The West fails to maintain sanctions? Green light for them on Taiwan. And more importantly Taiwan knowing it. Hence even a threat will lead to concessions.
The West maintains sanctions? Russia, with the natural resources China craved, is dependent on them, while China is not dependent on Russia at all. China’s power grows with Russia functionally under their control.
Given that over the medium term many see China’s ambitions as the world’s biggest stability threat, how should/can these outcomes be softened?
If Putin gets removed by the Ogliarcs and/or Generals, I believe that the outcome will be completely different. I feel this is now a fairly likely outcome.
If this is a total failure for Russia, this could bode very well for Taiwan. If the world rallies around Ukraine’s defense, and their defense is successful, and especially if it damages Putin (or brings him down!), then that means that the world might rally around Taiwan’s defense if it were invaded – and world naval power (especially submarines) could be much, much more important to such a conflict (to the detriment of China) than it is in this one. Taiwan supported by the entire world, along with total united world sanctions on China, could result in a Taiwanese victory in such a conflict.
In other words, this conflict may demonstrate that the power of the free world (i.e. most of Europe plus US, Canada, Japan, Australia, etc.) is still significantly greater than the power of the unfree world (China, Russia, scattered despots). When was the last time that was tested?
How does China take Taiwan? It is very difficult to take an island, if you go by sea, you have to mount a D Day, with thousands of boats and hundreds of thousand troops and their gear, and armor, ground transport and a logistics train from hell [food, ammo, fuel, medical supplies] If you go and blockade, the rest of the world would mount a Berlin air Drop resupply and if they fired on one of our airplanes, we would bomb the hell out of their ships. If they go in by air, again - transport issues. OK, so they decide to bomb the place back into the stone age, they don’t want a naked island, they want factories and slave techs to work in them, and farms to supply food.
There is no actual way they can do anything except destroy what they want to own, or die trying to get it. They can rattle their sabres all they want, not happening in the way they want.
They can charge a surcharge of 25-75% on any Chinese made products to anyone who tries to interfere, since at this point no country can live without Chinese products they will quickly go back on their intentions.
This assumes that:
A) No country can live without Chinese imports (I think some can with great disruption to their economy, and some can but they would face economic and political disaster)
B) The other countries do not have the backbone to go broke for the sake of Taiwan.
This. None of us depend on stuff made in Russia. We all have stuff made in China, and would be hurting if we no longer had access to that stuff. The global economy depends on China. Russia not so much. Maybe that’s part of why Putin is so butthurt.
I suspect that if Putin’s Blitzkreig had actually worked, China would be far more supportive of Russia right now. But China is good at hedging their bets and will probably play the middle now instead.
They have been all along, walking the line between support and self-interest. They’ve been pretty carefully selecting their words in their media releases, a lot more conciliatory in tone than of late IMO.
So I’ll just throw this out there: the chip foundries. My understanding is that Taiwan, or rather, a company like TSMC, is involved with the US DoD in the manufacture of certain semi-conductors that are for military use and are highly senitive to US security. And that along with that has been an active restriction by America on these more advanced (smaller, I guess?) chip designs in keeping them out of the hands of the Chinese (and probably, Russia too), and that China, while it does produce semi-conductors, cannot make these types of chips fdor themselves and they covet the accession of these foundries.
Honestly, if things continue to progress the way they are, I’m pretty hopeful that the CCP will get the right message out of all of this. That message is…we aren’t going to tolerate a change to the status quo or any invasion adventures, and anyone trying is going to come out of it bloodies and bruised, economically if nothing else.
So far China (and India for that matter) have played this fairly cagey. They haven’t supported directly either side, though China did sign a huge new energy and wheat contract with Russia…but they did that before the invasion. Since the invasion, the Chinese have basically played it cool. They are basically saying that it’s not an ‘invasion’, but that they aren’t supporting either side (they actually have good relations with Ukraine as well as Russia). India is doing the same thing…sort of a wait and see. This was as of Friday, so I might have missed something since then, but my guess is they will both see how the wind is blowing and play it cautiously, taking no side…and looking to make political and economic capital regardless of how it turns out.
I think that China trying to put Russia under it’s thumb would be like trying to pin a tiger with just your pinky. It’s not like trying to hold onto a Koala like the Netherlands, Russia can play by all the same dirty rules that China does, plus a few more.
I hope they go for it. They’ll waste a lot of effort in the trying.
I think that it’s actually Russia deliberately putting itself under China’s thumb because Putin does not want to deal with the west, and he sees China as the lesser of two evils. He’s wrong about that, but then he seems to be wrong about a lot of things. But Russia under Putin has increasingly been pushing Russia into China’s sphere…and, sorry, but China is a lot more massive than Russia in just about every term imaginable, and it will be Russia that orbits China, not the other way around, regardless of what tricks Putin et al can play. There is simply no other outcome if Russia continues to move this way…and Russia isn’t going to be able to or want to try a rapprochement with the west under its current regime. Only two choices…and Putin is picking China.
This as much as anything should indicate to people that this guy isn’t some sort of 3-D chess playing genius, but a thug and an idiot who is focused on what he perceives as his own good, not the good of the Russian state or people.
Expand please. Hearing good arguments about that is why I made this OP.
To me it seems that in the aftermath of this China holds all the cards. China has international power by way of economic and political strength. The West will continue to trade with China, China benefits from Russia’s natural resources but push come to shove could do without. Russia OTOH, a weak economy, cannot manage to be cut off from both the West and from China. What dirty rules can they play by? From here out Russia NEEDS China, much more than China needs Russia.
To me, it’s clear this guy is a lot less smart than people seem to think. He’s totally ruled by his emotions and not by logic or any sort of critical thinking ability. YMMV, but the more this goes on and the more I see his other actions wrt China, the stupider I am rating him. Like I said, YMMV.
I’m not a former KGB officer so I’m not certain that I can come up with a successful anti-China policy but some things about the world that I note:
India is still sitting open to partnerships and relies on Russian hardware/cheap military supplies.
Whether under US sanctions or not, Russia is still a permanent member of the UN and there’s nothing to stop them from voting with the US.
China has pissed off every single country on their border.
China has been horrific to the Muslims inside their territory and several of those countries on their border (e.g. Indonesia) which they have pissed off are Muslim. One of the leading forces in keeping Islamic countries divided against one another has been Russia - which they could always stop doing - and they have lots of friendly relations with Islamic countries (e.g. Iran and sort of Turkey).
China has always been and preferred to stay insular. They don’t want to manage the world, they just want their neighbors to respect them and offer gifts.
One of China’s greatest strengths is its low shipping price. That price is set by an international committee. The membership of such committees can be controlled through assassination and bribery.
As a country with a large and organized mafia with connections to government, North Korea shares more in common with Russia than it does with China.
A lot of people think it’s hard to arrange a party but, really, the hardest component is just being brave enough to post the time and place. You don’t really need to do anything more than that. If everyone else wants the party, they’ll bring the festivities.
He’s a Mafia don who’s been top of the pile for nearly a quarter of a century
I can’t see any way that anybody climbs a pole that high, and stays at the top that long without knowing people, how to gain power and how to retain it without be smart. Call it rat cunning, if you like.
He knows that when he falls there’ll be no golden handshake, irrespective of the billions he has salted away, much more likely a Nicolae Ceausescu redux