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America faces a two-front war: Russia – Chinese alliance moving ahead at great speed
Today China officially announced the visit of their Minister of Defense Li Shangfu to Russia on Sunday for three days of consultations with his Russian counterpart Sergei Shoigu and also with Russia’s senior military command in charge of the war operations in Ukraine.
Li Shangfu took his present post a little over a month ago following the re-election of Xi Jinping to the presidency and a reshuffling of ministerial portfolios. It was particularly noteworthy that Li has been on the U.S. sanctions list since 2018 for alleged cooperation with Russia.
The sense of this visit was interpreted by expert panelists on the news and analysis program Sixty Minutes earlier today as follows: to inform the Chinese leadership of what has been learned by the Russian command from the 14 months of war in Ukraine.
What is the relevance of Russia’s on the ground experience? Although armchair generals in the West were very quick to fault Russia with making serious mistakes and showing unpreparedness in the first phase of the war, the reality is that since WWII no major power has been engaged in a peer-to-peer war entailing vicious fighting on the ground without enjoying command of the skies. That is what we see in Ukraine today. The United States has had no such experience. Nor has China.
The Russians now have a lot to tell their Chinese friends about the latest NATO military tactics and about the U.S. and European hardware that is being given its baptism by fire in direct engagement with themselves. The capture of a German Leopard tank in battle near Kherson yesterday is just one of many war trophies that the Russians can lend out.
Will such sharing of information critically important to China as it examines the possibility of a similar armed conflict with the United States and its proxies over Taiwan be cost free? Of course not. We may take it as a given that during the visit of Li to Russia, he and the Russians will be planning further steps to turn their strategic partnership into something more closely resembling a full-blown military alliance with mutual security obligations.
Meanwhile the Russian Pacific fleet is now on full alert and performing exercises to repel an unidentified potential aggressor. A gentle hint as to who this aggressor might be is the fact that particular attention is being given to maneuvers around the Kurile Islands, over which Japan has territorial claims. Though the subject is not much discussed in our mainstream media, the Russians consider the Japanese navy to be a formidable force. Japan is one of the key allies in the “Pacific NATO” that the U.S. is currently building to contain China and, as needed, to fight a big war against Beijing.
Also worth noting is that last week the Chinese military response to the meetings in California by Taiwan president Tsai Ing-wen with Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy was to simulate an air and sea blockade of Taiwan. This in turn elicited a call by the ever inflammatory Senator Lindsey Graham (R – South Carolina) for the U.S. to disrupt the flow of oil from the Middle East to China in the event of a blockade being imposed on Taiwan. If anything can hasten the signing of a full military alliance between Russia and China, it is precisely that threat.
All of the foregoing latest developments necessarily raise a question that was not discussed on Russian television but which is highly timely for Americans to deal with on their own: whether the Biden Administration, by its ongoing reckless foreign and military policy that is headed towards an unwinnable two-front war, is not betraying the security interests of the United States. I leave it to legal experts whether that would constitute an impeachable offense.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023