Stop Pulling the Wagon

Chinese President Xi Jinping & Russian President Vladimir Putin

Photo: BBC News

Russian President Vladimir Putin seems to believe that he has formed a mutually beneficial and long term relationship with President Xi Jinping of China.

Business Insider.com had even referred to their relationship as a “Blossoming Bromance” in a July 2019 article.

In recent months, before the Ukraine Invasion by Russia, the Chinese and Russians signed huge wheat, coal and oil deals worth more than 100 Billion Dollars to the Russians.

Would it be just conspiratorial conjecture to suspect that the crafty Chinese President “outfoxed” the Russian President by tacitly approving the invasion, and subsequent near genocide of the Ukrainians.  Letting the never popular Russian President become one of the most despised and never to be trusted leaders in the world and now an outcast among civilized nations?

Did President Xi all along just look at President Putin as a “goose” to be fattened and then harvested to serve the expansion of China’s Empire?

Where else among civilized nations can the killer of civilians, whole families, children, even babies, turn to after an unprovoked, barbarous invasion and slaughter of innocents?

I suspect that as time passes Russia will descend into little more than a client “state” of China. A resource rich “goose” to feed the growing needs of China. 

It is more China’s way to use “client states” to do their “dirty work”.  Places like North Korea, as an example, and now perhaps Russia.  In the process China just smiles and practices “plausible deniability”.

Lest you think I am engaging in just wild speculation, consider the following:  China is a brutal, totalitarian country and its citizens have no human or civil rights.  Having said that, can you name for me one “foreign” country China has sent its armies to invade in the last 200 years.  They have used their armies to ruthlessly quell rebellions in many of China’s provinces but not other nations.  Before World War II Japan invaded China but China never invaded Japan.

What China does is acquire influence and power in foreign lands by buying and investing in the resources of foreign nations.  For example:  China became the largest buyer of milk products from New Zealand.  New Zealand expanded milk production by dairy farmers borrowing money to increase their herds to meet China’s growing demand.  Then China cut off buying the milk products.  Many of New Zealand’s dairy farmers could no longer pay the bank loans and filed for bankruptcy.  Chinese “investors” bought up the bankrupt dairy farms.  Chinese “investors” are buying up land, mineral resources and businesses around the world, including here in the United States.  In this way China expands its Empire and influence without ever firing a shot.  Smart like a fox.

Rulers like Vladimir Putin invade places like Ukraine, destroy its infrastructure, severely damage its resources, kill and alienate its citizenry and then takes charge of a country that despises him and is in ruins. This also creates fear and loathing in other nations who understand they could be the next target of aggression.   This is not smart like a fox. It is the actions of a power mad Barbarian.

Tell me, am I wrong?

Bob Bandy – March 2022