Sorry to burst your bubble, but no one was playing a long game in the 1990s. China was rising but very dependent on Most Favored Nation trading status, and in any event through 1995 or so Deng Xiaoping was still running the show, and his mantra was just to modernize and get rich. His successors, Jiang Zemin and Zhu Rongji, were really pro-Western.
In Russia, the country was just in total chaos from the collapse of an inefficient but nominally functional command economy and run by a drunk and ad hoc sort of leader, Boris Yeltsin.
North Korea was in the midst of its worst crisis ever and millions were dying of starvation. It was in survival mode.
Iran was limping along and Khamenei was trying to consolidate his power against Rafsanjani and others.
India was ... well, India. It's never played a long game.
Who, then, precisely, was playing a long game in the 1990s?
ἡ δὲ κἀκ τριῶν τρυπημάτων ἐργαζομένη ἐνεκάλει τῇ φύσει, δυσφορουμένη, ὅτι δὴ μὴ καὶ τοὺς τιτθοὺς αὐτῇ εὐρύτερον ἢ νῦν εἰσι τρυπώη, ὅπως καὶ ἄλλην ἐνταῦθα μίξιν ἐπιτεχνᾶσθαι δυνατὴ εἴη. – Procopius
Ummaka qinnassa nīk!
*MySmiley*
