Ok Foxy, keep dreaming.

Keep pretending chatter is going to make a difference to the CCP.

I am not going to spar with you anymore on the CCP.

Dear Banjo Paterson,

There’s a Russian proverb that Ronald Reagan was fond of quoting, “Trust but verify.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trust,_but_verify

If a disarmament treaty is made it should include provisions for parties to the treaty to inspect to see that all are living up to the treaty. If any party to the treaty puts obstacles to inspection than the treaty is no longer valid. A disarmament treaty which relies solely on the word of the parties concerned is a meaningless piece of paper. A disarmament treaty which includes mechanisms to check on the activities of the signatories can make our insecure world less insecure.

Of course we live in a dangerous world, and any signatory to a treaty can withdraw from any treaty at any time. Nuclear proliferation is a great threat to peace. Every nation that acquires nuclear weapons makes the world a little less secure. There can be no guarantee that a seemingly stable person who has the authority to set off those weapons won’t have a psychotic episode.

In my opinion the current president of the USA is dangerous. He has suggested giving nuclear facilities to Saudi Arabia.

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2019/02/report-trump-rushing-sell-saudi-arabia-nuclear-technology-190219181918317.html

One can fear that Saudi Arabia will develop the capacity to make nuclear weapons. The Islamic world already has nuclear capacity in Pakistan.

JCPOA is an agreement between Iran and the five permanent members of the UN Security Council plus Germany and the EU to ensure its nuclear programme is limited to civilian use. Since experts in all nations involved apparently thought it was a good agreement and since there has been no indication that Iran has been violating the agreement I think it is a good agreement. Yet Trump has withdrawn the USA from the agreement without offering a reasonable explanation. He has stated that he thinks it was a bad deal. In my opinion if a Republican administration had done the deal he would not have withdrawn, but it was Obama’s deal. In my opinion he is a great danger.

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Dear Foxy,

"A simplistic "pro china" "anti-China" division ignores complex
questions and shuts down the conversation."

I agree, but how does 'the West' start the conversation - with any assurance of being taken seriously?

Hence, I posed two possibilities - 'band' with China in a genuine attempt to forge a viable way forward, or - take China 'to task' over what 'the West' sees as unacceptable behaviour, with the 'rider' of a potential withdrawal of all interaction with China if it refuses to 'participate'.

I'm not at all sure China would even agree to 'discuss the matter' with 'the West' - this being with a confirmed Alliance of all the major Western powers, and a rejuvenated UN (which is long overdue in itself).

Potential? Anyone's guess. But, can 'the world' afford not to at least try - one alternative or the other? Certainly either prospect would take time and dedication to achieve a mutually satisfactory covenant, and truly enlightened 'delegates' on all sides.

However, I cannot see long-term Peace and Security being achieved without much serious attention to the ogre of disparity and inequity running rampant in so many quarters.
Such ongoing 'inequities' present a most serious threat to world order, if allowed to persist indefinitely.

Of course, the 'West' could try 'going it alone' (to rectify Inequity), but I do not see the West even considering such a project with any enthusiasm in present circumstances.

ALTRAV,

I have no idea how to respond to you. I am not a student of history, Chinese or otherwise (or of very much else), and I could well be simply 'dreaming' or trying to sell 'a pipe dream', in my suggestion that the only way I can see for resolving the conflict and disorder so clearly evident in the world today is to seek to resolve the disparities and inequities so apparent in so many quarters.

Is 'disparity' truly the foundation of all 'evil'? Or, in other words, 'money' (or 'means'), and its concentration in few stingy, uncooperative and 'unreliable' hands?

I'm no Einstein, so, some ideas, please.

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The Islamic states are also a great danger and apparently the governments act without principle. In a post mhaze pointed out their silence in the face of China’s treatment of the Uighurs, Can anybody be trusted who doesn’t look out for their own?

Israel has not signed the nuclear non-proliferation agreement. Russia is still illegally occupying Crimea. I really don’t wish to single any particular country for condemnation since it seems that nobody’s hands are clean. Possibly Costa Rica has a good record from 1949.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Costa_Rica

“The victorious rebels formed a government junta that abolished the military altogether, and oversaw the drafting of a new constitution by a democratically elected assembly. Having enacted these reforms, the junta transferred power to Ulate on 8 November 1949. After the coup d'état, Figueres became a national hero, winning the country's first democratic election under the new constitution in 1953. Since then, Costa Rica has held 14 presidential elections, the latest in 2018. With uninterrupted democracy dating back to at least 1948, the country is the region's most stable.”

Most other countries might cease to exist if they didn’t have a military.

Banjo, you wrote:

“Dismantling all forms of defence is not the right solution.”

As far as I know nobody has suggested that.

You also wrote:

“Also, in matters of defence, prevention is better than cure. We need to correctly identify and analyse the root causes of the hate, violence and fanatism that threaten our families, friends and freedoms. We need to gain a proper understanding of the root causes and treat them appropriately.”

The absolute root cause of war is that it’s a thing humans do. If we got rid of humanity we would get rid of war. Of course other species kill each other, but not in the same manner.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Endemic_warfare

“Ritual fighting (or ritual battle or ritual warfare) permits the display of courage, masculinity and the expression of emotion while resulting in relatively few wounds and even fewer deaths. Thus such a practice can be viewed as a form of conflict-resolution and/or as a psycho-social exercise.

continued

continued

Native Americans often engaged in this activity, but the frequency of warfare in most hunter-gatherer cultures is a matter of dispute.”
Perhaps it is more reasonable to try to limit the violence and scope of war as tribal people have done.

The modern world has already tried to limit the violence and scope of war by such actions as banning poison gas, recognizing crimes against humanity such as genocide and establishing an International Criminal Court. I would not expect a disarmament conference to result in complete disarmament. I would just hope for mutual reduction of armaments with mechanisms of verification and more acts such as cited above.

If we try to eliminate the root causes for war we will often find they also make life more livable.

Armament manufacturers make money from instruments of destruction, encourage conflict to sell their goods and seek out new market opportunities. However, capitalism has also given me and others a standard of life unimaginable to our ancestors I would not want to give up capitalism. Capitalism encourages the use of technology and provides its benefits to population at large.

To promote the hate, violence and fanaticism which lead to war there is nothing as effective as religion. However, religion is also a source of comfort and meaning to many. In the West we pride ourselves on having religious freedom. Even though I am not a believer I would not want to give up religious freedom.

Another cause of war is overpopulation. I am guilty of engaging in reproduction. “Too many people wanting too few goods” is a recipe for inflation and war. Education for girls and women, availability of contraception, abortion on demand, encouragement of homosexuality to those in doubt about their sexuality and heavier taxes on those with more children are ways to curb population growth. Some of solutions would be unpopular with some. However, it can be pleasurable to have children.

There are other causes of war, but I can think of none which don’t have positive features.

Banjo, what root causes of war would you eliminate?

David f,
Let me put your mind at ease, and anyone else who naively believes that the POTUS, namely Mr T can start anything, is not correct.
He can say anything, he can even start small things; BUT something as catastrophic as a war is definitely not withing his reach, even if the red button is.
Before any neuc's are deployed there are a plethora of steps, stages, meetings and God knows what else, and after ALLLLL that, at the end of the line are two guys with keys who turn on the "GO" switches simultaneously, before one piece of nuclear equipment is deployed.
I'm not quite up with the internal workings of the US congress or military, but I can thankfully rely on the fact that Mr T may be able to push a lot of buttons, but NOT the nuclear one!