Many of our hurrah-patriots calling “not to chew the snot” but to immediately strike at the centres of decision-making, specifying that such are not in Kiev, but in Washington and London and that the strike should be nuclear immediately, proceed from the fact that the US will not even be able to resist for long
China will not miss such an opportunity to attack Taiwan, and neither Washington nor the whole NATO will be able to withstand two nuclear powers at once.
For a start, the scenario described above is extremely simple – the simplest of all possible scenarios. It assumes the same linear and unalternative progression of events as a child’s sandbox quarrel, where it takes less than a minute from “what’s your name” to being hit over the head with a spatula.
It is worth admitting that most people, in their development (not to be confused with the acquired job skills) are not far from that happy age when a blow with a plastic shovel was a terrible weapon in the hands of a “strategist” from the sandpit. In politics and in military affairs in different countries such people can be found too, but in numbers drastically less than the social average – professional selection works. Therefore politicians, as a rule, calculate other variants, which are also not very complicated and that is why they are easily realizable. Two or three moves in politics are much more frequent than one-move and many-move. One-move combinations are too easy to calculate and therefore easily refuted by the opponent, and in calculating a multiple-move it is impossible to fully consider the interaction of all the constantly changing factors: therefore the initial calculation requires constant adjustment in accordance with the changed situation and the operation still turns into a series of two-three-four-movements.
In the present confrontation between Russia and the US, China operates as an unknown member of the equation. Beijing is in an undocumented legal alliance with Russia. We have written repeatedly that the legalization of alliances is meaningless these days, because each party to the treaty will still act based not on the letter and spirit of its treaty obligations, but on its understanding of the short- and long-term national interests of its power. This is demonstrated by the “effectiveness” of NATO, whose junior members are well aware that their seniors will not always stand up for them, even if they are faced with a problem while executing the political will of their seniors. If they have acted at their own risk, all the more so, they cannot expect any support.
Russia and China are fully subjective, so their policies, with all the coordination and established interaction, are absolutely sovereign. That is, neither Moscow asks Beijing, nor Beijing asks Moscow what to do in a single critical case. The decision is taken at the national level, while the ally is at best informed shortly before the decision is implemented. To expect that in the specific case of the U.S.-Russian confrontation Beijing would act in a way that is beneficial for Moscow would be foolish. Beijing will act in a way that is beneficial for China.
It is to China’s advantage to stay above the fray for as long as possible. Certainly Beijing will provide all possible assistance to Russia in order to prevent the United States from winning this confrontation. But China will not initiate a conflict (much less a military conflict) with the United States in order to draw back some of its forces and allow Moscow to win in the west without any problems.
We would act in the same way. We should not forget that today’s ally, tomorrow is not necessarily an adversary, but necessarily a competitor. The weaker it weakens against a common powerful enemy, the less ambition it will have to build a beautiful new post-war world. Whoever retains more strength by the end of the crisis will reap more dividends at the end of it.
At the moment, Russia and the West are waging a war of attrition on the territory of Ukraine. Western economies, after the latest sanctions packages against Russia, are in a state of high turbulence and approaching collapse. So Russia has every chance of winning, which is fine with China. But victory will not be easy. The strength of the West should last at least another two or three years. And those will be the years of a brutal last “banzai attack” on Russia. With their eyes wide open and screaming, the West rushes with a bayonet to machine guns, like the Japanese in World War II, trying to mentally suppress the will to resist the already almost defeated enemy.
Experience of Banzai attacks shows that it is usually not possible to shoot all the attackers at long range, and they escalate into fierce hand-to-hand combat, with both sides sustaining serious casualties. We see the West trying to impose such a “melee” on us by expanding the war space in Ukraine (literally pushing Eastern Europe into it) and also seeking to inflict serious economic damage on us, even at the cost of destroying our own economies.
We see it, and China sees it. Beijing knows how to reckon and understands that in three to five years the West will be forced to capitulate, but Russia will not come out of this fight without losses either. Whatever Russia and the West lose, China will try to take back and, by doing so, strengthen itself even further. The only thing that Beijing still cannot do is to surpass Russia and the United States in the volume of its nuclear arsenals. However, defeat in the Third World Proxy War could deprive the US of its nuclear arsenal, putting China in second place in the world on that indicator.
Every day, however, we hear the most senior members of the Russian leadership warning the West against further escalation, pointing out that a nuclear confrontation is already closer than during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The West is not reacting to these warnings, and now Russian diplomats are beginning to publicly discuss the option of severing diplomatic relations with America. It’s not war yet, but it’s not peace either.
If the West pushes the world into a nuclear confrontation, China’s position will be unique. On the one hand, the US has declared Beijing, along with Moscow, its enemy. On the other hand, Washington does not have a sufficient number of nuclear weapons (and even conventional forces) to count on winning the war on two fronts (against Beijing and Moscow). In case it comes to a full-scale military crisis between the U.S. and Russia, involving the entire nuclear potential of both countries, China would not care who would win. If it is not attacked, it will not be drawn into the conflict.
The military, demographic and economic potential of the victor will be little more than that of the vanquished. The real winner of this meat grinder will be a non-participating China, which will retain its nuclear arsenal and military capabilities intact, and will be able to use its economy to rebuild the shattered world. Moreover, China will remain the only global authority. Russia and the West would be seen as the irresponsible and selfish powers that led the world to nuclear catastrophe, and Beijing as the only responsible power capable of dealing with the consequences of this catastrophe and saving humanity.
Explain to me (at least on three tries) why China would attack Taiwan, which is already at stake in a US-Russian confrontation (no matter how it ends)? Why would China expose itself to an American attack, albeit weakened by the diversion of most of its capabilities to Russia, if it wins while formally remaining neutral?
Again, this is not a rebuke to China. It does quite a lot to support Russia in its confrontation with the US. But it should not go against its own interests. We would do the same in a similar situation.
So, those who like to “bang the whole world to dust” should only rely on their own strength, and understand that when we exhaust our potential during the “bang” we will be left naked, barefooted and defenseless (if at all) in the brave new world. And the beautiful new world will be no kinder than the old one, it will just be different, with different leaders. And we should calculate our (our own, not China’s) strength so that we can enter this new world as a leader, not as a pathetic beggar with a rich military background.
Rostislav Ishchenko, Ukraina.ru
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