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Kim Il-sung of North Korea was one other chief who acted aggressively in his later years. Emboldened by the U.S. quagmire in Vietnam and its subsequent navy drawdown from Asia, he spent his third and fourth a long time in energy going from provocation to provocation. Between 1968 and 1988, his regime seized a U.S. intelligence ship and its crew; shot down a U.S. reconnaissance plane, killing all 31 aboard; tried to assassinate a South Korean president on a number of events and killed dozens of South Korean officers, together with the primary girl; bombed a South Korean airliner, killing all 115 aboard; and dug tunnels enough to move 30,000 troops per hour into South Korea.
Aged dictators not often mellow out even when they’re firmly in cost. Joseph Stalin emerged from World Battle II victorious in his mid-60s. But as a substitute of working along with his wartime allies he sought to dominate Eurasia and despatched a brand new wave of prisoners to the gulag. Leonid Brezhnev initially pursued détente with the West. However in his second decade in energy, the ailing Soviet chief took a extra hostile stance, selling Communist revolutions all over the world, invading Afghanistan in 1979 and deploying superior nuclear-tipped missiles geared toward Western Europe whereas awarding himself a chest filled with medals.
Getting older autocrats typically don’t change tack except compelled to. Mao sought rapprochement with america solely after the 1969 Sino-Soviet border battle made it clear that China wanted U.S. assist to counter Moscow. Colonel Muammar el-Qaddafi gave up his weapons of mass destruction in 2003 resulting from varied components, together with stress from america. The Chinese language Nationalist generalissimo Chiang Kai-Shek and the South Korean strongman Syngman Rhee grudgingly suppressed their yearnings to overcome China and the Korean Peninsula, respectively, partially as a result of they feared america would abandon them.
Which brings us again to Mr. Xi and Mr. Putin.
Somewhat than easing towards retirement, each males have aggressively asserted huge territorial claims, carried out mass navy mobilizations, strengthened ties with intolerant regimes like North Korea and Iran and constructed up their cults of persona. After invading Ukraine, Mr. Putin explicitly in contrast himself to Peter the Nice, the modernizing conqueror who based the Russian empire, whereas Chinese language Communist propaganda describes Mr. Xi because the end result of an excellent trinity: Beneath Mao, China stood up; beneath Deng Xiaoping, China grew wealthy; and beneath Xi, China will change into mighty.
Each have made plain their ambitions to redraw the map of Eurasia. Mr. Putin says Ukraine doesn’t exist as an impartial nation and has implied that Moscow ought to reunite the “Russian world” — an space that roughly maps the outdated Soviet borders. China’s claims embrace Taiwan, a lot of the South China Sea and East China Sea, and chunks of territory additionally claimed by India. “We can not lose even one inch of the territory left behind by our ancestors,” Mr. Xi mentioned in 2018.
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