US BREAKS THE RUSSIA-CHINA BOND?
In your dreams, Donald
The latest Russian victory in Ukraine will have little or no impact on China's relationship with Russia. China needs oil, Russia is providing it. China's oil supply from Iran and Venezuela are under threat by the Evil Empire, making Russian oil even more critical to China's economy. So, in the current circumstances, why Ukraine should matter to China in any significant way in its negotiations with the Empire is a mystery to me.
All this shows how incompetent the US and EU strategic planner were and still are. They have allowed critical resources to be monopolised by China at the same time as they are threatening China with economic and military belligerence. None of this happened overnight or covertly, it happened in plain sight over a period of thirty years.
Even if the Australian rare earth's deal could replace China's rare earth supply chain, this will take ten years and require US and Australian taxpayers to stump up the initial capital and ongoing subsidies. An alternative supply chain cannot match China's mature industry on price. It is unlikely that an alternative supply chain will ever compete with China's within twenty or thirty years without similar government subsidies that China uses to support its strategic industries.
Keven Rudd et al. have tried to claim that all along the Western strategy towards China over the last forty years was; engagement and then a calibrated “withdrawal” if China got too big for its boots.
A summary of this strategy was:
- Optimistic engagement with realism.
- Strategic hedging and recalibration.
- Advocacy for “constructive realism” — dialogue without illusion.
The trouble was that this was a post-factum, delusional “strategy,” (post 2010), made up when China had already gained much of its strategic monopoly in various domains, particularly manufacturing and rare earths. The use of the word realistic by these prophets is incongruent with the facts. By the time Xi came along, built up the Chinese military and started throwing his weight around on Taiwan and in the South China Sea, it was all too late.
The problem was of course good old-fashioned greed. Australian and US companies were making far too much money from China to worry about strategy. China which has strategy in spades consequently walked all over them. This is what happens when you turn over the keys of government to corporations and oligarchs by implementing Neo-Liberal economics, as the US and Australia did back in the eighties. Strategic management of the economy gets thrown out the window. It is no use having a strategy for security if you don't have a linked economic strategy to serve as the foundation of security. Making stuff matters, that's what the Collective West is finding out right now.
China's greatest weakness is its lack of hydrocarbon resources so it has been very active trying to secure these and Russia is one of its most important sources. They are hardly going to break off from Russia knowing what they know now. Russia also understood this and is demonstrating this chapter and verse to the US and Europe with its shrugging off of the Ukraine war sanctions.
I don't want to say I told you so, but I did. Long before the Duran was created. I always thought Rudd was a pretentious little know-all, and I have been proven correct.
From the military point of view, Russia and China have a long border, so for Russia to create another border enemy when it is up to its arse in Western alligators is not what strategic planning is all about. China is in the same boat, enemies all around them.
Sorry, Donald, but you'll have to come up with a real long term strategy that doesn't involve sending in the marines and shooting helpless boats out of the water. Micro militarism at the nano scale, the bellwether of a failing empire.
Rudd, Kevin. The Avoidable War: The Dangers of a Catastrophic Conflict Between the US and Xi Jinping's China Published 2022
