Sarah Paine

So expect them to prioritize stability over liberty.

And this brings a third problem.

If democracy and communism don't mix, and democracy and empire don't mix, okay, in an internet, cell phone age when people are much more interconnected, how does a government maintain legitimacy to rule?

Because elections are an incredibly powerful way to give authority to a government.

And this is where nationalism comes in.

And the Chinese Communist Party and the Russians likewise are trying to use jingoistic nationalism to stoke up popular loyalties and also to deflect people from domestic problems to go, oh, look at the hated outsiders, right?

And they aren't the only country to do this sort of thing is you blame outsiders.

It's all the immigrants fault or whatever.

And the problem with all of this, when the Chinese did it, right after the Tiananmen massacre, the Chinese Communist Party decided to rewrite all the textbooks so they're no longer going to focus on class enemies, but they're going to be focused, to use jingoistic nationalism, they're going to focus on evil Japanese, evil Americans, and focus things that way.

Well, the problem with nationalism is

It's a very heady drink.

If you imbibe too much, it clouds the judgment.

Moreover, it repels minority people within China's empire who are not interested in Han nationalism.

It frightens neighbors to coordinate with each other and find big powers to counterbalance this mess.

And it also impedes the de-escalation of unforeseen international dust-ups or crises.

With Putin's latest adventures, one would assume that the Chinese have some real thoughts about what's going on now.

And in Putin's case, he has thrown away the Soviet addendum to the rules for Continental Empire.

What was that one?

No hot wars.

If you think about Soviet rulers, they were all veterans of World War II through Leonid Brezhnev.