The focal shift from Russia in Europe to China in Asia is less a mechanism for coping with defeat than the pathological reaction of a country that, feeling a gnawing sense of diminishing prowess, can manage to do nothing more than try one final fling at proving to itself that it still has the right stuff — since living without that exalted sense of self is intolerable.

  • culpritus [any]
    ·
    1 year ago

    In the crude words of one Moscow official, “a tenant-farmer on Uncle Sam’s global plantation.”

    well that's one way to put it