And then there's the Communist Hermit Kingdom, was Lex Anteinternet: 第二帝国 (The Second Reich). China Channels Kaiser Wi...

Korean peninsula at night.

We just posted this:

Lex Anteinternet: 第二帝国 (The Second Reich). China Channels Kaiser Wi...: From the German reunification in 1870 up into World War One Germany, a continental power seeking to enter the colonial game just as the g...

But we should also note that as China pushed closer and closer to outright armed imperial aggression, it's tiny childish neighbor, the Communist monarchy of  North Korea, is outright acting with violence of a demonstrative sort.  It's blown up the structure where it met with its adult sibling to the south and its moving troops to the border.  And it now appears that Kim Yo-jong, Kim Jong-un's not too pleasant sister, is in fact taking more of a role in the Marxist monarchy.

All of this is likely because North Korea isn't getting the attention it feels it deserves and, more significantly, that it likely needs as things are likely not going well there.  But its risky.

And it puts the West, and more particularly the United States, in an increasingly precarious position.

The US hasn't fought a deep war, that is a major toe to toe war, with a serious opponent since 1973.  Sure, we've fought various conflicts since then, any one of which is serious if you are in it, but they are all very minor in their scale, if not their length, compared to the last major war we fought, the Vietnam War.  The Vietnam War required an American military presence of 500,000 men on the ground in Indochina.  The Korean War, which was in reality fought only shortly prior to that, took 500,000 U.S. troops as well.  Both wars resulted in 50,000 US killed in action, with the Korean War taking a little under four years to achieve that total (in fairness, while the Vietnam War went from 1958 to 1975, in U.S. terms, most U.S. casualties were sustained from 1965 to 1970).

Since 1945 the US has relied on technology to counter its opponents and has been so successful at it that its made internal modifications to the nature of its military that really weaken its combat abilities in a toe to toe engagement.  We've been comfortable with that, and even ignored that we were doing that, as we have been convinced that no war like the Korean War will ever come again.  If we're wrong on that, we're really going to pay the price.