avoiding 'magic happens here'

clarifying assumptions now

Dr. Bernard Cole will discuss ‘Why China would go to war’ on Friday, 3 March at 1200 in a webinar. If interested, please send me a note if you plan to participate so I can send you the link.

Our hostess made the much-anticipated split pea soup last night along with both homemade bread and chapatis. Oh, and a chocolate cake. This afternoon she and I complemented the morning ‘dog constitutional’ with a long walk in the forest primeval looking for skunk cabbage, which eluded us. Ever thicker blackberry brambles greeted us approaching the Appalachian Trail. Cold air buffeted us this last Saturday in February but we missed the snow afflicting nea

rby areas. It was a fabulous walk, culminating with a baker’s dozen of fresh eggs from ‘the girls’

.

I am struck by the constant use of ‘allies and partners’ at the Carlisle Barracks discussions. It’s a pretty steady refrain U.S. policymakers began using after Afghanistan and Iraq deteriorated, when we realised that others would be necessary to help us with the burdens of those conflicts.

The United States certainly has allies, formally, in the 1949 North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO), spaning the trans-Atlantic region. In one of his many justifications for reabsorbing Ukraine into Russia, Putin criticised NATO’s expansion