2. Reading the article we note there's quite some overlap between arms industry links and links to Israel's fundraising and lobbying circles. I wonder whether UK media discloses those links.
What countries have a defense sector, if the UK doesn't?
Last time I looked Iran and the UK are quite some distance from each other, and Iran has inexplicably neither been launching missiles at the UK, nor threatening to, and is apparently not even capable of it.
https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/crm120x4lzxo
So the justification for these "defensive" bombing runs on Iranian mountain sites from Fairford remains mysterious.
The UK's arms industry is - like most things associated with the establishment - an exercise in turning privilege into cash, so it's not a surprise to see Senior Figures doing the media rounds in establishment narrative factories like The Telegraph and The Daily Mail.
Readers with the money and connections to make a difference already know how the game is played.
Readers who don't should perhaps be allowed to keep their happy fantasy that the UK isn't one of the most corrupt countries in the world, as a mercy.
> one of the most corrupt countries in the world
A ridiculous exaggeration given what a lot of other countries are like.
I guess it's debatable whether the drone attack was proportional. I'd say that attack on clearly military installation of active ally is proportionate. Bombing bases in Britain would be more appropriate I think, since that's where the bombers that attacked Iran flew from and were loaded with weapons.
They are also allied with Russia who are doing the same.
They aren't some innocent party here. Geopolitics is complicated and not some black and white good guy bad guy mechanics.
Claiming that the UK doesn't support diplomacy through violence then transitioning into this gem has to be one of the wildest juxtapositions I've seen this year. Do you classify the US strikes on Iran as uniformly offensive or defensive in nature? Or do you think there is a mix? How would you classify a US bombing run on anti-air defences in the opening phase of the conflict?
It's pretty obvious how the the UK's actions vs. Iran's, or even the US's, are different.
If UK/US wanted to be in the in the clear they could have asked UNSC to authorize use of force against Iran.
Its role has been entirely defensive, and legal under international law as part of the right to self-defence.
Reminds of the old joke, "What propaganda? We don't have propaganda."
If Iran struck all of the UK's missile factories and military bases, would it be considered a defensive or offensive action?
I would assume there's a bunch of countries around Iran that appreciate UK's help in intercepting missiles.
I would assume there's a bunch of countries around Iran that don't appreciate the US starting a war of choice.
It didn't attack anyone until it was attacked.
It has been defending itself.
That goes far beyond what’s permissible in international law in response to an attack.
In my view the US and Israeli attacks on Iran were illegal, reprehensible, and deeply stupid. But that doesn’t mean Iran is allowed to do whatever it wants afterward, especially to countries not directly involved in hostilities. In this case Iran has also broken international law.
However it should have been dealt with earlier rather than latent bombing.
Anyway, I live in the UK, and I don't swallow the same propaganda as you.
Do you know any actual Iranians? I do!
Not directly, mostly; and not through land grabs. The age of land grabs is pretty much over - but imperialism lives on in different form - including massive military interventions and covert operations for manipulating or replacing regimes, more that properly conquering and settling lands.
Today's UK is not an independent empire of this kind. It used to be; but now it is relegated to being a junior partner in its alliance with the US empire, mostly, and with the EU, to a lesser extent. This is reflected in its top 10 arms recipients, e.g. for 2024 [1]:
Saudi Arabia, £14bn United States of America, £8.3bn France, £5.2bn Qatar, £3.5bn Italy, £2.8bn Oman, £2.5bn Turkey, £2.3bn India, £2.3bn Norway, £2.2bn United Arab Emirates, £1.7bn
and there are also arms Israel for about £0.572bn; and the arming of Ukraine, a cooperation with both the US and European powers, as part of NATO's struggle against Russia.
The UK also sends troops as part of US imperial interventions, e.g. in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya. There are also UK-dominated or UK-only interventions abroad, but mostly if we go a few decades back [2].
[1] : https://www.thenational.scot/news/24272310.uk-arms-exports--...
[2] : https://www.declassifieduk.org/the-uks-83-military-intervent...
Are you arguing that the entire world should never provide aid to other countries? Surely you're just calling for imperialist powers to gobble up the planet piece by piece.
Why did British people decide to move from the Northern Hemisphere to this island? Because the climate looked similar?
And yes, here is a dispute between a historically imperialist versus a settler state. It’s weird.
It has centuries of exactly that at a global scale, and continued post-war neo-colonial land grabbing and pressuring, plus eager participation in all the imperialist games of its larger brother.
I mean, just mentioning "Tony Blair" is enough...
Yeah, just a few decades years, to secure oil deals and/or keep control of the region. No biggie.
That this can be said with a straight face about invasions to two countries that created civil war, suffering, hundreds of thousands of deaths, displacement, etc, is telling of the ever-present colonialist mindset.
For anyone else interested, negotiations that could lead to the US leaving Iraq and fully returning control to the Iraqi people are also going swimmingly, according to reports.
For all their failures, the allies never bombed cities with nerve agents.
> Saddam committed crimes of aggression during the Iran–Iraq War
Which links to a page about the war:
> Iraq was aided by [...] the United States, the United Kingdom,
> After years of military and economic losses, decreasing morale, intensifying Iran–U.S. relations, and little international action against Iraqi attacks on Iranian civilians, Iran agreed to a ceasefire with Iraq under United Nations Security Council Resolution 598.
So they basically did.
What do you think an llm would say if you asked it:
> Did the US and UK support Saddam Hussein when he was using weapons of mass destruction on Iranian civilians?
It's a motte-and-bailey fallacy that starts with countries and leaders having relationships in a global, interwoven world and ends with excusing a blood-thirsty dictator as if they had no agency.
We do, as you rightly note have quite the history of a policy of imperialist land grabs, now we just play a support function to somebody else's empire.
In Germany, historically the strategic issue was anti-communism, but now it serves as a military logistics hub; in Iraq, it's about trade in oil in dollars and access to Iraqi oil fields for US companies.
The UK is more complex and more total, ranging from support in the security council, to access to markets for US goods and services, to stationing of US troops and hardware. Most of our economy is geared up for the benefit of US investment funds.
Any government, whether it be Germany, Iraq or the UK, which tries to alter any of these fundamentals will quickly find out the extent to which their land has been grabbed.
Whether troop presence is viewed as occupation or not in each of the >50 [1] countries currently "hosting" troops is very much a matter of personal perspective, the fringeness of which will vary from country to country.
I don't believe that it really changes the fact that yes, US troops occupy the UK, Germany and Iraq, and many more. The most substantial deployments, e.g., Germany, Japan, South Korea, and until recently Iraq and Afghanistan, were very much the product of invasions. At the time of those invasions, many of those on the receiving end would have very much felt on the receiving end of a land grab. It's just their grandchildren have been conditioned to view this state of affairs as natural.
The general pattern is "bomb the bejesus" [2] out of a country. Plant base. Install a friendly government and ensure a favourable operating environment for US interests. The UK is an exception in that it wasn't bombed by the US, but the upshot is the same. We're a wholely-owned subsidiary of corporate America, and a giant aircraft carrier on the other side of the Atlantic -- as the US's latest adventure in Iran has clearly demonstrated.
You may quibble over the "land" in land-grab, but the strategic bits (e.g., oil fields, bases) are very much owned, and the territory as a whole controlled by pliant governments.
[^1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_oversea...
[^2]: Kissenger, 1972
Nations (and people) exist in an ecosystem, and so will always behave accordingly, and always in their own interests. There are some emergent properties of ecosystems, one of which is that optimal behaviour is to acquire the maximum you are physically capable of defending, not the minimum that you need to survive.
It's perfectly reasonable for the US, the big fish in the pond, to leverage its advantages accordingly, and to the maximum. It would be a disservice to the US people if it did not. Smaller fish should indeed be glad that the big fish is as placid and strategically (rather than ideologically) motivated as it is, given the historically experienced alternatives.
The British empire has been completely wound down, other than a handful of small overseas territories.
How long do you plan on holding the currency set of British people responsible for things they didn’t do?
Just because Britain couldn't afford it anymore. And after bloodshed, in India, Kenya, Cyprus, Malaysia, and elsewhere. Not out of the bigness of their heart.
And the post-colonialism never ended. The same grabby hands get everywhere they can get.
And why exactly are those "small overseas territories" unquestionably retained? "No biggie, just an island here, an island there, and island there, some land in here"
Historically I’ve found your comments informative, well thought out, and entertaining.
Here’s the Wikipedia article on the BOTs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Overseas_Territories
I’m willing to acknowledge those locales probably remain British territories, at least some of them, as an spect of projecting force, in addition the to historical quirks.
I probably don’t know enough.
And, ultimately, it would be nice if everyone got along and was generally content to stay in their lane.
Would the former British colonies be doing better or worse had they never been colonised? Quite possibly better. We’ll never know. At least some of the former colonies have failed spectacularly. That’s probably a good enough reason to never try any of that again.
I’m trying to steelman your arguments here Mr coldtea. Not only that, I have also raged against what happened in a similar manner from time to time.
It's not necessarily correct to assume that they failed because they were previously colonised by the British. Should we have instead allowed other powers to colonise them? That is the only realisitic counterfactual here. Can we truly say the world would have been better off if the British had not colonised various countries, for example when it came to waging the Second World War?
What do you mean? As in invading other countries?
* assisting US offensive actions,
* weapons sales for offensive usage (eg: The UK government admits that Saudi Arabia has used UK weapons, made by companies around the UK, in its attacks on Yemen.)
Why wouldn't you call a military action to stop Argentina invading them "defence"?
As the other commenter correctly guesses, you only have to open the news to find examples. Iran, Palestine, Iraq (way back when). Most "wars" are not really wars these days, they're just exercises in western aggression.
In that case - why do you think it's "in a large proportion of their business"?