A chance underwater encounter in New Caledonia

Nik Darlington 11.50am

We hovered in clear blue mid-water, soaring over a pristine piste of snow-white sand. Twenty metres to the shimmering sun on the surface, another five to the seabed below.

Out of the deeper-blue distance, I spotted shards of silver and grey. Then another. Those shards became shapes; the shapes became a grey-blue shadow.

Yannick and I locked eyes, nodded and returned our sights to the enlarging shadow. Rapt. In this silent world, a look conveys more than words.

The shadow took form. A sleek six feet, maybe slightly more. The distance shortened, but slowly, as is its want, until a natural cordon ten metres in diameter was formed.

Yannick and I assumed the safest, recommended stance: back-to-back, never take your eyes off its circling form. Precautionary, of course, but truly indeed just to maintain a good look of it. Such economy of movement. So at home.

Unlike Yannick and I, thrill-seeking spectators in an alien environment. Though this is voyeurism with risks. Its graceful orbit became tighter, to the point of its being suffocating. At moments like this one appreciates the non-contradiction of claustrophobia in open water.

Admiration quickly became apprehension. No more than five metres separated us. Little more than two times it.

Then it stopped. Time stood still. Noiselessness interrupted by a noise so inimitable, yet unforgettable. Like a vehicle exhaust backfiring, or the expert crack of a whip.

By the time I had realised it was heading towards us, the sleek form had become a shadow once more. Then shards of silver and grey. Then nothing. All that remained was the shudder of displaced water against my stiffened body. Hairs don’t often stand on end under water.

Yannick and I locked eyes, and smiled.

Yesterday in Bangkok, the oceanic white tip shark was given unprecedented protection by CITES. Its numbers are in dramatic decline as a result of barbaric fishing practices (its prominent dorsal fin is a prized ingredient for Oriental pottage and eccentric medicines).

Opposition from China and Japan has long prevented its accession to a list of protected species but now, alongside three types of hammerheads and the porbeagle, the vulnerable oceanic white tip has been given a stay of execution.

Sharks are too often misunderstood, mistreated and maligned in fiction and film. As our understanding of sharks has increased, however, nations around the world have come to realise their immense worth and intrinsic beauty. Apparently the sea change has been arrived at in part by South American countries comprehending the vast tourism dollars that come with healthy shark stocks.

In coming into direct contact with sharks big and small over the years, I have certainly come to know fear and delight in equal measure. Fear is a good thing - it engenders respect. And is the truest basis for the sublime. There aren’t many good news stories where sharks are concerned. This is one.

Follow Nik on Twitter @NikDarlington

Book review: ‘The Godfather Doctrine’

Aaron Ellis 10.12am

There is nothing wrong with using popular culture to enliven international relations. I once argued that The Magnificent Seven can be viewed as an analogy for Afghanistan, while this article explains why outdated warfare methods and institutional group-think made the Jedi a poor choice to lead the Grand Army of the Republic.

Undoubtedly there are those who will scoff at such things, yet if it is the job of an expert to communicate complex issues to the layman in a way he understands then popular culture is an important resource.

In The Godfather Doctrine, two experts try to use the best film of all time (yes, I said it…) as a parable for American foreign policy in the early 21st Century.

John C. Hulsman and A. Wess Mitchell argue that the world is changing at the expense of the United States and that it has been ill-served by both the liberal institutionalism of Tom Hagen and the neoconservatism of Sonny. If the country is to maintain its position in the world, it must adopt the realpolitik of Michael Corleone.

Unfortunately, the book’s premise is undermined by bad analogies – and as I have said in these pages before, bad analogies are fatal in foreign policy analysis.

Michael Corleone did not merely preserve his family’s power in the criminal underworld; he made it even more powerful and hegemonic than it was under his father Don Vito. He did not do it through ‘smart power’, as the authors of the book believe, but by murdering his rivals. If the United States literally tried to follow Michael’s example, it’d wipe out Brazil, Russia, India, and China in a pre-emptive nuclear strike and then become rulers of the galaxy…

This bad analogy, which undermines the premise of the book, is followed by many others which makes one wonder whether the authors have actually seen The Godfather. For example, they blame the “neocon” Sonny for the gangland war that followed after the murder of the drug-dealer Virgil Sollozzo – just as happened in Iraq. Yet it was Michael who triggered the conflict, first suggesting the hit to a reluctant Tom and Sonny and then carrying it out himself.

An analogy is also made between Sollozzo and Iran. Messrs’ Hulsman and Mitchell rhapsodise about Michael’s use of diplomacy and limited force and say that he would talk to Iran, as well as apply economic sanctions ‘to bring them to their knees’. Of course, in the film, Michael actually puts a bullet in Sollozzo’s head and then weathered the ensuing storm, just as the Israeli strategist Ron Tira argued his country could do a couple of years ago.

If I had to recommend a gangster film that would best explain American foreign policy to the layman, it would be the Coen Brothers’ Millers Crossing: the erratic, headstrong boss Leo whose temper is just about controlled by his realist right-hand man, Tom.

Not to mention being awesome with a firearm…

Follow Aaron on Twitter @AaronHEllis

Despite slowdowns, economic stalemate between Europe and China is set to continue

Henry Hopwood-Phillips 3.44pm

Economic data from China is mixed. The bad news is that after first-quarter GDP growth of 8.1 per cent, second-quarter growth is being revised downwards from 9.5 per cent to 7.8 per cent by Caixin, one of China’s leading financial publications.

Reuters reckons second-quarter growth will fall even further, by 7.6 per cent, the weakest rise since 2008. Other indicators fare no better. Industrial production has risen by the lowest amount in three years, at 9.6 per cent. Electricity consumption fell to 3.7 per cent from 7 per cent in March. Property prices fell in over half of China’s seventy leading cities. And manufacturing PMI suffered its eighth consecutive month of contraction, from 48.8 in  June to 41.8 in May.

The second set of statistics paints a rather different picture. Exports were expected to clock a 6.8 per cent rise but instead surged by 15.3 per cent to $181.1 billion, mostly due to American demand. Not only that, imports only increased 12.7 per cent, giving a healthy trade surplus of around $18.7 billion. One of those imports was oil, which was bought at a record rate of six billion barrels a day in May due mainly to its low price and unstable future.

Bears point to a real estate bubble, over-capacity, over-investment, and a consequent lack of inflation as signs of over-extension. Bulls tend to side more with Jim O’Neill of Goldman Sachs who notes that the historical weight placed on production stats is misplaced and that “indicators of consumption are becoming more important”; and Jack Perkowski of Forbes who reckons “the phrase ‘property bubble’ will no longer be in the vocabulary” reasoning that it must have bottomed out after nine-months of decline.

The Chinese government, noticing a slow-down in demand, has not been slow in reacting. It has cut its interest rates for a second time. Consequently the yuan weakened against the US dollar in Shanghai.

Further measures are also being taken. The monetary authority is pumping 225 billion yuan into the financial system by conducting reverse-repurchase operations. The last steps to lower the amount of cash banks need in reserve, started in November and freeing up 1.2 trillion yuan for lending, are being implemented. And investment projects, many in the underdeveloped interior and western parts of the country, are being fast-tracked.

Beijing also hopes to boost energy demand by subsidising energy-saving white goods to the tune of 26.5 billion yuan. Such measures make a mockery of bullish claims that the Chinese government would intentionally try to cool the economy down in order to tactically restructure it.

China knows the oil that lubricated the post-war global economy is running dry. As the purchasing power of the Western consumer, based at first on rising wages but later on rising house prices has evapourated, no significant replacement has compensated for that lost demand. According to Bloomberg’s David Roseberg over 80 per cent of the world’s top economies are now posting a contraction in industrial activity. The EU and US together account for approximately 40 per cent of Chinese total exports but China knows that its long-term future lies with its own domestic consumer. This is why it has not been afraid to upset the laissez-faire apple cart by playing dirty with its currency, by using state funds to stockpile underpriced rare earths whilst imposing quotas and caps that ensure they remain in its domestic market, by refusing to “save” the eurozone, and by imposing duties worth £2.1 billion on US-made cars.

But the long term is naturally a long way off. Though there is talk in some quarters that the West needs to restructure its economy from a consumer-driven to an export-based one and that China needs to do exactly the opposite, the fact remains that the Chinese, with no real welfare state to speak of, are driven by both economic necessity and to a lesser extent culture, to save and supply rather than consume and demand. The West also has a tendency to overlook the old cronyist fundamentals of the Chinese economy which ensure the masses have little option but to stash their cash.

The fact is that much of the economy is still run on political rather than economical capital and that many bad debts are still sloshing round the system. Current generations are also living with the repercussions of the one-child policy legacy left to them by Xiaoping in 1979. They must save because demographically fewer and fewer people must support an ageing 1950s baby-boom generation.

In the short to medium-term the Chinese middle classes are not going to be either big enough or rich enough to fill the demand gap left by western homo consumericus and that gap remains unfilled by both BRIC and MIKT countries. This is the biggest single factor in the Chinese growth slow-down from averaging 10-13 per cent in the past decade to more humble 8-9 per cent IMF predictions this year.

But the Chinese have so far refused to invest in European customers who live in a eurozone that, according to Jin Liqun, Chairman of CIC, they believe to be profligate, lazy and politically undecided. China wants a eurozone to rise in its own image, with a freer market at ground level and a more centralised political command.

However, both seem unlikely to materialise and so, ceteris paribus, until one side blinks the economic stalemate looks set to continue.

Follow Henry on Twitter @TheHolySmoke

The story of Shin Dong-hyuk: hope springs from North Korea’s gulag

Nik Darlington 2.22pm

“Hope travels through, nor quits us when we die.” Alexander Pope.

How many people will have to die, needlessly and sadistically, in North Korea before hope is fulfilled?

Few stories permeate the confines of the grotesquely named Democratic People’s Republic, and few that do are as powerful as that of Shin Dong-hyuk, the only person to have escaped to the West from a North Korean concentration camp.

Shin’s story, Escape from Camp 14, has been described as a harrowing and extraordinary account of the grim semi-existence endured in the country’s gulags.

And a wonderful interview of Shin is out today on the Spectator’s Coffee House blog, by books editor David Blackburn, which I wholeheartedly urge you to read in full. Here is but a short extract:

Shin is nearly 30. He is short, maybe 5 and a half feet tall. He is immaculate in a well cut suit and sharp black shoes. His hair is neat and he carries himself with dignity. He is slim but there is evident strength in the line of his shoulders and the set of his hips. This is not the protein-shake variety of physique, the kind that takes up too much space on the Tube and develops diabetes. It is the lean, wiry type that can withstand 10 degrees below zero without a coat.

There is something about Shin, probably the knowledge of his past, that, I am ashamed to admit, makes me shift uncomfortably in my very comfortable seat. There is nothing quite like being confronted by one’s own indifference.

China can still learn from the West

Alexander Pannett 11.50pm

This week has seen the visit of Xi Jinping, the Vice-President of China, to the US.

It has been heralded as an important moment for the man widely expected to become China’s next president.

If this is so, Xi Jinping will be the leader of China at the moment that China has been forecast to eclipse the US as the largest economy in the world (in 2023).  To underline the importance of this fact, this will be the first time that a non-Western nation will have been the largest economy in the world for 500 years and the first non-democracy in almost 200 years.

The visit has again raised debate over the huge economic achievement of China compared with a soporific West that seems to lurch from one debilitating crisis to another. Commentators have insisted that it is now the West who should take political and economic lessons from China regarding the “China Model” of state capitalism rather than the alleged languidness and instability of the Western democratic model.

Impressive and sustained Chinese growth has been the defining feature of geo-strategic politics over the last 20 years cannot be denied. It appears that the rise of Islamic terrorism was a minor detour against the real historical changes affecting the world; the continuing transfer of wealth and power from West to East.

 Chinese advocates point to their government’s long-terms solidity, being able to implement projects that bring economic growth regardless of public opinion. The one party state can extend its will throughout China as no Western democratic government can. This allows for extensively ambitious construction works that have forged an infrastructure that has driven China to its current economic paean.

While the East has grown in importance, the West has descended into paralysis due to internal disputes. In the US, politics has never been more partisan, which has resulted in repeated failure to reach an agreement in lowering the titanic debt that is undermining America’s stature in the world, symbolic as the Chinese are the main creditors of this debt. In Europe, a sovereign debt crisis that has no end in sight threatens the very survival of the European Union.

America’s war on terrorism has shattered the Western unity that existed during the Cold War. Worse still, the Western intellectual genealogy that stemmed from a shared Enlightenment inheritance appears to be fraying as an increasingly secular and liberal Europe drifts further apart from an increasingly religious and conservative America. As America looks to the Pacific, Europe is becoming more pacific.

However, while there are undoubted merits to China’s economic growth, it still has much to learn from the West. Fractious as Western politics may be, democracies benefit from an attribute that all the economic growth in the world cannot bring: accountability.

Ruling through the acquiescence of the people ensures that Western governments must justify why grand endeavours are of benefit to their people. This checks the more hubristic ambitions of politicians. It also brings a modicum of transparency to the corridors of power that can too easily be swayed by vested interests, even corruption.

 A society that permits free expression will produce more innovative thinkers than a state that rejects views that differ from its priorities. It is telling that China has caught up with the technology of the West not from creating rival products or ideas through native research and development but from widespread piracy of Western intellectual property.

Though its economic growth has been herculean, China’s environmental record has been consequently sisyphean. Development has led to huge water shortages, with more than two-thirds of cities reporting an inadequate water supply and two-thirds of Chinese lakes have chemical deficiencies caused by pollution according to government estimates. Huge dust storms now envelop Beijing due to increasing desertification from over-farming. In 2005 China’s worsening air pollution cost the country $112 billion in lost economic productivity.

This is to say nothing of the social costs that have resulted from human rights abuses and a growing economic under-class. Despite its prosperity, most of China’s population earn too little to reach the threshold for income taxation. Only 24 million people make the $545 monthly threshold for taxation, according to the Ministry of Finance.

 This is the dark underside of a political system that is not accountable for its actions. The former USSR provides plenty of horrendous examples of wide-reaching government ambitions having ill-thought out and disastrous consequences. The Aral Sea is now an environmental wasteland and half its original size, due to extensive Soviet irrigation that attempted to turn Kazakhstan into a giant rice and cotton production centre. The Chernobyl nuclear disaster is another example.

 The Western model of democracy is not the only model of governance or without its own faults. Western governments have often been guilty of grand strategies that have brought more pain and suffering than any lasting achievement. It should also be recognised that the current Chinese one party model originates from political ideologies that were cultivated in the West.

 However, before China grows too confident in its own manifest destiny, it should be aware of the severe dangers of a government that rules without accountability. While China’s economic achievements currently dwarf those of the West, China still has much to learn from Western democracy.

Let us hope that the coming century will be a beacon of mutual erudition between East and West. A Confucian century of social harmony, rather than a Machiavellian century of rivalry.

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@alpannett

Western decline is not inevitable as long as we learn from our mistakes

Aaron Ellis 12.13pm

The West has had a tough time these last few years, flying from one crisis to another as if in a pinball machine and some of the levers seemingly controlled by the Chinese.

Some believe that the ongoing sovereign debt crisis is not only a crisis of globalisation but also one of Western identity. Given the alarm with which many in Europe reacted to the possibility of Beijing coming to their financial rescue late last year, they might be onto something.

Yet it is not the rise of countries like China that is dispiriting. Rather it is the self-pity that their rise has engendered in the West. Our public discourse has a melancholic tone, often combined with morbid humour: such as the gag that Chinese leaders only visit the United States to collect the rent. This kind of talk about Western decline is exaggerated and I reckon that we can reverse our relative decline by learning from some of the mistakes of the last decade.

First, we need to take a step back from the West’s day-to-day crises and look at the bigger picture. Professor Julian Lindley-French, an associate fellow at Chatham House, has done this, and in the passage below he displays typical common sense:

Whilst it is certainly the case that the emergence of China, India and others on the world stage is leading to a new balance of power, neither the West nor Britain are in terminal decline.

However, unless the despond of defeatism that seems to affect and afflict much of Europe is overcome decline could well become a self-fulfilling prophecy…[T]he zero sum game and with it the idea that if power rises on one part of the planet it must by definition decline elsewhere, is a compelling and neat academic treatise. Unfortunately, it is wrong.

There is no automatic reason why an increase in the power of China, India et al should automatically lead to a loss of Western power. Power and its wielding are subject to many factors.

In the context of American decline vis-à-vis China, an interesting article has pointed out that…

… Many studies note that the growth rates of China’s per capita income, value added in high technology industries, and military spending exceed those of the United States and then conclude that China is catching up. This focus on growth rates, however, obscures China’s decline relative to the United States in all of these categories. China’s growth rates are high because its starting point was low. China is rising, but it is not catching up.

There are things we can do in the West to overcome the challenges we face in the 21st century. For example, there needs to be a fundamental change in the way the United States leads the Western Alliance.

American hegemony is a Good Thing, in my view, but it has also had two harmful effects on Western cohesion. The almost universal power of the US military is a disincentive for the British and Europeans to spend money on defence with their security more or less guaranteed by others. Dan Trombly explained this point in more depth some months ago.

Because of the US hegemony, Washington also excludes NATO governments from its policy-making; the US decides on a policy – after bitter bureaucratic struggles – and informs its allies of the decision after it has been taken. This process wastes NATO governments’ expertise, leads to miscoordination and prevents British and European co-ownership of US policies.

President Obama has begun to remedy the first problem with his decision to “lead from behind” in Libya, but Afghanistan and the New START negotiations are perfect examples of the second one. A more inclusive policy making process will help the West overcome the challenges ahead.

There also must be clearly defined national interests separate from Western ones.

Western malaise is partly caused by an acute sense of overstretch, which was partly caused in turn by what I have called on these pages the “internationalisation of the national interest”.

This is the belief that the world is so globalised and interconnected that every crisis is a threat to our security and it is vital we are involved in sorting out the problem. Try having a coherent foreign policy with this belief as your framework!

If the Western Alliance is to be strong and united on the issues that matter to all its members then we also must appreciate there are issues where our interests are not at stake and cooperation must be more flexible. Germany’s position on Libya and, to a lesser extent America’s, is a perfect example of this.

It has been said that self-pity destroys everything except itself. The self-pity of many in the West about our supposed decline is destroying our chances of being relevant in the multipolar world of the 21st century.

Follow Aaron on Twitter @AaronHEllis

Transport problems: Heathrow is the solution that dare not rear its head

Stuart Baldock 9.38am

The Government has put itself in a difficult spot with regards to solving the South East’s airport capacity problem - or more accurately the capacity issue at Heathrow.

Prior to the election, the Conservative party - it could be said foolishly - ruled out building a third runway at Heathrow. The Liberal Democrats - perhaps even more foolishly - have ruled out any capacity increase in the South East, including a new airport or additional runways at Stansted or Gatwick. Both policies are enshrined in the Coalition Agreement. Both Parties should reconsider.

Airports are as important to the modern UK economy as maritime ports were between the 18th and 20th centuries. At a time when growth in the economy is desperately needed, ignoring this fact is misguided at best, or reckless and incompetent at worst.

Success in this globalised world depends on one’s links to current and potential markets.

No matter how good teleconferencing has become, business is still done in person. Indeed, a report by Frontier Economics, an economic consultancy, found that UK businesses trade by as much as twenty times more with economies that have direct daily flights to the UK compared with those that have fewer or no services.

Lack of capacity is already estimated to cost the UK economy £1.2 billion each year. Heathrow is operating at nearly 100 per cent capacity.

The UK is far behind competitors when it comes to direct flights China. As shown below, the UK has significantly less flights to the main Chinese cities than Frankfurt and Paris. In the case of Guangzhou, the leading manufacturing region in China, there are no direct flights from Heathrow.

BEIJING:

Frankfurt – 1032 

Paris – 964

Heathrow – 698

SHANGHAI:

Frankfurt – 1110

Paris – 1323

Heathrow – 621

GUANGZHOU:

Frankfurt – 211

Paris – 290

Heathrow – 0

There have been a number of solutions put forward to rectify London’s airport capacity problem:

• Build extra runways at Gatwick and/or Stansted. Both schemes would be relatively cheap – at around £2.5 billion. But Stanstead is unlikely to attract a significant number of airlines due to its distance from London. The Stansted Express train connection could be up-graded but at significant cost. Also linking it with HS2 would be prohibitively expensive due to its distance from the intended high-speed route. The main issue with expanding Gatwick is a planning agreement with West Sussex County Council prohibits the building of a second runway until after 2019. Not ideal when the Heathrow is already operating at capacity.

• Build a ‘Thames Estuary Airport’ – Lord Foster’s Isle of Grain scheme, the so called ‘Boris Island’, or an airport at Cliffe in Kent. The main issue with these schemes is the cost. The cheapest proposal is Cliffe at £14 billion. The other schemes are estimated in excess of £20 billion just for the airports, while another £30 billion may be necessary for associated transport infrastructure. There are also environmental and safety issues to consider: birds and airliners are not compatible. A 2003 report found that the risk of losing an aircraft to bird strike around a ‘Thames Estuary’ was between one in 100 or 300 years – significantly more than any other UK airport.

Heathrow is the best option from a point of view of speed, cost, and environmental sustainability.

An additional runway could be built relatively quickly and could cost around £9 billion - a substantial investment, but not as much as other schemes.

The question has to be asked, is it really ‘sustainable’ to close one airport in a suburb (which is what it would take to make many airlines leave Heathrow) and move it to ecologically important marshland? No.

Heathrow can - as indeed is planned - be easily linked with HS2 so that the benefits of a world class airport can be shared with the rest of the UK, not just the South East. A third runway may not be the most staightforward option politically, but it is the best option.

Follow Stuart on Twitter @stuartbaldock

In foreign policy, common values do not mean common interests

Aaron Ellis 11.03am

One of the popular misconceptions in international relations is that countries which share common values automatically possess common interests.

This attitude is historically flawed and a dangerous influence on contemporary policy, pace the attempt to create a European foreign policy. Twenty-five nations with different customs, histories, cultures and economic priorities cannot share a single foreign policy. A series of crises over the last decade from Iraq to the Eurozone are evidence of this fact.

But particularly dangerous is the notion that democracies do not share common interests with autocracies. An example of this kind of thinking is the “league of democracies” idea, advocated by neoconservatives like former US presidential candidate John McCain and the historian Robert Kagan.

Their presumption is that autocracies like China and Russia pose a challenge to western democracies.

“In a world increasingly divided along democratic and autocratic lines, the world’s democrats will have to stick together”, wrote Robert Kagan in The Return of History and the End of Dreams.

This new league would “complement” institutions like the UN, which is to say do things that they can’t do because they can’t get past the Security Council. And it is necessary to do this because, if we don’t, the power of the democratic nations individually will decline and their collective interests will be undermined by stronger, autocratic powers. “History has returned, and the democracies must come together to shape it, or others will shape it for them.”

If their ideas are to be taken seriously, neoconservatives need people to accept that Russia and China pose an existential threat comparable to the Soviet Union and even the rise of fascism in the 1930s.

“The world’s democracies need to begin thinking about how they can protect their interests and defend their principles in a world in which these are once again powerfully challenged.” Robert Kagan’s implicit comparison is wide of the mark, and its dubiousness is reinforced by him and other neocons lumping together the eastern autocracies with Iran and nuclear proliferation and Islamist terrorism and any other evil they see fit to mention.

They also assume that common political values mean common geopolitical interests, which ignores geopolitical realities.

China has as much money invested in the United States as it does in Africa, and Germany has close economic ties with Russia, prompting her to argue against the EU taking an anti-Russian stance. Robert Kagan and others seem to ignore this.

The thinking behind the ‘league’ and similarly grand schemes is that democracies do not go to war with one another, which is taken seriously only by people who don’t know any history.

Both the American War of Independence and the War of 1812 were waged between a republic and a constitutional monarchy with representative institutions. Finland also declared war on Britain during the Second World War after the German invasion of the Soviet Union brought the Russians on to the Allied side.

As a proposition, the “democratic peace theory” also ignores the many times democracies have almost gone to war. Throughout the later 19th century there were numerous occasions when conflict could have broken out between either Britain and the United States or Britain and France. It wasn’t the pacifist will of the people that prevented fighting, rather it was the secret diplomacy of national elites.

Those people who believe that different political systems cannot be comfortable allies also ignore the many instances when they have been. The Allies in the Second World War are often cited, but there are other less-well-known examples like the strong relationship between France and Tsarist Russia and the Anglo-Japanese alliance at the turn of the 20th century.

Lord Palmerston’s line about ‘no permanent friends, only permanent interests’ is hackneyed but nonetheless true. There is no reason why democracies cannot share strategic interests with autocracies, either historically or today.

Neoconservatives pose a threat to world peace by insisting this can’t be the case.

“Great disasters,” wrote the historian A. J. P. Taylor, “are caused by trying to learn from history and correct past mistakes…it is probably best to think about the present, not about the past.”

China and Russia today are not Nazi Germany nor the Soviet Union. To treat them as such would be perilous. Why make unnecessary enemies?

We choose our allies and our enemies according to our interests. To think differently is to go against many of the basics of good statecraft and risks committing us to unnecessary wars.

Follow Aaron on Twitter @AaronHEllis