February 4, 2024 - 1:00pm
Piece by piece, a great Eastern blockade is coming together, cutting off trade routes between Europe and the Indo-Pacific. The Bab-el-Mandeb strait at the southern end of the Red Sea has become the site of multiple skirmishes, as Western navies struggle to protect the free transit of freight vessels against attacks carried out by the Iranian-backed Houthi movement.
Meanwhile in the Gulf, Iran is also threatening another strategic bottleneck at the Strait of Hormuz. To the north, war rages between Russia and Ukraine — bringing down a new Iron Curtain. An alarming scenario thus presents itself: a stack of hostile and/or war-torn states running from the White Sea in the Arctic all the way down, via the Black Sea, to the Red Sea.
Is there any hope that Europe could survive such a geopolitical calamity? Yes — because it wouldn’t be the first time.
In 1453, the Fall of Constantinople sundered East from West, yet Europe didn’t crumble. The Ottoman conquest may have marked the end for the Byzantine Empire, but for the rest of Christendom the catastrophe can be seen as the start of a rise to global greatness. The triumph of the West was the most extraordinary fightback in history, and Europeans today should draw inspiration from it.
One takeaway is the need to embrace reform. From the 15th century onwards, Europe was remade in a tumult of renaissance, reformation, counter-reformation and technological, cultural and political revolution. While non-European powers stagnated, the old continent rebuilt its rotten institutions, forging the modern world in the process. In the 21st century we should be restlessly intolerant of decay, beginning with the bloated, lumbering impediment that is the European Union. Brexit is not enough: Europe needs Eurexit.
What’s more, when they were hemmed in by hostile powers to the east, our predecessors looked west instead. Today, there are no new continents to be discovered, but the answer to Europe’s vulnerabilities is to draw closer to America, not further apart. In an increasingly multipolar world, there is more that unites the West then divides it — and so now is the time to renew the Western alliance. This should begin with Europe taking more responsibility for its defence. The old formula of sponging off the Americans is unsustainable: the transatlantic partnership must be one of equals.
Then, we must end our economic dependency on anti-Western regimes. In the late Middle Ages, Europeans became the masters of wind and water-based power — laying the foundations for the Age of Exploration and then the Industrial Revolution. Today, we should reclaim our energy independence and forever cut the cord with the fossil fuel tyrannies of Russia and the Middle East. We must also reduce our reliance on goods from places that don’t like us very much. Artificial intelligence and robotics gives the West a chance to literally reinvent manufacturing — and reshore industries so carelessly surrendered to other parts of the world.
Of course, there’s cause for shame as well as pride in Europe’s past. Nevertheless, at one of the great hinge points of history, Europeans turned adversity to their advantage. Do we have the vision to do it again?
Peter Franklin is Associate Editor of UnHerd. He was previously a policy advisor and speechwriter on environmental and social issues.
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SubscribeTo quote Bret Weinstein, “It’s complicated …..and …… it’s worse than that.” The ‘… places that don’t like us very much’ are inside the West as well as outside and need to be addressed for starters.
Whatever else might be critiqued in the article, the writer is right about being “at one of the great hinge points of history“.
The future isn’t for the faint-hearted. Whilst reference to previous hinge points is useful, what it doesn’t tell us (as yet) is how Europe turned itself into the powerhouse of the modern industrial and cultural world; what specific factors united to induce the required changes? I’d say, the main factor was a change in mindset, so that’s a good place to start when looking forwards.
Whilst culturally, the Renaissance is often referred to as having looked back to the glory of the ancient world – and which is in many respects true, as a springboard – there were other, more current factors in motion. The printing press, the “discovery” of how to utilise perspective in the visual arts, but above all, the Reformation which freed the stagnant thought-processes to precipitate change. The latter didn’t come without cost, and there were vested interests in maintaining the status quo. I very much doubt if the “liberal progressives” of today are any more entrenched than the Catholic church was, but nevertheless, the Reformation won through. So, a form of spiritual renewal: one geared more towards the commonality of humans rather than the institutions which presided over them.
That’s what i strongly believe is required once more. Just as the visual arts moved from primarily religious painting towards a greater exploration of the human soul beyond religious boundaries, a further exploration of what it means to be human would need to occur, without recourse to dogma, ideology or comfort-seeking. Technology will play a part in this, as we seek to come to terms with how our humanity can encompass the challenges posed by AI, the potential for transhumanism and the recapture of meaning, wresting it from the slimy claws of unmeaning brought about by critical theory.
“how Europe turned itself into the powerhouse of the modern industrial and cultural world”.
The illusive event you seek probably occurred at the Wheal Vor mine near Helston, Cornwall around the year 1710, when one Thomas NEWCOMEN installed his revolutionary steam engine.
The whole world should be eternally grateful to Newcomen, his colleagues and England in general for this simply stupendous event.
The point is: why was he even looking to find a solution to mine drainage? The Romans mined in Cornwall (as you’ll know, of course) but only when the conditions were ripe for the upsurge in industrialisation was a solution needed to extract more minerals. That upsurge was due to the factors i’ve alluded to, which preceded Newcomen – revolutionary though his invention was.
I take your point but the Reformation only really repaired the the damage done from say 390 AD to 1519 AD.
From the Reformation WE began to think again after more than a thousand years of monotheistic christian tyranny.
I’ve been re-watching James Burke’s brilliant ‘Connections’ on YouTube. A series that, for many reasons, wouldn’t be made today. One of them is that it is very Eurocentric, but explains how the modern world came to be. Well worth checking out.
The more interesting aspect of the technical innovation behind steam power is the English and Scottish entrepreneurial culture that supported maverick engineers and the subsequent design enhancements over decades. It was a chaotic unregulated peer to peer network of provincial capitalism that delivered results.
Over in France the centralized Government instructed their national institute of science to create a French steam engine pump. They failed and had to buy pumps from the English Midlands.
Somewhere along the path of our national story we have forgotten British history and today a Conservative government presides over record high State spending as a proportion of GDP.
The Green Left would undoubtedly be down on the guy because his steam engine produced CO2.
Modernist ‘Word Salad’
No – it was strength of ethics, rule of law, unity of culture, and all built on the exceptional Intellectualism of the ‘Dark Ages’
Yes, the extreme intellectualism and even technology of the ‘Dark Ages’
Tens of thousands of Priests were educated in Latin to the highest level in Church seminaries, Universities, Ministries – taught the Philosophical Classics, Logic, Rhetoric, Theology, Diplomacy, math, Law – and sent to every court in the lands to teach the Barbarian leaders- to further commerce by keeping the roads under treaty, to make international rule of trade and treaty – wile a hundred thousand Monks hand write the books needed to spread education and wisdom and thinking, and the unifying ethics and Rules of Christianity.
The Philosophical thinkers of those ages were absolute drivers of that became the Renaissance – which did NOT rise from barbarity – but the rule of laws, and intellectualism of the ‘Dark Ages’ of Christian Europe.
It was those Priests and Monks – led from the world’s intellectual capital Rome, which NO other society could match – which made Europe the global leader. They are the foundation all rose from. From the Church.
Not quite.
The Church tried very hard to suppress scientific and technical advancement (from Galileo to Darwin). They also weren’t that keen on the printing press and general distribution of the Bible. Nor native European languages.
The real breakthroughs came with the agricultural and industrial revolutions. The church may have put in place some of the foundations to make those possible. But it did little, if anything, to actually create and support those. Witness the rise of England, France and Germany and the corresponding decline of Spain and Italy.
The Crusader sack of Constantinople in 1204 was far more serious than the Ottoman one of 1453.
There NEVER was a Byzantine Empire. They were Romanoi – Romans until the very end, just before lunch on Tuesday the 29th of May, 1453.
They called themselves Romans. They were not Romans. They were a Greek Empire, with a Greek Church. They lacked the Roman talent for assimilating other populations and making them feel Roman. The favoritism showed to all things Greek, and especially the imposition of Greek Bishops on the Oriental Orthodox populations alienated Egypt and Syria, and made them easy picking for the Arabs.
It was the Roman Empire, policy missteps of the sort you note notwithstanding. Constantine move the capital. The upper classes even when the capital was at Rome spoke Greek rather than Latin. The “Fall of Rome” in 476 was made up by later historians to deprive the Christian Empire of its Roman-ness, giving near ontological importance to the non-event of the retirement of the last Western Augustus to a villa near Naples because the Emperor in Constantinople deemed that the King of the Ostrogoths in his role as a Patrician of the Romans could look after imperial affairs in the old homeland just fine without a co-Emperor sitting in Rome.
They apparently self-identified as Romans, despite being ethnically Greek and speaking Greek and being Greek Orthodox.
So this self-identification thing clearly isn’t new ! Though not necessairly an indicator of impending civilisational collapse …
If only Unherd.com could send you back in time to tell the citizens of Byzantium they had misnamed their city.
I thought it was the Vikings who saved Constantinople – wasn’t it some Hagrad or someone – around when the Normans were invading England… how my memories of the past keep falling away….
Some people would have you believe it was the Palestinians!
Byzantium stopped being called Byzantium twelve centuries before its fall, when Constantine renamed Byzantion to Constantinople. This was when he made it his capital and massively expanded in the early 4th century.
Actually, Constantine called in New Rome. Everyone else took to calling it Constantinople once he moved the Imperial capital there.
And after that they were Romanoi (to the Turks, the Rum = Roman millet) under occupation even after that. The Patriarch of Constantinople was given a secular role as Millet-bashi (ethnarch) of the Rum, and made to answer for any misconduct by his subjegated coreligionists).
Greek nationalism only switched to calling itself “Hellenism” in the early 19th century because the West would support that, but wouldn’t support a Romaioi nationalism that wanted to restore the Empire (as the Tsars did even into the 20th century).
If around the time of the American Founding, you’d called a Greek-speaking Christian in Adrianople a “Hellene” he’s have punched you in the jaw and told you he was a Roman. Hellene had the sense of Greek pagan, and had since before Charlemagne used it as slander against the living continuation of the Roman Empire.
I am uncertain how further and deeper allegiance to a dying, over-extended US Empire will benefit Europe.
Europe must look after itself, both economically and militarily. A good start would entail not getting involved in the Empire’s catastrophic expansionism and aggression towards powers with the ability to utterly destroy Europe if they choose.
Yes, the US “Empire” is ailing but Europe and the UK are much closer to their demise. The US still has the option to contract militarily to a size that assures deterrence for itself while ditching defense responsibilities for European and Pacific allies. So doing would achieve a massive expenditure benefit. Europe is waking to the reality of massive budget increases if it wants to be able to defend itself. It is unused to such defense expenditure and it will not go down well with taxpayers whose material standard of living will necessarily diminish.
The US also has greater energy autonomy than its European friends as well as a better chance at surviving isolation via its other mineral resource assets that are superior to Europe’s. Most of all, Europe has far greater threats from within due to massive immigration combined with profound differences in birthrates between “native” and immigrant populations. I do not mean that in a xenophobic, or racist way; however, it is hard to imagine how the secular-humanist cultures of Europe will prevail when those numbers and birthrates combine to create majorities who are theocratic in outlook, uninterested in assimilation, and hostile to “Western” values.
While the US also has been the destination of many immigrants, a the majority of them are from Mexico, Central, or South America. They are in some ways more traditionally Westerners even than their new host country; for example, they are overwhelmingly Catholic, and practicing ones at that. They are certainly not out in the streets demonstrating in favor of Intifada.
Your economic argument is sound however in Europe provincial governors are not maneuvering their local armies to challenge the authority of the central State Government.
It could suddenly turn very bad in the US, things are shaping up to deliver a 21st century US War of the Roses.
”governors are not maneuvering their local armies to challenge the authority of the central State Government.” *
* :””To throw themselves free from the lethal and oppressive and tyrannical shackles of the Neo-Con postmodernist Global Elite Uniparty and Deep State.””
It is a good omen they are called red states. Alas poor “Mayorkas” they saw through him so well.
Now praise the lord and pass the ammunition
We Americans are used to flamboyant turmoil. I have lived through the assassination of two Kennedys and MLK, the attempted assassinations of Reagan and Wallace; the Cuban missile crisis, Vietnam, the Iran hostage crisis, the World Trade Center bombing, Iraq War, Afghanistan War; BLM riots, the US Capitol riot, and the weirdness of Trump. Add to that sui generis financial disasters like the sub-prime mortgage/ derivatives mess of 2008 and the Madoff scam. While the rest of the world has its small-time pedos, we have the spectacular Jeffery Epstein. We have suffered more school shootings than there are counties in the UK.
In that context the business on the Texas border between Gov. Abbott and President. Biden is viewed here by most as no more than political theater that will soon pass. The media, as they do, make everything into Armageddon but War of the Roses is probably a long shot. I too fear for an American decline but it may be less spectacular and cheat our detractors of the schadenfreude they await. To borrow from T.S. Eliot, America may ultimately end “not with a bang but a whimper.”
I’m not sure “spectacular” is the right descriptor for Geoffrey Epstein, but if it is, there are quite a few spectacular Catholic Priests.
The problem with this line of argument is that you are correct until the first shots of a civil war are fired at which point you become profoundly wrong.
Most political debate forms around analogue social issues e.g. money printing or affirmative action. These things can be dialed up or down.
Civil wars don’t work like that, in the US a civil war would be binary and brutal.
Apparently at the moment some of the Texas State Guard are deployed to confront a inland threat. That threat is perceived to be federal forces loyal to President Biden.
My point was not that the US itself will fail, but that it will indeed withdraw from its Empire, and become isolationist.
The EU (ie Germany…) made a huge error alienating Russia from which is got cheap energy, but that was probably intended by the US anyway to bind it closer.
I think Germany made a brilliant move in decoupling itself from reliance on Russian energy. It is never a good idea to do business with someone you know you can’t trust.
Yes…heaven knows why the Russians did…
Which is why myself in England wonder why we are putting up with old Trailer Trash Joe.
Those who aspire to a One World viewpoint will have to set that aside for future centuries. The cultural differences at present are such that the rational lot (usually assumed to be The West), should insulate themselves to some extent from the believers of the supernatural. The charming thought that the rule of law, rational decision making, civilised behaviour etc will endure, regardless of demographics, is one best left behind in the 20th century.
The structured attacking and discarding of Christianity from Western society is what has led to all the problems – the replacing of Christian Morality and Ethics by Postmodernism – the replacing of Enlightenment Liberalism by Lefty-Liberalism, replacing good and evil with ‘Correct and Incorrect’ – those are the problem. Your coy use of ‘Supernatural’ is a perfect example of the decline and ultimate destruction of the West.
Your cannons are pointing in the wrong direction. As a devout atheist I was quite content to leave Christianity as the common man’s moral compass. It was, after all, toothless and dying out. It had served its purpose as a bridge between barbarism and civilisation. But then the Postmodernists stepped in. Believe me, my disdain for them is greater than yours.
I share your fate as far as atheism is concerned. However, if you look at Christianity as a unifying moral compass, it could be resurrected and there is no alternative to be seen. Marxism in the broadest sense, including socialism, ecologism, post-modernism, etc. has one fundamental flaw which is systemic, the denial of the human nature, and not just organizational as would be the case for Christianity. So what are you suggesting ?
The problem with Christianity is that we now know what its clergy really get up to, and that tends to rather put us off.
Sadly it does !
Not like those nice moral rock stars then.
Most rock stars don’t claim to speak the words of God.
Some of them do invite us though to imagine a world without religion and countries where everything will be well apparently.
My hope is that we can live without any ‘isms’.
Except for “Atheism” the one “True science”…right?
Some people tried. Some people remember the result. Unfortunately, not all.
Islamism and Neoliberalism especially!
Ethics are what need to be taught – not religious teachings.
A Devout Atheist? Every Communist subvariant starts out as “Devout Atheism.” That is an oxymoron.
Postmodernism and Critical Theory were created to address Nietzsche’s “Death of God.” These were Atheists looking for a new way to understand truth because the Scientific establishmemt is prone to be captured by political ideologues.
This is a perfectly expected consequence of “Devout Atheism” because Devout Atheism is Gnostic. Its all knowing. People that are all knowing can’t possibly be wrong. It’s a standard beyond Faith. Its the Self as God.
It was not the great army of ”woke and atheist” Cossacks relieving the siege of Vienna which saved the West. It was the might of the Christian Warriors repelling the Heathen….
So where does the writer see this happening – what with his ‘Shame’ for the European history?
Welby converting the heathen Asylum Seekers’? That they may better fight extradition for their crimes? Sure – that’s going to work…..
Unnecessary blast of Christians. Agree it was coy.
The West chose confrontation rather than negotiation with China, Russia and the East, and therefore should not be surprised by the barriers they have produced.
You can only negotiate with people or countries when there’s some common ground and trust on the underlying rules. And there are very good reasons why our trust in Russia and China is limited and below the level we have with other countries in the West.
Not least in all of this is the shared common history, language, legal system and culture across what’s often called the Anglosphere.
The bahviour of Western European countries is also more predictable – so when disagreements arise, it’s easier to manage them.
It’s naive in the extreme to imagine that we have no enemies (not always permanent enemies, but form time to time there always are) and everyone can just be negotiated with. So we do not “choose confrontation”. Sometimes it is necessary and the least worst option.
I also note that Russia and Germany completed a negotiation in 1939. How did that one pan out ? Or the UK and France with Germany in 1938 ?
Never in the field of online debate have so many downvotes been cast on so few posts.
And your actual point is ???
Do you not have anything factual to say about the comment ?
I was making an oblique comment on the outbreak of negativity that has become endemic in the Western World in the New Year.
15 hours ago none of the comments here on this article warranted a downvote.
Maybe the pestilence of endemic downvoting reflects growing anger in society. Downvotes seem to be the weapon of choice while people wait to be conscripted into General Sir Patrick’s Russophobic battalions.
Won’t be long before they have live ammo to fire, catastrophism has arrived.
Thanks. Agree with you about the tendency to catastrophism.
There’s nothing “Russophobic” about distrusting Russia when its leaders openly name us as their enemies and issue military threats against us. I note that we issue no such direct threats against Russia. People would do well to remember this.
It is the US Empire which expanded to the borders of Russia not the other way round. And it also organised the coup which overthrew the elected President of the Ukraine…
And you believe Russia can’t be trusted?
Your last sentence is correct. I believe Russia can’t be trusted. Also, if you have some spare time, you should tour the countries of Eastern Europe, and tell the citizens they are part of the “US Empire”.
They’ve all been promised free coca cola for life.
There. Is, No. US. Empire.
Try telling the Mexicans…and Syria…not Afghanistan, it couldn’t be held…
Because BAD people were against negotiations. And we did not enter the War to save Jews because the reaction of British and USA troops show that no one knew about it. (The top elite did) And all through the 1930s successive British Parliament’s passed law after law to stop Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany being able to live here,settle here,have a life here. A lot went to America. The ones that did settle here had help from British friends,mostly middle class Quakers,who are nice people. Both the British working class and the aristocratic upper class were strongly anti-semitic.
As I recall it, we entered the war at the very start before the mass extermination of the Jews started. Yes, from day one when Russia and Germany jointly started it by invading Poland. I’m not sure what more you’re expecting we could have done.
I really doubt that you’d recognise a “bad person” if you met one. On the other hand, there are stupid, deluded people who believe that negotiations were possible. Putin’s late 2019 ultimatum to NATO was a fantasy wish list which could never be accepted – telling NATO to get out of Poland.
Get real !
When it comes to China, the West’s error was not recognising Taiwan as an independent country in about 1950.
This is about the most ambitious recommendation I’ve read in a long time. Not that I’m disagreeing: if we really could throw the EU out of Europe, reshore an AI/robot manufacturing base, and drop fossil fuel dependence upon parts of the world in ways that cause this perennial geoplitical havoc we’re always stuck with, then I’m all in favour. One awkward little word does pop up at this point of course: how?
I have my own ideas on energy (Thorium MSRs with fracking as a stopgap until we can get the MSRs working), but I suspect we’d get nuclear fusion working before we could eject the EU from Europe. As for AI/robotics, it’ll happen of course, but not on any timescales that will align with pressing geopolitical needs, so the idea is not an ally of Europe’s desire to survive.
This is such utter, complete, unadulterated ahistorical nonsense that I don’t know where to begin to unpick it.
Please, read ANY academic work on the history of the time. Forget you ever read this drivel.
It is drivel.
”Of course, there’s cause for shame as well as pride in Europe’s past.”
What a complete Di* k
I don’t share the author’s opinion that we should isolate from Russia. Russia is a natural part of the west, as we share large parts of a common culture. If you look at it, Putin is a much more reason guided leader than almost all of the western leaders.
I don’t think it is an exaggeration to say that the true enemies of the west are within rather than outside. The western leaders have stopped acting on behalf of our interests, by herding in millions of individuals from other cultures, although it is more than clear by now that multiculturalism has failed and that a big percentage of the immigrants are unwilling to assimilate.
Only problem: who to vote for in order to oust the self-appointed globalists ?
I respectfully disagree with absolutely everything you say. Russia has never been a friend of the West, and won’t be any time soon. Granted, there have been some military alliances, but they mostly arose out of necessity. It is in the West’s interests to create a weak and isolated Russia.
Oo-,,oh,those Russians.
I don’t frankly think that Russia could at any time in history have been regarded as a civilised nation.
I’d like very much to be able to agree with you, but I think you understate the extent to which Vladimir Putin and his regime fail even the most basis tests of civilised government. Even before the Ukraine War when Europe was an enthusiastic importer of Russian energy, Russia was still a place that jailed and executed political opponents, sometimes going as far as assassinating such people on British soil, and Russian society remains an unsafe place generally for a significant number of minorities.
I suspect we might agree on the point that modern Russia didn’t have to be like this, if only the West had been more intelligent and flexible after the fall of Communism. But we weren’t, and while Russia represents a lost opportunity for western democracy, it ultimately isn’t wholly or even mostly our fault.
I admit that I may fall a bit for the ‘my enemy’s enemy is my friend’ way of thinking, when thinking about Putin. But I still think that we cannot apply the same standards to Russia than we apply to ourselves, because Russia can see what is wrong in the west from outside and there are forces within Russia that want to convert Russia to the western ways.
And when I look at how western leaders treat their inner opponents nowadays in the USA (structural violence against Trump, Elon Musk, Jan 6 crowd, …), in Canada (freezing truckers’ bank accounts, arresting investigative journalists from Rebel News), in Germany (diabolization of AFD with Stasi methods, stripping opposition politicians of fundamental rights) … I really don’t see that much of a difference to Russia, apart from the lethal … euh … accidents maybe.
I also believe that the ideals of human rights have been weaponized against us by forces who do not act in our best interest, which is bad, regardless whether they do so out of stupidity or evil intent.
There will have to be some rather radical changes to our societal architecture if the west is to succeed, and some will include being a little bit more like Russia and a little bit less like lying and corrupt bastards.
Are you saying that Western leaders should stop “beating about the bush”, and just murder and jail their political opponents, like Putin does?
One of the tests of a civilized government is how often the State looses a criminal prosecution it has pursued.
At the Federal level, the United States is a judicial tyranny with a conviction rate above 99% percent. A Russian has a much better chance in President Putin’s legal system.
I cannot find an exact comparison but have a look:
https://www.doarlaw.com/blog/2021/04/what-you-should-know-about-the-federal-governments-conviction-rate/
https://www.statista.com/statistics/1306899/trial-decisions-in-russia-by-verdict/
Yeah. The Russian will just have the misfortune to ingest some Novichok. He won’t need to worry about the “legal system” at all.
The high point of Russia for me was the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev. It briefly looked like the evils of communism would be consigned to the dustbin of history, and might be replaced by something good. Unfortunately, it was replaced by Putinism.
The West has to grasp the nettle here and not to allow the left to control any part of the narrative . Everything they touch they destroy , simple as that !
We should but we don’t. This is like all those Healthy Living articles we have read all our lives,eat raw vegetables l,knit your own clothes,give away all your excess money to a homeless refuge,rewild your garden and embrace virtue.
And for 5 minutes we intend to. But we don’t.
“the transatlantic partnership must be one of equals”
But that is the last thing that the US wants. It wans Europe to remain a collection of vassal states just paying ore for their own defence
Excellent essay! It’s good to think that someone is looking forward, instead of just picking at the scabs.
Of course the history that Franklin describes was not a singular act, a Great Leap or a Ten Year (20? 50?) Plan. It was a concatenation of thousands of individual efforts, with various motivations, each with it’s own goals. And often a willingness to go with plan B.
So let’s not be waiting around for some Superman; or the ghost of Karl Marx or Ayn Rand to save us.
…philosophically we need to turn to John Stuart Mill, George Orwell and Roger Scruton…for Geopolitics to Samuel P Huntington’s “Clash of Civilizations”…in Economics we must shut out our enemies, be they Islamist,Russian or Chinese…
…in practical terms defence expenditure needs to rise IN REAL TERMS by ten or fifteen percent per annum for at least a decade. Even at the low figure that could see capacity increased by fifty percent in five years and doubled in ten…at the higher one, we could be on the front foot in just three or four…
….and domestically, we need to reinstate the Riot Act…under the direct control of the Home Secretary and Cabinet (easily done in modern times)…and create a prarmilitary police unit at divisional strength, much akin to the CRS in France…
…and use them, agressively, where required…riot armour, tear-gas, water cannon…and firearms and light armoured vehicles, if required.
What we have is worth defending…it is time to get organised to do exactly that…
The author suffers from right-sided hemianopia: he looks at the map of Europe but sees only one half of it: the left side. He does not seem to know that on the right, reaching all the way to the midline of the continent, running along what is today the eastern border of Austria and Czechia, was the farthest spread of the second muslim conquest of Europe, the Ottoman Empire. The only importance the writer sees in this conquest is the fall of Constantinople, but the people of southeastern Europe saw and experienced it as an utter disaster or them, lasting for centuries. Millions were killed, and forced or kidnapped into slavery, causing severe depopulation of vast parts of what is now Hungary, Romania and the former Yugoslavia, as well as Albania and Greece.
It was not the peoples of Western Europe that fought back against the Ottoman Turks, but those of Eastern Europe. Let’s acknowledge their greatness.
My God, Peter. Welcome back. You’ve written nothing but tripe for weeks now but have done the thing that you are encouraging the west to do in your article; recover and do it better. Well done indeed and nice to have you back. Reading it made me think that life under the old Empires wasn’t so bad after all. I’m thinking British and then American after WWII. Time for the Brits to rebuild the Royal Navy methinks.