When the Russian bear farts...

Tim Stanley has a good blogpost in The Telegraph, although I find his use of the phrase "new Cold War" as a lazy shorthand for "a standoff between Russia and America" almost as irritating as misplaced analysis that try to portray the current crisis in Ukraine as some sort of relic from the original Cold War.

His conclusion had a definite Mao Zedong character to it, and I am sure was what set off my train of thought:

Russia is a paper tiger. Why we're wasting time hunting it, I cannot imagine.

Mostly, however, I am writing this blogpost because that chain of thought led me to leave a comment in the comments section that could have been written by Chairman Mao himself, and of which, I have to say, cuts to the chase of what is happening in Ukraine:

Every time the Russian bear farts, the American eagle screams 'New Cold War'.

 Yes folks, that's what all those years at Cambridge and the LSE have been distilled into: foreign policy analysis using fart metaphors.

However, if you consider the latest editorial in Beijing's People's Daily, maybe I am not so far off the mark after all.

Reuters: China paper slams West's "Cold War mentality" over Ukraine