China cannot do to Taiwan what Russia is doing to Ukraine. That was the message given this Thursday (3) by the leaders of the Quad, the alliance between the United States, Japan, India and Australia.
It was the clearest association between the perceived risk by Americans that Xi Jinping could repeat actions by ally Vladimir Putin while Western powers are worried about the invasion that has knocked on Kiev’s doors.
“We agree that unilateral changes to the status quo using force like this [na Ucrânia] will not be allowed in the Indo-Pacific region,” said Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida, scheduled to speak after the virtual meeting with Joe Biden (USA), Narendra Modi (India) and Scott Morrison (Australia).
Since last year, the Chinese dictatorship has intensified military actions to test the effectiveness of the air defenses of Taiwan, the autonomous and democratic island it considers its own. Reunification is a mainstay of the Xi regime, and recent animosity has fueled speculation that Beijing may go to great lengths to seize the area.
The comparison with Ukraine, although imperfect in its design as they are quite different from reality, also comes from the fact that before the invasion Putin and Xi established a cooperation pact that placed the Russian alongside the Chinese in the so-called Cold War 2.0.
Although it is not military in nature, despite the recent rapprochement of the two nuclear powers, and has several practical difficulties to get out of the rhetoric, the alliance was established to counteract pressures from the West, particularly economic sanctions.
Russia has already faced them since 2014, when it annexed Crimea, but the brutality of the reaction to its invasion has impressed: the country has had its international reserves made inaccessible and is being virtually canceled around the world.
China did not, of course, support the UN resolution against the war. But it has adopted a rhetoric of caution to avoid association with highly unpopular military action, with thousands of civilians killed. Its economy, like Russia’s, is highly integrated with the rest of the world.
The fact that the warning was given by the Quad is almost provocative on the part of the US. The group was revived in 2017, within the scope of the Cold War 2.0 launched by Donald Trump and which would be Biden’s priority if Putin were not in the way.
Alongside the Aukus military pact (USA, Australia and UK), it is the basis for expanding efforts against Chinese assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific, whose vital sea routes for Beijing make it the priority strategic environment for the Xi regime.
There are important nuances, however, in the speech. India is a very close country to Russia, having been its preferred military client for decades. So far, of the three Quad members, he is the only one who has not criticized the action in Ukraine. More than that, Modi and Putin talked about cooperation this week, as if everything was in perfect condition.
India is in the process of acquiring Russian S-400 anti-aircraft systems, the same ones whose purchase caused Turkey, a member of NATO (the Western military club), to be kicked out of the international program for the advanced American F-35 fighter.
There is an ongoing discussion in the US Congress about possible sanctions on Indians for the negotiation, even more so in the context of the war in Ukraine. That would be a node for the Quad unit.
At the same time, New Delhi has faced renewed feud with Beijing, as the deadly 2020 border skirmish made explicit. When the US left Afghanistan to focus on the Indo-Pacific the following year, the Indian alignment became even clearer — China, by the way, is the sponsor of the Indians’ historic adversary, Pakistan’s nuclear power.
If the design already seems complex, include the differences between Moscow and Tokyo, which dispute some islands with oil interests in the Sea of ​​Japan, and the growing feud between Australia and China.
The Chinese, in turn, are constant in their criticism that the Quad is an instrument of the “Cold War mentality” that they identify in the Americans. This Thursday’s rhetorical outburst will only reinforce that view, and fuel theories about what the alignments would look like if a Third World War emerged from the current confusion.
