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Ukraine V

mykel said:
Tibet, Nepal, Bhutan, big chunk of India, big chunk of Siberia, South China sea.

What do they not consider theirs?
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Probably ties in with the old Chinese fable that the Great Master Baker produced humankind. The first batch was underdone and came out a pale white colour. The second batch was overdone and came out black. The third batch was perfect, a nice golden-brown. No prizes...

A century before Columbus, Admiral Zheng He set forth in an armada of enormous ships that dwarfed Columbus's. They got as far as Africa and Arabia, but the Imperial Court decided that everything out there was inferior and unworthy of notice, so the great ships returned and were burned. The Chinese now seem keen on re-establishing themselves as the centre of the universe. I wonder how Putin feels about being the junior partner.
 
Indeed and, like Finland and Sweden, the war has caused decisions to join NATO which would probably not have happened otherwise. There was no internal pressure within Finland or Sweden for NATO membership and (to my limited knowledge) no overtures from NATO for them to join, so things would have gone on just as before, with Finland/Sweden (and probably Ukraine) as 'NATO curious' but not actually doing anything about it.
 
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Every now and again I like to hop around the foreign news channels. Today, I alighted on France 24 which had an article on global defence spending being the highest since the Cold War. A few surprising facts (to me anyway):

Ukraine increase 640%

China increase 7.1%

UK 10% and number six globally

US annual increase only 0.7%
 
"Prigozhin, leader of Russia's Wagner Group, has said that they will no longer capture Ukrainian soldiers fighting against them. Instead, they will all be killed." (Twitter)
 
Sue Pertwee-Tyr said:
Indeed and, like Finland and Norway, the war has caused decisions to join NATO which would probably not have happened otherwise. There was no internal pressure within Finland or Norway for NATO membership and (to my limited knowledge) no overtures from NATO for them to join, so things would have gone on just as before, with Finland/Norway (and probably Ukraine) as 'NATO curious' but not actually doing anything about it.
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It's Finland and Sweden. Norway and Denmark are NATO founding members (=since 1949).

AFAIK Sweden chose to stay neutral after WW2 among other reasonsto support Finland's position which for obvious reasons had no other realistic choice except neutrality at the time.
 
Spraggons Den said:
Every now and again I like to hop around the foreign news channels. Today, I alighted on France 24 which had an article on global defence spending being the highest since the Cold War. A few surprising facts (to me anyway):

Ukraine increase 640%

China increase 7.1%

UK 10% and number six globally

US annual increase only 0.7%
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Only one of these countries is in the insurance business.
 
tones said:
Probably ties in with the old Chinese fable that the Great Master Baker produced humankind. The first batch was underdone and came out a pale white colour. The second batch was overdone and came out black. The third batch was perfect, a nice golden-brown. No prizes...

A century before Columbus, Admiral Zheng He set forth in an armada of enormous ships that dwarfed Columbus's. They got as far as Africa and Arabia, but the Imperial Court decided that everything out there was inferior and unworthy of notice, so the great ships returned and were burned.
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And allegedly Australia too!
There was a new emperor, and the court eunuchs who had hated the idea, at last got their way. Chinese cultural supremacy has been a national theme for over 1000 years, so hardly new. It was simply interrupted to an extent under the communists, but has now re-asserted itself. Russia has a related self view, in that they approve of a strong "father" as their leader.
 
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