Tag Archives: foreign policy

The Putin-Xi Relationship

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The Wall Street Journal asked in its Thursday article concerning President Joe Biden’s (D) Friday telecon with People’s Republic of China President Xi Jinping whether the call, or any other factor, would shift [the PRC’s] alignment with Russia.

The answer is crystalline in my NSHO.

Not a chance. Putin’s performance in Ukraine and his request for Xi to send him additional arms, military foodstuffs, and money represent a golden opportunity for Xi to reduce Putin to even further dependency on Xi and on the PRC, and to solidify the PRC’s presence in eastern and southern Siberia. That presence already is greatly expanded over prior years by the Putin-Xi economic agreement to have the PRC and Russia jointly exploit the Siberian resources, with a significant fraction of the produce going to the PRC and with PRC citizens (and their families) moving into Siberia to provide the labor.

Xi won’t pass that up, and he doesn’t care in the slightest what other nations’ politicians might think of him. The gains will be worth it to him.

Support for Russia

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As the People’s Republic of China President Xi Jinping considers shipping money, arms, “nonperishable foods,” any other material to support Russia President Vladimir Putin’s invasion of and atrocities on Ukraine and that nation’s women and children, and hospitals and schools, and innocents sheltering in bomb shelters against the barbarians’ rockets, missiles, and bombs, the video below is what Xi will be actively approving, not merely tacitly condoning.

As Union of South Africa President Cyril Ramaphosa actually blames NATO for Putin’s naked aggression, and refuses to blame Russia for its barbaric behavior, the video below illustrates the nature of Putin’s invader barbarians that Ramaphosa actively approves.

Heads up. The video is behind Aplhabet CEO Sundar Pichai’s YouTube warning that the video is too harsh for Americans to see without being warned first. Which is, itself, an indication of the barbarism of which Xi and Ramaphosa approve.

Here is the video.

Governments that support such behavior are themselves ill-matched for the civilized world, and interaction with them should be done rarely and with great caution.

It’s a Start

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The House, by an overwhelming bipartisan majority—424-8—passed a bill that would strip Russia and its satrap Belarus of Most Favored Nation status. The bill, if passed by the Senate and signed by President Joe Biden (or his veto overridden), would allow us to

raise tariffs on goods from Russia and Belarus and give President Biden power to impose even stricter import taxes on their exports amid the ongoing invasion of Ukraine. …
The bill also sets up strict guidelines for when the president can restore normal trade relations with Russia and Belarus based on the state of the Ukraine war.
The Biden administration will additionally be obligated to push for Russia’s removal from the World Trade Organization and oppose Belarus joining the group, which would subject both to higher tariffs and steeper trade barriers.

Eight Republicans voted against the bill; their concerns centered in part on their push to make President Joe Biden’s Executive Order barring importation of Russian oil statutory by including that in the bill.

The more we pile economic burdens onto Russia over its invasion of Ukraine and the atrocities Putin’s barbarians are perpetrating on Ukrainians, the better. However, we need to keep such moves in perspective: they’ve forced Putin to withdraw zero battalions from Ukraine, and they forced Putin to drop zero fewer bombs, rockets, or missiles on Ukrainian women, children, hospitals, schools,…. Weapons, ammunition, and medicines need to flow freely and rapidly to the Ukrainian military.

Silence is Violence

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The Ukrainian industrialist and philanthropist, Victor Pinchuk, has a simple plea for the West:

We thank you for the food, the money, the sympathy and the painted blue-and-yellow flags. But if you want to save us, Ukraine needs planes, antiaircraft and antitank missiles, armed drones, and other weapons of war. So I beg our friends in the West: please give Ukraine the planes and other weapons it needs—now. Stop buying coal and oil from Russia. Don’t think about it; don’t evaluate options; don’t consider. Just do it. Time is life.

What he said.

What is that Leftist slogan? Silence is violence. More to the point for Biden-Harris and the persons leading NATO and the EU, so is dithering.

Such Naivete

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Douglas Feith and John Hannah want, not so much a no-fly zone over Ukraine, as much an air bridge via which to fly in humanitarian materials—food, meds, etc—and to fly out civilians wishing to evacuate the nation. They actually think such a facility would put useful pressure—or inconvenient choices—on Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Vladimir Putin would either consent and facilitate distribution of supplies or provoke more denunciations of Russia for its inhumanity. Even if criticism doesn’t move him, his top lieutenants may worry about their image and their vulnerability to war-crimes trials. This proposal may aggravate whatever divisions exist within Mr Putin’s team and trigger further antiwar sentiment among ordinary Russians.

This is incredibly naive, bordering on disingenuous, which is disappointing in Feith particularly.

Putin cares not a fig about denunciations; criticism won’t move him. Putin’s top lieutenants are in those positions because Putin chose them; they’re not going to fold because foreigners say mean things about them.

Antiwar sentiment among ordinary Russians? Quite possibly. But Feith and Hannah seem to have missed the fact that this is a tsarist Russia, not any sort of democracy or republic, or even enlightened dictatorship. Putin is the Tsar, and the people have no power at all unless and until they take to the streets as a population. They did that in the later days of the collapse of the USSR, but Yeltsin and Gorbachev were much more…civilized…than Putin is today.

And what war crimes trials? Do Feith and Hannah really envision a Western occupation of Russia when its invasion of Ukraine is ended? That’s the only way that there will be any chance at all of rounding up Putin and/or his minions. Of course, they may well be tried and convicted in absentia, but such things are cynically empty gestures; Putin and his lieutenants still will be sitting in their dachas enjoying their little water and their girls.

Do the flights, certainly, but when they’re shot down by Putin’s military—as surely they will be just as the humanitarian ground corridors to which Putin pretends to agree are attacked as soon as those corridors are filled—more concrete responses from the US and NATO will be required than just angry finger-wagging and stern press releases.