WASHINGTON, DC, Feb 28 – Is the Russia-Ukraine war the prelude to global warfare, the likes of which we haven’t seen since World War II? The question is, will it embolden the Chinese to invade the free island nation of Taiwan? If so, how would the Biden administration respond?
It’s no coincidence that mainland China’s air force escalated their threatening fly-overs of the free Chinese island nation of Taiwan in the days leading up to Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. Kervin Aucoin, a savvy veteran Army intelligence officer told Newsmax, “It is very important, in light of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine, that we talk about China’s next steps with Taiwan. China has now made it public they have aligned with Russia and their next step after the successful annexation of Ukrainian areas is the formal reunification of Taiwan with mainland China.”
Rep. Steve Chabot [R-OH] notes that Putin met with Communist China’s General Secretary Xi Jinping for a summit meeting, issuing a lengthy solidarity statement in which they each declared they have each other’s backs. Although Xi did not say anything about Russia and the Ukraine, he did, however, say he fully supports Putin’s opposition to an expansion of NATO. The Washington Post described it as a reference to Ukraine’s “efforts to join the alliance.” The solidarity statement sounds a lot like the pact Nazi Germany had with Imperial Japan during the second world war.
In an interview with the Epoch Times, Rep. Ken Buck [R-CO] expanded on that notion. Regarding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, he said: “I think they have coordinated and I think that China is in a better position letting Russia go first, to evaluate … China has designs on Taiwan and they want to see if the world imposes real sanctions on Russia, and how much it hurts Russia, and what really the willpower is to stop an aggressive nation from gaining further territory.”
Meanwhile, it would appear that the rogue nation-states of Iran and Syria are likely to join Russia and Communist China in the 21st Century version of the axis of evil, according to Anders Corr, a principal at Corr Analytics Inc., publisher of the Journal of Political Risk.
In a recent Opinion article, Corr explains, “What Putin does today to Ukraine, Xi will do tomorrow to Taiwan. Tehran will do the same in Iraq and Syria. The three ongoing fights are inextricably linked as the world’s dictators-in-chief seek ever more power, held by hubristically assuming NATO and friends are too cowardly to oppose them militarily.”
In addition, it is noteworthy that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad was quick to support Putin’s war on Ukraine. An official statement issued on his behalf the day after the Ukraine invasion stated, “President al-Assad stressed that what is happening today is a correction of history and a restoration of balance in the global order after the fall of the Soviet Union. Syria stands with the Russian Federation based on its conviction that its position is correct and because confronting NATO expansionism is a right for Russia.”
Russia’s saber-rattling regarding Ukraine in the weeks before Russia’s invasion prompted the Wilson Center, a non-partisan policy forum that tracks global issues, to produce a paper discussing the potential of Sweden and Finland joining NATO when Russia first started threatening Ukraine last month. The paper noted that, “Given Sweden and Finland’s deep business, cultural, and historical ties, it is reasonable to believe that the two countries will continue to deepen their commitments to NATO in light of tension in Ukraine, but this will stop short of pursuing full membership.”
It did not go over well in Moscow. Speculation by the Wilson Center, among others, resulted in a direct threat coming from the Kremlin that warned Sweden and Finland of “serious military-political consequences which would require retaliatory steps by the Russian Federation” should they decide to join NATO. The two nations have never indicated that such an alliance is in the offing, but they have always been ready to cooperate with NATO. Over the past several years, they’ve engaged with the European defense alliance, offering close military cooperation.
NATO has taken a stand as regards the invasion of Ukraine. Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg has issued a clear and present warning that if Russia takes military action against a member state, for whatever reason, it will be dealt with. As Stoltenberg put it at a news conference last week, “For NATO Allies, we provide the absolute security guarantees under the Washington Treaty Article 5. An attack on one will be regarded as an attack on all … And we are clear on this distinction because it is important to make sure that we don’t have an even bigger crisis in Europe where Russia challenge, or is threatening, or attacking any NATO allied country.”
Finally, for the pacifists among us who say, “let’s not get involved. It’s not our fight,” military historian Morgan Deane had this to say in a recent article he published, “the lesson of history, like Pearl Harbor and 9/11, show the need to bury the isolationist relics of the past and be ready for whatever dictators, like [Putin and] Xi, might do next.” Deane went on to quote a Chinese philosopher who said, “Even a tree so big that it shields the sky was, at its beginning, only as thick as the base of a tree sprout: easy to get rid of. But once it has fully manifested itself, a hundred people using hatchets and axes are unable to fell it!”
Britain’s Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, ignored the threat posed by Adolf Hitler and accepted the Fuhrer’s promise of peace in 1938. A year later, World War II broke out. This time around, no one is promising peace; Putin has already started the war. And, right behind him is China, signaling its intent to join him.