Burton: China’s potential long game: First dominate Russia, then on to the Arctic

China’s potential long game: First dominate Russia, then on to the Arctic 

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-chinas-potential-long-game-first-dominate-russia-then-on-to-the-arctic/

Whatever the outcome of the suffering in Ukraine, Russia will remain shunned by the West, blocked from financial transactions and trade with lucrative European markets. This risks ushering Russia into the arms of Beijing, which will be only too happy to facilitate the dependence of its “strategic partner” on Chinese economic support, under the guise of helping it weather cataclysmic sanctions. It will come at a humiliating cost to Mr. Putin, but make no mistake: Beijing will exploit Russia’s weakness to bring it into subordination to China’s overall geopolitical agenda.

The West’s hesitant, conditional response to Russian aggression against an allied nation is being seen by Beijing as an affirmation that the Washington-dominated global order is in decline. The subtleties of NATO’s Article 5 are lost on the Standing Committee of China’s Politburo. What they see is Mr. Putin threatening to use nuclear weapons, the West backing away from Ukrainian pleas for meaningful military support beyond a token promise of a few outdated armaments, and no commitment to clear Ukrainian air space of the Russian bombers that devastate the nation below.

Burton: Time to wake up and take megalomaniacs seriously

 Burton: Time to wake up and take megalomaniacs seriously

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2022/03/02/time-to-wake-up-and-take-megalomaniacs-seriously.html

Xi is confident that, under his leadership, China’s civilizational norms, as he interprets them, will displace the liberal West in a new China-dominated global order. He foresees this “community of the common destiny of mankind” being in place by 2050. Under his Belt and Road global infrastructure initiative, the world’s economy will be restructured to place China definitively at the centre of power; all the belts and roads will lead to Beijing. It is a delusional overblown ambition, but if Xi sees this promised future slipping away, China could lash out at the world in the same dangerous ways as Putin is doing now.

Canada has until now given Xi’s ambitions short shrift. Serious China expertise in our foreign ministry, CSIS, the RCMP, CSE and DND is thin on the ground. There has been no political will to get more Canadians fluent in Mandarin and thus more attuned to what is really going on with the Chinese Communist Party, domestically, internationally, and here in Canada.

In fact we even enable Xi’s regime by submitting to Chinese embassy threats to punish Canada economically through trade sanctions if we respond in any substantive way to China’s robust industrial espionage operations in Canada, or coercion of ethnic Chinese people in Canada to serve the interests of the Communist Party regime, or China’s very sophisticated influence operations targeting Canadians with influence on Canada’s foreign policy formulation.