Henare briefed on Russia-Ukraine
US couldn’t fight China and Russia at the same time, says Peter Hartcher.
Defence Minister Peeni Henare says he is receiving regular briefings about the prospect of Russia invading the Ukraine, but Cabinet is yet to discuss New Zealand’s position on the potential crisis. Russia has been amassing troops at its border with neighbouring Ukraine, raising fears among Nato countries that the military power may soon invade – sparking the possibility for conflict. Russia has denied that it intends to invade. US President Joe Biden will meet Russian President Vladimir Putin today. Henare yesterday said New Zealand did not have an ‘‘active position’’ on potential conflict.
The Russian brown bear and the Chinese panda sport different colour schemes but share many attributes. Recent developments raise troubling questions about whether they might be interested in co-ordinating their plans for territorial conquest.
The Chinese panda has been prowling ever closer to Taiwan, as the Russian bear stretches its claws in the direction of Ukraine. We now hear increasingly urgent warnings that each is considering aggressive action as early as next year to seize their respective targets.
And we see US President Joe Biden engaging the leaders of both China and Russia in separate summits within three weeks of each other in an effort to head off a potential crisis.
If either Russia or China should make a lunge to take the territory it craves, it would be a disaster. If both acted around the same time, it would be much worse.
‘‘The greatest risk facing the 21stcentury US, short of an outright nuclear attack, is a two-front war involving its strongest military rivals, China and Russia,’’ a former senior American diplomat, A. Wess Mitchell, wrote in the US journal National Interest in August.
The former prime minister of Sweden, Carl Bildt, a respected diplomatic analyst, two weeks ago wrote an essay drawing attention to what he considers to be the growing risk. ‘‘What has not yet been fully appreciated is the possibility of both happening simultaneously in a more or less co-ordinated fashion. Taken together, these two acts of conquest would fundamentally shift the global balance of power, sounding the death knell for diplomatic and security arrangements that have underpinned global peace for decades.’’
China and Russia are not allies but partners of convenience. Their main shared interest is their joint opposition to the US. Biden is dealing with both great powers diplomatically to avert disaster. He held a virtual summit with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, three weeks ago to ‘‘responsibly manage’’ competition between the two powers, as the White House put it, with Taiwan top of the agenda.
The Beijing military made 159 intrusions into Taiwan’s air defence identification zone in November. That’s the second highest monthly tally on record, and the third consecutive month that the People’s Liberation Army Air Force has sent more than 100 warplanes into Taiwan’s buffer zone.
China’s only formal known deadline for its ‘‘reunification’’ with Taiwan is 2049. But speculation of a much earlier Beijing grab has intensified with its intimidation campaign. The mainland military forces ‘‘seem to be preparing for their final military assault against Taiwan’’, Taiwanese Foreign Affairs Minister Joseph Wu said earlier this year.
And now Biden has scheduled a virtual summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin for today to ‘‘underscore US concerns with Russian military activities on the border with Ukraine and reaffirm the US’ support for the sovereignty and territorial integrity of Ukraine’’, according to the White House.
Russia has massed 70,000 troops along its border with Ukraine in recent weeks, according to a Pentagon estimate. Ukraine says it’s actually 94,000. Russianbacked forces invaded parts of Ukraine in 2014 and intermittent war continues.
US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken said at the weekend there was ‘‘evidence that Russia has made plans for significant aggressive moves against Ukraine’’. The Washington Post published US estimates that Russia was aiming to assemble up to 174,000 troops and invade by early next year.
Over the weekend Biden said he was compiling ‘‘the most comprehensive and meaningful set of initiatives to make it very, very difficult for Mr Putin to . . . do what people are worried he may do’’.
The Chinese and Russian military movements might be mere feints. Xi and Putin are masters of using all means short of combat. China might be trying to create the impression of inevitability about its takeover of Taiwan so it can win without fighting. Similarly, Russia might be using its military as a bargaining chip to negotiate with the US-led Nato alliance – Ukraine wants to join the alliance and Putin demands that it must not – rather than as an invasion force. Putin denies any intention to invade.
And while Beijing and Moscow are increasingly close, co-ordinated warfare would be way beyond any co-operation they’ve conducted in the post-Soviet era. A more likely scenario would be that one strikes its target and the other uses the opportunity of US preoccupation to conduct its own strike. The uncertainties are profound, the risks immense.