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Sarah C. Paine

Sarah C. Paine is a professor of history and grand strategy at the U.S. Naval War College.

Articles

The question isn't if China will turn on Russia, but when

by Sarah C. Paine
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