It used to be trade then conquest

But now it might seem to be aid then conquest.

The story of British India can be boiled down (with all sorts of caveats) into the move from the trading relationship of the East India Company which morphed over time into a military relatuionship through Plassy and Clive, to full militarily backed colonialism after the Mutiny.

These plans by Pierre Lellouche, France's EU minister, seem to be at the early stage but follow me on my putative journey.

He is calling for a

crisis response force to deal with emergencies such as Russia's wildfires.

In an interview with Le Figaro published today (10 August), Lellouche said: “At European level it would be good to have real mutual assistance capabilities in the case of emergencies”. Lellouche said that he had stressed to European partners the importance of pooling assets to create a European emergency force after the earthquake in Haiti.

Of course if you are to have a bunch of civilians disapearing around the world to disaster zones then you will find that in many, if not most, cases these will be going into areas that are not merely hit by natural disasters, but are also politicaly unstable too. So therefore there will need to be a force protection body to ensure that all your humanitarian types are kept safe.

Imagine if you will if he were suggesting that this force were to go to Pakistan now to help with the floods. There is no way that they could go without being tooled up, as the locals might well take to shooting doctors and so on.

And thus it starts.

I am amused by the fact that he really wants to send teams to Russia, who have pointedly not asked for help. Must be frustrating for him, all this national soveriegnty.