0010 Daily Notes 2013 08.30 Thursday 10th October . I had a reasonable night with SP Treatment averaging 8.4 still. I had the heating on for an hour to take off the morning chill. I played Patience enjoying a bowl of cereal and will brew coffee shortly. I then spent 45 mins topping and tailing the last three daily notes which also included writing up the major part of yesterday as I was too tired last night. These now uploaded and printed original and album editions. The plan is now to finish the cricket writing 2496 before going back to Newcastle for the important Defence lecture from Syria to Scotland based on a geopolitical academic analysis.
Also yesterday paid off the outstanding account main Credit Card and printed out Bank statement and enjoyed rest of chicken with a madras curry and plain white rice yesterday evening on return from Newcastle.
15.15 the day has gone well and after the uploading I have concentrated on finishing the writing of 2496 on Durham cricket, present and future but will leave the final checking and uploading until my return from Newcastle after the Annual defence lecture at he University For lunch I started with some noodles and then enjoyed four mini fish cakes of salmon and crab on their own with a can of Maxi Pepsi.
20.00 Despite the threat of rain I decided to wrap up well with my long black Mac, take the small umbrella and walk to the Metro station for the journey to Newcastle, abandoning the idea of investigating the notice about free parking after 5pm and deciding against repeating doing to Hewarth, saving the cost of the petrol and £2.40 in he process.
I arrived at the lecture hall building at the University just before five and found many waiting to enter the auditorium, plus around 100 military and naval men and women in uniform as well as later several young men in smart suits who I believe were officers from local barracks. They comprised at least a third to a half of the audience which was full around 250 people. Yesterday I put the audience for Gurcharan Das on India at around 100.
Sir Hew Strachan was a significant participant who as an academic has made a study of War in History, especially the first World War as we come to mark 100 year since it commenced. His lecture was headed from Syria to Scotland geopolitics in today’s world and my first task was to ensure that I understood what is meant by geopolitics.
Wikipedia states Geopolitics is the study of the effects of geography (both human and physical) on international politics and international relations. Geopolitics is a method of foreign policy analysis which seeks to understand, explain, and predict international political behaviour primarily in terms of geographical variables. Typical geographical variables are the physical location, size, climate, topography, demography, natural resources, and technological advances of the state being evaluated. Traditionally, the term has applied primarily to the impact of geography on politics, but its usage has evolved over the past century to encompass wider connotations.
Geopolitics traditionally studies the links between political power and geographic space, and examines strategic prescriptions based on the relative importance of land power and sea power in world history. The geopolitical tradition had some consistent concerns with geopolitical correlations of power in world politics, the identification of international core areas, and the relationships between naval and terrestrial capabilities Academically, the study of geopolitics analyses geography, history, and social science with reference to spatial politics and patterns at various scales. Also, the study of geopolitics includes the study of the ensemble of relations between the interests of international political actors, interests focused to an area, space, geographical element or ways, relations which create a geopolitical system. Geopolitics is multidisciplinary in scope, and includes all aspects of the social sciences—with particular emphasis on political geography, international relations, the territorial aspects of political science and international law. The practice directly and indirectly impacts businesses and economies.
The term "Geopolitics" was coined at the beginning of the twentieth century by Rudolf Kjellén, a Swedish political scientist, who was inspired by the German geographer Friedrich Ratzel. Ratzel published Politische Geographie (political geography) in 1897; that book was later popularized in English by the Austro-Hungarian historian Emil Reich and the American diplomat Robert Strausz-Hupé (a faculty member of the University of Pennsylvania). Although Halford Mackinder had a pioneering role in the field, he never used the term geopolitics himself.
Sir Hew’s lecture was a brilliant encompassing of the majority of issues included in the definition and i regretted that his box office title would have misled many into thinking he would be concentrating his lecture on the current situation in Syria and the issue of the Scottish independence referendum without providing a broad historical perspective of the basis of his persuasive argument if you are prepared to support military intervention in a good cause where one has choice as would have been the situation in Syria and may still become an issue although the announcement today that the latest Nobel Peace prize has not gone to the school girl from Pakistan Malala, although she has been given the EU Peace prize, but to those who have commenced the removal and destruction of Syrian Chemical Weapons.
His lecture provided the opportunity to consider a number of concepts which I readily understood and accepted but needed to digest which meant that at times I did not keep up with all the nuances of his central thesis. Because everyone was jammed packed together I was hesitant about note taking which I now regret although I could relive the experience if the lecture has already been posted on the internet, but in terms of priorities and my work balance for to day and the coming week I need to continue to write this and move on, noting the points which have been left with me without a relistening and further consideration.
He drew attention if one is attacked, unless you surrender there is no alternative but to fight. There is no other choice where as many of the recent intervention there has been choice We could ignore the slaughter of human beings in their thousands and tens of thousands, and the associated humanitarian crisis as countless others in their hundreds of thousands flee with nothing but their clothing, skills, if they have them and memories in order to avoid death or life changing maiming. In UK in particular our approach has been governed not so much by what happened in the Second World War but by the subsequent genocide in Africa and central Europe which led to positive intervention but then has come to a halt because of what ahs happened in Iraq and an Afghanistan, the impact on other civilians, the lack of a peaceful outcome which appears to satisfy all its citizens and the reminder of the cost with the constant return and funerals of young men and a few women.
He argued that the situation in Syria could have been dealt with had we intervened to support the removal of the Presidential regime as the so called Arab Spring was underway and that if we proposed to intervene we should and could have planned to do so, amassing the intelligence and work out with others so mind the best way to ensure a positive outcome sustained after the removal of the regime. In the event we stood back as did the USA who he suggested had become more interested in he pacific than the North Atlantic as the attention is focussed on China.
He suggested that only the countries with major land masses, China, Russia, India, Brazil as well as the USA would have the capacity to sustain themselves in terms of natural resources availability, the increasing demand for energy ( and arising from the lecture the previous night as all these nations attempt to match the per capita wealth of the USA and its consequential power and influence). He mentioned that Australia had at one point wanted to develop a fleet of nuclear submarines until representation from China whose purchasing of needed resources was responsible for the economic strength and growth of that country.
He suggested that whereas European Countries and signed up to the North Atlantic Treaty on the basis that the USA would aid if participants were attacked during the Cold War era, the more likely possibility was now that it would be the USA who would call on Europe to assist in the event of an attack on its Pacific Seaboard, potentially from Asia rather than from Russia from the cold war ideology clash between Command control of the economy by the state ( what I would call the Communist Socialist imperative) and the capitalist imperative of the free market. As was also covered yesterday we now have in many way an extraordinary situation of all the major land masses using the capitalist market model to rapidly progress their economies as with China of course having the political model to direct and enforce the changes required.... The establishment of an increasing in size of the middle class as happened in the UK in the industrial revolution must inevitably in my view lead to and what I also think must result in a widening of the wealth gap between the top and the bottom, especially as of recent times when it looks that national economic growth is not a given a s a means of ameliorating the impact of the system on the have nots, those affected by its downs as well as ups as well as providing a wide range of public funded social support and enhancements..
The ability of the large land masses to cope with climate change for example pointed to greater comings together (as I have argued in relation to the European concept since attending Henley back in the mid 1980’s) than separatism (with the Scotland’s argument for impendence).
Given that the speaker is a specialist adviser to the General Staff and the Parliamentary Security Committee (he suggested they generally did not take his advice) I was interested in his particular comments that the Military against the proposed recent intervention in Syria as was Osborn in terms of cost and the Prime Minister had been motivated by genuine humanitarism but faced with the opposition within in own party (little Englander), public war weariness) he had just not backed down faced with the prospect of Commons defeat but refused to consider any intervention even if information and circumstances changed. He was even more critical of Obama suggesting that the motive of the president had been one of gesture politics without real intent.
As he strayed more and more from the geopolitical analysis. I felt he missed the point or at least what is simple to me that despite what Syrian leader had been doing and recently this was 14th known chemical attack, the Western nexus had done a deal saying he could remain in power and crush the opposition if he immediately assisted in removing chemical weapons before they fell into the hands of the one or more of the extremism factions set on a fundamentalist Muslim state and the imposition of Muslim law system which the Taliban have now said must be the basis of any talking about their future with the head of Afghanistan saying that he feels that despite the years of intervention the state is no more secure that when the intervention started. I found all this depressing especially with the USA turning more and more away from the United Nations which is based within its borders and President Putin of Russian gaining the kudos in the rest of the world holding back the proposed intervention of he USA France and the UK.
What those brave young men and women who attended the lecture made of these and the other issues or the way and context in which they were raised I have no means of knowing,.
I headed home as quickly as I could for the night had become cold colder.
I cannot remember now if it was yesterday or the day before I viewed the important new series about the work of Masters and Johnson. I think the day before as I recalling writing something. I went to bed after some quick food making, email responding and game playing.
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