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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   802 thread views

Transnational Thursday for May 22, 2025

Transnational Thursday is a thread for people to discuss international news, foreign policy or international relations history. Feel free as well to drop in with coverage of countries you’re interested in, talk about ongoing dynamics like the wars in Israel or Ukraine, or even just whatever you’re reading.

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There seems to be a weird phenomena among formally powerful people and nations where once they no longer actually have the power they once had, they fall back on formality, legalism, and ceremonial trappings. It’s really funny once you actually see it, or at least when it’s not happening to your side of the argument. Countries that once had a military presence that the world feared now politely go about hat in hand to beg their former subjects to do something and paying them to do it. Political entities that once reshaped nations now reduced to issuing letters or rulings and impotently asking the people with actual power to listen to them.

When you start seeing groups become formal, you know they lack either the power or the will to be powerful. The UK hasn’t been much of a power since the Second World War. It’s unlikely they will hold such power this century.

Who has behaved this way apart from the UK? France certainly hasn't.

The French literally yielded fully to a minor colonial revolt months ago because they attempted to give their own citizens right to vote in the territory in which they lived, diluting the native vote share. They reversed the change and now seem likely never to implement it.

France hasn’t been a superpower since Napoleon. I mean im pretty sure 1900s France was doing the “stop or I’ll send a letter to the League of Nations” up until they got invaded in WW1.

I mean im pretty sure 1900s France was doing the “stop or I’ll send a letter to the League of Nations” up until they got invaded in WW1.

Your timeline is off. League of nations was created after WWI. And France was both massive colonial empire and they fought quite the good fight in WWI.

They still had a colonial empire and weren't paying other countries to take their possessions off their hands.

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