Russia and America lost their tough-guy wars. China wants to pull an Azerbaijan on Taiwan.
Russia failed in Ukraine and America failed in Iran, when gung-ho attitude turned out to be insufficient. But that doesn’t mean China won’t try its luck on Taiwan – or that it won’t win.
I nearly lost a finger on Wednesday when Donald Trump started talking about the “tough guys” who don’t understand that it is time to make peace with Iran.
Never try to prepare food while catching up on a Trump press conference.
Trump. Mr Tough. The guy who dived, head first, into a war nobody but Israel wanted. Talking about “the tough guys that would drive the country right down the tubes” and the “tough guys don’t realise” that he’d been working for years towards this ultimate victory of yada yada totally not a humiliating climb-down.
It was not the hypocrisy that nearly caused me physical injury; this is Donald Trump, after all. It was flinching in sympathy for all the poor diplomats and international relations types when I realised just how much harder their jobs just became.
Because convincing the West that China almost certainly will invade Taiwan, that was never easy. Now that America and Russia have both lost important wars, well, I can only sympathise.
Because China isn’t America or Russia.
China is Azerbaijan.
