History lesson for today

StrategyPage has a history of countries that were once empires, and now are beginning to think they should be empires again.
Nothing like "glory" to make headlines so people forget reality.

 many Chinese never forgot the imperial glories. The Chinese government, like their counterparts in Russia, Iran and the Islamic world are calling for the return of past glories and power in order to distract people from more immediate realities (corruption, bad government and a long list of related complaints).

as this earlier essay notes, the Philippines is in China's crosshairs as the weakest link.

lots of background stuff for those who only hear headlines by the clueless ideologues of CNN.

and they end on this cheerful note:

 Today, these obscure disputes have the potential of escalating into the kind of nuclear nightmare that most people are justifiably terrified by. This limits the activities of empire builders if both sides have nukes and remain rational. You can’t always rely on that last item.