Well, it looks like Europe has got sick of peace and prosperity. It has been nearly 25 years since there were major wars between the “East” and “West”. Now it looks like the USA and Russia are wanting to have a show of strength again.
\nThey seem to want to show everyone else that they are bigger and stronger than anyone else… and that nobody else matters. It might be that China has caused this to happen. Both superpowers used to ignore China (and India) as too weak to matter. Now, with the Olympics, you can see China emerging as a world power in many more ways that seem to matter to the media-hungry leaders. I can be sure from my recent visit to Hong Kong that there is no reason at all for China to feel inferior on the world stage. There is every reason to believe that they will become stronger and more “democratic” in the very near future.<\/p>\n
Democratic is a word that is misused badly. What I mean is that the general population of China will get to have a significant say in how the country is governed and its priorities. Sadly, this will result in bloodshed and significant hardships for those who wish to be recognised as separate ethnic states. In some ways, this is likely to be a mirror of Russia and in some ways it might be like the break up of a Yugoslavia. I cannot see it being as violent as Yugoslavia because the tensions are not that great (the Balkan states having been forced together by somewhat\u00a0 arbitrary political decisions in the carve up of Europe post WWII).<\/p>\n
It is easy to see that there will be trouble with Tibet and some of the other border state\/provinces. What may surprise people will be the internal strife within the heartland of China. Exactly how this will pan out is not certain but what is quite sure is that the growing state wealth and the disparity between poor and rich will create trouble. What a great tragedy that the lessons of two catastrophic World Wars were not learned! Grace and generosity in victory was what allowed Japan and Germany to emerge as economic and social powers for the good of humanity following WW II. Mean and punitive, even cruel and inhuman, penalties at the end of WW I produced WW II and its several holocausts during and after. . The other lessons that should have been learned are that you cannot just draw lines on maps and define states\/countries\/nations like that. The Balkans, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria, the Caucasus, Israel\/Palestine and the middle East. Vietnam, Korea, Cambodia, Indonesia, Pakistan\/India and Burma.<\/p>\n
These places define the folly of creating nation states that are ruled by “acceptable” leaders who see their role as destroying the diversity of culture and making it all homogeneous. It matters not whether the flavour was Communism or Capitalism. The same results could be seen. I cannot help but think that these “shows of strength” are actually displays of fundamental weakness – designed to cover up that weakness. George Bush is a classic Lame Duck president and Medvedev is struggling to keep together a nationalistic population that can see corruption in all levels of Government still rife. What better thing to do in either case than to have an “other” enemy. What better enemy to have than one that all the population over the age of 25 will remember as the deadly enemy of the past. The ones who have grown up without the Cold War rhetoric are probably too young to vote anyway. One question that I hear asked often (quite innocently too) is “Why would Poland allow missiles to be place on their land and provoke Russia?” You need to go back into Polish history. The greatest enemy Poland has ever had is not Germany, France or Austria\/Hungary. No. It is Russia who has wanted to annex Poland for the past 200+ years, ever since it became a European power. No doubt that in WW II there were appalling outrages from the Nazis (and German people) but that only matches what has been almost a tradition from Russia. Even now gentle Sweden pillaged and plundered Poland in the 16th and 17th centuries. Russia was especially harsh during and post WW II when they wanted to finally subdue their troublesome “satellite” neighbour.<\/p>\n
Well, it looks like Europe has got sick of peace and prosperity. It has been nearly 25 years since there were major wars between the “East” and “West”. Now it Continue Reading →<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"featured_image_urls_v2":{"full":"","thumbnail":"","medium":"","medium_large":"","large":"","1536x1536":"","2048x2048":"","ab-block-post-grid-landscape":"","ab-block-post-grid-square":"","slider":"","featured":"","small-featured":""},"post_excerpt_stackable_v2":" Well, it looks like Europe has got sick of peace and prosperity. It has been nearly 25 years since there were major wars between the “East” and “West”. Now it looks like the USA and Russia are wanting to have a show of strength again. They seem to want to show everyone else that they are bigger and stronger than anyone else… and that nobody else matters. It might be that China has caused this to happen. Both superpowers used to ignore China (and India) as too weak to matter. Now, with the Olympics, you can see China emerging as…<\/p>\n","category_list_v2":"Serious bits<\/a>","author_info_v2":{"name":"Peta Guy","url":"http:\/\/petaguy.info\/blog\/author\/peta"},"comments_num_v2":"0 comments","featured_image_src":null,"author_info":{"display_name":"Peta Guy","author_link":"http:\/\/petaguy.info\/blog\/author\/peta"},"modified_by":"Peta Guy","featured_image_src_square":null,"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":false,"thumbnail":false,"medium":false,"medium_large":false,"large":false,"1536x1536":false,"2048x2048":false,"ab-block-post-grid-landscape":false,"ab-block-post-grid-square":false,"slider":false,"featured":false,"small-featured":false},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Peta Guy","author_link":"http:\/\/petaguy.info\/blog\/author\/peta"},"uagb_comment_info":1,"uagb_excerpt":"Well, it looks like Europe has got sick of peace and prosperity. It has been nearly 25 years since there were major wars between the “East” and “West”. Now it Continue Reading →","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/petaguy.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/petaguy.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/petaguy.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/petaguy.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/petaguy.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/petaguy.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/208\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/petaguy.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/petaguy.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/petaguy.info\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}