The Chinese are raising the stakes over those tiny Japanese islands the Chinese claim are theirs, a claim fueled by hubris as much as the oil and gas contained in the waters around them. Will it come to war between China and Japan? China seems prepared to go that far. As Mark Twain correctly observed, history doesn’t repeat, but it does rhyme.

 

The Chinks and Japs have been at war

For many ages now

And we have seen so oft before

The Chinese emperor bow

To Japanese who seem to win

Despite the number gaps

Can they give fortune one more spin

The answer is perhaps

The Kamikaze came and blew

The Mongol fleet away

And later Meiji armies knew

That they had won the day

In ’37 Nanking fell

And China lay prostrate

Knocked down but then saved by the bell

Pearl Harbor changed their fate

Yes China now’s a different case

But still, as we all know

The PRC lost beaucoup face

Not many years ago

When Viet Nam beat them real good

At odds of one to ten

For China never understood

That war was more than men

And so some islands are the cause

Of tensions on the rise

You’d think that history would give pause

But it is no surprise

That China, rich and smug and fat

Would think it’s time to strike

That tiny island nation that

They always did dislike

A billion Chinese more or less

Japan one two five mill

But numbers, history will confess

Count not as much as will

So if it’s war ‘twixt Japs and Chinks

If they should come to blows

The winners are the Japs, methinks

That’s how the history goes

‘Gainst China Japs just seem to win

The odds against them still

Will fortune give them one more spin

The answer is it will