Vaguely, mariner remembers a children’s story about an ogre that was so big no matter what he did, it caused a disaster. A sneeze would wipe out several homes; a snore would have the effect of an earthquake, etc. So it is with China.

China has the national size to pursue Uighur-Muslim genocide in the southwest, nation killing in Hong Kong, worldwide espionage on the internet and bullying the South Pacific in the southeast. China’s strategy in world trade is similar to US private equity – outright ownership.

Nevertheless, China has its own interior issues just like the United States. Its population is restless; there are severe labor shortages; the political oppression of Peng Shuai (tennis) hints at unstable human rights management. So it may be interesting to get democratic boogeyman George Soros’ opinion on China:

— SOROS BETS ON XI’S UNRAVELING: Billionaire investor and philanthropist GEORGE SOROS said in a speech Monday at the Hoover Institution that Chinese Xi is threatened by internal dissent. Soros said that’s fueled by financial system stresses, demographic challenges and the mounting social and economic costs of Xi’s “zero-Covid strategy.” “Xi Jinping has many enemies … [and] there is a fight brewing within the CCP,” Soros said.

Still, a hiccup in China is similar to an eruption of the Tonga volcano.

The reason that China has any offense at all on the world stage is because Xi Jingpin doesn’t have a nationally elected Congress; he has an obedient, internally selected national congress.

Mariner’s perception of good or bad relations with China is that China is that storybook large ogre where anything is capable of global disruption.

A new twist is the mutual crying shoulder relationship between Russia and China over the West – especially the United States. Both nations have identical confrontations with the West: Ukraine, Taiwan, trade balances, embargos and global leadership competition; not to mention the competition for communication dominance. What should concern the west is the lack of government elasticity in authoritarian nations. Like bullies, tension has a break point driven by just a very few individuals, e.g., Donald. Subtlety is not available; fair is not a win.

Ancient Mariner

Mariner has nagged about the decline of government, economics and society for 23 straight months, not counting other ideological issues and the always inadequate electorate. But in the last six months, setting Covid aside for the moment, the nation’s core stability is increasingly stressed. The U.S. is faced with fragile situations by Russia wanting Ukraine and China wanting Taiwan. Still the U.S. struggles with deepening populism and citizen violence.

There is a good chance Congress will fall to an oddly deranged republican party which will not be able to hold together a deepening distrust by the nation’s citizenry. Note the following chart from Gallup, an annual exercise reflecting citizen satisfaction:

Most of the satisfaction scores don’t represent a trend – it’s more like driving over a cliff.

Things seem not to be finding their way out of the maze yet.

Ancient Mariner

The red line on the map of Eastern Europe below shows the peak of USSR dominance in 1950. For decades the West has known that Vladimir Putin’s dream is to restore Russia to its largest expansion that was created by the Warsaw Pact. Evidently Vladimir thinks it is time to begin restoration.

The Russian aggression has pushed out of the news the inflamed issue of Pacific Ocean dominance vis-à-vis China. Today the issue is Ukraine and Crimea, which are immediately to the east of Poland and Romania, bordering the northern shore of the Black Sea. Crimea, already forcibly annexed by Russia, is the island at the north end of the Black Sea

One of the intellectual victories that came out of WWII negotiations, and one which sustained national independence through the Cold War, was an agreement that national boundaries cannot be changed by brute force.

Ukraine was part of Russia until it officially declared itself an independent country on August 24 1991, when the communist parliament of Ukraine proclaimed that Ukraine would no longer follow the laws of USSR and only the laws of Ukraine, de facto declaring Ukraine’s independence from the Soviet Union. For the likes of Russian plutocrats, this has remained a thorn in the side. Vladimir surely believes that Ukraine and Crimea have always been part of Russia and should remain so.

Economically, Russia is hurting the way dictatorships usually suffer: Government sucks every dollar it can (not unlike American private equity firms) leaving too little for the citizenry to survive comfortably. The one thing Russia cannot tolerate is to be cut off from international trade via intensely restrictive sanctions – the strategy Biden and the EU have been touting. The problem that throws sand in the gears is that the EU is dependent on Russian oil and natural gas.

What Putin is banking on is that an invasion could be accomplished in a few days before opposing nations could respond to Russia’s execution of overwhelming military force, borrowing Syria’s strategy which is to level everything without regard for future functionality; Ukrainian leaders, like the opponents of Adolf Hitler, would be summarily executed.

On paper this has merit since Ukraine is not part of NATO and is not automatically protected.

The 1950s question is whether nations will be able to enforce the idea that boundaries cannot be changed by brute force without using brute force themselves.

All eyes are on Vladimir Putin.

Ancient Mariner