A hundred years ago an event of great geopolitical significance occurred – the fall of Baku and the Republic of Azerbaijan to the Red Army. When the question is asked: why did this happen it is usually answered with an explanation of how it happened, neatly side-stepping the actual issue why? It seems to be […]
British policy with regard to Russia and the Caucasus was formed in the Imperial War Cabinet. This was founded in 1916 after Lloyd George replaced Asquith as Prime Minister. Its function was to concentrate power in the hands of the few (rather than the 22 of the normal Cabinet) so that the War could be […]
Editorial from Irish Foreign Affairs (August 2017): England declared itself an Empire about 500 years ago—486 years ago to be exact. The meaning of that declaration was that it asserted itself as an absolutely independent sovereign Power. By doing so it detached itself from Europe. John Bruton, the former Taoiseach, has written a long article […]
Editorial from The Irish Political Review May 2017: North Korea is the last of the Cold War states—that is, the last of the states left behind by Britain’s Second World War: that is, the war on Germany that Britain declared in 1939, expanded into a World War by use of its Navy when defeated in […]
“Since in the domain of foreign affairs Great Britain spoke for her whole Empire, and since the seas of the world were controlled by the unchallenged strength of the British Navy, the influence of Europe was predominant over the whole globe, while at the same time no world war was possible without British intervention.” (G.M. […]
There has been much criticism lately of Russian bombing in pursuance of military objectives in Syria. The bombing has been purely of a military character to support the boots on the ground wresting territory from the enemy. It does not have the objective of obliterating the civilian population in pursuit of their destruction of their […]
On the eve of Britain’s Second World War on Germany in 1939 Arthur Bomber Harris was single-minded in his view of how it should be waged: “I could see only one vista through the wood which seemed to end in the faintest gleam of daylight. That was the bomber offensive. But in any case I […]
The bombing of civilian populations was originated and perfected by Britain in “policing” operations on the frontier of India/Afghanistan and its new construction of Iraq in the inter-war years i.e in the interlude between the two British World Wars on Germany. Hugh Trenchard, father of the RAF, had not been able to put his strategy […]
The Russians have been bombing Aleppo in pursuance of military objectives. That is hardly something that is unprecedented in warfare over the last century. But in the US and UK the consequences of that bombing are placed on the TV screens in a way that mirrors the absence of all such images of the bombing […]
The Bundestag has passed the ‘Remembering and Commemorating Genocide against Armenians and other Christian minorities in the period of 1915-1916’ Resolution. The vote of the German Parliament is more an indication that there is something rotten in the modern state of Germany than there was in Ottoman Turkey. Germany had no reason to pass such […]
