Archives for posts with tag: Xi

One of the most celebrated personages in the history of the West.
He revolutionized military organization and training;
sponsored the Napoleonic Code, the prototype of later civil-law codes;
reorganized education; and established the long-lived Concordat with the papacy.
He was the moving spirit behind the intertwined series of conflicts known as the Napoleonic Wars, which had revolutionary repercussions, both militarily and politically,
in Europe as well as other parts of the world.
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Napoleon-I

Exasperated, the XIX-th century France had decided to change everything.

Please note that despite the rather inept leadership offered by the last three kings, France was the dominant European power of the moment. Economically, demographically and militarily.
Exasperated people tend to make rather poor decisions.

Napoleon Bonaparte was permitted to rise to power. To absolute power…
He yielded that power in such a way that he had angered most of his neighbors. Most of France’s neighbors… Which had banded together and defeated him. Twice.

Which was a premiere.
A bully put down by an alliance… A bunch of autocrats put off by another who decided they had enough.

The same template was used against Germany’s dictators. Both Wilhelm II and Hitler had been put down by coalitions. By people fed up with their antics.
A somewhat similar thing happened during the Cold War. A bullying regime, the Soviets, was kept in check by an informal ‘coalition of the willing’. ‘Informal’ in the sense that NATO was only the ‘tip of the iceberg. In reality, the Soviet Union had been defeated by the ‘free world’ working in concert.

Nowadays, ‘living in interesting times’, we witness another coalition taking shape.
Three authoritarian leaders ‘pushed together’ by a fourth one… By the antics perpetrated by a guy pretending to uphold freedom. Absolute freedom…!

“Faced with reckless U.S. disregard of China’s repeated and serious representations, any countermeasures taken by the Chinese side will be justified and necessary, which is also the right of any independent and sovereign country,” foreign ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying told a daily briefing in Beijing.

‘Repeated and serious representations…’

‘I told you how I see things.
Hence if you do what I warned you not to, I’ll be free to punch you in the nose!’

Is this the epitome of ‘bullying’?

Or, rather, of pushing yourself into a corner?!?

Now, if Pelosi actually lands in Taiwan, how far will Xi go in order to ‘save face‘?
Let it go… he would lose too much of it. Too much ‘face’. Any threat he would utter from then on, would be met by deaf ears.

Do anything foolish…

On the other hand, China is the world’s biggest importer of food! And energy…