The UK has taken some sh!t from the US over the years, but this really takes the biscuit.
UK: 'Hey US, let us do you a massive favour and effectively dedicate our surface fleet to help you contain Iran, who incidentally has no real beef with the UK, and help you save loads of money as that's an entire carrier battle group that will be freed up.'
US: 'For the privilege of being allowed to help us out, you need to cough up a blank cheque for our defence contractors to charge you as many billions as they feel they can get away with to add an ABM capacity that you would not otherwise need, and which would be effectively worthless to you for any other mission.'
The UK desperately need to learn to stand up for itself and tell the US to go do anatomically improbable things to itself from time to time and stop being so pathetically sacred the yanks might dump them. Currently the UK is playing the beat up wife role to protection and selling itself woefully short. The Americans need the British a lot more than vice versa right now, and if the UK stood up for itself over an issue where the yanks are taking liberties and the sitting US president tried to play hardball, the UK can tell them to shove the 'special relationship' up the proverbial and the shock of it will unseat the party in power comes the next US election and the next guy in the Oval will make repairing the special relationship a top priority and the UK might actually get some benefits out of the special relationship for a change.
PLA Wolf, common friend, you should already know that irrespective of what the situation is, in end the America, Britain, Europe and Australia would always serve each other's interests. History has given us enough examples to support this fact. Whether it be America coming to the aid of Britain, when the Germans were pounding the hell outta them during WW2. Also, the Korean War, which had the Americans, Brits, French, Australians and Germans, among other countries (minority). Or be France consenting to Britain's pleas to stop supplying Argentina with Exocet Missiles during the Falklands War, where Argentina sunk several British Expeditionary Warship using the Exocet launch from French-made fighter-jets. Or the Gulf War were Americans lead the Brits, French and Canadians against the Iraqis. The Afghanistan Invasion (2001), where the Americans again lead the Brits, Aussies, Germans, French and European countries. And again the Iraq Invasion (2003), with America, Britain, Australia and Poland. And most recently, Mali War, where the French were assisted by the Brits with "American made" C-17 Globemasters.
So my friend, you see, there isn't much difference between them when it comes down to War in other countries or their own. Britain's agenda conforms to that of America's and of course the Australians would be where ever the Americans and Brits are. Irrespective of what anyone thinks, that is the reality of things. Whatever differences that may be apparent to the public eye, are superficial and don't really mean that much. For anyone, it should be an example to learn from and counter act.
China, Russia and the Central Asian Republics ought to form a stronger alliance, which not only has military pacts. But also has wider ranging economic cooperation that benefits all countries involved. The closer and stronger this alliance becomes, the more it would be able to acts as a counter-weight to NATO. Establishing thorough, detailed economic agreements, that specifically aim to drastically enhance the member countries' growth. This can be achieved by focusing on developing infrastructure like highways, ports, air-hubs, railway-network, open-economic-borders, free-trade.
These things ought be looked into by China and Russia. If these two recognise the importance and value of building up an alliance (economically and militarily) then the future is bright for China, Russia and their allies. The closer economic cooperation between the two, the greater the chance that their smaller allies would draw into an even tighter knit alliance. Countries like Venezuela, Argentina and Algeria, would find this Sino-Russian alliance a beneficial one to be a part of. If they witness greater economic growth and stronger military ties.
A lesson to learn ..... create your own allies, build stronger relationships with them and harness it into an alliance which gives you greater global reach, influence and command respect among other strong nations.
, one will see that the cjbd image mentioned above is indeed photoshopped from the very image of 054a vls used to compare it with. There are not only details visible in proper 052d image missing but there are small details of imperfection on 054a image that are identical on the cjbd image. scratches and imperfections in the same place? On top of visible differences in other images?
