traveller: Japan will have no choice but to follow China's lead in Asia...The future will show us who is right. Since 27 years or more I am predicting the economic expansion and development of China...The political power will follow.

Japanese culture has crystallized over millennia and cannot abide following "China's lead". I do not disagree that Chinese power will eclipse that of Japan's in every conceivable area, but this development will neither weaken Japan nor make China a closer ally of the United States. Japan has admired Western civilization for centuries, resentments and rivalries aside, whereas China prefers to go it alone. Similarly, Polish culture faced westward, while Russian culture faced east.

However, I maintain my earlier point that slowly but surely Russia and the United States will prove natural allies, especially insofar as Islamic expansionism and aggression is concerned. Indeed, the European Union is increasingly turning inward and thereby resembling China - perhaps these two entities are natural allies also.

In Reply to marcfrans:

Firstly, NATO is not facing irrelevance, merely transition from a Euro-American military bloc to an Anglo-American one. Similarly, post-Soviet military and economic blocs are focused on Central Asia as opposed to Central Europe. Secondly, the expulsion of ethnic Germans from Soviet-occupied territory east of the Oder-Neisse line extinguished German irridentism and claims to West Slavic lands. These German communities were as much products of imperial/colonial policies as South Africa's White population. The same is true for the Hungarian minorities in question. The presence of ethnic minorities in a country that exist there as a result of territorial ambition is in and of itself immoral as far as the right of national self-determination is concerned. Furthermore, Mr. Handlery is regularly attempting to raise the issue of Hungarian minorities and their supposed plight. For the record, I feel similarly about their "plight" as I do about that of Albanian minorities in Serbia (Kosovo) and Macedonia.

pashley: I regard redrawing boundries or repartriating peoples criminally stupid, a left over from maybe America's worse President, Wilson...All countries have minorities, of some form, number, and type, and any polity that defines itself to the exclusion of some of its inhabitants begs for strife.

Au contraire. Wilson's emphasis on national self-determination was spot-on, except that it unfortunately was only applied in part. Moreover, one must ask why ethnic minorities are present i.e. are they derived from legal immigrants to settler societies such as the United States, holdovers from an occupier's colonisation (e.g. the Baltic republics), aggressive expansion (e.g. Kosovo, Macedonia) or the arrival of stateless migrants e.g. Gypsies, Jews.

traveller: It is becoming impossible for any European population to accept military activities in Afghanistan since they are currently obliged to consider moslims as the good guys in Europe and those same European governments enacted "laws against racism" which practically forbid to consider moslims as "dangerous" in Europe. How would it than be possible to convince the same European people that moslims are "bad" in their own moslim countries?

Opposition to involvement in ISAF military operations has little to do with official or multicultural perceptions on Muslims. The Afghanistan mission is largely considered an American one, and one with a small chance of success and poorly defined goals. The ISAF's mission is peacekeeping and defending Afghanis from rebels that are drawn from a single transnational ethnic group that is in the main foreign, based mostly in Pakistan's Waziristan province. It has little to do with fighting Muslims, as even a liberal democratic Afghanistan would remain Islamic.

traveller: ...the US will be the "natural" Pacific ally of the Chinese.

Never. This would jeopardize their strong relations with Japan, which is destined to be the regional pro-American power in East Asia as American forces are withdrawn.

IV, and disagree with II.

    Russia and the US have a numerous overlapping interests.   Unfortunately Russia is something of a rotten (internally) ally, and would come with some friction with our new allies in eastern Europe.

     I regard redrawing boundries or repartriating peoples criminally stupid, a left over from maybe America's worse President, Wilson.   All countries have minorities, of some form, number, and type, and any polity that defines itself to the exclusion of some of its inhabitants begs for strife.

@ KA

1) I find your points 1, 4 and 5 very perceptive.  If your views on 4 are widely shared in Germany and elsewhere on the Continent, then clearly NATO is doomed to become irrelevant. A frightful prospect for the dwindling number of Europeans with a clear understanding of modern history.

2) As often before, I find your comment under point 2 reflective of a very disturbing underlying (im)morality.

"4. Meanwhile (28 Feb.) Slovakia’s Foreign Minister announced that his government rejects demands for autonomy no matter where it is requested. Apparently it does not bother him that this contradicts the practice of the original EU countries."

This does not contradict the practice of the original EU countries. France has enforced to this day a policy of crushing centralism and linguistic extermination.

"9. From time-to-time some of the youth in certain countries riots. Essentially they demand respect for the ways of their parent’s home country."

Actually, they riot to spite the whites and fight boredom.

I. I certainly concur that denying Kosovar Albanians secession would only exacerbate Balkan tensions, even if Kosovo had been de facto annexed by NATO. I also agree that the sizeable Serbian enclaves adjacent to Serbia should be permitted to secede from their respective states and join it. Additionally, the same should be possible for the Croat and Albanian minorities. However, I disagree that national self-determination is a moderating influence on Islam. Only fascism has encouraged "moderate Islam", be it Arab or Turkish nationalism, and it involved jackboots on the streets, doors kicked down in the middle of the night, torture cells, pock-marked walls, whether in the Egypt, Iraq, Turkiye or the Central Asian republics. Ramzan Kadyrov, despite his usefulness to the Kremlin, is determined to impose Sharia on Chechnya. Indeed, Islamic extremists have been fighting secularism in Egypt, Syria, Iraq, Turkiye and elsewhere, and appear to be winning at present.

II. Unfortunately, I am unsympathetic to the plight of the Hungarian minorities in Romania and Slovakia. These minorities exist because the Magyars displaced already established peoples through armed aggression after settling in Pannonia. Not unlike the German minorities east of the Oder-Neisse boundary, they should be "repatriated".

III. In spite of my vivid imagination, there is little Turkish policymakers could do to convince me that their membership in the EU would be worthwhile.

IV. Neither the German government nor its citizens appear to support their armed forces' operations in Afghanistan, even if these already are as far from the action as possible. This is not being "difficult". Clearly, American foreign policy has to seek new alliances, particularly with East-Central European countries such as Poland. The United Kingdom aside, Russia is quickly becoming more of a "natural ally" of the United States than Western Europe, even if each regards the other as a rival.

V. Your comments pertaining to the Danish cartoon scandals and multicultural revisions of history and mathematics seem contradictory and nonsensical.