Opinion Sur
View of Taiwan and continental China. A photo is worth a thousand words on the future of the region
In a multilateral world, the Manichaean budgets of the Cold War do not work and displace a power like the United States and to a lesser extent the Russian Federation and China in the indispensable exercise of continuous and varied negotiation in different contexts. We find ourselves facing a delicate re-balancing of powers. The situation is visible on the big stage of the 2022 Winter Olympics.
Leaving aside its indisputable beauty, it would be naïve to think that sport is alien to politics in each country, and that the major world championships are alien to geopolitics in the field of international relations. In this article, I will take the Winter Olympics of the current year as a very clear example for its importance, which is much more than symbolic. However, I will start with the symbolism, because it counts.
It is no coincidence that these Olympic Games take place in China, in a capital that is more than just the center of the traditional Middle Kingdom (Zhōngguó 中国). Alongside the traditional great cosmopolitan cities—Paris, London, New York—Beijing has become a world capital on a rapidly changing planet. It is coincidental but curious and witty that the games take place in winter, when the media insists on mentioning new “cold wars” (China-US/NATO-Europe). And they coincide with a major deployment of a severe but successful public control of the pandemic (the proportion of pandemic deaths in relation to the inhabitants is negligible in China[1]). President Xi Jinping wants to show the world that his country is as efficient and powerful as the one you love (read the United States). Western criticism of the Chinese model, focused on the propaganda discourse of human rights, together with the boycott of some countries (Denmark, the United States, United Kingdom, Australia), have not managed to make a dent in the enormous Chinese display of organizational superiority.
The Olympic Games are the great theater where the relative strength, the new tensions, alliances, and dependencies of the multilateral world of 2022 are represented. This is not new. As early as 1936, Germany used the Olympic Games in Berlin to show the world that it had recovered with great strength under a dictatorial regime. Today, Russians and Chinese take the opportunity to strengthen ties and formalize an alliance that will be very broad though shallow. Latin American presidents of the left and right ask for help from each other among the powerful attendees who visit the games and lend themselves to development and investment initiatives by the powers of the East. In the absence of a regional union, each Latin American country must negotiate, and sometimes beg, separately. The American, British, and Australian heads of State have refused to attend the Olympic Games, but they cannot be conspicuous by their absence or tarnish[2] Beijing.
It is a varied picture and fundamentally different from the Western unipolarity and pride of just two decades ago. According to Henry Kissinger’s thesis, we have returned to a game of power balance that is negotiated continuously and in various fields. Among the famous absentees, the United States, far from “containing” its rivals as in the old Cold War, is being “contained” by them, both in the physical field (Ukraine on one side, the eastern and southern China Sea on the other) and in the diplomatic field[3]. In the latter, threats of sanctions (so far vague) indicate that they were mostly financial, but do not seem to have strong teeth in the case of Russia, and would bite their own tail in the case of China. Moreover, if they were to be implemented, they would threaten to harm the interests of a key European ally such as Germany (a country dependent on energy supplies). From a realistic point of view (Realpolitik) these contradictions and crossed interests mean a certain guarantee of peace, even if it is an armed peace, because no one in the background is interested in a great warlike conflagration.
In the Indo-Pacific area, China continues to do business with neighbors but also with its regional rivals and with the West. In the military field, the great country allows itself to wait patiently while arming itself for an asymmetrical war in which, according to the Pentagon’s simulation games, the Americans have everything to lose. The Chinese strategy—and to some extent the Russian one—is based on the recommendation of General Sun Tzu who is older than gunpowder (invented by the Chinese in the 9th century): you can win a war without firing a single shot if you surround the enemy with a superior force in a well-chosen terrain[4].
In the Eastern European field, the Russian protest against the advance of NATO towards its borders after the collapse of the Soviet Union, is a rather legitimate one as seen from an external observer, although the Russian leadership presents it with an arrogant disregard for strength and uses Ukraine to underline the height of its patience and the non plus ultra of its tolerance. In that sense, it is possible that the threat of invasion with a massive presence of troops on the borders of Ukraine, if it results in a new and great Russian military incursion into that country (today independent but once a member of the Soviet Union) will produce a series of effects unwanted by the various actors, and ultimately it might result in a new status quo with profits and losses for all. I will clarify this hypothesis with a historical review and a single name that should give Mr. Putin a pause and awaken the brains of the West: Finland.
We know that repetition in history is rare but rhyme is more frequent. With this caveat, we can transport ourselves to a terrible year and the worst winter of the 20th century: that of 1939[5]. In that year, Russia and Germany were preparing for war despite the cynical non-aggression pact between the two powers. Fearing a German invasion of the Finnish corridor and the capture of Leningrad, Stalin demanded that Finland cede a part of its territory. The Finnish government refused and the Soviet Union invaded that adjoining country (which had gained its independence in 1917). The disproportion of forces was impressive: a Russian army of more than 400,000 soldiers against Finnish troops with scarce equipment and very little outside help. The result was surprising. The Finns lost 11 percent of their territory but stood firm on the rest. They responded with another immense and inverse disproportion: they lost 25,000 men but caused the Russians casualties estimated at more than 138,000 dead. The victim ratio was 5 to 1 in favor of Finland. The invading forces had to stop. Finland maintained its independence with a fierce resistance that knew how to fight much better in its frigid and snowy forests. The beating was so great[6] that Hitler was later encouraged to invade the Soviet Union. The two great dictators of that time made a major miscalculation, each in their own way, at the beginning of World War II.
After the war, and already in the middle of the Cold War, Finland declared itself neutral and maintained its independence with a skillful balance between East and West. It combined that neutrality with excellent economic and social development that had nothing to envy its Scandinavian neighbors. Today, Finland is part of the European Union but remains outside the NATO military alliance, along with Sweden[7]. This historical experience could be the basis of an understanding between Russia and the West in the case of Ukraine, with reciprocal concessions and guarantees of security and non-aggression on both sides. It would be a Solomon solution. It is to be hoped that such a solution will be reached without the ravages of a conflict as bloody as that winter war of the distant 1939. Today as yesterday, the powers know how to start a war but they do not know its surprises. They should learn prudence in remembering the Finnish experience.
The preceding paragraphs refer to a possible Finlandization of Ukraine. In the other scenario of the new and supposed “cold war” (the East and South China Sea) centered on Taiwan, the Finlandization is already a fact. In almost all confrontational scenarios (war games), except that of a total war, the US high command is very worried, since the probability of a Chinese triumph in a localized and asymmetrical conflict is very high. The question everyone is asking is are the United States willing to risk their lives in defense of the island of Taiwan a few kilometers from mainland China? Beijing asks another question: How can we have guarantees from all sides that Taiwan will never be an independent republic? For now, tensions are rising, in a spiral escalation by the three main players in Taipei, Washington, and Beijing. The ambiguity of many years ago about the fate of the island (formerly called Formosa, and seat of the defeated Kuomintang since 1949) is no longer easy to sustain, in the face of a much more powerful People’s Republic and an autocratic and mysterious leader in his plans.
There are two major obstacles to maintaining the “Finlandization” paths to which I have referred. In Ukraine and on the Eastern European Front, Westerners proclaim again and again that NATO’s post-Cold War advance is purely defensive. At the other end of the planet, Taiwanese maintain that they can live without a formal declaration of independence, but maintaining their sovereignty. Faced with Beijing’s insistence that they are a renegade province, the most flexible Taiwanese can return the ball and say that they would be very happy to be part of a single China, as long as it is democratized.
The problem in both cases is as follows. A purely defensive military alliance (NATO) and a sovereign Taiwan without being independent are two unicorn-like animals: very pretty but non-existent.
[1] https://es.statista.com/estadisticas/1095779/numero-de-muertes-causadas-por-el-coronavirus-de-wuhan-por-pais/
[2] . T.N. Spanish word game in the original with no English equivalent (“brillar por su ausencia” or “ sacar el brillo”)
[3] U.S. strategic budgets belong to the old Cold War. They are obsolete and displace this power in the new game of balance of powers.
[4] Unlike China, the Russian strategic problem is the inability to maintain a full occupation of Ukraine with resistance.
[5] The temperature was 45 degrees below zero.
[6] Those interested in this episode can check out William R. Trotter, The Winter War. The Russo-Finnish War of 1939-40, London: Aurum Press, 1991, y Robert Edwards, White Death. Russia’s War in Finland 1939-40, London: Phoenix, 2006. Those who want to know the value of a resistance can read the Order of the Day to his soldiers Marshal Carl Gustav Mannerheim of 14 March 1940, of which I have an English translation. This supreme commander of the Finnish forces was elected sixth president of the country in 1944 and is regarded as the father of the country.
[7] In repeated trips through Finland Could verify as the story with Russia translates today into a strong nationalism, a deep-rooted suspicion in the population in front of its Slavic neighbor, a general consensus on maintaining compulsory military service and a vehement rejection of any surrender of sovereignty. The position is: Peace yes, pacifism no.
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