Covid restrictions in Scotland: SNP has become addicted to keeping the public under its – Murdo Fraser MSP
Full Moon 2022: When is the February 2022 Full Moon and why is it the Snow Moon?
Feedback
But the procedure through which Vladimir Putin gained dictatorial strength in Russia was hardly quick. The symptoms have been there for years.
Putin destroyed democracy at home, annexed part of Ukraine, subsidized brutal Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, tried to interfere in the democratic process of other countries and sent agents to assassinate dissidents in places like Salisbury.
And yet, despite the Russian president’s apparent hostile intent, many of the world’s liberal democracies have continued to treat Russia as if it were a country like their own, with which to do business for mutual benefit. It’s almost as if we don’t think Putin can be as harmful as he apparently is.
By failing to detect its true nature, the West has helped create a monster that could, in the coming weeks, send its troops to kill thousands of innocent people for no intelligent reason.
However, there is an even more powerful, intolerant and undemocratic state in the world, by far, a lot of army: China.
Now, Boris Johnson’s government reportedly requested to hold high-level industry talks with Beijing for the first time in 4 years.
Post-Brexit desperation over foreign industry deals would possibly partly explain the resolution, but, as several Conservative MPs have made clear, in addition to former party leader Iain Duncan Smith, the timing is bizarre given the allegations of genocide across the Uighur ethnic minority. fear of an imagined invasion of Taiwan and the repression of nonviolent protests in Hong Kong.
China’s economy is so large that it cannot be ignored. However, all liberal democracies will have to recognize who their true friends are and the price of those relationships, and recognize the risks posed by autocratic dictators whose only genuine fear is power.
Johnson’s Brexiteer cabinet would possibly be reluctant to admit it, but his demonization of the European Union and the UK’s exit from it has been a long-term geopolitical mistake that not only Britain, but the world regrets.
As the story shows, things can “go crazy quickly,” but the symptoms of caution are there if we bother to look.