China, Russia, and Western Delusions
Taking Our Opponents As Seriously As They Take Us
The Beijing Olympic Opening Ceremony began sometime in the last 24 hours. Unfortunately, neigh-religious fanatical liberal fads consume media around the Olympics. The Olympics used to be a time of rallying around the flag and watching incredible feats of athleticism. I will watch some of it inadvertently, but I won't seek it out like many others.
While the Olympics began in China, the eyes are focused on the Russo-Ukraine crisis in Eastern Europe. Twitter pundits speculated that Russa would wait until the Olympics to attack between the freezing weather and the opportunity to strike. However, with surveillance and sensor technology improvement, the Olympics is not much of a distraction. Unlike the 2002 Battle of Yeongpyeong along the Northern Limit Line in the Yellow Sea, a sports event isn't going to obscure a full-scale military assault. So far, any Russian delay is to accomplish some goal or prepare an unorthodox attack.
Russia’s Strategy
I am increasingly skeptical that a Russian assault will be as conventional as many expect. A full-scale military invasion is still possible. I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding of Russian strategic goals in Ukraine. Would Russia like to incorporate a substantial portion of Ukraine? Yes. The whole of Ukraine? No. Vladimir Putin is not Joseph Stalin, and the Russian Federation is not the Soviet Union. Russia could be happy to continue the conflict indefinitely.
These two events, the Beijing Olympics and the Russo-Ukraine crisis provide an excellent opportunity to introduce a towering Realism figure, John Mearsheimer. Mearsheimer is the father of offensive realism and makes a lot of similar arguments I've made vis-à-vis Russia, Ukraine, and China. I recommend watching his talks on YouTube, and you can watch them at 1.25x speed for the sake of time.
The interesting aspect about realism, which Mearsheimer makes, is it is intrinsically a non-ideological view towards war and peace. We live in a highly ideological age where decision-makers justify national decisions through highly abstracted concepts. These go far beyond principles. Liberal hegemonic universalism often fundamentally rejects reality rather than guides it toward an ideal state. See an example of Western/Central European propaganda:
This is a vignette but poignant. For whom is this video made? Western, non-Ukrainian, and non-Russian, spectators. Spectators because this is like a sporting event for the liberally minded person with political opinions. These videos are designed to elicit emotional reinforcement that these outsiders' world views are correct. These spectators don't have skin-in-the-game when it comes to conflict elsewhere.
What is this worldview? That universal expansion of secular liberal democracy is a good and desirable thing that creates a condition of global non-violence and global humanitarianism. It is, in a way, utilitarian because it assumes the sameness and indifference between any nation. Despite being a preferable form of government for many, these assumptions are fundamentally untrue.
The United States and Soviet militaries, and the collapse of birthrates, kept the peace in Europe, not ideology. For example, the American wars of liberal jihad have caused needless bloodshed abroad. That's not to consider actors' far more insidious motivations for domestic and foreign interests. The nature of power politics is that more aggressive, tribal, and less liberal factions can exploit the liberal tendencies of openness to their own ends.
The Russo-Ukrainian crisis has taken this spectator liberal worldview to the extreme—this conflict in motion by handing over Crimea to Ukraine, exacerbated by Western agitation. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, NATO began to expand Westward under the concept of liberal universal hegemony expansionism right to Russia's borders. Following the Budapest Memorandum in 1994, Russia made it clear it would not tolerate Ukraine joining NATO.
In 2013 and 2014, massive protests demanded further integration into the European Union. Keep in mind that Russia made it clear that they would not tolerate further Western influence into its bordering nations. Then Ukrainian President Yanukovych refused the protest demands, and violence broke out between the state and the protests.
Yanukovych's most extensive base of support is in Eastern Ukraine, with the most significant part of the Russian minority in the country. One of the major social policy drives was to elevate Russian to the second official language.
Subsequently, after the events of 2013 and 2014, protesters drove parliament to oust Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych. Immediately after, Ukraine's parliament debated introducing legislation to remove Russian language official status in the country as a part of Ukrainian culture push of de-Sovietization. This legislation failed, but it's provoked the Russian-speaking areas of Ukraine, whose partiality to the deposed Yanukovych pushed Ukraine further into the civil war. Russian troops seized Crimea only hours later, and the War in Donbas began.
One of the major reasons for laying out the timeline is to identify this is a civil war with an ethnic component. Many of the Russian minority believe Western Ukraine oppresses them. As I've pointed out before, this may seem strange to us in the West with a long history of coexistence. However, this region has had many mutual hostilities between Russians and Ukrainians for decades. This is also a problem of the Western obsession with semi-presidential unitary parliamentary governments – inadequate enfranchisement of minority groups in the political system – but I digress with my American fondness for republican forms of government.
So, you have a situation where Russia’s strategic interest compels them to prevent EU/NATO expansion and ethnic skirmishes with Russians as a minority faction. Russia will act unlike Western countries bordered by oceans, which abandoned their ex-pats.
What's Russia's interest – to compel Ukraine to give up the Russian-speaking portion of Ukraine to Russia. According to Mearsheimer, they have no interest in consuming the whole of Ukraine. However, they are more than willing to wait out the Ukrainian resolve.
To maintain troops in the field is expensive, especially calling up reserves and irregulars like Ukraine has had to do in the 2022 Russo-Ukrainian crisis. We will soon be entering the most important seasons for agricultural growth in Ukraine, potentially with reserve troops called up. This troop call-up is extremely dangerous for Ukrainian agricultural exports – that Ukraine relies on for money. In comparison, Russia can delay conflict indefinitely and grind down Ukrainian civil society through low-intensity conflict.
Russia has repeatedly shown they don't want to risk manpower in offensive wars wherever possible needlessly, so they're willing to employ unorthodox strategies to seize territory and topple governments. We see this with the number of plots and ploys Russia attempts.
Furthermore, they don't need to take Eastern parts of Ukraine – they need to continue to deny Ukraine's ability to join the EU and NATO. That is a victory condition for Russia – denial.
On a broader point: geopolitics is not very hard. The field is often gussied up in esoteric language to discuss specific ideas, but for most people, it's as clear as what is important, what is valuable, and what do forces want.
China
Even though it's not exceedingly difficult, it is apparently impossible to make national security figures take prominent issues seriously – like the rise of China. China's rise was through maximum engagement with the United States because of the Sino-Soviet split. To put it more simply, the United States created a peer Great Power competitor. Pundits discussed America's accidental creation of Al Qaeda; well, we intentionally made a country that could beat us because of our Cold War obsessions with Russia well after the Cold War.
To that end of acting more serious about China, President Trump launched his limited trade war. President Biden oversaw the creation of Australia-United Kingdom-United States tripartite alliance and the "Quad" alliance of the United States-India-Japan-Australia.
However, despite these positive directions to contend with Chinese competition, our national security establishment still says the dumbest of liberal takes.
Of course, China wants a further escalation in Eastern Europe. China wants to see Russia, the world's largest commodities exporter outside the United States, driven into a closer relationship with China, the world's largest consumer. This is your brain on fantasy liberal idealism. Why should China want de-escalation in Ukraine? I want to know.
This kind of thinking exists across both parties of the political spectrum. Even within the Trump Administration, cabinet secretaries like Steve Mnuchin didn't care much for the competition with China, downplaying their ability to contend with the United States. While a military confrontation is questionable, it is undeniable that we are in economic and political competition with China.
Conclusion
While the loud faction demands war with Russia and further engagement with China, the United States fails to deal with its direct strategic interest in the Pacific and Asia. Europe is increasingly less and less potent in geopolitics, with Russia following with them through a sheer lack of babies. Meanwhile, the most crucial item in national security – to prevent a military confrontation with another nuclear power – is ignored. The failure to strengthen American geopolitical competitiveness will embolden China to act more aggressively in areas of American interest, including at home. Conclusion: There needs to be realism that Russia is the key for America's objectives in Syria and Iran and maintaining a balance of powers against China.