An interesting argument yesterday with one of my Chinese students. He said that the Chinese authorities have great respect for the British intervention in the Ukraine War. They believe that the target is not the Russians, and that eventually the British and Russians will reach an amicable agreement. The target was the Germans. Cutting off the flow of cheap Russian hydrocarbons has crippled the German economy. This has weakened the European Union and put a stop to any attempt at building European armed forces. The only European country able to ride out this crisis in reasonable economic and military shape is Britain, which will eventually impose its will on Germany and France. The East European countries will come out of this war with a strengthened and angry Russia on their borders, and with a weakened Germany. The only country remotely able to protect them will be Britain, and they will not repeat the stab in the back of 2019, when they sided with Germany of the Remainers in our Brexit negotiations.
He said my reading of the British ruling class as a bunch of incompetent traitors was superficial, and that the Ukraine War is the real Brexit. He even suggested that the Americans had been sucked into a trap, with a probable loss of dollar supremacy from which the pound and the City of London would emerge with enhanced power.
My response was that he was too clever by half and that he should apply himself to his Greek verb tables. Except I don’t regard the death of 350,000 Ukrainian soldiers as a legitimate price for doing over the French and Germans, I can’t presently think of an argument against his case.
