May 6, 2023

The People Republic of China has gained attention by promoting itself as a peace advocate in the Russo-Ukraine War. Yet, it should always be kept in mind that when Chairman Xi Jinping met with Russian President Vladimir Putin to discuss the issue it was part of a deepening of the Comprehensive Strategic Partnership between the two powers. It is not a proposal from a disinterested or neutral party. Li Hui, the Chinese diplomat tasked to broker the talks, is a former ambassador to Russia who once stated that China needs a powerful Russia. He was also awarded the Medal of Friendship by Putin.

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Chinese statements have mentioned everything from avoiding nuclear escalation, to maintaining supply chains and providing humanitarian assistance. The keys to peace, however, were set out by Beijing’s UN ambassador Dai Bing who stressed “Strengthening or even expanding military blocs will only undermine regional security and will never bring about peace. Russia, Ukraine, and European countries are neighbors that cannot be physically moved away. To realize lasting peace and stability in Europe, the Cold War mentality and bloc confrontation must be abandoned, and the legitimate security concerns of all countries must be taken seriously.In plain language, Russia, which invaded Ukraine with the object of installing a puppet government in Kyiv, is to be given security guarantees by the NATO which will not expand its membership. This is in accord with Beijing view that Russia is the victim of NATO expansion. Indeed, Beijing claims that in the Ukraine crisis it is Russia that is being targeted.

It is amazing how accepted this Russo-Chinese narrative for the origins of Putin’s invasion has become in the West, and not just among the “No to NATO” leftist “antiwar” radicals, but even among some conservative commentators. Yet, the record does not support any justification for Russia’s attack, only an account of its lust for conquest.

Poland, Hungry and the Czech Republic were the first of the newly liberated nations in post-Cold War Europe to join NATO. These countries had particularly tough times during the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe. Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968 tried to gain their freedom but were crushed by the Red Army. Poland’s history of Russian domination dates back centuries. Poland had been partitioned in three waves (1772, 1793, 1795) by Russia, Prussia, and the Austrian Empire. It would not reemerge until after World War I when all three partitioners had been defeated. Yet, the first thing the new Soviet Union did was invade. That invasion was repulsed, but in 1939 Poland was partitioned between Nazi Germany and the USSR after the Hitler-Stalin Pact. Russia then overran the three Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania) and invaded Finland.

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It is easy to see why Poland wanted to join NATO as defense against any resurgent Russia. There is no moral equivalency between NATO expansion by voluntary collective security and Russian expansion by fire and sword. NATO is not a threat to Russia, only to Russian ambitions to reestablish its reign of domination and oppression from which its neighboring people wish to remain free. History is very much alive in the Eastern European mind.

Poland, Hungary, and Czech Republic joined NATO the same year Vladimir Putin came to power in Russia (1999). The second wave of new NATO members was in 2004 when Bulgaria, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania joined. Again, it should be noted that at this time Putin was lamenting the collapse of the USSR and rebuilding Russian power.

In 2008, Ukraine and Georgia asked to join NATO. Russia immediately attacked Georgia and grabbed border areas. NATO then stalled on granting membership to either country to appease Moscow. In 2014, Russia seized Crimea (where it had been permitted to keep its naval base at Sevastopol) and instigated an uprising in Ukraine’s border areas. The alleged provocation was the popular overthrow of the pro-Moscow President Viktor Yanukovych who then fled to Russia. Again, there was no NATO deterrent because Kyiv was still not a member. The West also looked weak after the failure to act against Syria for crossing the “red line” of chemical weapons use against civilians in its civil war. This also opened the door for Russian military intervention in support of the Assad regime in league with Iran.

Then came last year’s full invasion of Ukraine. When Putin started marching troops around Belarus to gauge U.S.-NATO reaction, President Biden fell back on the “not a NATO member” excuse for non-intervention. And in the wake of his cut-off of aid to the Saudi-led coalition fighting Iranian proxies in Yemen and his panicked collapse in Afghanistan, it looked to Putin that the American president had no stomach (or backbone) for foreign adventures.

But the Ukrainians fought back with valor against an incompetent, overstretched Russian army, changing the strategic situation and winning sympathy and respect. The NATO alliance won new members as Finland and Sweden asked to join, and Japan squared the circle of global security when Japan’s prime minister Fumio Kishida visited Kyiv in March and his defense minister Nobuo Kishi told the press “Confronting Russia will deter China.” Had such muscular unity been displayed before Russia invaded, the war with all its casualties and global economic disruptions could have been deterred. Moscow would have decried any NATO guarantee of security to Ukraine, but Putin would not have dared attack (he had left the back door open by claiming he was not going to attack, until he did).

A more robust NATO (pushed by President Donald Trump and now, belatedly, taken up by President Biden) is seen as a threat to Chinese expansion plans as well as Russian. An op-ed in Global Times, the media outlet of the ruling Chinese Communist Party, claims “What the West is doing to Russia today can be seen as a rehearsal for what they will do to China in the future.” This is a riposte to the concern in the West that what Putin is doing to Ukraine is a rehearsal for what Xi wants to do to Taiwan. Beijing loudly objected to Prime Minister Kishida Fumio visiting Ukraine and a NATO meeting (also attended by South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand) in Brussels. And the new security arrangements the U.S. is forging with South Korea and the Philippines are alarmingly compared to Finland and Sweden joining NATO. All are reactions by countries fearing aggression seeking collective security within the U.S.-led Free World.