This is no coordinated non-aligned movement. security partner and major purchaser of Russian arms, has both bought knock-off Russian oil and chided Putin for his nuclear sabre-rattling. Riyadh decided, with other oil producers, to keep prices high, much to Washington’s fury. It forced a visit from Biden, who had entered office promising to shun Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. For Saudi Arabia, the abrupt removal of Russian oil from the market was a boon. The initiative follows years of Turkish assertiveness abroad, including tipping the battlefield balance in Libya and the South Caucasus and expanding drone sales. Turkey, long walking a tightrope between NATO membership and ties to Moscow, has brokered, with the United Nations, a deal to get Ukrainian grain onto global markets via the Black Sea. The war has shone light on non-Western middle powers’ influence and autonomy. Though the world’s two biggest economies remain entwined, technological decoupling is under way. Chinese designs upon Taiwan are not going anywhere. Competition is still baked into the two countries’ foreign policies, however. President Joe Biden and Xi promised a resumption of dialogue. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s August visit to Taiwan riled Beijing, but the meeting three months later between U.S. and China – that will dominate the coming decades, the Russia-Ukraine war has not changed the fundamentals. Nor are Moscow’s battlefield failures.Īs for the relationship – between the U.S. The massive sanctions imposed on Russia are not lost on China. But an invasion that seemed too risky for Beijing in the near term even before the war seems – at least for now – even less likely. The war has heightened fears of a Chinese assault on Taiwan. allies in Asia bolster defences and seem even keener to keep Washington around, even as they still want access to Chinese markets. But neither does it wish to provoke Western capitals by abetting the invasion. He appears disturbed by Putin’s travails and nuclear bluster. Beijing does not want to undercut Moscow and is unlikely to compel Putin to reach a settlement. Despite Chinese President Xi Jinping’s public embrace of Putin and continued trade between the two countries that has helped Russia weather sanctions, Beijing’s material support has been lacklustre. Whatever happens in Ukraine, the West and Russia will likely remain a miscalculation away from confrontation.įor China, the war has been mostly a headache. If, on the other hand, Putin feels truly in peril, due to Ukrainian advances or other reasons, it is not impossible – unlikely, but hard to completely rule out – that he will use a nuclear weapon as a last roll of the dice. Moscow might yet force an ugly settlement and set a troubling precedent for aggression elsewhere. The Kremlin appears convinced that Russia has staying power. Russia’s economy has adapted to massive Western sanctions. It has revealed resolve and competence in the West that fiascoes in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya had obscured (though admittedly things might have been different had the U.S. The war has laid bare weaknesses in Russia’s military that operations in Syria (2015) and Ukraine (20) had disguised. Finland and Sweden joining the alliance, which seems on track, will dramatically shift the balance of force in Northern Europe, more than doubling the length of Russia’s borders with NATO states. It has breathed new purpose into a previously adrift NATO. It has turbo-charged Ukrainian nationalism and pushed Kyiv closer to Europe. An offensive that was supposed to subjugate Ukraine, weaken the West, and strengthen the Kremlin has, up to now, done the opposite. Still, it was shocking, when Russian forces did roll in, that a nuclear-armed power in 2022 would seek to conquer a neighbour in an act of unprovoked aggression.īeyond the devastation in Ukraine, the war has cast a long shadow over global affairs.įor Russia, so far it has been disastrous. He openly derided Ukrainian national identity and sovereignty. Putin seemed ever angrier at Kyiv’s refusal to bow to his will. True, Russia had attacked Ukraine in 2014, and in the spring of 2021 had staged a dress rehearsal for an invasion, building up forces on the frontier before sending them home. All the signs pointed to an assault, bar one: it seemed unthinkable. intelligence warned that Russia was preparing for all-out war. Russian President Vladimir Putin had massed almost 200,000 troops on Ukraine’s borders. Will he or won’t he? This time last year, that was the question.
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