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Nicholas Guyatt
@nicholasguyatt.bsky.social

Madness for the UK government to get involved in the increasingly unhinged and dangerous foreign policy of the Trump administration, but Keir Starmer seems determined to outdo Tony Blair in becoming lickspittle-in-chief to a rogue U.S. president

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Catch22
@catch22-47.bsky.social

Nah it's fine. If the ship was legally sanctioned and operating as part of the Russian or Iranian shadow fleet and being used to finance the Russian war in Ukraine then crack on and seize them.

Nicholas Guyatt
@nicholasguyatt.bsky.social

Hard to reconcile the flagrant illegality of US policy towards Venezuela this past week with the idea of a 'legal' sanctions regime - and I suspect that that regime will end up being highly selective rather than consistently enforced, in terms of Venezuela/Iran vs Ukraine

Catch22
@catch22-47.bsky.social

The sanctions are legal, bombing Venezuala isn't. It's not difficult to reconcile at all. Much of this traces back to Russia's illegal invasion of Ukraine and their subsequent war crimes & illegal annexations, that is the biggest breach of international law. Don't sweat the small stuff.

Nicholas Guyatt
@nicholasguyatt.bsky.social

A military capture of Russian-flagged vessels at sea won't seem like small stuff to most of the world, and the idea that a US sanctions regime can be seen as legitimate by the rest of us when the Trump administration is burning down the international order is also a hard sell right now