It is hard to see much subtlety pooh-poohed by Joshua Keating in North Korean poster declaring ‘If you come at us, (we will destroy you) with a single blow’. Obviously North Korea is telling the world that ‘US was forced to accede to water down the UN resolution because US can NOT afford to be destroyed by mighty North Korea’.

Fact of the matter that Joshua Keating so conveniently ignores is that power is slowly but surely slipping away from US to China as the UN resolution fiasco so clearly demonstrates. After blowing hot and cold over North Korean sinking of US-ally South Korean navy boat, US has been unable to do much except pass such a toothless UNSC resolution, thereby allowing China’s North Korean puppet get away scot-free. So in a way, China is making a mockery of helplessness of US, the super power.

Russia and the PRC at the UNSC are two powerful countries, either alone can tangle up the Council's deliberations and votes - both together can indeed frustrate the Western democracies, UK, US, France. In addition to the P-5, there are the rotating 10 members which, in turn, when consisting of the 'right' governments, can enhance the power and leverage of either of the opposed two sub-blocs of the P-5.

The subgroup P-2 of the Council - Russia and the PRC - did well for themselves this time around, but the P-2 subgroup doesn't by any means control the votes of the entire council consistently or decisively, any more than the composition of the entire council at a given time can or does assure the dominance of the P-3 Western democracies.

You imprudently get carried away with your illusions, not to mention your laffable anti-Americanism. Remember, the PRC can't become a Great Power because it isn't a regional power. The PRC is precluded ever becoming a regional power by the strength of Japan, Taiwan, Indonesia, the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei and further south Australia and NZ. Even Russia itself, acting in its own interests against the PRC, keeps denying certain high tech, high priced military hardware that the PRC keeps seeking from it on a name your price basis.

The PRC is facing increasing pressure from ASEAN to correct the misnomer of the South China Sea to the accurate South East Asia Sea (Google it). A petition is being organized in SE Asia to the UN President of the Atlas of the Seas and the UN Conference on the Standardization of Names to make the correction. Let's see the PRC try to quash and squash ASEAN in this effort by its "neighbors" to the South to choose the name of the basin of water that along its rim touches all of their shores. One of the valid arguments in support of the change of name is that the body of water musn't bear the name of any one of the countries that share it.

This pointedly is directed at the reachy grabby PRC.