Putin says he wants to restore Russia's Soviet-level glory. Will Russian elites decide to save Russia from the China threat despite Putin's insane crusade against NATO that should be a source of support against the real threat and not an enemy of Russia?
Beijing is increasing its political influence in Siberia and the Russian Far East to better support its expanding economic activities. These efforts are directed at the political and business elites who are the major stakeholders in deciding which firms can operate in their respective regions (Kommersant, May 20; Vybor Naroda, October 25). This pattern follows the Chinese playbook from Central Asia, where Beijing has used a wide range of tools to promote its “soft power” and even opened the way for deploying elements of “hard power,” including private security companies (see “The Role of PSCs in Securing Chinese Interests in Central Asia,” February 22). China has done so by providing funds and opportunities that Moscow can no longer offer to support the authoritarian tendencies of regional elites.
I've noted Russia's need to end their invasion of Ukraine in order to pay attention to the real threats to Mother Russia.
There was little notice of China's sudden claim of a small amount of Russian territory and calling Russia-controlled territory by their Chinese names in their newly released official map. But Russians surely paid attention to that very dangerous precedent for future claims to reverse Russia's contribution to the Century of Humiliation that China fixates on.
But Putin remains fixated on imaginary NATO threats in the west while outside of the cone of his tunnel vision a gathering storm builds in the east. He has lost his gamble of buying time to face that threat.
In one sense, getting China focused inland rather than to the sea where America and our allies are is what I've long wanted America to achieve. But the point was to get Russia to flip to siding with the West. Putin's bloody and destructive war on Ukraine is wrecking the ability to easily accept Russia into the free West to make a Russian reaction to China's threat work out.
The West may get the worst of both worlds by having an outcast Russia being the first line of defense against China's inland front that does too little to divert China from the sea front.
Still, having a Russia isolated from the West but focused on China is better than what we have now.
Honestly, I've considered the overthrow of Putin as a low odds source of ending the Winter War of 2022.
But the way China is exploiting Russia's flailing and costly war in Ukraine, the odds of paranoid Russian elites wondering if China sent Putin to Russia the way Germany sent Lenin there may begin to grow in enough minds to lead them to save Russia by ending the war against Ukraine and the insane crusade against NATO.
The bottom line is that I once speculated that Russia had to pivot to Asia and be set by July 2026 before a treaty with China expired, freeing China to claim territory in Russia's Far East. Unless the treaty is extended again--and a faltering China just might do that--Putin is watching the clock tick on his war in Ukraine.
We speak of Russia being able to overwhelm smaller Ukraine. But Russia needs to preserve its power for a much larger enemy. Don't assume time is on Putin's side. Because of Putin's brutal war on Ukraine, the degree of difficulty for having a moment of clarity on real threats to Russia has gone up.
NOTE: TDR Winter War of 2022 coverage continues here.
NOTE: I'm adding updates on the Last Hamas War in this post.
