1 A short story

“History never repeats itself, it rhymes” Mark Twain

There was once a Prime Minister of a very large country. He would stroll hand in hand with the leader of an even larger country & thought they were best of friends. His cardinal mistake was, he thought a

2 personal rapport would ease the deep rooted systemic tensions between the countries. He thought “screw a disputed border; screw severe ideological differences; screw the fact that the larger country was in deep turmoil and needed an external scapegoat; screw that all the ..

3 ...warning signs were that this larger country took the prime minister’s protestations of friendship to be fake & duplicitous; screw the fact that no human being would prioritise an esoteric friendship over self-preservation; screw the fact the larger country was more powerful”

4 So the prime minister ignored all these underlying tensions, continued to walk hand in hand like star crossed lovers, ignored intelligence reports, ordered the army to lie where necessary & held summits with this leader, sinking deeper & deeper into his delusions. Sadly for him

5 the leader of the larger country found his delusions naive to the point that he thought the prime minister’s sickly sweet demeanour was actually duplicity of the worst kind. So the foreign leader went on testing the border & every single time the prime minister like a gorkha

6 watchman would scream “all is well”. Finally the foreign leader sent in his troops to inflict a smashing defeat on the forces of this large country ruled by a prime minister. The prime minister’s reputation collapsed, his armed forces that had been neglected collapsed, and his

7 country was forever traumatised. Despite this his courtiers would keep fawning over him, blame everyone except him for being a naive idiot & institutionalised a mindset that refused to see the invading army as an enemy, instead being wary of a power 10,000 kilometres away.

8 The prime minister in question was quite shameless. He never took responsibility for his actions & his courtiers & PR machinery shielded him well, but in the eyes of the world he became a sad pathetic joke that nobody took seriously ever again. A certain Philippine Defence

9 minister in fact referred to him as “woolly headed” in public. But deep inside he knew what he had done. He was a broken man inside & within a year he died.

Which country & which prime minister am I talking about?