... Moscow’s unconditional support for the One-China principle. This should be understood as a recognition of Taiwan as an integral part of the People’s Republic of China, while some nations, at the behest of the United States, talk instead about a “united China,” avoiding any recognition of the sovereignty of the Communist authorities over the island. Incidentally, Taipei protested the joint statement and imposed sanctions against Russia in late February as the situation in Ukraine was developing.
Self-Defence has its limits
Finally, Tokyo’s reaction to the aggravated international situation amid Russia’s special operation is extremely concerning. Sanctions were to be expected, as Tokyo has consistently followed suit ...
... military strategy and planning can be only evaluated later, its poor political planning is already evident. The task of keeping Ukraine under control could be carried out in various forms (and it was often successfully realized in some periods of post-Soviet ... ... anywhere outside the occupation zone.
Furthermore, Moscow's reliance on Beijing is growing considerably. The People's Republic of China remains the only stable and large external market for Russia and its only source of advanced technologies. But these new ...
... expects of Russia is to continue to permit the expansion—even though the unipolar moment is now over—however, Russia has resurrected, and the global balance has irrevocably changed with the rise of China and the rapprochement between Russia and China. In other words, the strategic offensive posture of NATO, which derives from the moment of unipolarity, was expected to linger in Europe.
When Russia recognized the two breakaway republics of Russian-speakers in Ukraine, following it up with troop infusion, the West could have understood the heightened yet long-standing security compulsions of Russia, considering it as a continuum of the Russian policy since 2014 and an attempt to contain things at that point....
... commentators have been skeptical if Chinese companies would be willing to incur such risks,
citing
their past compliance with U.S. regimes.
China’s support for Russia’s policy towards Ukraine might also jeopardize its own interests in the country. China is one of Ukraine’s
main trading partners
, accounting for about a sixth of its imports and exports, while Ukraine has been one of the biggest destinations for Chinese investments in Eastern Europe,
especially
in its agribusiness sector (albeit with most of ...
... Russian peacekeepers. We called on the United States to stop the madman in Tbilisi and had to react with our military might only 24 hours after the blatant and heinous offence against peace in the Caucasus had been committed.
So any analogy of Russia and China coordination with regard to Ukraine is nonsense. Although speaking more broadly, there is no doubt that the current situation in the world fosters further strengthening of the strategic partnership between Moscow and Beijing. But unlike the U.S. and its NATO allies we have no geopolitical ...
... position is on its rise.
If one looks at U.S. bilateral relations with other countries, the overall picture seems the same. The United States is very inconsistent in its policies towards North Korea, the Middle East (predominantly Syria, Turkey and Iran), China, Venezuela, and Ukraine. And this inconsistency doesn’t seem to be a part of a grand strategy defined within the laws of “realpolitik”, where actions change and fluctuate in accordance with the situation at hand, but more a proof of cluelessness about how to act ...
... unchanging over time. The more Western-oriented discourses in Russia would have some believe that Russia could simply return to the European world and order that existed 15, 20 or even 30 years ago. In that European order, there was no conflict over Ukraine, no sharp Eurozone crisis, no migration crisis on the present scale, no Brexit, and no rise of right-wing populism. That world order had no transatlantic fault or split, no comparable economic dominance by China, no return to international protectionism, and no Arab Spring with its tragic consequences.
Bref
, that European order had none of that which today determines the priorities of the EU.
The vulnerability of the liberal narrative in respect of the ...
... way to knock the “Russian card” out of the hands of political profiteers is to implement a well-balanced, long-term and consistent strategy of Russia’s relations with a specific state or groups of states. The most instructive case is Russia–China relations. There have been and there will be many attempts to sow doubts or mutual suspicions, to resurrect old grievances and contradictions, but they all come to naught because of a solid edifice of bilateral relations that has been consistently ...
... (not Crimea), the US, politically unpredictable and preoccupied by any Russian connection to the 2016 presidential election, is unlikely to be able to deliver any meaningful sanctions relief for the foreseeable future.
Back to Asia, and perhaps with China now clearly in the lead. A critical, underappreciated part of any global deal to stop the fighting in, and more generally to stabilise, southeastern Ukraine, and indeed Ukraine as a whole, must be a very large economic package that seeks, first, to rebuild the territories of southeastern Ukraine ravaged by war; and second, to resuscitate the near-bankrupt overall Ukrainian economy, including by reformatting ...
... systems obsolete?
But if Missile Defenses do prove to be effective, at least against some missile systems, is it possible to develop some form of dual key Missile Defense system against third party threats? How can the U.S. best reassure Russia and China that the US deployment of MD systems is not aimed a developing a first strike capability?
Russia–Crimea–Eastern Ukraine
In June 2017, just after the U.S. re-imposed sanctions on Moscow, the U.S. State Department insisted that the new sanctions measures were intended to reinforce existing sanctions and that they were “
designed
to counter attempts to circumvent ...
