isn’t unusual in long-running dictatorships.

Everyone’s scared of admitting to the boss that there’s a problem, so stuff gets swept under the carpet. 1/

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Autum… For example:

Shoigu’s watch

https://twitter.com/ASLuhn/status/1495774856423657483

A confrontation between London and the EU over the Northern Ireland protocol carries grave risks for the unity of the UK, because views on Brexit are so much a matter of identity.

This thread explains why. ft.com/content/b5f7dd… 1/ The consequences of disruption to trade will be felt in the UK economically as inflation, shortages, real terms wage stagnation and weakness in the pound.

But who gets the blame depends on how people feel about Brexit.

On the day when a rare public rebuke of the UK by a visiting US president leads @thetimes pro-government commentators are wheeling out the excuses. But the reality is that British foreign policy has got into a mess.

A thread about why - and how to get out of it - 1/ UK foreign policy is in serious trouble. It is being undermined by attempts to wriggle out of the Northern Ireland protocol that the UK doesn’t have the power to execute. This is storing up serious trouble down the road.

If this article turns out to be true the UK's integrated review is heading towards an unrealistic direction that will irritate the US and China, unintentionally make the case for EU strategic autonomy, and delight Russia. 1/ The article ft.com/content/4a0022…

2/

Biden will win this, but there are sobering lessons for the opponents of national populism. Thread. 1/ National populist candidates have appeal across different countries, and ethnic groups. They’re dangerous, and they’re not going away.