[the_af]

Great Britain is very directly involved in a whole bunch of relatively recent messes in the Middle East, China, etc.

It's not whataboutism to point up the current messed up situation is not unrelated to the behavior of the UK, and their fingerprints are all over it. Of course things aren't static and new actors have changed the conversation, but this doesn't absolve them and they shouldn't be pointing fingers.

[andy_ppp]

What on earth are you talking about? The UK has just done whatever the US wanted for about 40 years or more.

If you’re saying historically as an imperial power we’ve done terrible stuff we can all agree with that!

[the_af]

Yes to both things.

Since it fell from power, the UK does everything the US wants.

However, historically it set up a lot of bad things that happened in the Middle East, China, Africa, etc. The UK cannot untangle itself from it, "it's all in the past", because history is terribly influenced by things in the past, by definition.

[andy_ppp]

So do you think citizens of the UK should be held accountable somehow? I honestly don’t think the UK has done much to harm other countries since the Iraq War which obviously made everything worse.

[the_af]

The citizens of the UK in general? No.

Authorities and government? Yes. Even if the current ones weren't born when history was made, it's their duty to understand the history of the country they are governing, and of how past decisions shaped the world as it currently is.

> I honestly don’t think the UK has done much to harm other countries since the Iraq War which obviously made everything worse.

The history of Hong Kong itself is deeply influenced by Great Britain's actions (as well as other world powers, of course), and it doesn't start with mainland China's takeover.

Another example of UK's actions deeply influencing the current world, unrelated to China, is Iran (and well, the Middle East in general). So the UK cannot simply point fingers at others and forget about how they helped shape the situation.