Ranger from the North

It’s bad enough having one North Korea, but that country has very limited resources and its strike range is still severely limited. China, on the other hand, is the world’s most populous country and among the wealthiest. Imagine what Mao himself would have done with the material and military resources Xi now has, and especially with a more approachable partner in Moscow like Putin rather than Stalin, Khrushchev, or Brezhnev. Creating sovereign islands in international waters will be just the beginning. Xi will have the ability to re-create a form of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, by the threat of force if not force itself. North Korea is relatively easy to isolate, but with a dictatorial China bent on regional domination, isolation will be impossible.

This is a very bad development, one which should have red flags (again pardon the pun) going up at the White House and State Department. It should also remind us why we need a robust US Navy to protect and defend international trading routes as well as to remind our friends that we will not get pushed out of the Pacific. It’s time to get serious about our long-term staying power in that theater.

How did Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, the world’s favorite liberal mascot — a feminist man, with movie-star good looks, a 50 percent female cabinet and a political lexicon that has replaced “mankind” with “peoplekind” (making millions swoon) — end up looking silly, diminished and desperate on his trip to India this week?