The Red Pen

[The Red Pen @TheRedPen12]

@theallinpod @altcap @Reddit @DavidSacks Best pod in a while. All the insight without the ideological soap box.

[The Red Pen @TheRedPen12]

@DavidSacks @RStatecraft Best pod in a while. All the insight without the ideological soap box.

[The Red Pen @TheRedPen12]

@JEyal_RUSI And King Charles in every subject country for 24 days (365/15).

[The Red Pen @TheRedPen12]

@JEyal_RUSI Here’s a thought: Charlemagne-style itinerant court. UK House of Commons in every kingdom for three months a year with a local Speaker.

[The Red Pen @TheRedPen12]

@simonharley @tbonetommy39 Don’t be hard on yourself. To have a viable global scale military you need to be in the $15T+ club. Britain as a middle power can only try to join a big fish, or pool resources with several other middle powers, or both.

[The Red Pen @TheRedPen12]

@JEyal_RUSI Canada did it in 1965. Big ol’ leaf of some sort.

[The Red Pen @TheRedPen12]

@JEyal_RUSI It’s even got the label wrong. The 2% isn’t the ‘goal’, it’s the minimum. The 2006 decision says “at least 2%”.

[The Red Pen @TheRedPen12]

@ianbremmer ‘Russian-speaking’ does not equal ‘ethnically Russian’. I know this because I’m writing this in English. Per @TimothyDSnyder

[The Red Pen @TheRedPen12]

@Rob_Kimbell Look at those silly-goose Union Jacks on the flags of those modern sovereign nations. Canada sorted that out 60 years ago.

[The Red Pen @TheRedPen12]

@JEyal_RUSI Also notice how global culture has made english Europe’s lingua franca? That adoption line has gone basically vertical since ‘07.

[The Red Pen @TheRedPen12]

@JEyal_RUSI @GrahamSmith_ These are holdovers from a time when monarchs actually had power over subjects. Now, the monarch can’t do as much as direct you to the men’s room. Explicitly swearing your subordination to a figurehead is kind of dumb.

[The Red Pen @TheRedPen12]

@ianbremmer I’m less impressed that ‘first indicted president’ will be in the textbooks and more impressed Stormy Daniels is now an historical figure.

[The Red Pen @TheRedPen12]

@GoodwinMJ Nah the funniest is elite conservatives arguing that elites are the problem.

[The Red Pen @TheRedPen12]

@ianbremmer Xi can’t be peace broker because Zelenskyy could never travel to China. They’d put him on a train to Moscow.

[The Red Pen @TheRedPen12]

@MichaelShurkin Japan, strongest ally of the US. By a pretty large margin. Visit’s a big deal.

[The Red Pen @TheRedPen12]

@ChuckMarteau @MichaelShurkin Yep and it is keeping all that hardware for itself. France has sent less than a billion of total military aid. That’s 1.5% of the total support. And France has the fourth largest military budget in NATO. Do better.

[The Red Pen @TheRedPen12]

@ChuckMarteau @MichaelShurkin It’s all marketing. Big splashy statements that add up to 1.6% of defence spend. Show me data not anecdotes.

[The Red Pen @TheRedPen12]

@ChuckMarteau @MichaelShurkin What does France need 98.4% spend for anyway? It should at least spend 1 in 10 euros on the only current war in Europe. Anything less is just cheapskating.

[The Red Pen @TheRedPen12]

@ChuckMarteau @MichaelShurkin France shouldn’t compare itself to Estonia. It should compare itself to Germany, UK, Poland, US, Canada. France is doing almost nothing militarily and is hoping no one notices.

[The Red Pen @TheRedPen12]

@ChuckMarteau @MichaelShurkin Nonsense. Ukraine needs all the hardware it can and France is one of the worst in Europe in sharing it. Three times worse than Germany for example with similar military budgets.