Chinese Strategy Versus Russian Strategery

Is China using NATO to destroy Russia?

I only ask if China is using an unexpected opportunity to use NATO to destroy Russia because while Chinese aid is helping Russia fight Ukraine, it is subliminal help that China can deny to avoid Western sanctions. China is helping Russia keep fighting. But China is not living up to its so-called partnership without limits to help Russia win absent a collapse of Ukrainian or Western will to resist.

China might still resent Russia for sacrificing Chinese soldiers in the Korean War while Russia kept its hands clean:

Mao and the CCP leadership acted immediately to cope with the crisis situation created by the outbreak of the Korean War. The CCP leadership quickly decided to postpone the PLA's Taiwan campaign plan to focus on Korea.71 On 30 June, five days after the outbreak of the Korean War, Zhou Enlai decided to send a group of Chinese diplomats, most of whom were military intelligence personnel, to North Korea to establish better communications with Kim Il-sung as well as to collect first-hand materials on the fighting. One week later, on 7 and 10 July, Zhou, under Mao's instruction, chaired two conferences focusing on military preparations for the Korean conflict. A crucial decision was made at these conferences: the Thirteenth Army Corps under the Fourth Field Army would be immediately transformed into the Northeastern Border Defense Army (NEBDA) to prepare for "an intervention in the Korean War if necessary." By early August, more than 250,000 troops of the former Fourth Field Army had taken positions on the Chinese-Korean border.

China wanted to intervene to prevent America from destroying North Korea. The Russians promised to send their air force to Korea to support the Chinese ground forces. But at the last minute the Russians backed out of that commitment:

The meeting was supposed to focus on how many fighters and bombers the Soviet Union could send to Korea while the Chinese land forces entered the Korean War, and who should command Soviet air forces there. To the surprise of the Chinese, however, Stalin was now reluctant to dispatch Soviet air forces into Korea. He promised that the Soviet Union would deliver the Chinese military equipment for 20 divisions, but the Soviet air forces would not be sent into Korea because they needed more time to get ready.

The result?

The Soviet "betrayal" at this crucial juncture made clear to Mao and the CCP leadership the limitations of the Sino-Soviet alliance. The Chinese desperately needed Soviet support in any form at this moment, and Mao had no other choice but to swallow the fruit of the Russian betrayal. Mao, however, would never forgive it.

If China can fixate on the Century of Humiliation in the 19th century, losing huge numbers of troops while Russians watched and sent aid might have left a mark that lasts to today, no?

Note, too, that China’s intervention in the Korean War saved Taiwan from a planned Chinese invasion. This is a reminder of the difficulty of identifying victory at the moment without perspective. I’ve noted that over time I’ve come to see the Korean War as a victory rather than a draw because of how South Korea developed from a dependent, poor, autocracy into a modern democratic ally—even helping NATO states that buy their excellent weapons.

We can add in a bonus victory of saving Taiwan which has developed similarly into a modern, advanced, democratic ally that is crucial to our computer industry.

But I digress.

China might even resent apparent Russian desire to nuke China during the Nixon administration after the Sino-Soviet split and a brief border war.

Heck, China might resent Russia's efforts to point China at America—by selling weapons to China useful in an aero-naval war rather than land war—in an apparent effort to create America-China friction and perhaps ignite a war that would reduce to potential threats to Russia:

Those clever bastards in Moscow are trying to make up for their current weakness by encouraging the predators in Peking to look south. I can't believe that this didn't occur to me until I read the north-south article. Doh. The Russians aren't stupid. They aren't some rube Third World nation. They were recently a superpower and they aren't deluded here. Sure, there's some appeasing here, but a good part is making sure China goes for somebody else--Taiwan and therefore Japan and America, too.

Not that Russia compelled a Chinese southern strategy, as I noted. China was disposed toward that strategy anyway. But Russian arms sales certainly reinforced the southern orientation. 

And as I suggested in that post and explicitly argued a decade later:

Putin seems insanely paranoid about the West and NATO. Perhaps it is very rational for him to pretend NATO is a threat to hide the groveling to China.

I don't know if Russian pretending eventually convinced themselves of the deception, but Russia sure acts like it fears the until-recently nearly toothless European NATO states.

As Russia destroys its military and economy by invading Ukraine trying to rebuild Soviet glory, China may figure it has an opportunity to weaken Russia which is the last major power still holding gains from China's "century of humiliation."  Look at all the territory in the northeast that Russia has controlled since it took it from China in the 19th century:

And even now China seeks to take a small step into that former imperial territory.

But no worries, Moscow. Xi claims his partnership with Putin has no limits. Whew! It's safe to send every swinging Ivan guarding the border with China to die inside Ukraine!

Wait. What? There are signs China wants limits on its so-called "no limits" friendship? Is this a feint of tilting to the West to get the West to ignore China’s growing non-military support to Russia that sustains Putin's war? Or proof the two are frenemies with temporary benefits and that the benefits to China are fading?

Russia's tunnel vision is astounding:

Meanwhile China, the only real threat to Russia, quietly makes progress in the east. There China has claims on much of the Russian Far East and is openly replacing Russia as the primary economic, military and political force in Central Asia.

Russia thinks they have problems now? The Russians have no idea how much worse it could get when China thinks it has squeezed every last benefit from a declining Russia that China pretends is a partner.

I'm only mostly joking when I ask when Russians will look at the destruction Putin has inflicted on Russia and conclude the Chinese sent him to Russia the way Germany sent Lenin to Russia during World War I to undermine and destroy the czarist Russian Empire.

But FFS, what else could possibly explain Putin's record? Putin could end up hanging by his heels from a lamppost as the fanciful paranoia he has stoked about NATO circles back to hit him.

#WhyRussiaCan'tHaveNiceThings