Month: January 2022

By Burak Bekdil of Gatestone Instutute; he is one of Turkey’s leading journalists, was recently fired from the country’s most noted newspaper after 29 years, for writing what is taking place in Turkey. He is a Fellow at the Middle East Forum.

Summary:

• “If we lose Istanbul, we lose Turkey.” — Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.
• It appears that [Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu’s] “terrorists” are actually people who are being probed for links with illegal organizations but who have not been prosecuted — let alone being found guilty by courts.
• This kind of intimidation, further victimizing Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu in the eyes of the voters, will simply boost his popularity — and at a time when Erdoğan’s ratings are plummeting.
• Erdoğan, it seems, did not want opposition mayors to gain further popularity by helping the poor.
• It would be premature to conclude that there will be a historic shift in Turkish politics in 2023. All the same, the reports are real, and so are Erdoğan’s fears, panic and increasingly reckless governance.

Turkey’s secular state establishment was shocked when a young militant Islamist won the mayoral elections in Turkey’s biggest city, Istanbul, in 1994. “Who wins Istanbul wins Turkey,” Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, at that time Istanbul’s mayor, would often say. History would prove him right.

Erdoğan’s tenure as Istanbul’s mayor ended when in 1997 when he recited a pro-Islamist poem. “The mosques are our barracks, the domes our helmets, the minarets our bayonets, and the faithful our soldiers” earned him a 10-month prison term for “inciting religious hatred,” four of which he served. In 2002, Erdoğan’s Justice and Development Party (AKP) swept to victory in national elections.

Erdoğan has since remained unchallenged, first as Turkey’s prime minister and, since 2014, as president. Observers agree that Erdoğan’s skilfully-crafted image-making as the “victim of an authoritarian, secular regime” helped him to win one election after another. “People saw him as the guy from the other side of the tracks who the system had unjustly punished,” Soner Çağaptay, author of Erdoğan’s Empire, wrote.

Ironically, the man who has become Erdoğan’s worst nightmare is following a similar path. In March 2019, as the race for municipal elections was barrelling ahead, Islamist parties had controlled Istanbul — along with Turkey’s capital, Ankara — since 1994. Erdoğan’s candidate for Istanbul was a big shot: former Prime Minister Binali Yıldırım. The opposition, however — including social democrats, liberals, some nationalists and Kurds — united behind Ekrem İmamoğlu, then a little-known district mayor in Istanbul.

During the run-up to the election, Erdoğan’s party officials and trolls launched a smear campaign against İmamoğlu. One AKP deputy chair spoke of “many question marks” surrounding İmamoğlu’s ethno-religious identity, demanding İmamoğlu prove “that your spirit, heart and mind is with the Turkish nation.” A propaganda machinery started to allege that İmamoğlu was a crypto-Greek, and that his supporters were Greeks disguised as Muslims. He was also accused for having links to Kurdish terrorists.

The vote count, on March 31, 2019, proved to be a political fiasco for Erdoğan and his seemingly invincible AKP: İmamoğlu won by a narrow margin of 13,000 votes (in a city of 18 million people). The AKP-controlled Supreme Election Board ruled for an election rerun on June 23. This time, İmamoğlu won by a margin of 800,000 votes, shocking Erdoğan and his gigantic party establishment.

Just two years earlier, Erdoğan had said, “If we lose Istanbul, we lose Turkey.”

Since the restoration of Turkish democracy in 1983, which followed a military coup in 1980, no candidate in Istanbul’s mayoral elections had a managed to win with such a majority: İmamoğlu won 54% of the votes, compared to 45% for the AKP candidate — and compared to 25% for Erdoğan in the 1994 election.

The election result triggered a campaign of intimidation and hatred against İmamoğlu which, paradoxically, has boosted him as a perfect contender against Erdoğan for the next presidential elections in 2023.

During the early days of the Covid-19 pandemic, Erdoğan launched a national donation campaign, through which wealthier Turks, individuals or businesses, could help poorer Turks. In other words, the Ankara government would collect money from the people to help the people. Unsurprisingly, the campaign collected an embarrassing $245 million in a country of 83 million people — and most of that came from government-controlled companies.

Parallel to Erdoğan’s campaign, İmamoğlu and Ankara’s Mayor Mansur Yavaş launched local campaigns to collect donations to help the poorest in Turkey’s two biggest cities. But there was a problem. The government said city councils, according to law, must first obtain permission from the Interior Ministry to launch fundraising initiatives. İmamoğlu and Yavaş argued that other government-controlled municipalities were also raising donations to help workers and small business owners who had lost their incomes due to the coronavirus. Yes, the government said, but they had obtained permission whereas Istanbul and Ankara had not. Erdoğan, it seems, did not want opposition mayors to gain further popularity by helping the poor.

In 2020, Vakıfbank, a state-owned lender, froze the Istanbul municipality’s account after coronavirus donations had reached $130 million. The Interior Ministry launched criminal investigations against the two mayors on charges of illegal fundraising. “Pathetic,” was all İmamoğlu said. In further shows of ire, the central government in Ankara would also suspend Istanbul municipality’s campaign to sell the poorest Turks cheap bread.

In one bizarre episode last year, the Interior Ministry launched an investigation into İmamoğlu for “disrespecting Sultan Mehmet II’s tomb” — referring to the Ottoman sultan who conquered Istanbul in 1453. A probe was opened and the mayor of Istanbul was summoned to make a statement. What was the offense? It seems İmamoğlu, in a 2020 visit, had walked in the tomb of Sultan Mehmet II with his hands folded behind his own back! Evidence? A photo showing İmamoğlu in front of the tomb with his hands folded behind himself. “In my opinion,” Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu said, “This [behavior] is an offense.”

“I feel so much shame,” İmamoğlu replied, “on the minister’s behalf.”

Nevertheless, the Interior Minister is once again on the run to sideline İmamoğlu. On December 27, the ministry launched an investigation into hundreds of staff at the Istanbul municipality, accused of links to terrorist groups.

The probe covers 455 people working at the municipality and municipality-owned companies with alleged connections to Kurdish militants, along with more than 100 allegedly linked to banned leftist and other illegal groups.

The municipality protests that none of its employees has a criminal record, based on data provided by the Justice Ministry. Yes, the Interior Ministry admits, that is true. But, it maintains, the “terrorists” are individuals who are being investigated. Turkey has become more ridiculous than a caricature: the Interior Minister does not know that every suspect is innocent until proven guilty? It appears that the minister’s “terrorists” are actually people who are being probed for links with illegal organizations but who have not been prosecuted — let alone being found guilty by courts.

This kind of intimidation, further victimizing İmamoğlu in the eyes of the voters, will simply boost his popularity — and a time when Erdoğan’s ratings are plummeting.

Surveys by Metropoll Research show Erdoğan’s approval rating, at 38.6%, is its lowest since 2015. His popularity, they show, trails that of three potential presidential election rivals. A poll by Sosyo Politik Field Research Center put support for Erdoğan’s AKP at 27%, against 37% who said they voted for the party in the last parliamentary election in 2018. The AKP’s nationalist ally in parliament, the MHP, was at 6.3%, down from 7.3% who said they voted for the party in 2018.

Metropoll’s most recent research found that the mayors of İstanbul and Ankara have a comfortable lead over Erdoğan for the presidential election. If two candidates were to go head to head in the election, the survey showed, İmamoğlu would beat Erdoğan by 48.7% to 36.6%.

It would be premature to conclude that there will be a historic shift in Turkish politics in 2023. All the same, the reports are real, and so are Erdoğan’s fears, panic and increasingly reckless governance.

North Korea has fired what is believed to be an Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM) which fell into waters near Japan, according to Bloomberg. Crucially, this marked one of the most powerful missile launches in years and also busiest after Pyongyang conducted successful hypersonic missile tests earlier this month. 

Both South Korean and Japanese governments confirmed the IRBM launch on Sunday. They said the missile reached a height of approximately 1,243 miles and flew about 500 miles for 30 minutes before landing in waters outside of Japan’s exclusive economic zone. 

North Korea tests its most powerful missile since 2017, ramping up firepower for its record-breaking seventh launch this month as Seoul warns nuclear and long-range tests could be next pic.twitter.com/sgQSpA7ZjA

— TRT World Now (@TRTWorldNow) January 30, 2022

“If the missile were fired at a normal apogee, its range would be up to 3,500 kilometers to 5,500 kilometers, making it an IRBM and North Korea’s longest test since 2017,” Joseph Dempsey, research associate for defense and military analysis at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, told CNN.

Sunday’s launch is North Korea’s sixth ballistic missile launch this year and the seventh missile test overall, already surpassing firing totals of 2021. 

The series of missile launches came as North Korean leader Kim Jong Un vowed to strengthen his military capability further. Sunday’s test is a wake-up for the Biden administration because South Korean President Moon Jae-in said North Korea could abandon the moratorium on Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBM) — indicating these long-range missiles could potentially hit the US mainland. 

Soo Kim, a policy analyst with the Rand Corp. who previously worked at the Central Intelligence Agency, told Bloomberg, “Kim hasn’t had to pay the price for his actions, and he knows that especially now – with Covid, the Russia-Ukraine situation, brimming U.S.-China tensions, not to mention a South Korean presidential campaign season – the time is ripe for provocations.”

“Kim’s made it pretty clear that it will take something greater than sanctions to make him flinch,” the Rand analyst said. 

It was reported last month that the US, South Korea, North Korea, and China “have agreed ‘in principle’ to declare a formal end to the Korean War. But they’ve yet to meet on the matter due to Pyongyang’s demands.” The matter has still been stalled and doesn’t look to find a way forward anytime soon.

Notably, the latest test marks the rogue country’s missile and possibly atomic ambitions. Now the world waits for a response from the Biden administration, busy drumming up the prospects for conflict with Russia over Ukraine. 

After seven inconclusive rounds of voting, the Italian Parliament met on Saturday afternoon and re-elected President Mattarella with 770 votes, averting the political chaos a failure to elect his successor could have sparked in the eurozone’s third-largest economy.

An interim official count in Saturday’s ballot put the 80-year-old president over the top. It followed a deal between Draghi and Italy’s main parties to back Mattarella. The agreement between the two main coalitions to extend the tenure of the incumbent ensures the survival of Draghi’s fragile government for now. This was the sixth slowest election process in Italian Presidential history.

According to Bloomberg, Mattarella had said he was keen to retire, going so far as to rent a new apartment in Rome. In the end, it was Draghi who asked Mattarella to remain in office on Saturday, breaking the stalemate. All parties backed the incumbent except Giorgia Meloni’s far-right Brothers of Italy.

Members of parliament broke into applause as the 80-year-old, whose first term of office ends on February 3, received the necessary votes for a second seven-year term, in the eighth round of a ballot that has bitterly divided the national unity government in Rome. 

After several back-and-forths, vote outcomes showing a very limited adherence to party discipline and, finally, an attempt by the centre-right to break the stalemate by putting forward their own candidate, this morning the majority of the centre-right coalition (Lega, Forza Italia (FI)), the centre-left coalition (5Star, PD and LU) and the centrists Coraggio Italia (CI) and Italia Viva all agreed to vote for the incumbent President Mattarella. Throughout the process, President Mattarella received the larger number of votes in every single round of voting but one.

Draghi was initially seen as a top contender for the job and made it clear he would be keen to become head of state. The former ECB president was thwarted by lawmakers in his own unity government who feared a return to political turmoil without Draghi at the helm.
The outcome could provide relief to investors as it reduces the chances of early elections and will let Draghi press ahead with his reform agenda until the next election, due in 2023.

Mattarella had tapped Draghi to lead the government amid political chaos at the start of the Covid pandemic. Parties across the ideological spectrum agreed to suspend their political jockeying and back Draghi.

Since his appointment last February, Draghi, 74, has held Italy’s querulous parties together, embarked on a series of economic and administrative reforms, led an aggressive vaccination push and secured 200 billion euros ($223 billion) in European Union Covid recovery funds.

His challenge now is to inject fresh energy into his administration, which appeared to lose steam in the weeks before the vote. Still, staying on will give Draghi more say over policy than if he had shifted to the presidency.

The Italian president has limited powers and the role is ceremonial most of the time. Yet, no one gets to be premier without the president’s approval — they nominate heads of government and their chosen ministers. The president also holds the power to dissolve parliament, which means they can act as a force of stability in crises.

During his seven-year mandate, Mattarella has appointed four different governments and become a symbol of continuity and stability. He addressed the nation several times during the worst months of the pandemic, even showing he did not get an haircut during the lockdown months, like most Italians.

The good news for markets is that we have a continuation of the status quo, one which sets up former Goldman bankers and ECB head Mario Draghi to remain as prime minister, and as Goldman’s Filippo Taddei writes, “the current outcome is the most market friendly for Italian macro risk in 2022 and beyond.”

Authored by Joe Lauria via Consortium News,

The telephone call between U.S. President Joe Biden and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenensky on Thursday was said to have not “gone well,” according to a senior Ukrainian official. The official said Zelensky urged Biden to “calm down the messaging” on the situation in Ukraine and that Ukrainian intelligence did not see a Russian threat the same way the U.S. did, according to a report on CNN. It is  “dangerous but ambiguous,” the official quoted Zelensky as telling Biden, and that “it is not certain that an attack will take place.” 

At a news conference on Friday, Zelensky said: “They keep supporting this theme, this topic. And they make it as acute and burning as possible. In my opinion, this is a mistake.” He added: “If you look only at the satellites you will see the increase in troops and you can’t assess whether this is just a threat of attack or just a simple rotation.” 

Zelensky also spoke about the resumption of diplomatic talks in Paris in the Normandy Format with Germany and France in which the Minsk Accords are to be implemented.  The 2015 accords would end the war between Kiev and two breakaway eastern provinces that opposed the 2014 U.S. backed coup that overthrew a democratically elected president that leaned towards Moscow. The provinces would be given autonomy from Kiev. Zelensky said he hoped that the ceasefire in the east would hold.

This is almost the exact opposite of what the U.S. and its loyal media are blaring everyday. In the call, Biden raised the temperature, decisively saying that a Russian invasion of Ukraine was coming. “Biden warned his Ukrainian counterpart that a Russian attack may be imminent, saying that an invasion was now virtually certain, once the ground had frozen later in February, according to the official,” the CNN report said. 

War fever has clearly gripped Washington. Emily Horne, a U.S. National Security Council spokeswoman, “disputed the senior Ukrainian official’s description of the call” according to the network.  “Anonymous sources are ‘leaking’ falsehoods,” she was quoted as saying. “President Biden said that there is a distinct possibility that the Russians could invade Ukraine in February. He has said this publicly and we have been warning about this for months. Reports of anything more or different than that are completely false.”  This was before Zelensky repeated the same sentiments on Friday.

But Zelensky is not the first first Ukrainian leader to deny that there is a serious threat from Moscow. The New York Times reported on Tuesday: 

“Ukraine’s defense minister has asserted that there had been no change in the Russian forces compared with a buildup in the spring; the head of the national security council accused some Western countries and news media outlets of overstating the danger for geopolitical purposes; and a Foreign Ministry spokesman took a swipe at the United States and Britain for pulling the families of diplomats from their embassies in Kyiv, saying they had acted prematurely.”

The line from Washington, funneled through the U.S. corporate media, is that America understands Ukraine better than Ukrainian officials do. The reason Ukrainians are pushing back against the U.S. hysteria, “analysts” are “guessing,” is to “keep the Ukrainian markets stable, prevent panic and avoid provoking Moscow, while others attribute it to the country’s uneasy acceptance that conflict with Russia is part of Ukraine’s daily existence,” as the Times reported.

It couldn’t possibly be because there’s not the threat the Americans say there is. 

The war fever is clouding the minds of the U.S. national security state and its loyal media. And, as always, arms manufacturers like Lockheed Martin and General Dynamics stand to benefit.

The angry response from the NSC spokeswoman reveals how official Washington is reacting to doubts about the war hysteria, even if it comes from the president of the supposedly targeted country. 

European Doubts Too

Ukraine is not the only country that is not as gung-ho for war as America. Germany has refused to ship its weapons to Ukraine. “Weapons deliveries would not be helpful at the moment – that is the consensus within the government,” German Defense Minister Christine Lambrecht said last week. 

Last Saturday, Vice-Admiral Kay-Achim Schönbach, the head of the German navy, resigned after saying talk of a Russian invasion of Ukraine was “nonsense” and that Russia was merely seeking “respect” for its security concerns in Europe.   German business with extensive commercial ties to Russia, has long bridled under pressure from Washington to put German sanctions on their trading partner. 

Germany’s stance has freaked out strident Atlanticists, such as the think tank Carnegie Europe, which yesterday said, “If Berlin does not adopt a bolder, unambiguous stance toward Russia, it will undermine the West’s deterrence efforts.” 

You guys aren’t making a big enough deal of this weird dynamic that American leaders are more worried than Ukrainian leaders of Russia invading Ukraine. This needs to be explained.

— Max Abrahms (@MaxAbrahms) January 29, 2022

The U.S. State Department took the extraordinarily bold step on Thursday of dictating to Germany that the U.S. would shut down the Nord Stream 2 natural gas pipeline from Russia to Germany — a commercial project that has nothing to do with the U.S. — if Russia invades.

“I want to be very clear: if Russia invades Ukraine one way or another, Nord Stream 2 will not move forward,” U.S. state department spokesman Ned Price told NPR. But even the BBC had to say: “Questions remain over whether the US would have the power to cancel the project.”  By no coincidence, the U.S. this week said it was organizing much more expensive liquified natural gas shipments, from the U.S. and other parts of the world, if a war caused Russia to turn off its gas pipelines to Europe.

For its efforts to undermine Russia and even for naked commercial interests, the U.S. seems to be willing, even begging, Russia to invade.

France Too

In an address to the European Parliament last week, French President Emmanuel Macron appeared to show Russia the kind of respect Schönbach was talking about. He said:

“Europe needs to build a collective security order on our continent. Our continent’s security requires a strategic reinforcement of our Europe as a power of peace, a balancing power, particularly in its dialogue with Russia. I have been advocating this dialogue for several years. It is not optional, for our history and our geography are stubborn, both for ourselves and for Russia. For security in our continent, which is indivisible. We need this dialogue…. What we need to build is a European order founded on principles and rules to which we have committed, and which we established not against or without Russia, but with Russia.”

Despite Macron’s words, France has agreed to send a contingent of its NATO soldiers to Eastern Europe, along with Denmark, Spain, and the Netherlands. 

As is often the case, Europe is torn between its own interests and those being dictated by Washington, resulting in an ambiguous policy. There are few examples of Europe risking America’s ire, even for its own benefit.

Refusing to cooperate with the U.S. on Ukraine would signal a European defiance of the United States such as Charles de Gaulle pulling France out of NATO in 1966 to preserve French independence.

The last time European governments broke with Washington on a major issue was the 2003 U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. Then France and Germany joined Russia on the U.N. Security Council in blocking the war’s authorization (although Britain supported it). But France and Germany then voted for a resolution several months later that essentially condoned the invasion.

Only London

The dissension by the German admiral and the French president to the U.S. position exposes the war propaganda being stirred up daily over Ukraine as a mostly Anglo-Saxon affair. Britain has begun playing an increasing role with the United States in preparing its populations for war, reminiscent of the lead-up to the 2003 U.S-U.K. invasion of Iraq.

Last Saturday, the British Foreign Office, without providing any evidence at all, said Russia is planning to “install a pro-Russian leader in Kyiv as it considers whether to invade and occupy Ukraine.” This week Prime Minister Boris Johnson said an invasion would become “a painful, violent and bloody business” for Russia.

The Ukrainian people already installed a pro-Russian leader through the ballot box, Viktor Yanukovych. He was overthrown in an actual U.S.-backed coup in Ukraine in 2014, leading to the continuing crisis. Evidence for the Kiev coup came in the form of a leaked telephone call between then U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland and the then U.S. ambassador to Ukraine in which they discussed who the new Ukrainian leader would be, weeks before the coup happened.

Britain is going further, spreading alarm that the Ukraine standoff can lead to a world war. Liz Truss, the British foreign secretary, traveled as far as Australia to raise fears that China might join the war by attacking Taiwan if Russia “invaded” Ukraine.

An interview she gave to The Sydney Morning Herald, under the headline: “Aggressors working together: UK’s Truss warns China could follow Russia into war,” began:

“China could use a Russian invasion of Ukraine as an opportunity to launch aggression of its own in the Indo-Pacific, British Foreign Secretary Liz Truss has warned. ‘I don’t think we can rule that out,” Ms Truss said. … “Russia is working more closely with China than it ever has. Aggressors are working in concert and I think it’s incumbent on countries like ours to work together.’”

The United States and Britain are trying to save a nation that says it does not need saving at the moment.  And it is only Washington and London that have fully spun this story of war and are ready to bully anyone of consequence who challenges it.   

Authored by Andrew Thornbrooke via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

Tensions are mounting throughout the world concerning the possibility of a war between Russia and Ukraine. One question that has experts on edge is what role China might play in such a conflict, and how such an event could set a dangerous precedent for China’s global ambitions—particularly in relation to Taiwan.

Russia has demanded that Ukraine never be allowed to join NATO. As of this week, it has amassed 130,000 troops at the eastern border of Ukraine to intimidate Western nations into disallowing Ukraine from ever joining the alliance and to pressure the global community away from further militarizing the region.

The Chinese leadership has joined in the effort, urging cool heads while also giving cover for Russia and its history of illegal expansion.

The regime’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi and U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken spoke about the situation during a telephone call on Jan. 27. Wang used the call to tell Blinken to “stay calm” and warned the United States to stop creating “anti-China cliques.”

The interaction could signal a much-increased role for China as a diplomatic go-between for Russia and the rest of the world.

A Different World than 2014

Despite the temptation to compare the current crisis to Russia’s illegal annexation of Crimea from Ukraine in 2014, experts say that the geopolitical and economic landscape is quite different in 2022.

Perhaps the most notable difference, they say, is that China will play a prominent, if not dominant, role in any potential conflict and its eventual resolution.

This state of affairs is in stark contrast to 2014 when, given the chance to support Russia’s claims to Crimea, the Chinese regime’s leadership demurred.

“China did not recognize the 2014 Russian annexation of Crimea because it did not want to get implicated,” said Sam Kessler, a geopolitical analyst at North Star Support Group, a multinational risk management firm. “They didn’t condemn it either, which is important to know.”

“The Chinese delegation abstained twice when initiatives to officially condemn the [annexation] were introduced at the United Nations,” Kessler added.

There were multiple reasons for declining to recognize the Crimean Peninsula as Russian territory at the time, according to Giselle Jamison, associate professor of political science and international relations at St. Thomas University.

In the first, it interfered with plans for a deep-water port in Ukraine that China had invested in, Jamison told EpochTV’s “China Insider” program. In the second, China did not have the depth of economic ties with Russia that it has now.

In fact, the increasing interconnectedness of the Chinese and Russian economic spheres owes largely to the 2014 annexation, which Kessler said changed nearly everything about the U.S.-China-Russia trilateral relationship and its balance of power.

“The sanctions imposed in 2014 enabled Moscow to abandon most of their Western economic interests and pivot to China and the rest of Asia,” Kessler said.

“This has streamlined significant economic, security, defense, political, and good neighbor agreements that previously had either been stalled or gradual processes.”

This interconnectedness means that China stands to lose much more to sanctions on Russia in 2022 than in 2014.

The potential knock-on effects of Russian sanctions on Chinese markets may thus necessitate that China’s communist leadership will engage heavily in the Ukraine crisis.

“A conflict between Russia and Ukraine would force Beijing to take a more solid stance than they did in 2014,” Kessler said.

“The current circumstances and diplomatic environment are more evolved and strained between all parties involved than they were in 2014. It would impact China both politically and economically because their strategic positioning is now more direct and transparent than it had been.”

Kessler’s comments were in line with the findings of a recent report on the issue by Christopher Miller, an assistant professor of international history at Tufts University, and co-director of the school’s Russia and Eurasia program.

“Because China is deeply intertwined with Russia in terms of trade and, to a lesser extent, finance, it would be unable to sit on the sidelines,” Miller wrote. “Beijing would either have to reject US sanctions and export controls, help enforce them, or do some mix of both.”

“Either way, China would be forced to choose.”

China is Key to Russian Success, or Failure

That power over the effectiveness of U.S. economic coercion methods is new territory for China and means that Beijing could make or break any attempt by the United States to punish Russia for its actions.

There are two key reasons, according to analysts, that indicate that Beijing would not support Western sanctions on Russia. The first is that its dependence on international trade with Russia has grown. The second is that its leadership is not incentivized to promote U.S. goals or ways of doing business.

Concerning the first, Russia currently imports and exports more goods with China than any other nation. Sanctions would majorly disrupt China’s state-owned firms and Russian-based corporations.

Specifically, Miller’s report warns that commodity markets for aluminum, nickel, copper, and palladium could be significantly disrupted, leading to price hikes which would further compound supply chain woes for critical technologies, to say nothing of energy supplies and other sectors.

Likewise, enforcing such measures would require China to go against its longstanding dedication to national sovereignty, by serving as an enforcer of the United States’ vision for a liberal international order, which is unlikely.

There is also a tertiary problem for Chinese Communist Party (CCP) leaders, according to Jamison, which is pride. Pride that would prevent the regime from promoting export controls that could be used to imply that China somehow needs U.S. permission to trade with whomever it wishes.

“This time, if the West carries through on its most severe threats, the impact on China could be profound, in terms of economics, but also in terms of reputation,” Miller wrote. “If China adheres to US sanctions against Russia, Beijing’s economic heft will seem less significant and America’s financial power will be enhanced,” Miller wrote.

“This raises the stakes for Beijing, which in a crisis might conclude it has no choice but to stand up to America’s extraterritorial sanction power. If so, Russia would find a valuable friend amid the crisis—and the West could find itself embroiled in a two-front financial war.”

China Signaling Support for Russia

The Chinese regime, in fact, may gain influence if the United States attempts to leverage heavier sanctions on Russia, analysts note. This is due in no small part to the fact that Beijing has made leveraging loans a strategic priority for garnering influence worldwide.

If the United States sanctioned Russia, China could offer loans to cover the lost revenues, thereby simultaneously helping Russia to evade the heft of the sanctions while also increasing its own economic sway over Russia.

“China is very likely to not obey any Western sanctions that would be imposed on Russia since they already firmly opposed the ones placed on Iran,” Kessler said.

“If the West imposed more export controls and sanctions on Russia, then China could find ways to violate them while imposing blame on the West for having caused it,” Kessler added.

To that end, Chinese state-run media has already broken with the precedent of 2014, and suggested support for Russia. The Global Times, a hawkish CCP-controlled outlet, tweeted an editorial that said the crisis stemmed from NATO cannibalizing Russia’s strategic space.

In recent times, as the United States and its allies have taken an increasingly tough stance towards Beijing’s malign activities, China and Russia have grown closer. Putin is expected to visit China in February, and the two nations have implemented joint military drills on an unprecedented scale over the last year.

While China is key to Russian success, however, its communist leadership is not as altruistic as Russia might like to believe. And China’s slow shift into the leading role in the Sino-Russian relationship could carry its own price to pay for Russia.

“Chinese philosophy and politics, in my opinion, is a lot more long term and, in a way, [more] clever, than the abrupt nature of Putin,” Jamison said.

While Beijing is unlikely to directly aid in a conflict between Russia and Ukraine, Jamison said, it would help Russia sidestep any punishments, and carefully calculate the United States’ response.

“China is watching,” Jamison said.

Ukraine: A Precedent for War with Taiwan?

The Russia-Ukraine crisis is something of a litmus test, then, for the viability of an alternative framework to the U.S.-led international order. It is an opportunity for CCP leadership to measure the effectiveness of authoritarian governance as a counter vision to the liberal-democratic ideals enshrined by the U.S.-led rules-based international order.

According to Miller, China will use the crisis in Ukraine to gauge the effectiveness of the United States in responding to regional issues throughout Eurasia, and determine what the corollary responses should be.

“The success or failure of U.S. efforts to impose meaningful costs on Russia if it escalates will be seen as a test of whether the U.S. could do something similar in Asia … Because of this, China will not see a new phase of war between Russia and Ukraine as a peripheral issue in its foreign policy, even though China has no core issues at stake in Ukraine itself,” Miller wrote.

In this way, Kessler said, China’s observations of the Ukraine crisis will inform how it proceeds in its ambition to unite Taiwan with the mainland.

“Russia and China are very likely engaged in observing every little move the West is making and testing them to see how it responds,” Kessler said.

“This will greatly impact China’s future decisions regarding Taiwan, especially since Xi Jinping is facing reelection,” he added, referring to the Chinese leader’s bid for an unprecedented third term in power to be determined at a twice-in-a-decade Communist Party Congress to be held this autumn.

China’s ambassador to the United States, Qin Gang, in an unusually direct statement, said in an interview on Jan. 27 that the United States would face “military conflict” over Taiwan if the island’s democratic government continued to seek independence from the regime’s communist government.

According to Kessler, what lessons the CCP ultimately derives from U.S. efforts to sanction Russia could have profound implications for the continued success of the United States in the Indo-Pacific and abroad, as CCP officials consider the ongoing tensions to a test of American power itself.

“Other than Ukraine, this could lead to future military and economic decisions relating to Taiwan as well,” Kessler said.

“The endgame for Russia and China is to very likely figure out the potency of Western commitment and resolve.”

David Zhang contributed to this report.