There is a certain cadence to decline, a rhythm of arrogance and desperation, of miscalculation and delusion. The late-stage empire, unmoored from reality yet clinging to myths of its own indispensability, lashes out at perceived threats not because they are real, but because it cannot conceive of a world in which it is no longer the gravitational centre of history. In this way, Russophobia and Sinophobia function not merely as ideological constructs, but as symptoms of systemic decay, the fever dreams of a civilisation struggling to process its own obsolescence.