The current crisis over Ukraine appears almost to have been scripted to shift focus away from China. Suddenly, the cold war rhetoric is back in play, with screaming headlines going after Russia and an “evil” Vladimir Putin. The latest escalation in the stand-off between the West and Russia is being gleefully highlighted by western Atlanticist commentators as proof of Nato’s centrality in geopolitics. This has to be seen in the context of UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson signing a “New Atlantic Charter” with US President Joe Biden last year, in the hope of breathing life into a moribund Nato, with UK and US taking the lead in guarding the “world” against the rump of Soviet Russia that Putin’s Russia currently is. There is no doubt that Russia’s amassing of troops on Ukraine’s borders is ratcheting up tensions. But there is a counter view that says, but for Russia’s show of aggression, the pro-Russia Donetsk and Luhansk of Ukraine, comprising the Donbas region bordering Russia, will be left at the mercy of Ukrainian troops, given the history of hostility of this region with Ukraine from 2014 onwards, when the war in the Donbas started. Opinion might be divided on whether Putin’s latest show of force is meant to protect the interests of ethnic Russians in the Donbas, or is actually about territorial aggression and plans to create a buffer zone between pro-West Ukraine—which may be allowed to join the Nato—and Russia, or both. But the bottom line is, except for fuelling Atlanicist dreams of a possible conflict, this crisis is a complete shifting of focus from where the focus should be—on the Indo-Pacific. Even this week, China sent in more than a dozen aircraft into Taiwan airspace in what amounts to a psychological warfare against that tiny island nation. It is China that is the real aggressor, an imperial power that is working towards the control of every aspect of life even in the West. It is China that is fighting an economic, cultural and political warfare against the world, 24X7. PRC’s unrestricted warfare is about global domination, about undermining democracy, the free world and remaking it with Chinese communist characteristics. And China has the muscle and economic power to actualize its goal. China is a far greater threat to the world than Russia under Vladimir Putin will ever be, even to Europe.
In this context, it must be acknowledged that there was much substance in what German Navy chief Kay-Achim Schönbach said in New Delhi last week., although he was forced to resign for uttering the uncomfortable truth. He was right in saying that Russia needed to be befriended to fight China, that the Nato should stop hoping that a pro-Russia Crimea, which Putin annexed in 2014, can ever be brought back to Ukraine, and that Putin was seeking recognition. He had clarified, “Even we India, Germany we need Russia, we need Russia against China…Having this big country, even if it’s not a democracy, as a bilateral partner, giving them a chance. It’s easy and keeps Russia away from China because China needs resources of Russia.” “Does Russia really want a small and tiny strip of Ukraine soil? No, this is nonsense. Putin is probably putting pressure because he knows he can do it, and he splits EU opinion. What he really wants is respect,” he had added. But all hell broke loose and Schönbach ended up losing his job, proving once again that the West is still stuck in history—in a Cold War-era black and white binary. However, when it comes to PRC, these very same countries such as Germany use the grey areas to explain their association with the biggest totalitarian power in the world,. After all, Bonn has a thriving trade relationship with Beijing, even when mouthing all the right words about human rights and democracy. So does the UK, a country whose sanctimoniousness ends with discussing India’s “human rights record” in its Parliament, even though it is totally ambivalent when dealing with PRC, with trade being the decider of that relationship.
The western nations are threatening to sanction the living daylights out of Russia if it takes a misstep, knowing full-well that further sanctions will drive Moscow deeper into Beijing’s arms, thus facilitating the continuing rise of PRC. It is almost as if logic has flown out of the window and a battle of egos has started, with the threat of a kinetic conflict hovering on the horizon. The only country laughing amid this is the People’s Republic of China.