Should Russia be the most worried country if China's power has peaked? America can encourage that worry.
Well, if history is any guide, they might include launching a war of desperation in the hope of securing the best geopolitical settlement possible before China is weakened to the point where it is simply condemned to another ‘hundred years of humiliation.’ What that war might look like – how it might erupt, whom it might involve, what course it might take – cannot be forecast with any certainty. But then neither could the war started by Germany in 1914 nor that by Japan in 1941. The point is that in those two earlier cases, the only rational course of action for the faltering challenger was the strategic Hail Mary pass. The question is, will a China whose rise is similarly stalling throw a comparably desperate strategic pass the early in the 21st century?
I've been on this failure to pass America by issue for a long time. Even if China could pass America by mid-century, I wondered if China could hold it by the end of the century. But now it looks like China might not even make it to number one by 2049 at the century mark of Communist China.
If China tries to salvage something from their peak of power and strikes America, America needs to avoid giving China the option of crippling American power in the western Pacific to clear the decks for a war against a local target that might cement Chinese gains in a peace treaty before China's relative decline is clear. Note that America is starting to get those anti-ship missiles for land deployment in the western Pacific as I called for back then.
Of course, a problem with striking America in order to target a small objective is that it draws in America and our allies into what China would hope could be a small, short, and glorious war. A war against America and its allies won't be small, and it probably wouldn't be short or glorious.
And even targeting a small country--like Taiwan or the Philippines--risks drawing America in to the war. And then American allies may come in and that small, short, and glorious war goes down the tubes, too.
So what military objective could China gain that might cement lasting gains that will continue even as China's relative power declines?
Russia.
I'm sure that the Chinese are aware that Russia is no friend of China and is simply appeasing China out of weakness to keep China from taking Russian territory that Russia took from China in the 19th century.
So maybe a conventionally weak and internationally isolated Russia would be a prime target for China in a short and glorious war that signals China's rise to great power status. A victory that would cement China's claims to the Russian Far East in a peace settlement even if China did not demand much of it at all to end hostilities.
Russia needs to take steps to repair ties with America fast. If Putin thinks China will fight and die for Russia, he is mistaken.
