Comment by scrubs

I hate to agree the Chinese government is competent in foreign affairs, but it's true.

Fundamentally China isn't Russia or USA which both have a proclivity to become entangled in foreign problems. For the US (I'm american) the civil side has four strategic risks:

- weak to no show congress which has ceded war making to the executive branch

- civilian leadership who think bomb it and declare success which is naive

- the inability to stop being suckered in by our own hurbris when others say but we can't get it done without US involvement

- an economy post WWII built on cheap oil, which has tentacles into the mideast

Meanwhile after having pissed away 50 years of culture wars particularly since newt gingrich and the tea party, the US fiscal situation is deplorable.

Most maddening? We did this to ourselves. Blaming immigrants isn't the flex people think it is