Sarah Paine

So I think the question isn't whether this

bromance is going to last forever, but rather when it's going to end.

When is Xi Jinping going to decide he's got the right amount of leverage to get whatever it is he wants?

And I think what's going on now illustrates the perils of getting your primary adversary wrong.

Nicholas II fought a recreational war against Japan, the Russo-Japanese War of 1904-1905.

He is pouring resources into really an irrelevant theater in those days.

Instead of taking those resources and putting it into a railway system that European Russia desperately needed to face off Germany, which it does within the decade and loses,

He is overthrown in part because of bread riots in St.

Petersburg because no foreign aid can get in because he has inadequate railway system.

They'll be built later and it'll be good for Lend-Lease.

So he and his family wind up shot in a Siberian basement.

It takes a decade to play out.

So I don't know how it's going to go for Vladimir Putin on all of this.

If we play our cards right, maybe he'll go away and is lonesome.

We have to wait a long time.

On the other hand, if we get into a hot war, nuclear war, and in the meantime, if the United States kills off its alliance system, which is one of its greatest strengths by doing a gratuitous trade war on our allies,

And then we have a dust up with China.

Well, let's think about this.

Japan tried this go it alone, my way or the highway strategy with China back in World War II, right?

When China was a failed state and it wrecked Japan.