Lessons from Ukraine for the Indo-Pacific. Meta/conceptual

Lessons from Ukraine for the Indo-Pacific. Meta/conceptual

Geostrategery and world history classrooms. More than two years after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, has the Western foreign policy-national security establishments – public and private – learned lessons and made improvements? I fear perhaps not, or not enough, and walls of missiles and AUKUS submarines notwithstanding, this poses the greatest challenge in the face of the China Threat. There has been exceptional analysis, but not the “mainstream/loudest” – which has stubbornly held onto decades-long conceptual frameworks. Although US intelligence performed brilliantly, many in the policymaking establishment were not convinced that Putin would invade. Nor have we gotten good analysis of why Putin chose to invade at this time – a lot of Western-centric guesses, NATO, historical grievance, whatever. There was widespread surprise at how bravely the Ukrainians fought, and how shoddy the Russian military performed.

If these were the major blind spots of Western policymaking establishment during the Russian invasion of Ukraine, we should be concerned about similar blind spots while analyzing the Indo-Pacific and the China Threat. There is a growing consensus among US and Western intelligence that for dictator Xi of communist China, the ability to invade Taiwan by 2027 is the primary objective. Are we suffering from similar Western academia-think tank-official establishment mistakes regarding policymaking calculus within the Chinese dictatorship?

A few educated guesses. I don’t think dictator Putin cared much about the expansion of NATO (See Finland and Sweden). I think Putin was primarily motivated by primordial, reactionary ideas about geostrategery, and national security, reviving ancient Russian imperialist-chauvinist ways of seeing neighboring nations as subordinate, tribute states. I think his calculus is that an isolated, permanent warring Russia that’s poor and full of grievances real and imagined-manufactured makes his dictatorship safer. Is this why sanctions have not changed Putin’s thinking? It is certainly why the parade of Western leaders flying to Moscow on the eve of the invasion for dialogue didn’t do anything. This is why I have concluded that the “escalation/de-escalation/management” model favored by Western national security establishment makes little sense when dealing with dictatorships with an entirely different set of motivations.

Now back to the Indo-Pacific/China Threat. We have a similar and worrisome pattern wherein Western intelligence sees aggressive and rapid preparation by the Chinese imperialists. We see evidence – Chinese military aggressiveness from India to Southeast Asia into the South Sea against Taiwan, Japan, and Korea – of both preparation and intentions. Just as with Putin’s Russian imperialism, Xi’s Chinese imperialism has been stated by the Chinese communists in plain words – the right of the Chinese communist to invade and subjugate Taiwan, the right of Chinese imperialism to expand its sphere of influence from the Sino-Indian border to Southeast Asia, from the South Sea through the Taiwan Strait into the East Sea and the Western Pacific. Is it possible that once again Western foreign policy intelligentsia is repeating the same mistakes from Russia-Ukraine, imposing Western values and Western policymaking hierarchies onto another continental, imperialist dictatorship? I have read calls for assuring Beijing. I have seen proposals to make concessions. My question is – had the Western powers “gave” Ukraine to Russia in 2022, would Putin stop his aggressive policy challenging the US-led world order? And a similar question now – if the Western powers “give” Taiwan Republic or the Philippines or the South Sea to communist China, would that result in the Chinese communist dictatorship behaving in a way that benefits the US-led world order? Why haven’t relatively harsh economic sanctions and tools to decouple the Russian economy from the global trade system not curb Russian or Chinese aggression? And if such economic sanctions prove relatively ineffective against Russia, would they become more successful against China?

If my guess is correct – both dictator Putin and dictator Xi have calculated that decoupling from globalization – globalization to them merely means another phase in the post-war world order invented by the United States and enforced by the American navy – makes their dictatorship more secure, then what policies before 2022, and what policies in 2024, would have more likely prevent military aggression from the Russians and the Chinese? Would including Ukraine in EU and/or NATO as a response to the invasion of Crimea be the way? Does a US/AUKUS-led coalition of troops rotating into Taiwan and the South Sea change the calculation for dictatorship preservation for Xi? 27.4.2024

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