Author Archives: markdowe1

Britain, Defence, Government, NATO, Politics, Society, Uncategorized

NATO defence spending

DEFENCE

nato-funding

Intro: Mr Trump is right to ask serious questions about the budgetary imbalance

The visit by Theresa May last month to Washington won an important acknowledgement from President Donald Trump: ‘he was 100 per cent behind NATO’. This was perceived as something of a coup given Mr Trump’s apparent indifference towards the 70-year-old alliance. His principal objection was not so much its existence as to the disproportionate contribution being made by the United States to its upkeep. By some measures, America pays 75 per cent of the total of NATO spending, most of which provides for the defence of Europe.

Donald Trump’s view – and, also, that of President Obama before him – is that Europe should shoulder a bigger share of that burden. A NATO symposium in Cardiff a few years ago proposed a minimum standard: that all NATO members should spend two per cent of their GDP on defence. This suited the UK because we have been meeting are two per cent commitment. According to the Government and NATO we continue to do so. A think-tank report, however, has caused consternation in Whitehall by suggesting all is not as it seems.

According to The International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), last year’s figure was put at 1.98 per cent, below the NATO standard. The report claims that in Europe, only Greece and Estonia met the 2 per cent target in 2016. It has been suggested that the UK fell slightly short of the target because the economy grew faster than expected. The cash shortfall equates to around £380million. The British Government has responded by denouncing the calculation as “wrong” and has pointed to official NATO statistics from last July which put the UK’s defence spending for 2016 at 2.21 per cent of GDP. The Ministry of Defence has blamed exchange rate fluctuations caused by the drop in the value of pound sterling for the IISS ‘miscalculation’.

But this argument is largely specious – superficially plausible, but actually wrong – because, what matters is not a smoke-and-mirrors-game played with national budgetary statistics, but the provision for an adequate defence of Europe (largely paid for by the countries of Europe). Mr Trump is right to ask serious questions about the budgetary imbalance. The recent revelations that the Royal Navy’s entire fleet of seven attack submarines was out of action indicates that this is more than just massaging budgets; what matters is having the military capability to defend the nation and contribute to the requirements of the alliance whenever necessary. The politics and intergovernmental wrangling are secondary to the provision of effective defence systems; and the UK – and many others in Europe – need to pay their proper share towards them.

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European Union, Japan, NATO, North Korea, United Nations, United States

North Korea taunts the US with new missile launch

NORTH KOREA

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On February 12, North Korea launched a Musudan Intermediate-Range Ballistic missile. The launch contravenes UN Security Council resolutions.

Intro: North Korea is believed to have at least 12 nuclear warheads with explosive power of up to 40 kilotonnes each – over twice that of the Hiroshima bomb. The Musudan ballistic missile can carry at least one of these devices.  

Following the firing of a ballistic missile by North Korea towards Japan on February 12, Donald Trump has given Japan his ‘100 per cent’ backing.

The weapon flew some 300 miles before landing in the Sea of Japan. The timing of the launch coincided with the U.S. President hosting Japanese premier Shinzo Abe at his Florida mansion.

At a hastily arranged press conference Mr Abe said the ballistic test was ‘absolutely intolerable’.

Mr Trump added: ‘I just want everybody to understand that the United States of America stands behind Japan, its great ally, 100 per cent.’

The two leaders said their countries would draw closer together.

The South Korean foreign ministry said in a statement that ‘North Korea’s repeated provocations show the Kim Jong-un regime’s nature of irrationality, maniacally obsessed in its nuclear and missile development’.

Seoul’s military said that it was probably an intermediate range Musudan class missile. The weapons are designed to travel up to 3000 miles – meaning Japan could be reached from North Korea. Yoshihide Suga, Japan’s chief cabinet secretary, said it was a clear provocation to his country.

NATO secretary general Jens Stoltenberg said the continuing missile tests ‘undermined regional and international security’. He added: ‘North Korea must refrain from further provocations, halt all launches using ballistic missile technology and abandon once and for all its ballistic missile programmes in a complete, verifiable and irreversible manner, as required by the UN Security Council.’

Mr Abe said: ‘President Trump and I myself completely share the view that we are going to promote further cooperation between the two nations. And also, we are going to further reinforce our alliance.’

North Korea is barred under UN resolutions from any use of ballistic missile technology. But six sets of UN sanctions since Pyongyang’s first nuclear test in 2006 have failed to halt its drive for what it insists are defensive weapons.

It conducted two nuclear tests and numerous missile launches last year in its quest to develop a nuclear weapons system capable of hitting the US mainland. The European Union also joined the criticism of North Korea and said its ‘repeated disregard of its international obligations was provocative and unacceptable’.

The South Korean military said in a statement: ‘Our assessment is that it is part of a show of force and is in response to the new US administration’s hardline position against the North.’

Mr Trump has vowed to get tough with North Korea and has called its leader Kim Jung-un a maniac who butchered his family. At a rally in Iowa last January he said: ‘This guy doesn’t play games. And we can’t play games with him.’

He added: ‘The message we’re sending to the world right now is a message of strength and solidarity; we stand with Japan and we stand with our allies in the region to address the North Korean menace.’

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North Korean Missile ranges.

 

 

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Arts, Films, Society, United States

Film Review: ‘Loving’

THE POWER OF LOVE

Inspiring: Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga as Richard and Mildred Loving.

Inspiring: Joel Edgerton and Ruth Negga as Richard and Mildred Loving.

Synopsis: The gripping true story of a mixed-race couple who stood against the bigots to become American heroes.

WHEN Richard Loving, a white bricklayer from Virginia, married his black girlfriend, Mildred Jeter, in 1958, a firestorm of publicity and a prominent footnote in the Constitution of the United States were the last things either of them expected. Or wanted.

Richard, as depicted and choreographed by Joel Edgerton in writer-director Jeff Nichols’s wonderful film, was a simple soul, who with his crewcut and slow drawl might have seemed like the prototype of a Southern redneck, but clearly didn’t have a bigoted bone in his body.

He was joined in matrimony by Mildred (Irish actress Ruth Negga) for uncomplicated and old-fashioned reasons. They loved each other, and she was pregnant.

However, interracial marriage was prohibited by Virginia’s miscegenation laws. They sidestepped that by tying the knot in Washington DC, only to find themselves arrested and jailed on their return home.

The judge deemed that ‘Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed them on separate continents . . . The fact that he separated the races shows that he did not intend for the races to mix.’

He gave the Lovings a stark choice; either annul the marriage or leave the state for 25 years. They left, but secretly returned for Mildred to give birth, and were arrested again.

Their lawyer used his friendship with the judge to keep them out of jail, but told them there would be no further leniency.

Although they were country folk who yearned to go back to their roots, the Lovings were compelled to raise their growing family in the city.

A few years later, stirred by the spirit of the burgeoning civil rights movement, Mildred wrote to the attorney-general, Robert Kennedy, who referred their case to the American Civil Liberties Union.

An ACLU lawyer, Bernard Cohen (Nick Kroll), saw their predicament as perfect leverage for an appeal to the Supreme Court, and although Richard in particular recoiled from being leverage for anything, they duly became a legal precedent, a cause celebre.

Journalists descended on them. Life magazine sent a photographer (played here by the ever-splendid Michael Shannon).

 

AND inevitably, the grotesque notion, long enshrined in Virginia’s law, that interracial marriage was ‘against the peace and dignity of the Commonwealth’, was overturned.

Loving vs. Virginia remains a landmark civil rights case.

It is a poignant tale, but then civil rights stories always are. Nichols’s great skill is in maintaining its integrity. There are no eloquent, barnstorming speeches about injustice, least of all by the Lovings themselves.

This is not the America of Guess Who’s Coming To Dinner? Stanley Kramer’s 1967 film in which Spencer Tracy and Katherine Hepburn played the gnarled old white liberals grappling with their daughter Joanna’s decision to marry Sidney Poitier’s urbane black doctor.

This is an America in which you can practically hear the cogs turn when people think.

Edgerton and in particular the Oscar-nominated Negga are both superb, giving heartrendingly sensitive performances as two people bewildered by the events that have engulfed them. When their lawyer asks Richard if he has a message for the Supreme Court justices, it is a plain one: ‘Tell them that I love my wife.’

His surname gave Nichols a conveniently plain title, too, and the narrative doesn’t need much adornment either.

Maybe that’s why the picture itself is not in the frame for an Academy Award, but Nichols’s achievement should not be overlooked. He has made a very fine film.

 

Loving (12A)

Verdict: Rousing true story ★★★★

 

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