After a brief hiatus, the “A View from Afar” podcast is back on air with Selwyn Manning leading the Q&A with me. This week is a grab bag of topics: Russian V-Day celebrations, Asian and European elections, and the impact of the PRC-Solomon Islands on the regional strategic balance. Plus a bunch more. Check it out.
Kiwipolitico
Another excellent discussion thank you. Wide-ranging and hugely informative. It never ceases to amaze us the breadth of experience and knowledge that Dr. Buchanan has. We look for your prog on youtube, do not watch on fb – I have an account but rarely use it. Do not really ‘subscribe’ to fb and its systems, its values, its modus operandi. ….. must go back to that long read you published a week or so ago, about the Solomons-PRC – have a good look at that. …. BIG thanks to you both as always.
I am not widely read on this area of European history, but might we draw any parallels between Russia invading Finland (1939 – the so-called Winter War) and the current Ukraine invasion. We are all desperate for this Ukraine War to cease – hoping against hope that Ukraine will prevail … (they have Right on their side, if not Might – not directly, at least) – and the Winter War has come into the spotlight with Finland’s new urgency to join Nato … I know it is a long time ago, but similar alliances and national ambitions (ie Russia) still seem to prevail. It was a short-lived war it seems, to be followed by a 2nd ( the so-called Continuation War) – but the Winter War was relatively brief and settled with territory concessions and treaties. Might we seem the same here? It is remarkable the military strength & political position of Finland today, but obviously it came about as a result of the Russian invasion of Finland back in 1939, etc. Finnish-Russo relations is something little heard of here in the West; up until now. Thank you, kind regards.
Thanks Barbara,
We appreciate your interest. Selwyn manages to get the podcast up on YouTube pretty quickly after it airs live, either as a stand alone “A View from Afar” searchable in the YT search engine or on the Evening Report channel. I am still learning the ropes about getting it up on the 36th Parallel Assessments channel.
Since I am now alone at KP I am trying to mix bespoke KP essays with links to AVFA amidst my other work. After all, I still have to pay bills and neither KP or AVFA are revenue generating platforms.
As for Finland (as per your other comment). The Russians will have bitten a bit too much to chew if they attack Finland while still engaged in Ukraine. As the US adventures in Iraq and Afghanistan demonstrated, running two large scale conflicts simultaneously is exhausting on (wo) men, morale and machines at the best of times, and the US has a far better logistics and supply train behind its front line units than do the Russians. The Finns are just as staunch and possessive of their territory as are the Ukrainians, and like the Ukrainians, they know the Russians well–too well for the Russians comfort. I therefore think that the Russian threats are more bark than bite.
Incidentally, I just happened onto this site to do some basic daily maintenance (mostly spam clearing) and found your six repeat comments about Finland in the trash folder. Not sure how they got there since the comment I am replying to went through without problem, but I restored the last (1:27PM) comment and cleared the rest.
Yes, I was having problems getting that 2nd comment about Finland posted – sorry about that! I wondered if the Russians had hacked your site lol. Re Finland, I was not suggesting Russia would invade them again. More that I am looking back at history, with the hope that history might repeat itself; but this time in Ukraine. That this current invasion might (hopefully) be a short war, resulting in some territorial concessions and a treaty. Especially as it is being oft repeated that Russia is running up against unexpected resistance from the Ukrainians; and now that they are receiving more modern and more powerful Western weaponry etc. Kind regards.