This is Part Three of Four; Part One can be read here, and Part Two can be read here. This is a series of pieces talking about the implications of a Ukrainian victory or a Russian victory on situations around the world. Heads up—each Part will be a long-ish read.

Assume Ukraine wins.

Ukraine will have won despite US, NATO, and EU timidity in the face of Russian threats of nuclear war. That timidity was, for instance, President Joe Biden’s (D) motive for overruling his Secretary of State and blocking Poland’s offer of a squadron of its MiG-29s to Ukraine: Russian President Vladimir Putin had said that providing aircraft to Ukraine would be escalatory, and Putin and some of his seconds had been hinting away with their nuclear weapons. The chatter about Poland wanting a NATO imprimatur on the transfer and so wanted to send them via the American air base at Ramstein, Germany, or that Ukraine, in the USAF’s august opinion didn’t need them, was just chatter to distract from the timidity.

Repeating from earlier, Putin also had said, among his many hints otherwise, that nuclear weapons would not be used regardless of the outcome of the Ukraine “special operation.” Dmitry Peskov, Putin’s Press Secretary[i]:

But any outcome of the operation [in Ukraine], of course, is not a reason for usage of a nuclear weapon. We have a security concept that very clearly states that only when there is a threat for existence of the state in our country, we can use and we will actually use nuclear weapons to eliminate the threat or the existence of our country.

This only emphasizes the timidity of the West. Because of the essentially lonely nature of Ukraine’s victory, the outcome will not be the mirror image of the outcome of a Russian victory.

The situation with a Russian loss will center on a wounded and humiliated Vladimir Putin and his government, and on the People’s Republic of China’s President Xi Jinping’s reaction to the Russian loss, particularly as that loss concerns the Republic of China.

Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has offered in early negotiations, to acknowledge that the likelihood of Ukrainian membership in NATO is low for the near- to mid-future. That’s not the same as Zelenskyy withdrawing his request to join, and he will likely renew his request as soon as the Ukrainian military is able to consolidate its victory. After all, as Zelenskyy also has said, Ukrainian accession to NATO will be a gain for NATO not a drain on it[ii].

Zelenskyy also likely will press his application for admission to the European Union. The success of that, leaving aside the EU’s reluctance to angrify Putin (especially at the risk of rubbing Putin’s nose in his defeat), that will entail a few years of cleaning up the Ukrainian government and business environment to meet EU criteria.

With respect to that last, Zelenskyy did offer a plausible explanation of his decision to include a putatively neo-Nazi Azov battalion in his military establishment. In an interview with Fox News‘ Bret Baier (who did not address Zelenskyy’s expulsion of eleven opposition parties from his government while retaining one supposedly pro-Nazi party), Zelenskyy had this[iii] [I’ve corrected, mostly, the transcriber’s transcription errors and his and Baier’s grammar errors; I had listened to the interview live.]:

Baier: I want to have you clear something up for us and this is these reports about the Azov Battalion that is said to be Nazi affiliated organization operating as a militia in your country, said to be committing their own atrocities. What should Americans know about that unit, about those reports?

Zelenskyy: So Azov was one of those many battalions. With the caveat, they are what they are. They were defending our country, and later I want to explain to you. Pretty sure everything from all the components of those volunteer battalions later were incorporated into the military of Ukraine. Those Azov fighters are no longer self-established group. They are component of Ukrainian military. Back in 2014 there were situations when our volunteers were encircled and some of them did violate laws, laws of Ukraine, and they actually were taken to court and got prison sentences. So law is above all.

The most likely impact of the late Azov battalion is that it will feed EU reluctance and foot-dragging.

Having lost in Ukraine, Putin likely will move to try to save face by acting against Belorussia, Transnistria and then on into Moldova.

The friendliness of Russian-Belorussian relations is only skin deep—Belorussian President             Alexander Lukashenko and Putin do not like each other; they get along only because they must: Putin needs Belorussia, not only as part of a reconstituted Russian empire, but also to flank a still independent Ukraine and to give Putin an arrow, however fragile, aimed at the rest of Europe. Lukashenko needs Putin in order to stay in power. Lukashenko’s glorified hijacking of a foreign airliner in order to kidnap a journalist, together with his behavior with Arab and Afghan refugees on the Polish border, have put him in very bad odor even with his own people. The people themselves, while not Westward-looking, are not at all enamored of Russia, and they haven’t seemed favorably impressed with their nation being used as a staging ground for Putin’s adventurism. Withal, Putin will move to solidify that fragile relationship. He will likely leave some of his army units being withdrawn from northern Ukraine in Belorussia in order to encourage friendly relations.

Putin also is likely to move to settle, finally, the Transnistria question. At worst, from Putin’s perspective, a successful settlement in Russia’s favor would open another front from which to try Ukraine again at some later date. The region presently is nominally governed by a Joint Control Commission, but Moldova hasn’t actually accepted the situation, officially terming the Russian-occupied region the Administrative-Territorial Units of the Left Bank of the Dniester and an organic part of Moldova. Putin would gain credibility, at least domestically, were he to succeed in gaining formal control of the region. Putin has several Russian Army units already based in Transnistria—which haven’t moved in the war with Ukraine—with which he could encourage that Russian-favorable settlement.

Should he succeed at that, Putin will look to reincorporate, whether formally or de facto, Moldova, the ex-SSR, into the Russian empire. Those Transnistrian units would be useful for advancing that control, whether tacit or overt. Aside from recovering some credibility and taking another step toward empire reconstitution, controlling Moldova would deepen that second front against Ukraine.

Putin also will likely lash out at the Baltics and Poland with cyber attacks, but he will be unlikely to press formal hostilities against a NATO seemingly unified by his invasion of Ukraine and resurgent by its claimed role in the Ukrainian victory. Putin’s actions will be more in the nature of a temper tantrum than anything serious. He may also, in another backhanded nuclear intimidation effort, move a few more nuclear-armed IRBMs into Kaliningrad.

I tend to discount any significant change in Russian actions regarding Georgia and Azerbaijan/Armenia. In the first place, Putin will be preoccupied with his dealings with the immediate surround of Ukraine and looking for ways to reassert pressure on that nation, despite having a military establishment diminished from combat losses of men and materiel, and publicly shown to have been diminished all along through poor quality training, equipment, maintenance, and logistic capability, plus endemic corruption siphoning off materiel and funds. Too, Putin has only recently settled on terms more favorable to Russia than not, the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, and he’ll be anxious to consolidate that outcome prior to making any further moves along that axis. Changes in this direction must wait several years, and they’ll depend on the level of success Putin has in Moldova, Transnistria, and Belorussia. And Ukraine.

In the second place, Putin already occupies Georgia’s Abkhazia Oblast (along with its South Ossetia Oblast). This extends Russia’s eastern Black Sea coast, and adding the rest of the Georgian coast wouldn’t add enough—yet—to be worth the trouble.

That raises the question of Russia’s relations with the EU, UK, US, and the PRC. Putin’s success at any of the above moves depends heavily on the status of the sanctions levied against Russia pursuant to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. With the end of that war, Putin will press for the sanctions being lifted. President Biden has indicated that the sanctions should be left in place until Putin is no longer in power. The Polish government is strongly inclined to agree, as will be the newly victorious Ukrainian government.

The peoples of Western Europe, which even now have not experienced war’s ravages except for what they see on their television sets, will be less inclined to continue the costs of the sanctions. I anticipate Germany and Italy, especially, will look to have them lifted quickly so they can go back to getting all that cheap Russian oil and natural gas. Much is made in the press of Biden’s success in cobbling together the economic and military supply coalition that aided Ukraine; the new test will be whether he can hold it together for a few years longer. Putin will not go quietly or quickly.

Putin will turn to his new very best friend, People’s Republic of China President Xi Jinping. He’ll be looking to sell oil and gas into the PRC economy and to borrow money from Xi’s banks to cover the shortfalls caused by the sanctions and to pay for attempts to reconstitute his military establishment.

Xi will willingly lend Putin all he wants to borrow, and at favorable monetary rates. The true vigorish will come in the form of increased rights to Siberia, and favorable treatment of his BRI efforts through Kazakhstan and such other ‘Stans as might become useful to Xi. This is a lesson southern Road borrowers have learned and that Putin will learn. That collateral will be collected on the first late payment. Putin is likely to find Xi an enemy kept too close, but that’s a few years into the future.

Putin will look hard at India, also, in the aftermath of his defeat. Arms sales have been another source of income for Russia, and India has long been a willing buyer. With the increasing belligerence of the PRC along the Indian-PRC and Bhutan-PRC borders, India will—and has been—stepping up its arms purchases from Russia, along with attempts to buy from the US. India also is becoming more active in the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, a growing security arrangement among India, Japan, Australia, and the US, an arrangement aimed at mutual support against the PRC. This QUAD also encourages Indian arms buying, including from Russia. Russian ability to produce and deliver, however, is increasingly hampered by those sanctions, and the more so, the longer the sanctions remain in place. Putin may well find himself offering to deliver arms to India on Tuesday for a payment today.

In addition to arms, India has been an enthusiastic buyer of Russian oil. On both oil and arms, India has been trying to walk the narrow causeway between Russia and the West, and Putin will seek to exploit that to his advantage.

Putin will continue his saber-rattling against the US, given the partial success he had at that during his invasion of Ukraine, but his loss there will have defused much of his nuclear bluster. The US will largely ignore the bluster while seeking to build on the ties with NATO, EU, and UK that were partially renewed through the efforts vis-à-vis dealing with Russia’s invasion.

The People’s Republic of China—Xi and his PLA commanders—will have closely observed the failure of Russian arms, from training through logistics and maintenance to performance during movement to contact and under fire, and they will take a number of lessons from that.

One lesson is the differences in terrain between the relatively open Ukrainian land, even if swamps are present, compared to the essentially mountainous terrain of the island of Taiwan. Given the trouble even the transport challenged Russian units had—limited as they were to roads once inside Ukraine—moving across Ukraine’s relatively flat terrain, the PLA will carefully review its mobility capacities in those mountains.

Another may be the degree of arrogance by Putin and his command staff, especially regarding Ukraine’s political and military capability. The PLA command staff may not learn this lesson well, though: the PRC is at the center of heaven and believes it to be Chinese destiny to rule. That’s not conducive to maintaining a good balance between confidence and humility.

Another lesson available to the PRC is the impact of corruption on force readiness. The Soviet Long Range Aviation (strategic bombing) and Frontal Aviation (fighter aircraft) generally had an operationally ready rate of under 50%—less than half the aircraft in each force could be launched for combat; the bulk of the airframes were, to use an old USAF technical term, hard broke, with many of them no better than hangar queens. The forces were in such poor shape because from command staff on down to unit commanders, funds for maintenance, pay, and supplies were siphoned off for personal use. A possibly apocalyptic example is the claim that one of the reasons the aircraft had such a poor OR rate is that the alcohol-based hydraulic fluid was drunk by the lower ranks of maintainers. Their pay had been stolen by their commanders, so they had no money to buy real alcoholic beverages.

The Russian land and air forces employed in Ukraine were victims of the same sort of rampant corruption, which led to poor quality equipment, lack of maintenance supplies and weak fuel transport, even of food.  The funds intended to provide for these were largely siphoned off for personal gain of the oligarchs and the Kremlin command staff generals.

Corruption is just as entrenched in the PLA, along with the rest of the PRC government. The degree of effect on force readiness, though, remains uncertain due to the lack of actual combat use of any of the PLA branches. The recent kerfuffle between India and the PRC over the Bhutan-PRC border provides no indication; that was just a playground scuffle.

There are two likely results from these lessons which the PRC is likely to apply as it contemplates the Republic of China. One is to reconsider its plans to take control of the island by force “if necessary.” The PRC may decide to put off a forcible takeover, and it may put off the idea of physical isolation of the island until it has properly tested its units. The risk it runs here is that the delay would give the QUAD, and especially the US and Australia, time to increase and improve the RoC’s equipage and training. Delay also would give Australia time to improve its navy to the point of being a serious challenge in the South China Sea and along the Outer Island Barrier. Delay would give the US similar opportunity to redress is naval shortfalls, restoring it to a serious force in the Pacific and in the South and East China Seas.

The other likely result is that the PRC will decide to strike now, militarily, “now” being as soon as it can plus up its invasion force to an utterly overwhelming one so that it can hit the RoC with a coup de main before a response can be mounted by the RoC, or Australia, or the US. The risk the PRC runs with this is mountain guerilla warfare, which the PLA has not fought for 85 years and never without interior lines of communication or the support of the people—and never against guerillas rather than as guerillas. A prolonged conflict—longer than a few days—gives Australia and the US time to enter the fight and materially help the RoC drive off the PLA. Of course, the same implicit threats Putin has been using regarding nuclear war to back the US down regarding Ukraine could work just as well for Xi, as could the US’ helplessness against cyber attack.

It’s unclear to me which result Xi will take. The risks of nuclear war are as great for the PRC as they are for the US, if not worse. They boast of a population of 1.5 billion against our 330 million, but we have means of getting food to our survivors. The PRC does not. Their population is concentrated, in a relatively narrow band along its coast, while ours is more dispersed and so less vulnerable en masse. Also, arable land exists all over North America, not just in the US; the PRC has limited arable land, and much that is made possible by the Three Gorges Dam, a facility unlikely to survive the series of nuclear exchanges involved in a nuclear war. Nor is the PRC interested in having Russia pick up the Asian pieces. They’re allies for the moment against the common enemy of the US, but their mutual enmity goes back to the initial existence of a Russian polity.

The PRC also will be watching a triumphant and increasingly confident US, for all the minor role it played in the Ukrainian victory; along with an increasingly confident UK, with its historical presence in the Pacific (if currently greatly reduced); and an increasingly confident and steadily better armed Australia.

Xi is likely to try to improve relations with the nations rimming the South China Sea, primarily Vietnam, Thailand, and the Philippines in an effort to solidify PRC control of that Sea. That’ll be a fine trick, though, with Vietnam; the PRC and Vietnam have never gotten along, and Vietnam is unlikely to forget the PRC’s pressure on it to leave its fisheries and oil development in its Exclusive Economic Zone that extends so far out into the South China Sea. Nor is Vietnam likely to forget the PRC’s attempt to invade and conquer Vietnam a bare 45 years ago. On top of this, with the PRC’s occupation of Tibet, Xi controls Southeast Asia’s fresh water supply, which rises from the Tibetan Plateau. Xi is using that to control water levels in the Mekong River and so to pressure Laos and Cambodia. Vietnam views that with considerable suspicion and concern for its own fresh water access.

Thailand has too many domestic distractions presently, beginning with its constitutional crisis centered on who actually rules the nation, to be very responsive to PRC overtures. Beyond its internal problems, Thailand also is unhappy with Xi’s weaponizing Tibetan Plateau fresh water outflows, seeing the pressure on Cambodia and Laos as easily extensible to itself.

The Philippines is growing increasingly disgruntled with the PRC’s treatment of it, despite any effort by Xi at rapprochement: the PLAN’s constant harassment of Philippine boats in the Philippine fisheries and of Philippine attempts at other natural resource development in the Spratlys, for instance, won’t be set aside easily. Despite similar disgruntlement with the US, the Philippines and the US are beginning to draw closer, again, if only for the Philippines to use the US as a counterweight against the PRC.

All of that means that—absent any overt moves against the RoC—the sea lanes of commerce will remain relatively safe and open and free.

The PRC will try to expand its BRI efforts in the Indian Ocean, particularly with port development in Pakistan, along with a land route development effort connecting the PRC-Pakistan border with the PRC funded port development in Gwadar. The Pakistanis, too, though, are growing less enchanted with the financial—which is to say, debt—structure of PRC arrangements. On top of that, Pakistan has its own local distractions, a constitutional crisis over whether the nation’s legislature has the authority to toss its Prime Minister, Imran Khan; its disputes with India over, among other excuses to fight, Kashmir; its internal struggles with the Haqqani network; and its worries centered on an out-of-control Taliban in Afghanistan along with a possibly reviving al Qaeda there.

In addition, the PRC will face reduced economic engagement with the West and with the rest of Asia as the RoK, Japan, and especially the US, Australia, and UK move to relocate their supply chains and raw material sourcing away from the PRC, along with greatly reducing their investment and business venturism in the PRC and with PRC businesses operating outside the mainland. The PRC’s continued effort to apply its National Intelligence Law and its continued (if lip service-reduced) requirement that businesses “share” technology and intellectual property as a condition of doing business within it will serve only to accelerate that economic separation.

The resulting reduced economic activity for a nation that remains primarily agrarian and rural for all its industrial development since Deng Xiaoping’s efforts in the late 1970s will increasingly limit the nation’s ability to fund improvements in the PLA’s equipage and manpower, even to maintain the present status quo.

With a Ukrainian victory, the PRC’s relationship with the RoC becomes especially critical. If Xi decides to move against the island nation and succeeds, then the Ukrainian victory will become irrelevant, and all of the Asian follow-ons posited for a Russian victory will become operational. If Xi decides to delay any moves against the RoC in the face of the Ukrainian victory, then he will work to tamp down his (relative) aggressiveness vis-à-vis Japan, the RoK, and Australia, and he will seek improvements in trade and business relations with the US.

If Xi decides to move against the RoC and fails, then a weakened PRC and a face-losing Xi will have to deal with increasing pressures to quit his Nine-Dash Line-based seizure of the South China Sea and quit his manufactured islands—which remain claimed by (and disputed among) the Sea-rimming nations, particularly Vietnam and the Philippines. In this environment, too, Malaysia and Indonesia, on the southern rim of the Sea, likely will become more assertive about their claims. Xi may or may not accede to these, but the distractions will limit his ability to move elsewhere, especially given his own diminished PLA or economic endeavors after failing against the RoC.

I anticipate that these consequences will unroll over the succeeding 10-15 years, if they occur at all. It may well be that most, or even many, of these consequences will not ensue; however, the risk of pushing for outright victory, coupled with plain declarations that Ukraine must win, and fortified with active (re)supply of the weapons, ammunition, training, and supplies necessary, a Ukrainian victory will be well worth the gains, economic, political, and sovereign, that just some of them occurring would yield. And not only for the Ukrainian people. As Zelenskyy has often said, Ukraine is fighting for European freedom as well as its own[iv].

[i] https://to.pbs.org/3KcE7Iy

[ii] https://bit.ly/3v3k6Ok

[iii] https://bit.ly/3NGBelw Scroll ahead to about 4:16

[iv] https://bit.ly/3O6mflg

This is Part Two of Four; Part One can be read here. This is a series of pieces talking about the implications of a Ukrainian victory or a Russian victory on situations around the world. Heads up—each Part will be a long-ish read.

Assume, Russia wins.

Putin will build on this beginning of his geopolitical tragedy reversal.

Putin has long obsessed over reconstituting the Russian empire as embodied by the USSR: those ex-SSR nations (the Baltic States, Ukraine, and Belarus are the primary nations in the European context) and the USSR-controlled client states, including Poland, the German Democratic Republic, Hungary, and Czech Republic and Slovakia (sort of née, Czechoslovakia). That most of these are NATO members or merged into NATO members is a complicating factor, but with NATO having just been roundly defeated in the war for Ukraine, perhaps not that complicating. After all, NATO began the crisis already weakened and potentially fragmenting, with fissures based on energy needs, differing levels of foreign risk-taking (France vs Germany), differing economic strengths and interests (north vs south as canonically illustrated by the economic dislocations of 2008-2010, but extending beyond the Eurozone to include NATO’s member nations)—and differing degrees of the willingness of member nations to honor their mutual defense commitments.

Belarus already is in thrall to Russia, and Ukraine is just partitioned if not fully conquered. The Baltics then become the most immediately vulnerable, being small, significantly Russian national-populated (Putin’s Anschluss excuse), and flanked by Russia to the east and Kaliningrad to the west. With these nations forced to accommodate a resurgent Russia, Poland will become isolated, and its diplomatic freedom of action will be curtailed, even if it isn’t pried loose. Pulling the DDR back out of the Federal Republic of Germany will likely remain a bridge too far, for a generation, perhaps more.

Russia’s success in Ukraine and the Baltic States (and to an extent Poland,), however will be diluted for some years: the citizenry and escaped military units will engage in an ongoing guerilla war, sabotaging Russian equipment and killing occupying soldiers. These will be an ongoing drain on Russia’s finances, and military establishment, mitigated only to the extent Russia is able to coerce a lifting of US and European sanctions given the fait accompli of Ukraine, and Putin’s ability to convince People’s Republic of China President Xi Jinping to continue financing his expansionism. This last, though, will come in the face of Xi’s awareness of what a strengthening Russia means to the PRC.

Pushing back into Romania and Bulgaria will isolate a Hungary that historically has been ambivalent toward both Europe and Russia and give Putin ready access to the Balkan region—with which Russia has historically been allied and with which if shares—publicly conveniently when politically convenient—a pan-Slavic identity (the name “Yugoslavia” means “South Slav Land”), if only as an excuse to give Tsarist Russia flanking room around Main Europe.

While that’s going on and to the extent Russia is successful at it, Russia will seek to extract itself from its overt dependence on the PRC economically and financially, with particular concern for its financial debt. Of course, that contradicts Putin’s expected efforts to get Xi to continue financing him, but the relationship between Russia and the PRC is rife with contradiction.

Russia will have bought its success in Ukraine with PRC currency and those agreements for joint exploitation of Siberia. That’s exploitation money Russia will be sharing with the PRC rather than collecting entirely for itself. Of course, the joint exploitation will produce far more joint revenues, and that may well work out to net more money for Russia than had it been left to its own devices for the exploitation—which wasn’t all that prior to the agreements.

The joint arrangement, also, is and will continue to be facilitated by a steady, if not growing, influx of PRC citizens into Siberia, setting the stage for a mainland Chinese Anschluss into Siberia. Recall that generations of Chinese governments have considered Siberia stolen from them by the Russians. Recall, further, that Russia (then in the form of the Soviet Union) and the PRC engaged in several gunfights along the Amur River border region. That region has been the scene of gunfights between Russians and Chinese for nearly 400 years. The two nations, the two peoples, do not trust each other.

In short, the PRC wants Siberia and is willing to wait the generation or two that it will take for the Chinese Siberian population to grow enough to warrant a move to formally occupy. On the other hand, Russia wants to keep Siberia and needs the resources: its economy is heavily extractive, with limited capacity for goods production, and there is very little to extract west of the Ural Mountains by comparison. It’s true that Ukraine and much of the area east of Ukraine are a global bread basket, and it’s also true that the Donbas (the traditional Donbas, which extends into Russia) remains rich in coal, but the two combined are not enough to fuel the kind of expansion Putin intends.

That sets the stage for military confrontation, and the risk of nuclear war against the West.  The risk, though, is small in my view. Although Russia has inherited the Soviet Union’s doctrine for fighting and winning a nuclear war, Russia’s President Vladimir Putin has said that Russia would use them only if the existence of the Russian state were at risk. He made this statement through his Press Secretary, Dimitry Peskov[i], in the context of his invasion of Ukraine, but the principle extends.

But any outcome of the operation [in Ukraine], of course, is not a reason for usage of a nuclear weapon. We have a security concept that very clearly states that only when there is a threat for existence of the state in our country, we can use and we will actually use nuclear weapons to eliminate the threat or the existence of our country.

Russia is much more likely to play its own long game from its position of growing strength to the west. It will seek to exercise increasing control over the ‘Stans that used to be SSRs of the Soviet Union, with particular emphasis on Kazakhstan, which borders on the PRC’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. Russia already has sent—at the Kazakhs government’s putative request—military units to help that nation’s President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev put down “unrest.” Reoccupying Kazakhstan won’t be hard, and it would open a new point of contact with the body politic of the PRC. Too, Kazakhstan is an important component of the PRC’s Belt and Road Initiative routing[ii], and so becomes a bargaining chip for Russia. In addition, from Putin’s Russia-domestic perspective, Kazakhstan has the Baikonur Cosmodrome, over which Russia would like to reassert stable control.

The ‘Stans, Kazakhstan in particular, also will be a source from which to foment further unrest within the PRC to the extent Putin and his successors can convince the Muslims in Xinjiang that he’s really on their side. In the long run, though, that’s a losing game for Russia due to the differing sizes of economies and the differing skill levels in running an economy—Xi’s government is much more effective than Putin’s. After all, the PRC economy also actually produces stuff; Russia, as noted above, is heavily extractive and must buy a broad range of components and finished goods or barter for them with its extracted resources. Which it now must share a significant fraction of with the PRC. Both this border and the border of which the Amur River is a part will be sources of continuing irritation between Russia and the PRC, but the gunfights of the 20^th century are unlikely to recur until the PRC is ready to make its move in that generation or two.

On the other side of the People’s Republic of China sit the Republic of China, the Republic of Korea, Japan, the South and East China Seas, the nations rimming the South China Sea—particularly Vietnam and the Philippines—and Australia below Indonesia and Malaysia, which form the southern rim.

Russia victorious in Ukraine and expanding farther into Europe—or just looking like it’s expanding, and occupying much of the US’ attention—will strongly suggest to the PRC’s President Xi Jinping that he has a much freer hand in the east than heretofore.

The first move for the PRC in this new environment of a defeated Ukraine, NATO, and the United States will center on the RoC, resident on the island of Taiwan a bare 120 miles across the Taiwan Strait from the mainland. The PRC considers the RoC to be a rogue Chinese territory that will be resorbed into the Chinese body politic, at gun point if necessary. Gordon Chang[iii], columnist, author, and lawyer, has written that the PRC will use the world’s most destructive weapons if needs be to block interference with its conquering of the RoC, has threatened to incinerate Japan over its support for Taiwan, and has threatened a nuke threat against Australia over its participation in AUKUS, the Australia, UK, US joint effort to support Australia’s acquisition of nuclear submarines[iv] and both to help Australia strengthen its defense establishment and to form a containment facility against the PRC.

The island also is the anchor of the Inner Island Barrier—the First Island Chain in PRC parlance—that stretches from the Kuril Islands, through the Japanese Archipelago and Ryukyu Islands, on around through northwestern Philippines, to Borneo.

The PRC already has moved extensively to isolate the RoC politically from the world outside the mainland, and with considerable success: a very few nations still recognize any sort of political, or even economic, dealings with the RoC. The PRC even has moved to block the RoC from observer status at WHO conferences concerning the Wuhan Virus, even though the RoC has been among the earliest at diagnosing the virus and among the most successful at controlling the virus’ impact on its population.  The PRC had, until the Russia-PRC rapprochement and declaration of “eternal friendship” immediately prior to the PRC’s Olympic Games, held off making any overt moves other than demonstrations with bombers and fighters penetrating the RoC’s ADIZ.

In this US-weakened environment, though, and having observed the US’ acquiescence regarding Russia’s Nordstream 2 pipeline on the heels of Russia’s cyber attack and shutdown of a key American domestic oil node—Colonial Pipeline—President Xi Jinping is likely to make a more overt move: a physical isolation of the RoC with a naval blockade on the seaward side and sealing of both ends of the Taiwan Strait. This move may be preceded by a cyber attack against a major US financial node, denying consumer and business access to the financial records held there until Xi gets at least quiet, tacit acceptance of his move against the island nation. The US is notorious for its inability to protect even Federal government computer networks from penetration. And: so long as there is no physical invasion of the RoC, there likely will be no American overt response to the isolation of the RoC.

Nor would there be need for invasion: the isolation will bring about, within a very few years, the RoC’s acceptance of PRC control over the RoC’s foreign and defense policies.

With that control over the Inner Island Barrier cemented, the PRC then will move to solidify its control over the South China Sea, while holding in abeyance its already very low key moves against the East China Sea. The PRC already has militarized key islands around the southern loop of the Sea, making them fit for bomber and fighter aircraft basing and emplacing surface-to-surface missile systems able to range the nations around the Sea. I speculate that the PRC also has based, or soon will, long-range anti-ship missiles as well. With this consolidation in conjunction with that cyber attack, the US will be forced to reduce its naval presence in the South China Sea to a bare minimum, face-saving, occasional sailing.

The PRC already is moving to limit rimming nations’ access to the fisheries in the Sea and their ability to drill for oil beneath the Sea. It will likely extend that to overtly confine Vietnamese and Philippine access to the Sea those nations’ territorial waters, functionally eliminating the entirety of their claimed Exclusive Economic Zones in the Sea. The Philippines will be pushed to withdraw from its occupation of a few islands in the Spratly group.

There are riches, both physical and security, in the South China Sea that the PRC is anxious to control, both for its own direct benefit and to deny them to other nations. The fisheries are rich, but they are at their peak and overfishing effects are beginning to appear. The sea floor, though, is rife with mineral nodules: polymetallic nodules consisting largely of iron and manganese hydroxides, and rare earths. Beneath the floor sit rich oil and natural gas deposits. Controlling these latter, especially, would greatly reduce the PRC’s dependence on foreign oil, particularly via the relatively hazardous routing from Iran, and it would reduce its need for Russian oil and natural gas (to the detriment of the Russian economy and energy trade with the PRC). That last may seem to contradict the PRC’s interest in developing Siberian oil and natural gas resources, but keep in mind two things. One is that development’s use as a tool to develop an Anschluss rationale. The other is that the overland pipelines from Siberia are both more secure than even shipping from a secured South China Sea and economically cheaper.

The security wealth of controlling the South China Sea is even greater. More than half of the global merchant marine traffic[v] goes through the South China Sea, entering (and leaving on the return trips) the Straits of Malacca, Sunda, and Lombok, and nearly all of that South China Sea traffic passes by the Spratlys. As of 2016, some $5.3 trillion of trade goods pass through the South China Sea every year[vi]; one-fifth of that heading for the US, or about 14% of our total seaborne trade. Japan gets 42% of its annual seaborne trade via the South China Sea, and the Republic of Korea gets more than 80% of its oil via the South China Sea[vii]. For perspective, total world trade was $15.9 trillion.

The RoK also exports nearly twice as much in value to the PRC as to the US and imports nearly twice as much from the PRC as from the US[viii]. Japan exports the same value to the PRC as to the US, but its imports from the PRC are twice as much as from the US[ix].

With those sea lanes so critical to the RoK and Japan, the PRC will demonstrate its control by going back to its prior demand that non-PRC ships transiting the Sea identify themselves and ” report their information[x]:”

any vessel deemed to “endanger the maritime traffic safety of China” will also be required to report its information, which would include their name, call sign, current position, next port of call, and estimated time of arrival. The vessels will also have to submit information on the nature of goods and cargo dead weight. “After entering the Chinese territorial sea, a follow-up report is not required if the vessel’s automatic identification system is in good condition. But if the automatic identification system does not work properly, the vessel should report every two hours until it leaves the territorial sea….”

The PLA Navy will stop a few (or more?) freighters seemingly bound for the RoK and Japan, ostensibly for inspections, perhaps detaining one or more of them in a PRC port for some period of time, to drive home the point to those two nations regarding their economic (and so security) vulnerability and to demonstrate American impotence in defending their commerce despite the US’ vaunted Freedom of Navigation Operations—and to emphasize a similar point to the United States: that American maritime commerce can be held up to the far greater detriment of the American economy, and so American national security, than any response from the US can produce. That will be true, especially given the weakness against cyber attack demonstrated by Russia against Colonial Pipeline and by the PRC’s anticipated cyber attack during the runup to its move against the RoC. Xi also will remind us of his growing nuclear first strike capability with his hypervelocity nuclear- and global reach-capable missiles.

These economic demonstrations will weaken the relationships the RoK and Japan have with the United States and draw them more tightly into the PRC’s sphere of influence. Recall the already tight economic ties, relative to the US, those two nations currently have with the PRC. This changing level of relative influence could well lead to a RoK push, at PRC behest, to get the US to withdraw a significant fraction of its forces from the nation, and to a similar Japanese push, also with PRC encouragement, to reduce or eliminate the US presence on Okinawa. An increasingly crowded Okinawan population already is restive about the large American military presence.

With this growing Western Pacific power and eroding American position in the South China Sea/Western Pacific, the PRC will be in a position to increase its pressure on both Australia and India (the latter pressure to work in a feedback loop with the already growing military pressure from the PLA along India’s sort-of border with the PRC and the sort-of border between Bhutan (to whose military aid India already has responded recently) and the PRC.

That pressure will come in the form of the PRC’s gaining functional (not necessarily military) control over the Outer Island Barrier—the PRC’s Second Island Chain— which runs from Japan through the Mariana Islands to Micronesia.  That island chain will be a bit of a stretch for the PRC to control, but with a retreating and increasingly inward-looking US, coupled with the PRC’s growing security arrangements with the Solomon Islands[xi] (to the extent the agreement is finalized in substantially the form leaked) it will gain sufficient control. Although the chain itself is normally considered (at least by the PRC via its Second Island Chain designation) anchored on the island of New Guinea, it will be straightforward for a by now deep water-experienced PLAN to branch the chain to the Solomons.

A glance at a map[xii] reveals the risk to Australia and to India such controls—of the South China Sea and of the seas extending out to the Second Island Chain (to use the designation of the now regionally dominant PRC)—give the PRC.

From that position, the PRC will be able to heavily influence Australia’s maritime trade[xiii]—22% of its exports to the RoK and Japan combined, and 7% of its imports from Japan and 12% from the US.

India would fall into the same strait: 17% of its exports go to the US, and 7% of its imports come from the US. That’s not a stranglehold on India, although the Indian economy would suffer significantly were such interference to become actual. The point of the interference, though, from the PRC’s perspective, would be to further weaken the American presence in the West Pacific and to contribute to the erosion of American relations—and reliability—with the RoK and Japan from those two nations’ perspective. Any erosion of US-Australia relations from Australia’s perspective would simply be icing on that Boston cream doughnut.

The economic damage done by the PRC’s boycott of Australian exports to the PRC has been largely, and increasingly, mitigated by Australia’s growing trade relations with India; however, the state of India’s economy, its border problems with the PRC, and the PRC’s ability to interfere with Indian maritime trade with East Asia and the US all serve to limit the speed with which India can absorb increased Australian trade possibilities.

With that steady erosion of Asian influence that the US would be able to exert, two intermediate (relative to the PRC’s 100 Year War) outcomes would ensue: the PRC’s greatly increased influence over the RoK and Japan (and to a smaller extent Australia’s freedom of action, as well as India’s), and a greatly reduced freedom of action for the US.

There are some lesser influences that the PRC would be able to exert from this Russian victory that become more likely to the extent the foregoing are realized. These involve increasing influence of the PRC over the ‘Stans that border Russia. These are more important for the PRC’s overland access to Europe than for their direct influence over Russia. Nor must the PRC’s moves here clash at all with Russia’s moves in the region. While Russia’s interest is in reasserting control, both nations have economic interests, also, and the PRC’s interests here can be easily accommodated via another economic agreement that doesn’t, overtly or immediately, threaten Russian control.

The PRC will continue to import oil from Iran, ignoring any sanctions that might remain in place, in order to keep the US occupied in the Middle East. The PRC also may well roll the dice and, sub rosa, aid Iran in obtaining nuclear weapons, and for the same reason it’s aiding northern Korea: to keep the US distracted from other matters the PRC considers more important.

All of that brings me to the twin elephants in the room: the direct relationships between, and among, the United States, Russia, and the People’s Republic of China.

With the US and its putative allies, the EU and the European NATO member nations, in retreat, Russia is likely to push its success and its nuclear war threats to create further retreat by these Western nations, particularly European but including the US, and gain further influence if not outright control over increasing swaths of Europe.

Neither the UK nor France, the only non-American NATO—or European—nations with nuclear weapons, have the ability to fight a nuclear war without the US. The UK has only 225 nuclear warheads, of which only half actually are operational[xiv]. Furthermore, British nuclear alert capability is a joke: only one nuclear missile-armed submarine is maintained on patrol, it operates on a “reduced day-to-day alert state,” and its missiles are not targeted, but require several days “notice to fire.”[xv]

France’s Force de dissuasion has 290 warheads[xvi], and its nuclear alert force, typically one nuclear missile-capable submarine, has been increased to three[xvii] in response to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. The French alert force, though, remains inadequate: the three submarines aggregate to a total of 48 (MIRVed) ballistic missiles.

These forces are wholly inadequate to answering a Russian threat of nuclear attack or actual attack, and as long as the current and subsequent American administrations keep backing away in order to not fight a nuclear war, that is exactly the threat Russia will use against them and against the US in order to continue getting its way on the continent and increasingly so vis-à-vis the US.  In the end, too, the threat of nuclear attack and the separate success of cyber attack is far cheaper against any of the three than actual nuclear war.

Should the expense of nuclear war become, in Vladimir Putin’s eyes, worth the price, then to the extent Russia actually has such a system, its developing nuclear-armed hypervelocity missile(s) give it a first strike capability against both nations, and possibly against the US (the missile seems range-limited, so far, and so would require a ship- or air-launch capability to reach the US).

To the extent of Russia’s post-Russia-Ukraine war maneuverings success, Xi Jinping will exercise similar and increasing pressure against the US, fueled also by the PRC’s own increasing political and economic dominance in the Pacific. In particular, its dominance of America’s Pacific sea lanes of commerce; its demonstrated cyber war superiority; and its hypervelocity nuclear missile capability, a capability that gives it a first strike capacity, will enhance Xi’s ability to apply pressure.

The PRC will continue its acquisition of American technology and intellectual property through espionage, its requirement for technology “sharing” as a condition of doing business within the PRC, and application of its National Intelligence Law. The resulting economic and technological superiority achieved by the PRC will enable it further to limit the freedom of action of the US in a PRC-dominated global environment.

One more thing. After its strike on Pearl Harbor, Japan did not follow up with an attack on the American mainland to force us out of the war before we started because Japan had neither the economic resources nor the military forces with which to do so. In whatever form the PRC’s Pearl Harbor strike takes, the PRC will have the economic resources and military capacity to follow up. And it will have no reason not to.

In the end, it may well be that most, or even many, of these dominoes will not fall, even that none of them will. If some or many of them do fall, then with the exception of the move against the RoC they’ll do so in rough sequence over the ensuing 10-15 years to a generation, barring an early radical shift in the behaviors of the American, EU, and UK governing authorities—and especially depending on the American response to the PRC’s move against the RoC.

In any event, I’m not willing to risk the economy, the freedom of action internationally, the sovereignty of my nation on those dominoes not falling. That radical change in behavior is a Critical Item from the current election cycle on.

[i] https://to.pbs.org/3KcE7Iy

[ii] https://bit.ly/37q5lgg

[iii] Author of the optimistic The Coming Collapse of China and of the less optimistic The Great U.S.-China Tech War .

[iv] https://fxn.ws/3DzLx6c

[v] https://bit.ly/3j1yuRy

[vi] https://bit.ly/3LFzGGv

[vii] https://bit.ly/3iZxtcN

[viii] https://bit.ly/3Dz1YQa

[ix] https://bit.ly/3u2KCrX

[x] https://bit.ly/3u1Udzd

[xi] https://econ.st/3DAYexG

[xii] https://bit.ly/3LGDUO6

[xiii] https://bit.ly/3NI2HU3

[xiv] https://bit.ly/38pUvaR

[xv] https://bit.ly/3j29VUE

[xvi] https://bit.ly/35AoifQ

[xvii] https://bit.ly/3LBNrWS (Google Translate is fairly friendly)