China's Xi has been clear about intentions in Taiwan

Much of the world was shocked that Russian President Vladimir Putin actually went through with his threat to invade Ukraine — but not everyone. “I knew he would go in in July last year, when I read that manifesto for the subjugation of Ukraine and when I learned that he ordered all Russian soldiers to read it,” former Polish foreign minister Radek Sikorski told me last week. “He was telling us very clearly what he intends to do. We just thought it was too nuts, and he can't mean it.”

There's a lesson here: We need to take the words of our enemies seriously.

Putin was clear about his intentions in Ukraine — but we didn't listen.

Chinese dictator Xi Jinping has been just as clear about his intentions in Taiwan. We need to listen this time, so we don't underestimate the danger again.

Putin's 6,885-word manifesto is available for anyone to read on the Kremlin website. In it, Putin laid out a case stretching back more than 1,000 years that Ukrainians and Russians are “one people,” descendants of “Ancient Rus” bound together by common language, culture and religion. He quoted the 9th-century “Oleg the Prophet” calling Kyiv “the mother of all Russian cities.” He railed against the Bolsheviks for organizing the USSR as a “federation of equal republics,” which he said was a “time bomb” that exploded when the Soviet Union collapsed — unleashing a “parade of sovereignties” that left the Ukrainian people “abroad overnight, taken away ... from their historical motherland.” He said, “One fact is crystal clear: Russia was robbed.”

Ukraine, he claimed, was overtaken by “radicals and neo-Nazis” who worked with the United States and the European Union to turn Ukraine into “a springboard against Russia.” He accused NATO of exercising “direct external control, including the supervision of the Ukrainian authorities, security services and armed forces.” And he declared he would not allow Ukraine to be “a tool in someone else's hands to fight against us.”

Seven months later, he launched the largest unprovoked land invasion in Europe since World War II.

Now we need to pay attention to what Xi says.

The Chinese leader has laid out his intention to reunify Taiwan with the Chinese motherland just as clearly as Putin laid out his intention to reunify Ukraine with mother Russia.

In a 2019 speech, Xi declared of Taiwan that “we should not allow this problem to be passed down from one generation to the next,” adding that while he sought peaceful reunification, “we make no promise to renounce the use of force and reserve the option of taking all necessary means” to forcibly reunify Taiwan.

Last July (the same month Putin issued his Ukraine manifesto), Xi declared that “resolving the Taiwan question and realizing China's complete reunification is a historic mission and an unshakable commitment of the Communist Party of China,” and he promised to “take resolute action to utterly defeat any attempt toward `Taiwan independence.' ”

And last October, Xi warned that “those who forget their heritage, betray their motherland and seek to split the country will come to no good end,” adding that “the complete reunification of our country will be and can be realized.”

Some hear Xi's words and hope that he will not, or cannot, do what he says.

But the Russian invasion of Ukraine has reminded us that underestimating the words of evil and ambitious men is a terrible mistake. The question is: Will we listen this time? Or will we ignore Xi's words — just as we ignored Hitler, bin Laden and Putin before him — and pay a terrible price once again?