Because Substack apparently doesn't allow search engines to identify articles there, I'm going to try publishing the introduction here and see what happens.
Russia pretended that a weak NATO was a threat to Russia in order to conceal its post-Cold War appeasement of China while Russia rebuilt its decayed post-Cold War military. Appeasement was needed to delay a day of reckoning over Russia’s trophies in the Far East taken from China during weak China’s self-proclaimed Century of Humiliation. Russia’s threats to NATO convinced NATO to rearm. Yet Russia failed to break NATO when it was weakest. Worse, Putin failed to take even smaller Ukraine. And as time drags on with Putin self-immolating Russia’s ground forces, China sees opportunity in the Far East to erase the largest stain remaining from China’s period of weakness.
Read the rest here.
