alt Hacker NewsWang Yi, when he was in Brussels earlier last year was pretty blunt and said that if China wanted Russia to win the war would be over and given the scale of China's defense and industrial sector that's probably true. They don't actually recognize Russia's territorial gains. From their perspective, this is the middle position. They simply can't afford Russia to lose, they're dealing with their own US problem.
And mind you I'm not very sympathetic what we in Germany call "Russlandversteher" but it's also become clear, the war in Ukraine not withstanding, that Russia isn't an existential military threat. There'll come a time, maybe after Putin is gone, when there's an opportunity to have a security architecture that covers the whole continent. A Europe with Russia even though it's impossible now wouldn't be this vulnerable. And at some point this has to be resolved because it's untenable long term.
Kissinger wrote a book in 1994 Diplomacy where he pointed out that the biggest threat to European independence is over-reliance on the US, not China or Russia simply because of the predominance of the US militarily and economically. And if the US continues to be this beligerent, unlike Russia it is an existential threat.
> Wang Yi, when he was in Brussels earlier last year was pretty blunt and said that if China wanted Russia to win the war would be over and given the scale of China's defense and industrial sector that's probably true. They don't actually recognize Russia's territorial gains. From their perspective, this is the middle position.
I'm sure that's of incredible comfort to the citizens of Ukrainian cities that have missiles raining down upon them; missiles that contain electronics that were made by China as a direct result of Western embargoes. It's the middle position, helping a belligerent tyrant slaughter civilians, in a quest to be tzar in everything but name.
> They simply can't afford Russia to lose, they're dealing with their own US problem.
Of course they can. Same with North Korea. If they'd sworn off those two nations a decade - or more - ago, they'd just be sitting there with sweet Western investment cash and far less American antagonism. But they need those two nations to cause problems, to break rules, and to generally paint the world order as a farce. Otherwise, what vacuum are they to fill? They'd just be a bigger Japan: existing in an America-centric world order, comfortable, downsizing, and utterly without incident. That's not going to give the CCP the external threats it needs to justify its totalitarianism.
> that Russia isn't an existential military threat.
> Kissinger wrote a book in 1994 Diplomacy where he pointed out that the biggest threat to European independence is over-reliance on the US
Ah, that old ghoul. The very embodiment of interests over values. Hopefully a Cambodian child is dropping bombs on Kissinger's village somewhere.
Regardless, his assessment is flawed. The US begged, for decades, other NATO members to take defense seriously after the creation of the peace dividend at the end of the Cold War. With the exception of former Warsaw Pact countries that wanted to make damned sure the Russians stayed out, that seemed to fall on deaf ears until relatively recently. During the pustule's time in office, there has been discussion of moving the strategic focus from Germany, which was not particularly warmly received in the area around Ramstein. [0]
As for whether or not the Russians are an existential threat, well, for now, no. Despite Trump's best efforts, at least as of this writing, Article 5 still exists and any sort of mass movement towards NATO territory by Russia would likely quickly decay into a thermonuclear war that would involve the entirety of the American and Russian strategic arsenals. Life on this planet as we know it would be over. Get rid of that - and the pustule seems like he wants to - and there would be no effective counter against Russian WMD forces, because they would have an advantage over France and the UK in such a conflict. The likelihood of Russia becoming an existential threat increases if NATO's current configuration breaks apart.
Any time someone has thermonuclear warheads pointed at your cities, they're an existential threat. I'll leave it to you to guess whether the US or Russia has more targets in central and western Europe.
[0] https://fortune.com/europe/2025/03/05/ramstein-germany-us-ai...