Anybody else think that there’s a textbook somewhere on a shelf in various world capitals entitled “How to fuck with, and test the limits and behaviour of, new American administrations”.

This time round, Russia of course started the ball rolling, with an impromptu invasion of a very small and poor neighbour. Bolivia has gotten on board as well, with a spot of diplomatic PNG’ing.

However, this is child’s play. China has, of late, been the master of this. When GWB came in, they gave him a month or three to get to know the various phone extensions, and then they stepped up their monitoring of US spy flights with the somewhat messy effect of crashing into one. Which resulted in diplomatic confusion, some loss of life and a lot of brinkmanship.

Of course, that was then. Things are entirely different now. I mean, they’ve given this new president lots and lots of time to get to know the layout of the office, and they’ve hardly done anything at all. Oh, except for randomly trying to crash into US military assets again.

I think you’ll find that in the text book on page 17. Just next to the section on acceptable use of the words “yankee” and “dog”.

Of course, if I was really paranoid I’d be wondering why the US Navy has two very specialised sonar support vessels in the South China Sea just now. But I’m hardly paranoid at all, me…