While many eyes have been on the West’s proxy war in the Ukraine – and the media have expressed disappointment that President Trump did not resolve all issues in a single meeting in Anchorage – the conflict between China and India in the Himalayas continues.
Note that the disputed region may be highly scenic, but it is economically worthless and of negligible military importance. But the conflict rolls on. Reportedly, the parties have just finished their 24th (Twenty Fourth!) Round of Talks on the dispute, and produced a 10-point “consensus”.
Nine of the ten points seem to be boiler-plate blah blah. The only consensus point that matters is the 10th point – quoted in full here: 10. Both sides agreed to hold the 25th round of talks in China in 2026.
That’s because there’s more to life than money. As all but the most obtuse in the West are beginning to discover, people will fight and even die for other things: ethnic solidarity, national pride, a secure future for their progeny, the survival of their culture. I don’t know much about the China/India conflict but I’ll bet that one or more of these is involved.
That statement should probably have been rendered in the past tense … at least as far as the West is concerned.
There was a time when England fought Spain over “The War of Jenkins’ Ear” – started over a bar fight in Havana in which some say an English sailor got his ear bitten off. That sounds like ethnic solidarity or national pride as a cause, although historians say it was really a war for economic predominance.
But look at England today. Ethnic solidarity in a society which sends white Christians to jail for silently praying outside an abortion factory while letting Pakistani rapists walk free? National pride in a country in which officialdom sees its national flag, St. George’s Cross, as racist? Progeny in a society which has largely stopped having children?
What happens to Europe in a world in which the Euros don’t want to fight … but other people do?