When an event as shocking and indefensible as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine happens it’s a truism to say that “the eyes of the world are on Ukraine”. News organisations around the world are full of reports detailing, as best they can, what’s happening on the ground. Millions around the world are trying to fathom the fact that such an unprovoked attack has happened at all and how the nations and other powers of the world can usefully react to such naked aggression.
Who can remember a more causeless, pointless war?
But one country at least will be looking less at the battlegrounds of Ukraine and more to the world’s reaction: China.
In the weeks leading up to Putin’s invasion, many analysts around the world started to ask whether Russia’s military build-up might embolden Beijing as it considers its options around Taiwan and the South China Sea. Could China’s president Xi Jinping make a similar calculation to Putin? That the West is in a moment of distraction and therefore weakness, bowed down by a pandemic, political polarisation, the Trump years, economic fears and even a fundamental loss of faith in the institutions and tenets of democracy.
Putin has looked at the world and decided, in the year he turns 70, that it was his time to act against a neighbouring territory he believes rightly belongs to the motherland. Would Xi look across at Taiwan and come to the same conclusion?
For countries in and around the Pacific, this is a direct and present reason to care deeply about how the democracies of the world respond to this war that Putin has chosen.
America has long promised more attention on the Pacific and China in particular. And for all that is happening in Europe right now, foreign policy experts in the US remain clear that China is its main concern. But while America’s focus has intensified on this part of the world, it has always been less than many had envisaged. Invasions such as this are why. Like Syria, Iran and North Korea before it, Russia is yet another foreign policy distraction proving to the US that it doesn’t have the luxury of focusing as much attention on the Indo-Pacific as it would like. At a time when America power has waned and its resources are so patently finite, this creates opportunities for those countries seeking to challenge its geo-political dominance.
This fear of the US being spread too thin had prompted some to argue that the Biden administration should not be drawn into resisting Russia. The argument is that the US can’t afford to take its eyes of Beijing.
China looks at Taiwan in much the same way Russia sees Ukraine. An open stain on its dignity and reputation as a global power. An unresolved problem. A part of the homeland needing reunification. A functioning government where what is needed is a puppet. Just as Russia spend months building up its troops closer and closer to Ukraine, so China is steadily strengthening its military strength in the South China Sea, near Taiwan.
The broad agenda of both dictators has been clear, but the how and when and what might happen next much less so.
On one hand the world does not recognise Taiwan as an independent country in the way it recognises Ukraine. On the other, the US has - without a formal treaty - promised to defend Taiwan in a way that other countries have never promised to defend Ukraine.
Putin is clearly hoping that the pressure he is exerting in Ukraine will cause fractures far from Kyiv. He wants to see the bombs falling in Ukraine doing damage to relationships at the EU and NATO in Brussels and at the UN in New York. Expecting that economic needs might overcome diplomatic wants. Anticipating that the West may consider Ukrainian independence a small price to pay to stop energy prices climbing ever higher.
So far he has been strikingly, surprisingly and resolutely disappointed. The free world has united around Ukraine in a way few thought possible. The initial thought for many was that if the powers of Europe and North America were unwilling to send troops to Ukraine, they would be bystanders armed with nothing but increasingly pathetic pleas for peace.
Remarkably, the opposite has occurred. The European Union for the first time is sending weapons to a battlefront, with Germany doing the same, reversing its long-standing refusal to export weapons to warzones. Russia’s central bank has been frozen out and some of its largest banks cut off from the Swift (the Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) financial transaction system that moves billions of dollars each day between some 11,000 banks worldwide. Now that’s 11,000 minus “selected Russian banks”. According to plan, the rouble has plummeted.
The US, UK and EU has introduced sanctions aimed at freezing the funds of Putin himself and many of his small inner circle, such as foreign minister Sergei Lavrov. All Russian parliamentarians face a travel ban and frozen assets in the EU. Russian airlines face a blanket ban from taking off or landing in Europe, while other countries are shutting down Russia’s propaganda media, such as Russia Today. Germany put a hold on permissions for the Nord Stream 2 gas pipeline.
Even Sweden - Sweden - is sending arms and debating anew whether its decision not to join NATO is the right one.
Europe has united to sanction Russian oligarchs with ties to Putin, even promising to confiscate property and goods. In Asia, where countries have long chosen to stay out of such fights, the likes of South Korea and Singapore have imposed sanctions on Russia.
Together, it’s a staggering list of repercussions for Putin. In just a few days Russia has been isolated and punished in a way he could never have expected.
And that’s vital not just for the future of Ukraine, but also here in the Pacific. It could matter immensely to the people of Taiwan, even Hong Kong and Xinjiang.
If, as some suggest, Putin’s aggression signals a new world order, the response by so many key democratic powers is cause for real hope. At a time when democracies seem more frail and polarised than they have been in decades, here is unity and purpose. And actions of significance that have come at a very real price to their own economies. Yet rather than merely reacting, the West has taken the initiative. US President Joe Biden has shown his strengths as a respected and measured world leader, able to build an effective coalition. The European Union has found common cause. And Ukraine’s own president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, has become an overnight hero rallying the world to his country’s aid.
Don’t get me wrong, there is much yet to play out here and this unity will be tested in the days and weeks ahead. But this unparalleled and unified response has sent a clear message not just to Moscow, but to Beijing.
Those arguing the US and others should keep its eye on China and not be dragged into big moves on Ukraine have been proven wrong. The best response to China’s expansive ambitions has been to check Russia’s. If the world had been willing to give Ukraine away cheaply, the message to Xi would have been clear and emboldening. It would have confirmed what the West couldn’t do.
Instead, while Moscow recalculates, Beijing too will be reassessing its short and medium term plans to enforce its One China policy. And China will be watching not just the West’s resistance, but the Ukrainian resistance, the Russian people’s response and that of its diaspora around the world. Remember both Putin and Xi see ex-pats around the world as part of their ambitions and strategies, but also a power-base that needs to be controlled and motivated.
Biden, with his allies help, has bought himself a little time on two continents. It’s even prompted foreign policy experts such as the Council on Foreign Relations’ Richard Haas to ponder whether this might be a time for the US to reach out to China from a position of relative strength and to “restart a high-level strategic dialogue with China and search for issues, on Afghanistan, say, and climate change, where the two governments might cooperate”.
Still, today, we here in New Zealand watch horrified at the loss of life in Ukraine, shocked at this power grab. But we do so in the knowledge that this remarkable opposition to Russia’s invasion will have repercussions far from Kyiv and Moscow.