On the Russo-Japanese war, In Our Time did an episode on that last year -- their reading list may be worth mining for suitable books. And don't miss the pdf of Japanese woodblock prints of event… (View Post)

Yes, it's a really interesting period of history. If you can find a second hand copy, I liked Pat Barr's _The Coming of the Barbarians_ which gives the westerner's-eye-view of it by dr… (View Post)

You don't need to hypothesize a Russian belief in nonexistent US secret superweapons to explain that -- the nuclear weapons that the Russians can be 100% certain the US has are entirely adequate… (View Post)

Disagree. The first priority is being sure that nobody accidentally steps over somebody else's red lines and triggers nuclear escalation. The *second* priority is stopping Putin, by which I mean… (View Post)

I'm all for de-russifying the tory party, but surely we don't want to be giving tradable foreign currency *back* to Putin-linked Russians right now? (View Post)