As concerns grow of a possible nuclear conflict between Russia and the West over Ukraine, there are hopes China could defuse the crisis.
But Russia’s most influential ally may not have the desire or the ability to help, according to analysts.
“If any power has influence over Putin, it is China,” said Steve Tsang, director of the SOAS University of London’s China Institute.
While Russia’s invasion of Ukraine shocked Japan, its seriousness was multiplied by China’s support for Russia. Facing this new reality, Japan’s national security policy is now undergoing a historic change at an unprecedentedly fast pace.
Many countries expand their military strength as they acquire wealth. However, there are at least two important exceptions, the most important of which was the United States in the 19th and early 20th centuries. It was only after the start of the Cold War that the United States became a standing military superpower.
How Putin’s War Has Hurt Russia in Central Asia and the Caucasus
The Kremlin has struggled to contain the fallout of its invasion of Ukraine. It did not imagine that its war would inspire sustained unity among Western countries, nor that the Ukrainian army would resist so well, nor that it would need to partly mobilize the Russian population, a drastic measure with potentially disastrous domestic consequences. A war intended to restore Russian strength has instead left the country weaker.
Threats, Assurances, and Effective Deterrence
As tension rises between Beijing and Washington over Taiwan, strategists on all sides seem to have forgotten what the American game theorist Thomas Schelling taught years ago: deterring an adversary from taking a proscribed action requires a combination of credible threats and credible assurances. Instead of heeding that lesson, a growing number of U.S. analysts and officials have called for the United States to treat Taiwan as if it were an independent state and to abandon the long-standing policy of “strategic ambiguity” in favor of “strategic clarity,” defined as an unconditional commitment to use military force to defend the island in the event of a mainland Chinese attack. These calls have intensified since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, with some commentators even advocating for formal recognition of Taiwan as a sovereign country. Still others have called for a permanent (and significant) deployment of U.S. forces to Taiwan to lend credibility to the U.S. threat of a military response to a mainland attack. In testimony before the U.S. Senate last year, Ely Ratner, the assistant secretary of defense for Indo-Pacific security affairs, implied that the United States could never allow Beijing to control Taiwan because such an outcome would make it impossible to defend other U.S. allies in Asia.
The European Union’s foreign policy chief on Monday criticized the lack of international attention being paid to Afghanistan despite the suffering of the people.
In a speech to EU ambassadors on Monday, Joseph Borrell told countries not to only look at the Ukrainian crisis.
The United States’ newly released national security strategy calls for restrained use of the American military in the Middle East.
Instead, it prioritizes “out-competing China and constraining Russia” while criticizing the expanded missions of U.S. wars in recent decades.
Cracks have emerged in their marriage of convenience, but the two autocrats are in it for the long haul.
Anyone who has been in a relationship knows there are good days and not so good days. While trust and respect are the bedrock of healthy partnerships, transactional and even toxic relationships have proven, time and again, to be just as durable. Sometimes more so. That is why Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s marriage of convenience will endure, not despite Russia’s recent battlefield setbacks, but because of them.
Beijing is Poised to Dominate the Low End of the Arms Market
Shortly after Russia’s annual military expo concluded in August, Alexander Mikheyev, the head of the country’s state arms export agency, predicted that revenues from Russian arms exports in 2022 would be down 26 percent from last year. Russia remains the world’s second-largest arms exporter after the United States, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute; it would take a far larger drop in revenues to change that. But it has become clear that since Moscow’s disastrous decision to invade Ukraine in February, the Russian military’s need to replace its own equipment, U.S.-led sanctions, and buyers’ concerns about Russian equipment’s performance on the battlefield have reduced Russia’s ability to export weapons.
Iran is working on a major project to link its national grid with Russia and other members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization through a transmission line in the east of the Caspian Sea, an official said.
In an interview with IRNA, the Iranian energy minister’s adviser in international affairs said efforts are underway to connect the country’s national grid to Russia and other SCO member states through a transmission line passing through Turkmenistan.
The U.S. has the power to stop North Korean missile tests but has chosen not to do so. This is true not only of the Biden administration but also its predecessors. The U.S. has continually decided to adopt feeble options.