China has declared it is “ready to fight” over the future of Taiwan, an island to which it has no historical or legal claims. In many ways, its vociferous rhetoric mirrors that of Russia before its Ukraine invasion. At the time, many American analysts took Russia’s assessment of its military at face value. The White House even advised Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky to flee his country rather than face what they believed to be a successful Russian conquest and his inevitable death.

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