... an ally does not guarantee that they will be able to provide assistance in time due to the distance factor.
The consistent refusal of leading Asian powers to commit to stable and formal alliance obligations is the result of their historical experience,... ... strategies developed in the latter half of the previous century. Furthermore, the vast demographic size of countries such as India, China, and Indonesia limits their ability to form long-term alliances. The large populations of these nations require significant ...
... on a protracted conflict in which they know they have more resources.
Nuclear polycentricity reflects the world’s growing multipolarity
During the Cold War there were five nuclear powers, but then the only real poles were the US and the USSR, plus China with its then small nuclear arsenal. Now Beijing is moving towards (at least) parity with America and Russia, while India, Pakistan, North Korea and Israel remain independent players (unlike NATO members Britain and France).
The classic Cold War ...
... Korean nationalist An Jung-geun assassinated Ito Hirobumi, the first Prime Minister of Japan, has got a new magnificent Nouveau style terminal modelled after the original 1899 Russian station. Harbin has every reason to position itself as the leading China’s national hub for economic, cultural, educational and human interaction with its northern neighbor.
Remembering WW2 in Asia
One of the items of Vladimir Putin agenda in Harbin was to lay flowers at the memorial to some twelve thousand of Soviet soldiers and officers who died during WW2 liberating Manchuria from the Japanese occupation. The Russia leader specifically noted the careful attitude of the Chinese authorities towards the memory of joint pages of military glory and brotherhood....
... respect for national interests and civilizational values, and consensus.
Neither BRICS nor the SCO is overtly anti-American or anti-Western: their main focus is internal rather than external, and they have their work cut out for them. Of course, Russia, China, India, Iran and others insist on doing business without outside interference, not to speak of foreign diktat. They don’t want to dominate Eurasia: they live there, it is their home – unlike the ever-restless
“indispensable nation”
thousands of miles away. In Ukraine, the main issue for Russia has been national security, not some
“resurrection of an empire”
; in Taiwan, Beijing has advocated national reunification on a version of the Hong Kong model, again a far cry from an imperial ...
China attempts to delay, to the greatest extent possible, the process of direct conflict with the United States and its allies
China attempts to delay, to the greatest extent possible, the process of direct conflict with the United States and its allies....
Beijing is rather reluctant to get deeply involved in intra-regional politics in the Middle East, as this could provoke new tensions with the U.S.
The current escalation in the Middle East has been described by many as a test of influence for China. For example, the media repeatedly suggested that the United States asked China to put pressure on Iran during the latest rounds of escalation, especially after the Israeli strike on the Iranian consulate in Damascus. Yet, if compared to Qatari,...
...
estimated
by the US Naval Institute (USNI), the total number of SM-3 interceptors of different versions is 265 with more than a thousand
SM-6
interceptors for destroying targets in the atmosphere at a distance of up to 370 km. The U.S. Navy’s 7th Fleet alone,... ... defense system in the Asia Pacific calls global strategic stability into question, because it could be used against Russia and China. In 2018, the head of Russian diplomacy insistently
urged
Japan to enter into a dialogue about the U.S. plans to create ...
... President Vladimir Putin’s Munich Speech in 2007 was a kind of declaration of Russia’s geopolitical independence and a public challenge to the US hegemony. This defiance of Russia was geopolitical, normative, and partly military. At the same time, China’s rapid economic and technological growth and Beijing’s refusal to accept the American offer to become a junior partner of the United States subjected American hegemony to economic challenges. Since the mid-1990s, two major powers, namely Russia and China, have regularly declared multipolarity as the desired ...
... of Russian natural gas to China by 10 billion cubic meters per year
[2]
.
The declaration and the economic deals signed during the visit thereby contributing to Russia’s reorientation of economic ties from Europe towards China later led to the accusations against China that Beijing had been informed by Russians about the coming conflict, and China supported the Special Military Operation as a result. Another argument which was used to support the charges was a growing number of contracts to procure Russian liquefied ...
... growing giants of international politics, their colossal demographic size in itself puts internal issues in first place. Foreign policy activity fades into the background and is considered only in the context of the internal struggle for unity (Russia, China, India) or the retention of power by elites, who have become practically irreplaceable in recent decades (the USA and the largest European countries).
This objective process has two consequences that are of interest on a theoretical and practical level. First, there is growing confusion among those whose professional responsibility is to talk about international ...
