I’m sure that my friend and publisher is laughing aloud at my insistence on using foreign language titles. No matter. This Italian axiom is apt and so I used it. It means “we should consider it” and today it points us to consider what Xi Jinping has learned from observing the Russians fighting the Ukrainians and the Americans fighting Iran. To be sure, there is much there to consider.

The current leader of China’s Communist Party is an extraordinary strategic thinker and we would be wise not to lump him in with his fellow autocrats Putin and Trump because whatever similarities they may share, the ex KGB operative in Moscow and the blowhard failure of a businessman in Washington cannot hold a candle to the man who clawed his way to the top of one of the world’s most complicated and complex political systems.

I am no Sinologist, but since I took a course on Chinese history in 1972 as an undergraduate, I have been observing and trying to comprehend what that society has been up to. Every decade or so I gain an insight and the penny has just dropped again. I am convinced that Xi has noted with interest that after massively rebuilding his military to the point where Russia was being touted as having the second-best army in the world, they have not been able to do in years what Putin claimed would be done in weeks. Similarly, Xi has no doubt watched as the US launched hundreds of billions of dollars’ worth of the world’s most technologically advanced weaponry against Iran, only to find itself in a worse geostrategic position.

Nominally, none of this should matter to Xi, but it does for a very important reason: China has been on a military spending spree for the past several decades and now has one of the largest and most technically advanced militaries on the planet. But to quote an old Regimental Sergeant Major watching a battalion of infantry perform an intricate parade, “Very pretty, but can they fight?”

After more than half a century of observation, practice, and study, I can confidently state that “Nothing is as powerful as an army that has not yet fought.” This cynical view is based on watching analysts continually obsess over numbers and I touched on this subject in last week’s post. When considering war, we need to stop focusing so intensely on numbers. Numbers of troops and weapons are clearly important, but not so important as they appear at first blush. Consider this: There is a football match, and you get to bet on who will win. One side has 20 players, but they are college level athletes. The other side has 6 players, but they have all been on Superbowl winning teams.

Next consider motivation. We have all met highly motivated people in all walks of life, who somehow overcome incredible odds in order to succeed. I am old enough to remember how everyone laughed at Apple and Microsoft. Did these pipsqueak companies really think they could beat IBM? We all know the answer. Remember when everyone laughed at Bezos because his online “bookstore” couldn’t turn a profit?

Last we return to numbers and Xi Jinping. He has a massive military, but they have not been tested in combat since fighting Vietnam when it invaded in February 1979. One month later China withdrew, humiliated. The Peoples’ Liberation Army is now better equipped and much larger but is it any more ready to fight? Do the generals and admirals understand Operational Art? Are the battalion and brigade commanders highly motivated and tactically sharp? I can not speak definitively, but like I said, I have been looking at this for over half a century, and my money is on Taiwan.

Xi is not a stupid man and has something that neither of his fellow autocrats has: Strategic patience. He rules over a country that has serious economic challenges and by all accounts is on a steep actuarial death slide. One of the greatest military philosophers of all time famously said, “The greatest victory is the one that requires no battle.” That thought is from Sun Tzu, and da pensarci.