Ukraine (closed; covers till August 2014)

[Dayuhan]

I have been interested in understanding just why China has been so quiet on the Russian violation of national boundaries as that is the key corner stone of Chinese foreign policy since the 80s.

The Chinese typically don't say a great deal on issues they perceive as being outside their sphere of geographic and economic interest. They've nothing to gain by taking sides. They are also in a somewhat contradictory position: opposition to intervention is their default position, but they are hardly in a position to denounce others for pushing and shoving along their borders or trying to recover "lost" territory. It's quite normal and predictable for them to be fairly quiet.

It is possible that China could see a strategic gain in tension between Russia and Europe. If Europe starts weaning itself from Russian gas and oil, the Russians will need another outlet. The Chinese are acutely aware of the vulnerability of their maritime energy supply routes and always interested in exploring land-based delivery options. I doubt they'd want to become dependent on Russia, but having options never hurts.

Maybe it has to do with China receiving over 690M USD in weapons exports from the Ukraine last year and maybe in supporting very quietly Russia they want to ensure those weapons continue to flow.

I expect the sales would go on even if China took an equivocal or even negative stance on Russian actions in the Ukraine. Russian arms manufacturers need the money.

There is some chatter that both countries are slowly nudging closer together politically/militarily as a combined superpower against the US/EU ie in general anything western.

Of course they will cooperate to the extent that both see benefit in it, but "combined superpower" seems way unlikely. There's a long history of mistrust there, and a number of natural points of conflict, notably the rapidly increasing Chinese investment and influence in Central Asia. Both Russia and China want control (or at least to be the dominant influence) in the energy-rich "'Stans". There's also some concern in Russia over the perception of rapidly increasing Chinese settlement, economic influence, and commercial domination in Eastern Siberia

So again did the US underestimate badly both China and Russia in its soft power thinking?

That's an easy conclusion, but not necessarily an accurate one, at least in the case of the Ukraine. The miscalculation that is getting less attention than it should has nothing to do with "soft vs hard" power. For some time now the West has been very much enamored of the "color revolution/Arab Spring" scenarios... those peaceful revolutions where the people rally, the armed forces switch sides, the autocrat runs away, and everybody gets to be happy until things go to $#!t, by which point the west is looking elsewhere. The fondness for these revolutions has reached the point where they have come to be seen as absolute good things, to be encouraged at every opportunity, at least where the autocrat is not one we like. What has been less actively recognized is the associated risks. Sometimes the armed forces don't switch sides and the autocrat doesn't leave, which gets you a civil war with few acceptable avenues for control or desirable end states. Sometimes the disorder of the revolution opens the door for a neighboring power to take a bite.

If what's happening in the Ukraine is part of a planned strategy of aggression and expansion, then you could argue that only thr threat of "hard power" will deter the next bite. There's still the question of whether this is part of such a strategy, or whether it's simply an act of opportunism. Would Putin have acted the same way if the Ukrainians had waited for the 2015 elections and simply voted the bastard out? In a lot of ways the revolution, much admired in the West at first, handed Putin an opportunity on a silver platter, and it's easy to see why he took it. The bear may not break into your house and eat your food, but if you don't cover the garbage he will stop by and make it his own.

Deterring the next bite may be less a matter of threatening "hard power" than of depriving the Russians of similar windows of opportunity. I suspect that lesson has already been learned: don't expect the Poles (for example) to hand Putin that kind of engraved invitation to make a move.

I view the US troop draw down as a not to subtle signal to Russia that the US was in fact no longer interested in the European area.

Why not view it as a suggestion to the Europeans that they need to be able to look after their own affairs, at least in their own neighborhood? Given the relative economic clout of the US, the EU, and Russia there is really no conceivable reason for the Europeans to be leaning on the US for protection, especially given the extent of US commitment elsewhere. If the Europeans have failed to step up and prepare, the lesson there is not that the US has to rush back and protect them, the lesson is that they need to put more effort into protecting themselves. Why should the US bleed its taxpayers to provide defense for people who have more than sufficient capacity to provide for their own security?

If you notice there is nothing on the military card being played outside of proposed and or actual planned exercises-and talk--only the movement of aircraft which was responded by the Russian AF stepping up their activities---so really not much in the way of military card---all even including Germany have shut out a military response out of fear of triggering something that is uncontrolled breaking out.

Has there ever been a time, post WW@, when you think the US or Europe would have taken an active military response to a Russian (or previously Soviet) power grab on their own borders? I don't think so. There's a long tradition of nuclear powers avoiding confrontation, especially when the matter of contention is in close proximity to one power. Even at the height of "hard power" politics, both sides have backed down in such cases... it's a dangerous road and nobody wants to walk down it. MAD remains in place.

So I am hard pressed to understand why this WH thought diplomacy was all one needed for soft power.

What were their options? They took office with an economic crisis in full swing, US military power wildly overcommitted to legacy wars that had little relevance to core US interests and an electorate with little or no interest in getting into further engagements, at least unless critical interests were directly threatened. Inevitably the priority had to be disengagement from those legacy wars and addressing the domestic economic issues: first things do come first. The lesson, if we want to take lessons, is not only that hard power (or at least the threat thereof) is sometimes needed, but that if you expend your hard power on unnecessary adventures and fail to keep the home front in order, you won't have the capacity to use hard power whether you want to or not.