Alexander Clarkson

See also @sodrock.bsky.social among others work on entrenched adherence to concepts of apolitical institutional behaviour in the US officer corps that leaves generals paralysed in the face of authoritarian leaders above them and growing radicalisation and militarised populism within ranks below them

The Toronto Star will be even better

There is a sub-culture of Europhile American mid-level and senior officers with a lot of experience of and even profound attachment to Europe who may no longer feel comfortable in US DoD yet if hired could make a very useful contribution to European militaries and EU institutions

Most who are pissed off and tired of this will only speak up after resigning and in many cases for good reasons moving to places like Toronto, Rome or Frankfurt

Worth keeping in mind that in parts of the US Right there has since the fall of Saigon been a lingering stab in the back myth that blamed left wing protesters at home for preventing American military victory in Vietnam

CPD has 20+ injured on duty this afternoon, most/all from federal use of gas. Related: no arrests by CPD, no documented uses of force by CPD. (I wasn't everywhere / didn't see every skirmish. And possibly some late-entry TRR forms to come.) Saw two federal arrests, saw one on video didn't witness.

It’s pretty emblematic of today’s US Army, if you didn’t go to jump school, Ranger school, or some kind of SOF course, people question whether you were really “in” the Army at all, thus a whole bunch of officers who could be helpful self select out

The U.S. Navy’s Readiness Crisis Is a Problem for Europe, Too For more than a century, naval power was a crucial part of US global power. But now, a structural crisis in the US Navy threatens that power.

Friendly reminder that the US Navy finds itself in a deepening recruitment, retention, maintenance and shipbuilding crisis
www.worldpoliticsreview.com/us-navy-powe...

In news that might not be 100% unconnected to the last couple of weeks of other party conferences, the Greens now say they have 84,000 members (in England and Wales), with 25% of them aged under 30.

Amazingly enough, it seems like the claims made in a book listing the successes of Brexit might not be quite right... presumably also the book doesn't include how UK exports haven't risen since 2019, and UK immigration has, when I seem to remember the promise was of the opposite.

I just have no idea who the Tories think the audience is for full bore authoritarianism plus austerity. Very few who want the former want the latter.

Denying a referendum is a dynamic that can lead to entrenched polarisation and potential escalation. It would be the start of a new dynamic, not the end of the story.

That maybe is my main issue with Hugo's first post (agree largely with the rest of the thread). It's anchored around 1990s assumptions about UK politics when we live in a much more fractured and volatile era. Messing with something like ECHR risks becoming the pin that gets pulled off a grenade

I agree with the legal aspects of that account's thread, but there are risks to state cohesion beyond legal frameworks if departure from the ECHR is part of a wider far right muscular unionist turn among Reform and post-Tory Conservatives

The problem with this claim is it doesn't take the likelihood into account of Scottish independence, NI chaos and Wales drifting away if such a Reform/post-Tory Conservative outlook took power.

Leaving the ECHR would increase risks of the UK breaking up, so these dynamics are unlikely to be linear

Never mind the fact that a Reform or Conservative government in this form would probably lead to Scottish independence and perhaps even a Welsh drift away.

Never mind that Iain Dale might want to consider how his work and those around him might have contributed to the post-Tory Conservative Party's radicalisation spiral

Never mind the fact that Iain Dale might want to consider how his work and those around him might have contributed to the post-Tory Conservative Party's radicalisation spiral

Still waiting for Iain Dale to realise his Conservative Party has gone completely nuts and can't be supported anymore. But I've been waiting for that for a long time. Still, hope springs eternal.

The Conservative Party's lurch deeper into xenophobic authoritarianism to catch up with the Reform Party means that Farage will inevitably move even further towards radicalisation to remain distinct from the Conservatives who will then lurch even deeper into..

Barely a fortnight has passed since Kemi Badenoch’s reflexive and incredibly OTT hostility to the government’s proposals for digital ID.

Yeah - Badenoch is a flame-out of a kind that usually happens at minister of state level, and it is a consequence of the “you fool, this doesn’t matter because it doesn’t Cut Through with the public“ attitude of the Tory party in the Boris Johnson era.

Mixed readings so far on viability of ceasefire. On the one hand, IDF is standing down a considerable amount of reserves, & defence officials are briefing potential hostage release timetables. On the other, IDF intensified airstrikes and artillery, and Israel Katz, an idiot...

CDU-Politiker: Der schwarz-blaue Sehnsuchtssatz "Die Mehrheit ist rechts, aber bekommt trotzdem linke Politik" – diese Formel wiederholen CDU-Politiker gerade auffällig oft. Dahinter steckt eine gefährliche Strategie.

"Die Mehrheit in diesem Land ist rechts, aber bekommt trotzdem eine linke Politik" – dieser Satz ist also nicht analytisch gemeint, sondern strategisch. Er ist nicht da, um etwas zu beschreiben, sondern um etwas zu planen.

www.zeit.de/politik/2025...

This is the same level of nuance and reflection that gave the UK hard Brexit

Make sure they are cool before handling them

Yeah, Keir Starmer is an exasperated manager, Nigel Farage a golf club bore, Ed Davey an incompetent cuddly uncle but Kemi is every work colleague you’ve ever had who thought themselves to be superior to everyone around them, on steroids.

I visited the apartment building ICE raided on Tuesday today. Story to come, but you can walk right in. Half of the apartments have no doors on them. Children's stuff abandoned in some flats. *Citizen* residents told me they were arrested and held for hours in zipties. This is America

Kemi Badenoch says she will send people "back to where they came from"

As the escalation cycle ratchets upwards in the US every time an ICE unit commits an even worse act of violence against civilians the UK Conservative Party will be asked whether this is the outcome it wants.

The most revealing thing will then be which Conservative figure answers with "yes".