On February 24, the Ukrainian war broke out in full swing, and Russia became the protagonist of the global stage, so let's analyze some of the deep logic of this war from the perspective of Russia.
1 The Swing of the United States
Since the late Obama administration, the national strategy of the United States has evolved into a strategy of great power competition. There are two countries targeted, one is China and the other is Russia. According to the definition of the emerging national strategy of the United States, China is the main competitor, and Russia is an important competitor.
The specific implementation has a swing.
During the Trump administration, Russia was largely left unheeded, with the United States concentrating most of its resources on China. At that time, Russia was quite relaxed, and once a reporter asked Putin how to view the Sino-US trade war, and Putin had quite a mind of "sitting on the mountain and watching the tiger fight" (roughly meaning).
But after Biden took office, Russia ran into trouble.
(Source: World Wide Web)
Biden's strategy is to unite allies to beat up China, to mobilize allies to strengthen control of the European Union, and to reorganize NATO. Taking Russia as a target and rendering the Russian threat is the grip on regrouping NATO.
Therefore, in 2021, the United States will do things in Ukraine, and the US defense minister will publicly promise to support Ukraine's accession to NATO, which will greatly stimulate Russia's nerves.
Although Russia is also well aware that the US strategic center of gravity is shifting to Asia and is unlikely to make a big move in Europe, Russia has deeper concerns.
If the United States wants to maintain global hegemony, it is impossible to give up control of the European Union. Without European support, the dollar hegemony will collapse (more than 70% of the EU's foreign trade is settled in the US dollar, if the EU de-dollarizes, plus China, Russia and Iran, the dollar hegemony will no longer exist); scientific and technological hegemony will also collapse - such as the United States using high-tech advantages to card China's neck, if Europe does not cooperate, the United States is equivalent to giving the Chinese market to Europe.
If the United States wants to control Europe, Russia will certainly become a target from time to time to take out and knock it out - the specific way of knocking is NATO's eastward expansion, which Russia cannot stand.
In addition, since 2014, the United States and Europe have imposed a series of sanctions on Russia, which have continued to be carried out for so many years, which has made Russia very uncomfortable, such as Russia's international financing is very difficult, and it is difficult for funds and technology to enter.
In Crimea, for example, because of western sanctions, the Crimean economy has plummeted, prices have risen by 180%, and Russia has posted tens of billions of dollars for Crimea, which is also a heavy burden.
2 Putin's hidden worries
Putin is 70 years old this year, in power for 22 years, and the so-called "give me 20 years and give you a strong Russia" has become an empty phrase. Russia's domestic political situation has also been unstable in recent years, and in 2021 there was almost a color revolution.
From Putin's standpoint, there is still a question of historical accounting.
If the achievements in more than 20 years in power are useless, and even Russia's national security (NATO's eastward expansion) has not been resolved after stepping down, how does history and the Russian nation view Putin? How to evaluate Putin?
So Putin also has a strong incentive to completely solve Russia's national security problems once and for all during his time in power.
Therefore, for Russia, it is necessary to seize the opportunity of the United States' intention to transfer strategic resources from Europe, to do something to entangle the United States, to force the United States to face up to Russia's interests and concerns (including NATO's eastward expansion, Western sanctions, etc.), and to force the United States to make compromises.
Russia's economic field is very weak, the strongest is the military force, so Russia can only use the advantages of its military strength to help itself play an important role in the diplomatic field, and make some big moves.
3 Excitement of Ukraine
After Zelenskiy came to power, because of his lack of political experience and misjudgment of the situation, he greatly stimulated the Russian nerves in several things.
1. Crimea
In 2014, Russia forcibly recaptured Crimea and directly incorporated it into Russia. This kind of behavior is very fierce, but after all, the world relies on fists to speak, and your fists are not as hard as your opponents, so you must swallow your breath.
The last Ukrainian government was more sensible, and after seeing that it was impossible for Western countries to directly send troops to help Ukraine retake Crimea, it tried to dilute the Crimean issue as much as possible, and signed the Minsk Agreement with Russia, which gave the two oblasts in the Wudong region a high degree of autonomy.
Zelenskiy came to power to link the Crimean issue with the Oudong issue, and Zelenskiy claimed that there were two parts to the contradiction with Russia, one was Crimea, and the other was the Wudong issue, and both issues must be solved.
The reason is true, but what is the role of reasoning without the strength to back up the air?
For Russia, the Issue of Uzbekistan is a chip to contain Ukraine, and since it is a chip, it can be discussed. But Crimea has been eaten into the stomach and become a part of russia's body, so the crimean problem must not be discussed, which is Russia's most sensitive red line.
Zelenskiy's attempt to get what he lost on the battlefield at the negotiating table, and the demands and strength are seriously mismatched, is a big taboo.
In addition, Crimea has a real problem, that is, the supply of fresh water.
After the Crimean referendum "entered Russia" in 2014, Ukraine closed the upper gates of the North Crimean Canal. In 2017, Ukraine simply built concrete dams on the border between the Crimean Peninsula and Ukraine. The supply of fresh water to Crimea was completely cut off.
North Crimean Canal
A dam on the canal
From 2020 onwards, Crimea's precipitation has decreased and freshwater storage is seriously insufficient, so Crimean residents have even begun to allocate fresh water, and residents have complained, making it difficult for Russia to operate and consolidate Crimea.
Russia was ready to put pressure on Ukraine to restore freshwater supplies to Crimea on the Issue of Ukraine, but Zelensky's tough attitude and lack of compromise made Russia more and more motivated to use force.
After the outbreak of the Ukrainian war, the Russian army blew up the floodgates of the North Crimea Canal as soon as possible.
2. Minsk Agreement
The Minsk Agreement was signed by the previous Ukrainian government, the main content of which was a ceasefire in the Wudong region, and Ukraine gave the two regions of the Wudong region a high degree of autonomy, namely Donetsk and Luhansk.
To tell the truth, this agreement is a bit humiliating for Ukraine, but there is no way, the strength of the inferior people and repeatedly arch fire to provoke the strong must pay a price, the Minsk Agreement is this price.
The previous Ukrainian government had understood that the Western countries could not be trusted, and finally signed the Minsk Agreement in the face of reality.
But zelenskiy came to power with the intention of overturning the agreement, on the one hand, high-profile claims that the local armed forces of the two oblasts were rebels and wanted to mobilize Ukrainian government forces to suppress it, and on the other hand, he was hesitant to amend the constitution in accordance with the provisions of the Minsk Agreement and give the two oblasts autonomy.
Zelenskiy's attempt to overturn the Minsk Accords annoyed Russia.
3. Ukraine joins NATO
After Zelenskiy took office, he actively promoted Ukraine's accession to NATO, a demand that coincided with the United States' desire to reorganize NATO.
First the U.S. defense minister publicly expressed his support for Ukraine's accession to NATO, and then in 2021 Ukraine was also known as NATO's capacity enhancement partner, and the Ukrainian army has even begun to exercise with NATO troops.
Ukraine's accession to NATO is absolutely intolerable to Russia. In Russia's view, if it does not intervene again, Ukraine is likely to achieve its goal of joining NATO within 1-2 years (and finally Brussels officials confirmed this speculation).
The tragedy of Ukraine is the election of a simple president with no political experience to govern, and as a result, Zelenskiy's chaos plunged the whole country into the abyss of disaster, and the lesson is profound!
There is an old Chinese saying that if morality is not worthy, there will be disasters!
4 The U.S.-Russia game
Because of the superposition of the above series of factors, in December 2021, Russia began to mobilize troops on the border of Eastern Ukraine, backed by military pressure, Russia issued a price tag to the United States and NATO.
First, NATO has promised in writing that it will no longer expand eastward (legally binding) and that Ukraine will never join NATO;
Second, NATO withdrew all troops and equipment from the territory of countries that joined NATO after 1997.
And on January 10, 12 and 13, 2022, it launched three negotiations with NATO.
At first, the United States judged that Russia was engaged in blackmail, using the threat of war to blackmail the United States into compromise with NATO. So, on January 2, 2022, Biden promised in a phone call with Zelenskiy that the United States and allies would take "decisive" action if Russia invaded Ukraine. And at the negotiating table, the United States and NATO have taken a tough stance and rejected all russian offers.
But as time went on, the United States began to judge that Russia was really not blackmail, and this time it was really going to do it. There are two reasons for this:
One is that Russia has gathered more and more troops on the border of eastern Ukraine, about a hundred synthetic battalions, hundreds of thousands of troops.
In the Russian winter to mobilize and gather more than 100,000 troops, this cost is very large, in addition to the three major Russian fleets also began to train together, and even from the Far East to mobilize landing ships, which is to run more than 20,000 kilometers. It is not justifiable for Russia to spend so much energy not to do something.
The other was that in January Putin ran to China and quickly came up with a Sino-Russian Joint Statement.
The statement made the United States nervous because it was clear that Russia had made major concessions and met almost all of China's demands.
From the U.S. standpoint, think like this – why does Russia suddenly want China to make major concessions? What does Russia want to do?
Press: For details of the analysis of the Sino-Russian joint statement, see my historical article "Putin Gambles on National Fortune, Who Laughs Last?" 》。
Based on the above two factors, the United States judged that Russia may use force.
Then, the U.S. response is three.
One is to render the news of the Russian invasion.
Blinken and Biden personally went into battle, repeatedly rendering the news of Russia's imminent invasion, and even openly making multiple predictions of specific timetables, even if they had to insist repeatedly in the face.
One is to set aside the stance.
Biden changed his tone after late January to announce that he would not send troops to Ukraine, which was an early departure from the relationship.
One is sanctions deterrence.
The United States has repeatedly claimed that once Russia invades Ukraine, it will face the most severe economic sanctions, and even made noise that it may kick Russia out of the SWIFT system.
Why is the United States doing this?
Because the United States is also afraid of war.
The United States is not engaged in Russia to fight with Russia, but only to strengthen nato's status and improve the control of the United States over Europe.
But if war does break out in Ukraine, the strategic pace of the U.S. shift to Asia will be disrupted, and the United States will have to invest more strategic resources in Europe.
In addition, if Ukraine is beaten badly by Russia, it will also be a great harm to the prestige of the United States, after all, in the past, the United States patted its chest to support Ukraine's accession to NATO, which is equivalent to making a security guarantee for Ukraine. Biden also promised on January 2 that he would "act decisively", and once Ukraine was beaten by Russia and the United States stood by, it would chill many little brothers.
(Source: The Paper)
Therefore, on the one hand, the United States desperately abandons its position (will not send troops to Ukraine), on the other hand, it has released the wind to scare Russia with the most severe sanctions, and finally it is desperately trying to embarrass the former by rendering the news that Russia is about to invade Ukraine.
The above is the early game process of the Ukrainian war, and everyone knows that Russia directly chose the war -
Since russia does not get what it wants at the negotiating table, Russia will use force to take it back on the battlefield. To tell the truth, the situation at that time, from the russian standpoint, there was really no other way but to choose war.
(Source: Guangming Network)
As Hua Chunying said, NATO's 5 eastward expansions to Russia's doorstep have you ever thought about the consequences of forcing a big country into the Jedi? 70 years ago, despite China's repeated warnings, the United States insisted on crossing the 38th Line, pointing directly at the Yalu River at our doorstep, and then we must send troops to fight them back!
5 Cross-strait reunification
Let's not press the ukrainian war first, and now we will pull the perspective back from the protagonist of Russia, back to the perspective of China - now we are discussing an issue that everyone is very concerned about.
Is the war in Ukraine related to the mainland's settlement of the issue of cross-strait reunification?
The connection is great!
It can even be said that the war in Ukraine will help us speed up the settlement of the issue of cross-strait reunification.
Why?
Let's take a look at the logic.
The domestic voice of sycamore in resolving the Taiwan issue is very high, but for policymakers, there are two questions that cannot be avoided in making decisions -- how costly is war? Is this a price we can afford?
In the past, the cost of war was difficult to assess, mainly because of three uncertainties.
1. Will the United States enter the war?
2. If the United States does not enter the war and cooperates with Western countries to impose sanctions on us, how strong will such sanctions be and how much price will we pay?
3. Will the liberation of Taiwan be plunged into a brutal urban security war?
The above three problems have not been able to obtain relatively certain results from any computer in the past, and there is no reliable reference template, because the cost is highly uncertain, so the decision is very difficult.
Now the War in Ukraine provides us with an excellent reference template.
In Ukraine, if NATO sends troops is very convenient, on the one hand, it can unite with European allies to jointly send troops, logistics supplies, military burdens, etc. There is no problem, with the strength of the US military, united European allies, conventional war to defeat Russia is not a big problem.
But the United States would rather let its prestige be damaged than live and die without troops, to put it bluntly, or fear a direct war with the nuclear powers, although the United States desperately set aside its position before the war, but now the after-effects have begun to appear.
Russia's direct action against Ukraine not only frightened the neighboring countries, but also made the neighboring countries see that the United States was unreliable.
Poland, for example, has decisively withdrawn from sanctions against Russia; Turkey has changed its tune not to condemn Russia's invasion of Ukraine, but to claim to understand Russia's position.
In the past, these two countries were regional powers, and they have always been rampant in their respective regions. Now as soon as the real big powers strike, these regional powers are all instigated.
Similarly, if war breaks out in the Taiwan Strait, under the circumstance that the People's Liberation Army has an overwhelming superiority in the Taiwan Strait region, it is even more unlikely that the United States will send troops to engage in a direct war with another nuclear power without any certainty of victory.
The point is that we must, like Russia, mobilize heavy troops in the early stages and assume a posture of showing off at all costs. This gesture is enough to deter countries including the United States, Japan, Australia and other countries from acting rashly.
In the early days of the war in Ukraine, the United States and Europe declared that they would impose the most severe sanctions on Russia. What is the actual situation?
(Source: China News Network)
What does the above situation mean?
It shows that even sanctions in the West have a basic premise - they cannot harm their own interests because of sanctions, or at least they do not deeply harm their own interests.
With this reference template, even if there is a war in the Taiwan Strait in the future, the extent to which the United States and Western countries will sanction me will be roughly at the bottom, at least this price is basically bearable.
At present, the most ruthless sanctions imposed by the United States and Europe on Russia are to freeze all Russian assets, the reason is actually very simple, Russia has a lot of assets in the United States and Europe, and its own assets in Russia are very few.
In the future, if war breaks out in the Taiwan Strait, I feel that the United States and Europe may not dare to freeze the mainland's assets, because the mainland will pay a greater price for reciprocal retaliation.
China's assets in the United States are roughly hundreds of billions of dollars, while the United States assets in China are trillions of dollars, freezing each other's assets, the United States can not afford to lose.
The EU is probably unlikely to reach this point with China, because the EU has great interests in China.
Europe and the United States are afraid of Sanctions against Russia, and in the future, how severe sanctions can they introduce against China, whose economy is ten times larger than Russia's?
The West is a bunch of paper tigers!
This question is important.
Because once a brutal urban security war breaks out, it means a large number of civilian casualties, not only to face great international pressure, but also to deal with the aftermath in the future.
Now there is a view in theoretical circles that there will be no large-scale resistance to armed forces in areas with a low comprehensive birth rate, and there will be no strong will to resist.
The logic of this view is that the regional population with a low overall birth rate is more hedonistic and reluctant to have children affects the quality of life. Even if war breaks out, ordinary people are more willing to run away as refugees, at least have clean food and water, if they want to become a resistance army, they have to endure unimaginable harsh environments, run a hungry meal, can't take a bath once a month, and there is a ubiquitous threat to life.
Whether this theory is valid or not, no one knows without empirical evidence, but the Ukrainian War provides us with a template for reference.
Ukraine's combined birth rate is only 1%, which is the lowest region in the world, and in the future we can see whether there will be a large resistance army in Ukraine, and if not, then this theory is valid.
Taiwan's comprehensive birth rate is still below 1%, which is one of the lowest birth rates in the world, and if there is no large-scale resistance army in Ukraine, we will not have to worry about a brutal urban security war in Taiwan in the future.
Ukrainian Kiev people hiding in subway stations (Source: Interface News)
What is new is that the Ukrainian government is desperately trying to drag the Russian army into brutal urban policing.
The act of this country refreshed my imagination once again.
The government of this country is indifferent to the escape of the rich (the top 100 rich people in Ukraine ran 96 and the remaining 4 were unable to run because of suspected criminal passports), and the parliament ran away (more than 60 Ukrainian parliamentarians ran), and Zelenskiy even sent his family abroad in advance;
However, after the outbreak of the war, the Ukrainian government actually banned male Ukrainian citizens aged 16-60 from leaving Ukraine, and the Ukrainian government also took the initiative to issue guns to the residents of Kiev and teach the city residents to make bombs, which is to show that they want to push ordinary people to the battlefield and deliberately create a large number of civilian deaths and injuries to arouse the sympathy of international public opinion.
In the future war in the Taiwan Strait, we should not overestimate the moral ceiling of the DPP authorities, who may also emulate the Ukrainian government's forced abduction of civilians to participate in the war, so we must prepare a plan in advance.
My personal suggestion is to issue the corresponding laws before the war in the Taiwan Strait, which should include crimes against humanity. As long as the DPP authorities instigate and instigate civilians to participate in the war, it is a crime against humanity, and in wartime we will directly carry out the beheading of criminals against humanity, and we will also be severely punished by law after the war.
These are the valuable lessons that this template of the Ukrainian war has provided us.
Based on the above analysis, we know that through the template of the Ukrainian war, we can roughly deduce the response of all parties in the future war in the Taiwan Strait, which greatly solves the problem of various uncertainties faced by decision-makers in the early stage.
Once there is a reliable reference template for various uncertain factors in the war, cross-strait reunification will be greatly accelerated.
Not only that, but the war in Ukraine has provided us with many valuable experiences in modernizing the new type of warfare.
In this Ukrainian war, Russia skillfully combined psychological warfare, propaganda warfare and actual combat. Putin made several public video speeches, repeatedly stating the reasons for Russia's use of force and publicly shouting to Ukrainian soldiers to lay down their weapons and go home separately.
These statements and speeches are the best psychological warfare and public opinion warfare, and combined with the results of Russia's continuous release of military progress, they have played a great role in breaking the morale of the Ukrainian army.
The Russian army basically encountered no decent resistance in the early advance to Ukraine, and advanced to the border of Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, within 24 hours.
In addition, the Russian army performed very well in the Ukrainian war.
In fact, the Russian missile attack mainly attacked military equipment and hit the command system, and the damage to personnel was very small.
As long as modern warfare paralyzes the opponent's command system, it basically deprives the opponent of its combat ability, and the killing and injury of personnel is not important.
(Source: XinhuaNet)
It is precisely because of the small number of casualties that Russia's pressure at the international political level can be greatly reduced. Imagine how much political and public pressure Russia would face if there were a lot of flesh and blood in the Ukrainian war, and there would be corpses strewn around the ground.
This new mode of operation is very worthy of our reference.
Therefore, in the past, I suggested that the war in the Taiwan Strait cannot be a simple military struggle, and that public opinion warfare and psychological warfare should be combined, and I suggested that in the future process of liberating Taiwan, we must broadcast the whole process live on major social media, which is the best psychological warfare and public opinion warfare mode in the Internet era.
For the specific live broadcast mode, refer to my historical article "If the country starts<反分裂国家法>, I will give a policy for the country".
The war in Ukraine will profoundly affect the international pattern and fill this era of major changes that have not been seen in a century with more variables, and we will continue to pay attention to the development of the war situation in Ukraine.
For related reading, please search for the public account [Cat Brother's Horizon]:
1. "Putin gambled on the fortunes of the country, who laughed last?" 》
2. "The Sino-US Game Pattern Driven by Ukraine's Death bump russia"
3. "If the country starts<反分裂国家法>, I will give a strategy for the country"