I'll point out this very update proved that's an incredibly stupid line of thought. Because the more we depopulate the steppe around us the more nomad tribes are going to be curious and come to check out the locale. They were peaceful traders this time, but mass nomad genocide is just as likely to bring a distant khan down on our heads as anything else. Until you can outright exterminate the nomads and chase them down into the steppe- it's just not viable. Foreign tribes will come knocking, the tribes fleeing will replenish and turn their exodus into a legend, and when they return- the steppes will still be shitty, hard to defend marginal pastoral land because we're not made of Terra Preta and the action economy involved in landscaping steppes is utterly obscene.
People keep insisting it can be done when AN basically laughed and said come back when you have reliable communication over thousands of miles. We'd essentially need telegraphs, and even that would be nigh impossible to manage because nomads can just cut the cables.
You're patting yourself on the back for advocating centuries of some of the worst assymetrical warfare out there and calling it an ingenious colonization plan. It's nuts, only made worse when the geographical jewel of civilization is in easy reach.
