America is wrong to think that China is a bigger threat than Russia, and there are at least five reasons for that.
The Russian invasion of Ukraine greatly complicated the American military and diplomatic calculations, but it has not changed Washington's belief that China is a much bigger threat.
The Pentagon has sent a newsletter to US officials outlining the Joe Biden administration's national defense strategy. It states that the United States gives priority to deterring China's aggression in the Indo-Pacific region, and only then to Russia's challenge in Europe. But that assessment may change during Biden's presidency. Because Vladimir Putin's aggression in Eastern Europe is a much bigger military problem than anything Beijing is doing in the East. The Russian autocrat describes his invasion of Ukraine as the beginning of an alternative world order in which the United States does not dominate. Lauren Thompson, director of the Lexington Institute, writes about this in an article for Forbes.
The author notes that Putin rarely misses an opportunity to remind the world that Russia has a nuclear arsenal capable of destroying the West in a matter of hours. Such rhetoric cannot be compared to all that Chinese leader Xi Jinping says publicly. Of course, you can chat as much as you want. But there are more compelling reasons to believe that Washington will have to reconsider its turn to Asia. Thompson lists 5 of them.
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First of all, it's geography. China and Russia have the same history of empire-building over the centuries. But the geographical circumstances that dictate their security goals are different. European Russia occupied a large area from the Urals to the North Sea. And there are almost no obstacles to expansion in the western direction. In turn, China is surrounded by large geographical barriers: mountains and deserts, as well as the Pacific Ocean. One of the reasons why Taiwan plays such a big role in Washington's Indo-Pacific strategy is that the small island nation remains the only place that Beijing's military has a chance to occupy in the current decade. You can't say that about Russia. Without a reliable Western defense, the Russian army can occupy many neighboring countries: from Moldova to Finland. Putin's rhetoric reinforces the belief that Ukraine is only the beginning of a new era of Russian imperialism.
The second reason is leaders. Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin can be called aging dictators who do not want to let go of power. To remain at the head of their countries, they both use national insults allegedly inflicted on their peoples by foreigners in the past. However, Xi Jinping's approach to increasing Beijing's global influence is multifaceted and based not only on military force. In recent years, Putin's approach has been based solely on the use of the army to take control of foreign territories. Expert Ishaan Taroor wrote in an article for the Washington Post that Putin's neo-imperialist thinking is based on “claims of a mystical purpose that is above any geopolitical imperatives and through which Russia must come into conflict with the West.”
< p>Xi Jinping, no doubt, has his own conception of China's special destiny. But it does not provide for the occupation of territories outside Taiwan. Unlike Putin, who compares himself to the conqueror Peter I, Xi does not compare himself to the emperors of the Qing dynasty, who doubled China's territory. The success of his plan does not depend on the successful conquest of neighbors.
The third reason is the nature of the threat. Putin is betting so heavily on military power because of the weakness of all other available tools. Russia's economy, heavily dependent on fossil fuel exports, cannot compete with the West and advanced technology. In any non-nuclear war with the West, Russia is quickly defeated by a lack of new weapons and economic resources. The fact that Putin is so often reminiscent of Russia's nuclear arsenal is a sign of weakness, which shows that even in the military dimension, his country is not equal to Western rivals if they are united.
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In the case of Beijing, the situation is different. By joining the WTO in 2001, China has become the world's largest industrial power. Its industrial capabilities surpass anything in the United States, Japan and Western Europe combined. Its own technological capabilities are constantly advancing, and in some areas Beijing has a world leadership. If China simply maintains its economic vector, which it has been building up over the past two decades, it will become a dominant global power even without a first-class army. In the case of Russia, this is impossible. Its attempts to catch up with other economies have failed. Therefore, only military methods of realizing Putin's dreams of “greatness” remain.
The fourth reason is the intensity of the threat. Despite China's rapid build-up, its military threat outside Taiwan is largely hypothetical. In the case of Russia, the military threat is obvious and may persist for generations. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson and NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg warned last week that Russia's war against Ukraine could drag on for long, perhaps years. Even if the bloodshed stops, Russian troops will still be on the border with half a dozen NATO countries. Therefore, the threat of war will not disappear from Europe, regardless of how Putin's current aggression ends. The intensity of the war makes it impossible to ignore Moscow's behavior. At this time, the threat from China in the western Pacific is more hazy. Even if Beijing's current military expansion continues, China's challenge will primarily be economic and technological. No number of US troops in the Pacific will change the fact that China is constantly commercializing innovation faster than America.
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And the last reason is how well the threat can be addressed. Because China poses a regional military threat, the solution is relatively easy to predict. For example, it is possible to deploy an armored brigade in Taiwan on a permanent basis to deter any potential invasion. In Europe, the solution is much harder to find. Because, for example, there are natural barriers between countries like Japan and China. And in Europe they do not exist. Moscow's lightning attack on several neighbors could succeed before the United States could even mobilize forces. And whatever the Western reaction, it must be borne in mind that Russia has thousands of tactical nuclear warheads in the region. Thus, the threat from Russia in Eastern Europe will increasingly dominate Washington's strategic calculations. China has more behavior and more sophisticated leadership. He will be able to increase his influence in the East without the methods used by Putin.
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