Vienna, 1814
Lord Castlereagh: Move one inch to disturb our pretty new system and you’ll have a war on your hands.
Yours truly: No problem, you’ve made your point (almost).
Berlin, 1878
Otto von Bismarck: Move one inch to reverse what Germany has just achieved and you’ll have a war on your hands.
Benjamin Disraeli: No problem, let’s talk numbers.
Washington, DC, 1895
Richard Olney: Move one inch against Venezuela and you’ll have a war on your hands.
Lord Salisbury: No problem, we’ll leave you to it.
Tehran, 1943
Josef Stalin: Move the border one inch across the Oder and you’ll have a war on your hands.
Franklin Roosevelt: No problem, I’ve got an election coming up.
Geneva, 1954
Zhou Enlai: Let’s discuss peace and security in North and South-east Asia.
John Foster Dulles: (Silence).
Paris, 1972
Le Duc Tho: Quit Indochina and don’t come back.
Henry Kissinger: No problem, but let’s call it honourable (w/apologies to Mr Disraeli et al.).
Geneva, 1985
Ronald Reagan: A nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.
Mikhail Gorbachev: No problem.
Moscow, 1990
James Baker: NATO will not move one inch toward the East.
Mikhail Gorbachev: No problem. (Oops.)
Tianjin, 2021
Wendy Sherman: Let’s discuss ‘guardrails’ so that we can gauge how well you’re behaving yourselves.
Xie Feng: Problem. Please look up the definition of ‘demandeur’.