But in the real world the US and its ally the United Kingdom are arming Australia with nuclear subs to police the South China Sea. One example: early in the book the author rolls back Lin Biao’s famous plane crash during a failed defection attempt under Mao. The more I read about Xi in this book the more I appreciated how much he follows the Populist playbook.

Overreach: How China Derailed Its Peaceful Rise - Goodreads

Trying to understand what is happening in this messy, unpredictable war is hard enough, especially given the attempts by partisans of both sides to push their own narratives. It leaves a bad impression on me and makes me question motives or other possible obfuscations convenient to the narrative.Perhaps given some time for absorption of my findings in this book, I may have to qualify this stance or even re-examine them, time will tell and I try to base my positions on the facts as they stand. When American society finally collapses under the combined weight of massive foreign debt, military overreach, and internal decadence, [Gary] North and his followers at Tyler hoped to have a network of churches ready to step into the breach.

Overreach: The Inside Story of Putin and Russia’s War Against Overreach: The Inside Story of Putin and Russia’s War Against

This then, provides the reader with accounts, quotes and insight from current and former insiders, blended with those of people who fought/are fighting or suffered from Putin's "Limited Special Operation", as the first six months of this war unfolded.The author makes clear that Putin’s decision to invade Ukraine was in many ways an unusual gambit by him. Owen Matthews, who has featured a lot in the broadcast media, has considerable knowledge of and contacts within the Russian establishment, and has used these to good effect to try to explain how we have got to this precipice. But Hu proved unable to corral the clashing agendas of the eight others on the Politburo Standing Committee. As we near the first anniversary of Russia's invasion of Ukraine the inevitable flood of books begin in earnest. Unfortunately, this is often only true in the sense of history as “things that happened” – the interesting questions of history, those requiring careful arguments about causation and counterfactual, await more distance, better sources, and the attention of experts.