A Russian defeat in Ukraine may not be 100% beneficial to the Americans, but it is more than 1000% advantageous to the Chinese.
Author: Mohammad Idris Rahmani, Analyst (USA)
One of the main reasons the Chinese are not helping the Russians in uniform in the war in Ukraine is the big game of Russian control over the Arctic trade routes, which will likely determine the duplication of power and capital between these powers for decades. At the moment, the Russians are facing not only China but also other major powers such as the US and Europe.
Therefore, weakening Russian power in the exhausting war in Ukraine is in the interests of all major world powers. One of the most important consequences of the military defeat in the last two years of the war is that the Russians no longer exert force in the Arctic. Before the war, they controlled almost the entire pole alone and declared every day that the Arctic is part of Russian territory. They were not willing to consider the new trade routes through the Arctic as international trade routes between all the major economic powers.
If the Russians are not completely defeated and the Ukrainian issue is eventually brought to the political negotiating table, one of the things the West will probably ask the Russians to do behind the scenes is to sign an international agreement recognizing the Arctic as an international trade route after the ice melts.
Why is this important?
Once this new sea route is opened, most Asian economic powers will be able to reach the United States and Europe without having to cross the Suez Canal and incur high military, financial, and transportation costs due to wars in the Middle East.
For the first time in human history, the Middle East will lose its strategic importance.
How important is this?
Much like the invention of large ships and navigation technology led to the Silk Road, with all its importance and grandeur, being buried in history and disappearing. This means that the US will no longer have to defend Israel just for its own commercial interests, and the Middle Eastern powers will defend organizations like the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, and Hamas against the West - because these countries think that the West is preventing the profits of this trade route from going into the pockets of the Middle Eastern powers.
The entire border will return to the pre-Silk Road era. This is probably why the big Arab countries like Saudi Arabia, the Emirates, and Qatar are so busy building high-quality projects like exotic buildings and big airports - so that they can have big hubs when the new era of trade begins. Air transport and tourism should at least attract people from all over the world with their money to their countries to maintain the relative economic prosperity of the region. Almost the same concern that the Prophet and the Islamic Caliphs had in the early sixth century AH (Of course, it is assumed that oil energy sources will soon be exhausted.)
In this competition, only the Russians find common interests with the Middle Eastern powers, and in intensity, a new relationship is developing, according to which the Iranians are forced to sell weapons to their old historical enemy. Against the Chinese, the Americans and Europeans find deep strategic disagreement with this Russian position. In the view of these powers, if they do not stop the Russians, they will control the largest trade route in the world for decades to come and will charge each merchant ship a duty not of $50, which Egypt now charges, but of $500, and, unlike Egypt, they will protect these interests with their enormous nuclear power.
So it is not only the Americans who are waiting for the absolute defeat of the Russians or a strategic agreement to the exhausting defeat of the Russians. A Russian defeat in Ukraine may not be 100% beneficial to the Americans, but it is more than 1000% advantageous to the Chinese.
Why???
A total defeat of the Russians at this point would result in China regaining most of the territory (Manchuria) that the Russians had taken from the Chinese by force in previous wars.
It was the Russian takeover of Manchuria that started the feud between Chinese Communist leader Mao and the Soviet Communist leaders. Otherwise, the Chinese would have had no reason to confront the Russians during the Cold War and to cooperate militarily and economically with other rival countries, including funding and arming the Mujahideen in Afghanistan in the 1970s and 1980s. It was the Manchuria issue that forced the Chinese Communist Party into strategic cooperation with the Americans when the two countries had been locked in conflict in the Vietnam and Korean Wars a few years earlier.
Only by studying history can one understand the big, long-term games - otherwise these events are so scattered over time that one generation cannot understand them.
If you like politics or it is part of your work and life, then definitely study history. Study and learn a lot too.
