Russia is massing troops on the borders of the Ukraine at the same time the Chinese are increasing their unauthorised flights of military aircraft into Taiwanese airspace.

With a self-obsessed US ruled by a near-senile gerontocracy driven by barely post-pubescent revolutionaries like Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, it’s natural that the two great, nuclear-armed mercantilist nations would push against it to see whether they can both achieve long-cherished aims of regaining territory they feel is theirs.