“Thanks to the crisis, a brain-dead NATO has revived,” writes Senior Colonel Zhou Bo in a guest essay for The Economist
IF THE ENEMY of my enemy is my friend, is the enemy of my friend also my enemy? Not necessarily. Or so China’s thinking goes when it comes to the raging Russian-Ukranian war. On the one hand China is Russia’s strategic partner. On the other, China is the largest trading partner of Ukraine. Beijing therefore tries painstakingly to strike a balance in its responses to the war between two of its friends.
The future of Europe is not hard to fathom. Mr Putin’s all-out war against Ukraine has failed. Precisely because of that, he will fight until he can declare some sort of “victory”. Presumably this will involve Ukraine’s acceptance that Crimea is part of Russia, its promise not to join NATO and the independence of the two “republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk. The challenge is whether Russian troops are able to control Donbas after occupying it.
In recent months speculation abounded that Beijing and Moscow’s “unlimited” partnership—announced during Mr Putin’s visit to China in February for the Winter Olympics—might usher in a military alliance. But the war in Ukraine has inadvertently proved that Beijing and Moscow’s rapprochement is not an alliance. China didn’t provide military assistance to Russia.
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