Russia, China and Trump, All Heading Our Way (3)
Russia, China and Trump are Coming
Fox News has reported that in the view of Donald Trump, Russia and China are strengthening their relationship (definitely true) and that this poses a danger to the U.S. and the world (true only for so long as the US tells the world that it is so). Here is what Trump said:
"President Xi of China, I know him well. President Putin of Russia, I know him well. They're right now together working on plans, where they combine — where they get together and do damage. Because that's ultimately what they're thinking about: doing damage."
In supposed demonstration of the rationale for his fear, Trump expressed his horror at Xi Jinping’s declared expectation that one day Taiwan would be reintegrated with mainland Chia. Trump evidently fails to understand not only that Taiwan is already a part of China, but that this was and continues to be acknowledged to be the case ever since Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger’s visit to China in 1972 (following the Sino-Russian split of the 1960s which led to border clashes in 1969) and the formulation at that time of the USA’s “One China” foreign policy, still in place, and by the United Nations, where Taiwan does not have a separate seat. Trump appears to be also uncognizant of the reasons why the the two leaders condemned the U.S. for what they said were "hegemonic attempts" to "change the balance of power in Northeast Asia by building up military power and creating military blocs and coalitions."
Recent “discussions” between US Secretary of State Tony Blinken and Chinese President Xi Jinping illustrate the US obsession with China as a trading rival, which the US wants to reign in by sanctions, on the pretext of accusations that China is “over-producing” (in other words, has sustained high manufacturing strength as the US has weakened itself by transitioning to an economy based on financial and other services, entertainment, healthcare and the extraction of taxpayer money through an economy of war), and of assistance to Russia in its war with Ukraine through the provision of “hybrid products” (i.e. that can be used for both civilian and military purposes, which is almost anything that is ever produced).
In this trading relationship Russia can provide far more important military-related aid to China than China does to Russia, given Russia’s now global superiority in hypersonic weapons. But as China vastly strengthens its navy, it may be able to provide important assistance to Russian ship-building for its Black Sea fleet. The People’s Liberation Army Navy (PLAN) surpassed the US Navy in fleet size sometime around 2020 and by 2022 when it had around 340 warships, with China’s fleet expected to grow to 400 ships by 2024, while the US fleet numbered less than 300 ships in 2022, with the Pentagon’s goal of increasing this to 350 by 2045.
A recent article in Consortium News by a top former CIA analyst, Ray McGovern, whom I often cite in my posts, calls the recent Russia-China entente a techtonic shift in global relations one that has serious implications for the war in Ukraine. Together Russia and China can contain the USA. At the 2021 Biden-Putin summit meeting in Geneva there had been indications, at the time, of a Russian-US raprochement but, according to McGovern this was the meeting that decided the administration to seek a hardening of its relations with Moscow. That was when Biden considered the US could still divide Russia from China but at the summit discovered that this was not possible. China and Russia went out of their way following the summit to disabuse Biden of his belief in the desirability and likelihood of a split between them. Alexander Mercouris, commenting on McGovern’s article today, considers that this was what persuaded the Biden administration to try to force Russia away from China by provoking Russia and defeating it over Ukraine and instigating a regime change in Moscow. If so, the policy has failed, miserably.
According to McGovern, Putin and Biden, in their final pre-war discussion in December 2012, gave Putin to understand that the US had no intention to instal nuclear warheads on Ukrainian territory. But when Blinken met Lavrov in January 2022, Blinken pretended not to know of Biden’s promise, and Blinken insisted instead that medium range nuclear missiles could be deployed in Ukraine and was only open to discussion about the number. This alone would have persuaded Moscow that there could be no cessation of Western hostility to the existential interests of Russia, and that therefore Russia had to take preemptive action.
Both candidates for the US Presidency in the 2024 are committed to hostility to both Russia and China. So much for western liberal democray that, on the most important issues facing the world, offers no real differences of policy choice. Both play with the real possibility, even likelihood of nuclear war. One wants to destroy the world, in the longer term, by a heedless, unregulated combustion of more global warming; the other approaches the matter more slowly with a corporate-friendly policy of perpetual greenwashing.
Nowhere is there to be found a major US political figure who can even bring themselves to mutter ideas of mutual benefit, harmony and peace, the underlying premise of the BRICS alliance and the emerging multipolar world against which the US is currently caught in a multi-pronged counterrevolutionary war in favor of US hegemony and the corporate-plutocratic interests that sponsor it. Biden has indicated that the US will not be represented at the Swiss “peace” conference, to which Russia was not invited as a full participant, that is planned for June. The absence of Russia, China, the US and South Africa makes a nonsense of this event. It was a nonsence in any case, given the clear disrespect paid to Russia by a faux European “neutral” country in staging it without according full participation to Russia. More promising is a conference that I believe is being organized by China for later in the summer.
Ukraine Battlefields
As is typical when action on the battlefields heats up there are considerable swings and roundabouts not just in terms of what is actually happening, but in terms of reporting of what is said to be happening. Not untypically, a village, town or city is said to be “falling,” many times before it actually falls, assuming that it falls at all. Real warfare moves a great deal more slowly, for the most part, than in the movies or even in the minds of participants and commentators.
The overall pattern on the battlefields is that Ukraine is redeploying units to Kharkiv, units that in some cases are half or less than half their normal size, as the result of losses, while reducing their strength at other points along the combat lines, thus encouraging Russian advances in those places. Zelenskiy is accordingly demanding that collective West supplies hundreds more Patriots and F16s to Ukraine which, first of all, he is not going to get and, secondly, even if he did get, would not be able to make effective use of them. He is also asking the US for permission (so far not given) to hit targets on the Russian mainland with long-range missiles (ATACMS, possibly Taurus) and is seeking Western help in targeting information. Russia has indicated very clearly that this will result in reprisals against the countries that supply any such missiles, moving up the escalatory escalator towards nuclear war. Former Russian president Medvedev has said that use of ATACMS etc will mean that Russia will need to extend its ‘sanitary zone” a further 500 kilometers beyond the Oskil river into central Ukraine.
Russia currently dedicates 6.7% of its GDP to defense spending.
The Military Summary Channel continues to confirm a likely Russian offensive in the Sumy area and is showing satellite images of what appear to be recently erected military hospitals along the main roads from Russian Kursk region into the Sumy oblast, as at Konyshyyovka and north of Khomutovka. A move on Sumy would put Russian forces back in an area that lies close to Kiev, from which Russia was induced to retreat in 2022 when the West deceitfully told Putin would have to happen before a peace agreement could be signed, something that Putin has clearly never forgotten.
General Syrski has acknowledged that Russia has extended the combat line by 70 kilometers in Kharkiv regions. He anticipates further Russian advances in the next few days. There is a major concentration of Ukrainian forces in Lyptsi and in the forest areas to the south of Lyptsi. So the combat between Russian and Ukrainian forces in this area is intense. Russia has captured most of the fields north of the settlement and has likely entered the east of it as of writing at midday on Saturday May 18th. Further east, it is confirmed by Russian MoD that Russian forces have full control over the villages of Starytsia and Buhruvatka. Although there is heavy forest to the south of these settlements, the most likely direction from here, for Russia, is the village of Izbytske. Since the beginning of its latest offensive, Russia has so far deployed 1100 Lancet drone strikes in the Kharkiv area.
The situation in Vovchansk does not seem greatly changed from yesterday but Russia does have fire control over the southern section of the city and is reported to have hit a Ukrainian concentration of forces as far south of Vovchansk as the village of Yurchonkove. Also south of Vovchansk a “fire anomaly” may have been started by Russian forces around the town of Synelnykove so as to interrupt Ukrainian supplies westwards to the town of Prylipka. It is quite likely that Russian forces do now control the eastern part of the north section of Vovchansk north of the Volcha.
Dima considers it likely that Russian soldiers have already crossed the Volcha river into the southern zone of the settlement. If so they will try to move across towards the western flank of Vovchansk so as to access the railway. To the east of Vovchansk, it is reported that Russia has full control over the village of Tykhe and very likely over Zybyne (or at least the high ground behind Zybyne). This will soon allow Russia to move on the road immediately to the south, and eastwards to take all of the villages between Vovchansk and the Russian mainland.
In the Kupyansk region, Russia is moving westwards from the village of Kryliska that it recently occupied, towards Pischanne. It has entered Berestove and taken more territory around that settlement. It is making progress towards taking areas west of Russian-held Novoselivske to include Miasozharivka, and encircling a Ukrainian stronghold at Stelmakhivka. Russia continues to make progress in Bilohoriivka which is approaching cauldron status and may be abandoned soon by Ukrainian forces. Around Chasiv Yar, Russia is moving from Bohdanivka towards Kalynivka from which it will almost certainly stage an attack on central Chasiv Yar from the north. Ukrainians are abandoning their last positions in the forest to the west of Ivanivske. Russian forces are present in eastern Chasiv Yar. Russia now controls most of Klishchiivka.
West of Avdiivka, Russia has taken both Umanske and Netailove and is now heading towards the settlement of Yasnobordivka which lies between Umansks and Netailove but is a little further to the west. Russia has taken complete control of the town of Marfopil southeast of Huliaipole in Zapporizhzha. Yesterday, a Russian iskander missile strike on Odessa destroyed a warehouse containing the kinds of naval drone that Ukraine has recently used against Crimea and the southwest Black Sea coast of Russia.