Pull out of Ukraine

@4meAndyou May we take it the next USA Presidential Election will be tri-partisan? Republican, Democrat and Communist?

It does not greatly matter to we foreigners whether Rep. or Dem. is in Government in the USA, but a Communist victory would soon end the other two parties and seriously affect the nation's domestic and foreign policies and alliances. That'd give you a reason to bleat about "Marxists"... if allowed.

BTW... Whoever really sabotaged it and why, the Nordstream pipeline carried gas, not oil.

Here's a conundrum for you, talking of China and Afghanistan.

We know the hard-line, avowedly anti-religious, Communist, People's Republic of China has been making friendly noises to the supposedly-Muslim Taliban while destroying her own genuinely Muslim, Uyghur culture, but take a Google Earth "flight" over the arid plain in the far-Western corner of China-colony Tibet. See if you can fathom out why anyone would develop a town (Hotan? - the name of the Prefecture) with supporting farms there, directly below the ridge carrying the short Tibet / Afghan border... There is no road across the border, but in future? I am pretty sure it has grown quite rapidly and recently from a much smaller, older settlement.

@ArishMell Someone here has pointed out that our politicians are no longer Republican and Democrat, but globalist and anti globalist. I believe it was bizsuitstacy, as a response to a post by Budwick. What conservatives hope for is an anti globalist President in the near future.

The Democrat Marxist party included Marxists and Communists in their party in a desperate bid to gain more votes and power, and now the tail is wagging the dog.

Thank you for the correction about gas, not oil. Although I thought I read that there were shortages in heating oil in Germany and elsewhere because of the destruction of Nordstream II.

Regarding the rapidly growing town at the Afghan border of Tibet, I can't even speculate...but Afghanistan had two products which they export...Isis K fighters, and opium

@4meAndyou Well, I don't take sides in your febrile party-politics, but once I managed to find a reasonably neutral description of what "globalism" actually means, it occurred to me that the opposite is isolationism. No man is an island, it is said, but neither is a nation in any but a literal geographical form.

The USA, like the UK, is a member of or signatory to, a vast range of international bodies, treaties and agreements; many of them issuing what the EU would call "Directives" for translating into each nation's own legal system. I saw a list of the UK set and it was more than ninety! I imagine the same is so for the USA. E.g. NATO, UN and its component bodies, ISO, ones controlling international trade and travel..... That's before any international commercial firms, and many of those are American!

There were shortages of oil but not as a direct result of the attack on the pipeline.

ISIS is indeed active in Afghanistan but is not actually welcome there. It is a bitter rival of the Taliban, which it thinks not sufficiently hard-line, and has carried out a number of attacks in the country. I don't know the two factions' sects but the divisions between Sunni and Shi'a can be very deep and bitter. The Taliban also has its Pakistani "branch" but it is ISIS that is "exporting" itself across as many countries as it can.

Not sure what is the status of opium and heroin there, are now: I think the previous Taliban regime was trying to stop it, but it would need give the farmers practical alternatives.

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I can hazard a guess at China's strategic plans. That part of Tibet also borders Pakistan and (from memory) Tajikistan, and China has a long-term international trade and influence scheme called its "Belt Road Initiative". This does involve physical links, such as a new railway across Mongolia into Russia, and buying the Greek port of Piraeus (making that effectively Chinese territory in Greece?). So they might be looking to build border crossings in this very remote area; and they have even talked of building a railway from Tibet to Nepal - presumably through the highest part of the Himalayas, not via another nation.