Not sure where we are disagreeing*. They have been working on getting their crews up to speed. But even Chinese writers have acknowledged that it will take till middle or later this decade before they have the institutional training and doctrinal formulation to take on the USN at least in regional waters.
*Except that in my opinion the Type 055 isn’t a destroyer. It’s a cruiser with an inferiority complex.
And as far as I can tell, the USN agrees with me.
With your claim that it’s going to take some time to get enough people trained in all the shiny new vessels and aircraft that they have. They aren’t short on trained personnel for the ships they have or are constructing; ships and aircraft aren’t being built without crews trained to man them. Lacking enough ships to take on the US navy at the present isn’t caused by a lack of trained personnel, it’s caused by their inferiority in numbers of ships and capabilities vis a vis the US. Lacking a doctrinal formulation to defeat the US navy isn’t a personnel issue, it’s a doctrinal issue, caused by their said current inferiority in numbers of ships and capabilities, not trained personnel.
I also didn’t call the Type 55 a destroyer, I stated that the Chinese consider them destroyers while the US considers them cruisers.
It’s not just about ships, or tanks, or artillery. It’s really about combined arms and coordination.
Russia has serious problems fielding a modern military because authoritarian states have trouble relinquishing control to NCO level soldiers, for fear of mutiny or having their soldiers turned back on the leaders. Without them, decision-making is centralized and inefficient, and soldiers lack cohesion at the unit level. Changes in the situation on the ground require communication up and down layers, and the people who make the decisions can’t see what’s going on.
That’s why so many Russian generals and other high level officers have died in this war. An astounding amount, really. They discovered they couldn’t effectively lead from Russia, so they had to go to the front lines where they were easy pickings by drones and snipers and Excalibur artillery rounds spotted for by drones and satellites.
When the U.S. attacks something, it does so with overwhelming combined forces that include satellite and high altitude recon, massive numbers of aircraft and ships working in tandem with and communicating directly with officers and NCOs calling for fire support, etc. AWACS planes scour the area for enemy aircraft and missiles and coordinarte attacks, etc. It’s all a big choreographed operation that’s WAY more than the sum of its parts.
China has never fought a first world peer military power in modern times. Russia just has (partially), and it exposed huge weaknesses in their fighting ability. The only thing that kept Russia in the war at the beginning was that they were fighting a country that used the same weaponry they did. As the Ukraine’s weaponry has been replaced or augmented with more modern and capable western weaponry, the differences are becoming stark.
If Russia had faced NATO operating with a free hand, and neither side could use nukes, the result of the Ukraine invasion would have been NATO establishing air supremacy within a matter of days, followed by the obliteration of every Russian asset in Ukraine fairly soon thereafter.
A good comparison would be the Iraq war. Iraq had a HUGE army. Much larger than Ukraine’s. They had close to 4,000 tanks of the same quality the Russians are fielding in Ukraine. They had huge amounts of artillery. Their air force was the largest in the region with about 1,000 aircraft including all the planes Russia is flying now (Mig 29’s, etc) The soldiers were battle-hardened, experienced, and fighting defensively for their home. They were supposed to be expert at desert fighting. They were also extensively trained by Russians. Even American military experts thought the U.S. would suffer thousands of casualties in the initial phase of the war.
The tank wars wound up with 3300 destroyed Iraqi tanks vs 4 Abrams tanks damaged with a couple retired for being unrepairable. Iraq’s air force was eliminated quickly. The rest was mopping up. If Russia faced similar forces, the result would likely have been the same.
So what has China got that Russia doesn’t, either in hardware or a modern force structure? Because if China can’t coordinate all its branches and fight multiple levels at once (air, land, sea, anti-sub, etc) while retaining flexibility to change strategy as conditions on the ground change, the result of an invasion may well be a whole bunch of ships at the bottom of the Taiwan straight, or an army landing in Taiwan and finding they have no air support or something similar because Chinese fighters and ground attack planes get shot down before they get close.
China’s military leaders have to be looking at the performance of Russian equipment, tactics and men and thinking, “We’ve got some major restructuring to do.”
Back to the OP. 2001 signed agreement or not China views Outer Manchuria’s being part of Russia as the result of their “Century of Humiliation” in their revisionist history. Long term I’d believe they see taking it back as making history right. But agreed that they feel there is no rush.
Assume the OP is correct and that Putin is replaced by a sane individual.
That sane individual sees that Russia is pretty screwed in all cases. The war on Ukraine has vastly diminished their petrochemical power with the EU. Long term it was going to diminish anyway, but this sped it up. They have negative population growth, which the war has even worsened with some of their most highly educated and productive workers leaving. It would be a bigger problem if it wasn’t that they have less elderly for younger workers to support as many, especially men, do not live into very long age there. Probably COVID has helped thin out the elderly numbers as well. And they’ve proven that the threat of their land armies is a paper tiger at best.
Russia will be in desperate need of a patron and China will demand less severe terms for their patronage than the West will. Included in those terms will be Chinese control of Outer Manchuria in all but name. That will come decades later as Russian dependency on China increases even more. No tanks needed. Oh Russia will be assured of access to the sea too.
Russia post-Putin is already too dependent on China to risk pissing them off, and the West will be very reluctant to rely on Russia as major supplying partner no matter much humiliation Russia is willing to endure.
Russia’s path to increasingly being China’s vassal, not even junior partner, is fairly set. They’ve painted themselves into that corner and China didn’t even need to supply the paintbrush.
Good synopsis.
Another alternative future is Russia becomes a failed state on the lines of Somalia writ (very) much larger and (very) much colder. In effect a continent-sized region comprised of competing local warlords / oligarchs.
The real problem with any of this is how they transition from unitary dysfunctional kleptocracy to individual gangster fiefdoms without the current centralized military / secret police apparatus launching a wargasmic WW-III out of spite as it self-dismembers against the immovable rock of history.
The population of Russia is almost entirely on the border of Europe and looks European. I feel like, if they suddenly start realizing that they need to tie themselves to someone, it will be someone Western.
That said, the country could split West and East. Russia likes to view itself as the successor to the Roman Empire (with Moscow as New Rome). Rome divided itself into Western and Eastern halves, so that would just be following the same path.
Russia has a lot of raw materials and fairly quality, cheap labor. I don’t think that they’re particularly dependent on China. They make most of their own stuff.
Losing access to Taiwan, I suspect, is a bigger loss for them than China.
Realistically, I don’t know that they will be in a particularly bad state after the war, other than the loss of people. They’ll have burned through a lot of military supplies but that stuff was already all bought and paid for. They’re not in debt to anyone for it.
The question really comes down to whether they’re forced to pay reparations and how much that is. Conceivably, it could be zero - but a conditional zero. They might be told that they have to get rid of 95% of their nuclear arsenal, to create a Japan-style non-belligerence Constitution, sign a defense treaty with someone else (the UN?), and (for example) accept an oversight council of foreign-appointed overseers that have veto on the Russian political apparats - or something.
With something like that, they’re basically free of all of the military expenses that they’ve had to-date and they won’t owe anyone any money. They basically just need to keep their heads down for a few years until they gain access to the world economy again.
I don’t see any reason for them to tie themselves to China. Realistically, their biggest concern will be losing land to China so choosing a “big brother” who’s someone else would make the most sense.
The next shoe to drop if Russia loses badly is that their security arrangements and alliances with their neighbors could collapse. For instance, the CSTO (Collective Security Treaty Organization) is looking really shaky now, and it was supposed to be Russia’s NATO equivalent.
Armenia has already asked Russia for help against Azerbaijan’s invasion, and hasn’t gotten it. Belarus has so far stayed out of the war. Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan could distance themselves from Russia.
Nancy Pelosi went to Armenia last month to show support. That was a brilliant move, IMO. If Armenia sees America as potentially a better friend than Russia, it will do much to split apart Putin’s alliances.
Kazakhstan seems like it’s on the path to proper democratic government.
In general, they seem to be on a path away from Russia and China.