Like Czar Nicholas II, Russian President Vladimir Putin has misidentified his primary foe. Fighting a war of choice, he allows the real menace to his country to gather strength. China, not Ukraine, constitutes Russia’s existential threat. In the Russo-Japanese War (1904-05), Nicholas fought Japan over Manchuria for concessions that Russia could not monetize, instead of investing in the railways and munitions needed to fight the country’s actual enemy, Germany, a decade later. Defeat in World Wa