As Trump targets China and Russia, he could do with a history lesson

The current trade wars waged by the US against S-400 missiles and tech giant Huawei because they are Russian and Chinese, respectively, may come to a sticky end – as did Hitler’s obsession during World War II with an insignificant city just because it was called Stalingrad.

My St Petersburg University professor, who as a young private had fought there, often told us he really didn’t believe then that Soviet Russia would be able to repel that massive German onslaught. But that battle in fact saved Moscow and St Petersburg and thus eventually led to our victory.

So soon Turkey may buy our Russian jets instead of the denied American F-35s, despite US sanction threats, and China offer a 5G internet with software partly developed with us. After all, evolution is the survival of the fittest and not of the best, with the best German tanks never reaching Moscow and our fittest storming Berlin in 1945.

No doubt the leaders of Russia and China are fully aware of that, and that’s why they look so confident in spite of what all the papers are writing about the trade wars.

I don’t think that Mr Donald Trump speaks Chinese, but the title alone of a 2013 book on the expositions of President Xi Jinping might help: History: the Best Textbook.

Mergen Mongush, Moscow