The Russian invasion of Ukraine changed all the dynamics in Asia. Europe had been without war for almost 80 years. The struggle in Yugoslavia was a civil confrontation and therefore different. But a military clash between two large states in the heart of the continent was something forgotten during a period without precedent in European history. Yet it happened.
In Asia, the last war was 40 years ago; China attacked Vietnam over its conquest of Cambodia. Before that, there were decades of fighting in Korea and Indochina. The idea of a conflict was always more present than in Europe. If, then, a full-blown invasion can happen in Europe, the same possibility is automatically multiplied in more volatile Asia.
Therefore, every Asian country will have to assume, as it’s happening today, that a full-scale war might blow up at any given moment over any given incident.
Therefore, there is an arms race going on, and emotions are running high for various reasons.
Also, unfortunately, while in the past China backed the “attacked” countries, such as Iraq or Serbia when it was trying to safeguard the Yugoslavia’s unity, according to the official rhetoric, this time, at the start of the clash, Beijing’s domestic propaganda sided with the attacker, Russia, oblivious of its claim on Ukraine’s territorial integrity.
Presently, China is changing its tune on Ukraine, it is nervous; the region is tense. Every country in the area has reasons to consider that as Russia did with Ukraine, so Beijing could do with Taiwan. The chance might be low, but how could an Asian government around China dismiss this possibility and avoid rearmament?
Here is the dilemma: War preparation is thus very reasonable, increasing the chances of incidents and worse. Some serious dialogue should be there to stop or slow down the slide, but so far, there is nothing like that, while wild grandiloquence inflames sentiments, not only in China.
Traps and trip-wires have always been part of politics. There is nothing strange or particularly bad about them.
China beat the US at its own globalization game, and now China should be wise not to fall into various ruses set by its many enemies, not only the US. Actually, China should remove the tangles and de-escalate the tension. It is useless to complain about the snares and then fall for them; it all sounds deliberate. Super-clever Russian President Vladimir Putin complaining about being tricked by otherwise “stupid” Americans sounds nonsensical.
To top it all, Russia faces many problems in Ukraine. It has been politically defeated, and it might also be militarily defeated. Russian establishment in the past century never survived a defeat in war: It had disruptive revolutions in 1905 after falling to Japan, in 1917 after failing to Germany, and in the 1980s after losing in Afghanistan. Will it be different this time? Perhaps not, and the stability of Russia is crucial for every country.
In all of this, puny but hyper-dangerous North Korea is preparing for a seventh nuclear test, making South Korea and Japan very nervous.
Then, what kind of fire will Russia’s future “revolution” kindle with the fickle Asian fuel?
This could be months or days away, but not years. It is doubtful at this stage that the war in Ukraine can go on like this for many years. Perhaps, we all should prepare for something very soon.
I do not think the PRC has ever attacked militarily of its own free will, contrary to the Atlantic group, it reacted to military aggression on its areas of influence, as much as we are doing today with L-Ukraine. The statement “The idea of a conflict was always more present than in Europe.” referring to the PRC is decidedly drawn to be diplomatic. The only deduction of all this (and it can be deduced from Italian journalism including Giula Pompili) is that a military confrontation against the PRC has already been decided, no one can certainly rejoice in this, indeed.
“I do not think the PRC has ever attacked militarily of its own free will”,
except for:
– intervention in korean war to support the communist (that were the aggressors)
– 1962 sino-indian war
– 1969 chinese invasion of Zhenbao Island
– 1979 sino vietnamese war
In that Yugoslavian “civil war” US bombed the Chinese embassy in Belgrad.
This article like many others I’m seeing talks about war without considering the purposes of the possible participants. Von Clausewitz remarked nearly two centuries ago that war is the continuation of politics by other means.
China’s main purpose is to take over Taiwan without damage to its population and especially to its chips industry. A secondary purpose is the return to the Charter of the United Nations and to put an end to the “International Liberal Rules Based Order” under which US determines the rules and finances itself by creating money out of thin air.
US purpose is to defend that socalled “order” and to that end it spends more than the next seven largest big spenders on “defence”. It is continuously at war and is preparing war against China and Russia.
In 2014 US organized and let a coup against the constitutional order in Ukraine in which the sitting president was removed and parliament was purged by some tens of thousands of demostrators and including armed neo-nazis in a city with three million people and a country with tens of millions of people. Since then Ukraine is a fake democracy that is also guilty of shooting down MH17 airliner. Ukraine was included into the Joint Investigation Team to look into this crime because as my Dutch newspaper NRC wrote at the time then the evidence it produced didn’t need to be checked by the four original members. Of course if Ukraine was not guilty there couldn’t have been any objection to such checks. Did then vice-president Biden insist on that accession to the JIT?
The current war was began by Russia to spoil a planned Ukrainian attack to conquer the Donbas region.
In all of this there is no reason to start a war in Asia except for US defending its exorbitant privileges,