This short book has attempted to reveal a number of what might first appear to be random historical coincidences. These coincidences profoundly impacted U.S. and British history. For example, in 1897 the president of the U.S. Naval War College talked to Theodore Roosevelt about the importance of securing naval bases in the Pacific, and the very next year it coincidentally happened. Or how the Entente's invasion of Gallipoli just happened to overlap exactly with the Armenian genocide. Or how the date 7 December appeared not just once, but three times in 1902, 1917 and 1941. To cite James Bond-creator Ian Fleming's famous quote: “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.”

Many coincidences also impacted communist countries, in particular the Soviet Union. For example, gold was coincidentally discovered in Outer Mongolia immediately before it became a Soviet protectorate. The Great Purges and the expansion of Siberian gulags took place right after Japan coincidentally announced a major 5-million-person immigration push into Manchukuo. And Stalin was coincidentally able to make use of what appeared to be random word changes in the Yalta agreement and in Truman's Order No. 1 to obtain huge swaths of Asian territory, including the southern Kuriles, Outer Mongolia and many points along the still-disputed Sino-Russian border.

China was equally impacted by coincidence. General Yuan Shikai appears to have preapproved Japan's 21 Demands against China in return for being made monarch. Severe student unrest due to the perceived unfairness of the Paris Peace Treaty in 1919 might have been easily assuaged if only Wilson's secretary had published his compromise agreement with Japan, which the secretary coincidentally refused to do. In 1970, China might have then coincidentally used the anniversary of the May Fourth Movement to send a potent signal to Washington promoting the opening of diplomatic relations. Finally, and arguably most importantly, in 1948 the CIA suggested that to maximize Sino-Soviet tensions the Chinese communists should be allowed to take all of Mainland China, and in fact just 10 years later the Sino-Soviet alliance split, and 10 years after that—following the intentional intensification of Sino-Soviet tensions due to the Vietnam War—the two countries went to war, thereby opening the door for a Sino-U.S. rapprochement.