Hacker News Reader

Comment by roenxi | Hacker News Reader

This situation was dangerous and remains dangerous. There are a couple of significant risks here:

1) Western policy risks building up a big Asian military alliance. It should be obvious to China that what is currently happening to Russia is also slated to happen to them. India will be nervous too unless they are hopelessly naive. China and the US were friends once too, back in ... the 2010s...

2) We're escalating towards WWIII. This is like watching athletes limbering up.

3) In the modern era it is astonishingly rare for the US military to get involved and leave a country better off than when they entered. The US does not have the resources to head in and rebuild Ukraine - that privilege now belongs to China, world manufacturing superpower. We're going to see massive distabilisation in Eastern Europe for a generation. The Poles are wise to be rapidly militarising.

View on HN

> Western policy risks building up a big Asian military alliance .. China .. India

China and India have a weird, nasty little border dispute where they've agreed not to deploy firearms so troops routinely have fistfights instead. Anyone claiming they're on the verge of an anti-US alliance can't be taken seriously. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-asia-53062484

Closer than neighbors who haven't agreed to not deploy firearms to settle border disputes though, right?

More than the border skirmishes, China and India have a trade relationship that is predatory. It can even be considered colonial, with India being disadvantaged. India basically imports goods valued over 100 Billion USD from China and in return gets 0 opportunity to participate in the Chinese economy. The nature of the trade is intentional from the Chinese side. They cannot tolerate India as a major player in Asia and would rather deal with a loose entity like the ASEAN. The only thing India has going for it is that they are not indebted to the Chinese.

India is aware of this and is desperately trying to decouple from the Chinese economy. On the other hand India has deep ties to all the major Western economies with healthy trade balances that are not skewed either way.

People claiming India is looking to ditch the Western alliance and hook up with the Chinese are hilariously ill informed and unintelligent and lazy. India sees China as its top existential threat. Top Indian public officials have gone on to the extent to openly state that India's nukes are only meant for China. India's main foreign policy imperative since the days of the cold war has been to prevent a Russia-China alliance. This objective has now seemingly failed.

But a Russia-China alliance that will take shots against India is such a crazy nightmare for India that even now they are trying everything possible to maintain good relations with Russia, in spite of the Russians being pushed into a Chinese embrace. Ukraine's total destruction (or not) in the grand scheme of things is not of equal concern to India, compared to a hostile China that is joined by an equally hostile Russia.

Edit: In addition, it has to be mentioned, that India has always been skeptical of western support. Recent US withdrawal from Afghanistan is seen as proof that the West can never be relied upon and will ditch their friends for minor political gains. The unreliable nature of the west and the potential existential danger of an anti-India Russia-China alliance will keep India away from endorsing the Ukrainian side in the current war or even taking hostile steps against any Russian behaviour in the future. Neutrality in the current Ukraine conflict is the best any informed western analyst can even hope for.

> More than the border skirmishes, China and India have a trade relationship that is predatory. It can even be considered colonial,

Sounds pretty far fetched really. Just using emotive meaningless words -- China has no colony in India.

> with India being disadvantaged

With India being overall advantaged though, otherwise they would not enter into the relationship in the first place. Just possibly somewhat less advantaged than China.

This isn't some tiny nation being bullied and coerced, it's the country with the largest population in the world! And while they might share some border, China controls virtually none of India's important trade or transport routes.

Brothers fistfight.

>Western policy risks building up a big Asian military alliance.

I wonder if China's plan is to give Russia enough aid to keep the war going and build a sizeable debt, but not enough for Russia to actually win. In that plan, China would hold economic and political power over Russia.

I don't see why China would want Russia to win. A nuclear neighbor run by a defacto dictator high on the spoils of war? NATO strengthening ties and military forces in response to a major adversary? Sounds terrible. A subservient neighbor without access to any other advanced country's economy, so you can squeeze them on imports and exports, and they also have nukes you can rattle by proxy? Chance of NATO calming down after a few years of good behavior from Russia? Sounds nice¹.

¹Not nice for anyone but China, of course.

> It should be obvious to China that what is currently happening to Russia is also slated to happen to them

What, the US has scheduled the Chinese invasion of Taiwan for the convenience in destroying China?

> it is astonishingly rare for the US military to get involved and leave a country better off than when they entered

I think you need to distinguish between a hostile occupation and a liberation. Which is what went wrong in Iraq, of course; it was astonishingly naive to assume that the US would be greeted as liberators there. But remember, Ukraine is being liberated by fellow Ukranians on the ground.

> The Poles are wise to be rapidly militarising.

The Poles are militarizing in case Ukraine loses and they have to fight the same war. It's extremely in Poland's interest for the Ukranians to win.

> It should be obvious to China that what is currently happening to Russia is also slated to happen to them.

"If we arrest this murderer, other murderers might get worried!"

An international spanking for starting a war of aggression is a wonderful precedent to set.

>> It should be obvious to China that what is currently happening to Russia is also slated to happen to them.

> An international spanking for starting a war of aggression is a wonderful precedent to set.

That's the wrong metaphor. The West is in no position to provide "spankings" on demand. It's not the world's parent, and even it if was, children eventually grow up and parents pass their peak and decline in strength.

China will learn from this (Russia's tactical mistakes), and will adapt to avoid repeating them. The West may get cocky from the successes in Ukraine, and fail to adapt, and put itself in a position to be "spanked."

You can actually see the same dynamic in Ukraine: Russia invaded in 2014, and totally spanked Ukraine. Ukraine adapted, but the Russians cockily waltzed in in 2022 expecting to be able to repeat 2014, and got spanked themselves.

> The West is in no position to provide "spankings" on demand.

They seem to manage it fairly often, and certainly in this case.

> China will learn from this (Russia's tactical mistakes), and will adapt to avoid repeating them.

I most certainly hope they do. Giving up on taking Taiwan by force would be a wonderful result out of the Ukraine war. The West should encourage that lesson by pre-arming Taiwan with as many F-16s, Javelins, Stingers, etc. that they can produce.

> I most certainly hope they do. Giving up on taking Taiwan by force would be a wonderful result out of the Ukraine war. The West should encourage that lesson by pre-arming Taiwan with as many F-16s, Javelins, Stingers, etc. that they can produce.

That they'd just give up on militarily taking Taiwan because of this is more Western fantasy that reality, so I doubt that. The lessons they'll take will be ones of military tactics and strategy. They can assume the West will dump "F-16s, Javelins, Stingers, etc." into Taiwan, so how can they counter that? Maybe they develop a version of the US/Israeli Tropy system,* and put it on all their tanks. If they're competent at all, they're going to make sure they're making none of Russia mistakes (e.g. they're going to have someone making sure they're regularly rotating the tires on their military vehicles).

But maybe they don't have to do much if anything, since Taiwan will be far, far harder to resupply than Ukraine.

* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trophy_(countermeasure)

> But maybe they don't have to do much if anything, since Taiwan will be far, far harder to resupply than Ukraine.

It's also harder to invade, what with the lack of land routes, and there is a reason for the AUKUS nuclear submarine partnership and the US plan to equip sone of its existing ballistic missile subs with new high-speed, long-range, conventional precision weaponry starting within 5 years.

> It's also harder to invade, what with the lack of land routes, and there is a reason for the AUKUS nuclear submarine partnership and the US plan to equip sone of its existing ballistic missile subs with new high-speed, long-range, conventional precision weaponry starting within 5 years.

It seems like really bad idea that could easily be confused for a nuclear missile launch.

> Maybe they develop a version of the US/Israeli Tropy system,* and put it on all their tanks.

Russia already has such a thing (as does China). It'll never be perfect, especially against peer adversaries invested in countering it. (This includes Trophy!)

> But maybe they don't have to do much if anything, since Taiwan will be far, far harder to resupply than Ukraine.

All the more reason to do it in advance.

> If they're competent at all...

Folks thought the Russians were competent up until they had to prove it in combat. You don't think that gives the Chinese pause?

> Russia already has such a thing (as does China).

Did Russia widely deploy it?

> It'll never be perfect, especially against peer adversaries invested in countering it. (This includes Trophy!)

You could say the same thing about antitank missiles. The system doesn't have to be perfect to prevent a boatload of Javelin's from becoming some kind of trump card.

> All the more reason to do it in advance.

Sure, but supply chain problems could prevent that. Isn't the West pouring so much of their available stockpiles into Ukraine that they may not have enough send to sit in a Taiwanese warehouse?

> Folks thought the Russians were competent up until they had to prove it in combat. You don't think that gives the Chinese pause?

It will give them pause, but not a despondent "we give up forever because this proves we will always fail" pause, but rather a "lets make sure we're even better, so we can succeed when we try" pause.

> The system doesn't have to be perfect to prevent a boatload of Javelin's from becoming some kind of trump card.

It kinda does. A Javelin costs $100k. A main battle tank costs millions. Even if it takes 10-20 Javelins you're coming out on top.

> Sure, but supply chain problems could prevent that. Isn't the West pouring so much of their available stockpiles into Ukraine that they may not have enough send to sit in a Taiwanese warehouse?

Make more? Call it economic stimulus.

> It will give them pause, but not a despondent "we give up forever because this proves we will always fail" pause, but rather a "lets make sure we're even better, so we can succeed when we try" pause.

Do you think it's impossible to make Taiwan a tough enough target to resist an invasion, of the kind (massive-scale amphibious) China's never performed before?

> It kinda does. A Javelin costs $100k. A main battle tank costs millions. Even if it takes 10-20 Javelins you're coming out on top.

According to Wikpedia, they cost more than double that, without the launcher. 20 x 250k = 5 million. For comparison, an Abrams tank costs $6.21 million.

According to https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/type-99-tank-how-chin..., the most-advanced current Chinese tank currently has a unit cost of $2.5 million.

And you're talking like they're some wonder-weapon that makes tanks obsolete. I highly doubt that's true. IIRC, one of Russia's big mistakes, which increased their vulnerability to Javelins, was they tended to drive around big masses of vehicles without adequate infantry support. Tactics are something the Chinese could change.

> Make more? Call it economic stimulus.

Oh, they want to, but my understanding is those production lines take years to ramp up (at least in the West).

> Do you think it's impossible to make Taiwan a tough enough target to resist an invasion, ...

Short of giving it nukes or turning whole country into a military camp, probably.

> ... of the kind (massive-scale amphibious) China's never performed before?

There's always a first. IIRC, the US never did such a thing before D-Day.

> what is currently happening to Russia is also slated to happen to them.

Pretty sure Russia started this war, not the other way around.

>Western policy risks building up a big Asian military alliance. It should be obvious to China that what is currently happening to Russia is also slated to happen to them. India will be nervous too unless they are hopelessly naive. China and the US were friends once too, back in ... the 2010s...

So your position is, "we should stand aside and turn a blind eye to Russia's violent and unprovoked invasion of a sovereign nation because China might worry that we won't allow them to violently invade other countries?"

Been my policy since Iraq. Let the bullies bully.

For all the horrors in the Middle East, the Iraq war was less damaging locally than Ukraine will be for Europe.

This one war could easily accomplish what took decades of coups and army movements over in the ruins of the Ottoman empire.

> Been my policy since Iraq. Let the bullies bully.

lets call it what it is, its not bullies, in the case of Ukraine its a concerted effort by Russia to wipe a country out of existence, including the use of rape and torture.

But your policy doesn't sound so benign when its "let rapists rape and torturers torture" does it.

It's a terrible policy. Not all conflicts are identical to Iraq. What will be the most damaging for Europe is if Russia is permitted to violently invade and annex neighboring sovereign nations. It's insane that you would think otherwise.

.. how?

Around 8 million Ukraine refugees to 4 million Iraqis, and we could reasonably see the collapse of Russia, Ukraine & Belarus after the dust settles. There is a lot of pressure being bought to a point here. Not to mention a shit-tonne of weapons were just dumped into one of the world's more corrupt countries, we don't really know where they will end up.

And that is assuming the reasonably optimistic outcomes where Russia avoids launching a volley of nukes east or west as a final "screw you all we're not going out alone".

> Not to mention a shit-tonne of weapons were just dumped into one of the world's more corrupt countries, we don't really know where they will end up.

It's evident they end up killing Russians, we even get videos of it!.

> And that is assuming the reasonably optimistic outcomes where Russia avoids launching a volley of nukes east or west as a final "screw you all we're not going out alone".

You're telling me that the entire chair command, when faced with losing an external war to Ukraine is going to all the way down make the decision to launch and nuke and kill everyone last of themselves?.

I think thats unlikely to happen.

The more likely scenario is that Russia would rather detonate a nuke in Ukraine than lose the war, regardless of what NATO's response would be.

Having Ukraine become an official NATO base of operations is that dangerous to Russia, especially if it happens after they were just conclusively beaten in a war. It would obviously soon mean NATO support for separatists in Russian states directly, and the end of the federation.

> The more likely scenario is that Russia would rather detonate a nuke in Ukraine than lose the war, regardless of what NATO's response would be.

I really hope that nuke works and that not one person in that command chain has reservations about ending the country he lives in existence in its entirety.

Make no mistake, detonating a nuke will not only bring a response from NATO, it would bring a response from the world. Russia is done for if they do that.

> Having Ukraine become an official NATO base of operations is that dangerous to Russia, especially if it happens after they were just conclusively beaten in a war. It would obviously soon mean NATO support for separatists in Russian states directly, and the end of the federation.

How is having Ukraine become a NATO member anymore dangerous then Finland?, who literally just joined NATO.

> The more likely scenario is that Russia would rather detonate a nuke in Ukraine than lose the war, regardless of what NATO's response would be.

Based on literally nothing but your own fantasies.

1. Nothing was being done to Russia to force them into their war of choice. China ought to learn that too.

2. We're already in WW3, heavy hitting countries aren't directly firing at each other but enough of the world is indirectly or directly in war via proxies that I'd say the world is already in the war.

3. Ukraine isn't being rebuilt by just one country. A good portion of the free world already has established funds for non military aid to Ukraine. As far as I am aware China has not really aided Ukraine at all.

Why would we be in WW3, when a former superpower that is merely a vestige of its past slowly grinds up their (unfortunately) expandable populace by attacking another sovereign country, which the West supports through monetary/strategic ways only?

A world war would require some kind of equal threat, but that’s just orders of magnitude not the case with Russia vs NATO, and China has no reason to go against NATO for Russia either. Sure, we have nukes now so we still are standing in a bucket of gasoline with a lighted match, but suicide is not in the interest of Russia either - hopefully someone would coup before that.

NATO (& allied free democracies), Russia, & CCP don't have to be directly shooting at one another to have the most of the World be at War.

A lot is wrapped up in "regional" conflicts that mask how much economic powers are influencing and fighting each other through proxies (to secure resources).

Most likely USA will be destroyed. Most American nukes are in their 50s-60s. USA also has a doctrine to cut loses as can be seen in Vietnam and Afghanistan. A quick sucessions of tactical nukes on American carrier fleets and pre-emptive strikes on 30 of American top cities will render American surrender. Even if they decide to launch, their ballistic nukes are interceptable, their satelites are now trailed by many Russian and Chinese satelite killers. As for F35, let just dig in that Israel F35 has been shotdown in Syria and likely another one F35 accident in Pacific in the last 24mths. Russia alone has about 20K nukes and deliverables with near 100% accuracy while USA THAAD and Patriots have been widely known as duds (Saud had to change their policies to make peace with Yemen and Syria because of poor American weaponry). By the way, USA imports Russian uranium. Considering John Titor's timeline America nuked and fractured in his timeline plus some East Asian prophecies about the fall of USA, I do believe WW3 would be a short one. The whole text of original Titor are in Library of Congress. Read that version. It did mentioned about Bill Gates and segway. Poles are widely known as military weak. Their only good one was their winged Hussars in medieval time. Already closed to 20K of theirs in Ukrainian as "mercs and volunteers" slaughtered. I dont think they willing to go WW3. They are too close to Russia, just purely on logistics, not enough Americans soldiers and artillery shells able to sustain Russian assault backed by Chinese factories. It is better they go for MYOB strategy. Doing Ukrainian or 80s Saddam-USA friendly Iraq policies are fatal. With Russians and Chinese establishing their influence in Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, Africa, and now Ukraine I just dont see how EU can do much. Already they have to content with x6 fuel price without Russia and Chinese now able to half thrir fuel cost thanks to Russians gas pipes....that is 12x advantage just on energy alone. If you look at IQ and labor cost, EU sre serious outnumbered. We not even counting massive industrial espionage to bring EU IPs into Russia and China.

WWIII is already in action. It's a cold war, but it's world. It's actual hypocrisy that it's OK to send guns (but not the best!) and not soldiers but whatever.

if china doesn't want to find themselves in the same situation, literally all they need to do is not invade any other countries, simple as.

The annihilation of Ukraine and the violent expansion of a nuclear armed dictatorship is not a risk in your eyes?

they don't want to expand. The original goal is to have ukraine not in NATO and not pointing missiles at them.

Ukraine although not in nato, had been doing training with nato for a while prior to the invasion.

So Ukraine is moving closer to NATO due to a fear of offensive actions from Russia, and that is your justification for actually attacking them and invading their country? Ukraine was obviously justified in seeking a military alliance to protect itself against illegal invasions.

This argument is essentially denying Ukraine's right to sovereignty. It's a bad and disingenous justification for a wholly illegal and unprovoked invasion of a sovereign country.

You're confusing the cause and the effect.

The invasion happened after the unofficial joining of nato, obviously.

Do you really think there is a country that would not react if a very big neighbouring country were to join an enemy military alliance?

If you are in an armed standoff with someone, you have to need a lot of trust to let them point a gun at your head in self-defense.

How high do you let the gun get before you consider it provocation?

They have made many very public statements to the effects that they do want to expand, also for example questioning the legitimacy of the Baltic states, and sending many planes on defense-probing paths in the overall Zapad (Western) direction. So you are going to have to work a bit harder at convincing us that they don't want to be doing what they say they want to do, and also atrociously attempt to do.

USA sends planes over Iran. Does it mean USA wants to invade Iran?

> they don't want to expand.

That is laughable. They annexed Crimea in 2014, and now claim Donetsk, Kherson, Luhansk, and Zaporizhzhia. Very strange behavior for a country that is just 'protecting itself from NATO'.

Do you mean before the invasion of 2014? (???????)

Not the poster but probably. There were significant NATO policy decisions immediately preceding the 2014 invasion with respect to Ukraine. Further decisions were taken immediately proceeding the 2022 build up and subsequent invasion.

The first was in 2008 when NATO decided Ukraine could start the NATO membership process.

This came to a head at the start of 2014 when Euromaidan revolution lead to a change of government.

In 2014, the Ukrainian parliament renounced Ukraine's non-aligned status.

In 2016, Ukraine was granted a NATO Comprehensive Assistance Package (CAP), comprising the advisory mission at the NATO Representation to Ukraine as well as 16 capacity-building programs and Trust Funds.

In 2018, Ukraine was officially given an aspiring member status.

2021 NATO reaffirmed that Ukraine will become a member.

Here is some basic information from the right wing conspiratorial outlet NPR:

https://www.npr.org/2022/01/29/1076193616/ukraine-russia-nat...

That might have been the case up until 2008 when NATO put Ukrainian membership on the road map

Ukraine turned to NATO because Russia had already invaded them, occupying Crimea and eastern parts of the country. That invasion was completely unjustified as well. It started with Russia getting a big mad Ukraine was acting like a sovereign nation and wanted to sign a free trade agreement with a functional economy instead of them.

Russia's problems are all of their own making. They had no need to invade Ukraine. They did so because Ukraine didn't want to be their puppet state like Belarus. The Russian government wants to treat former SSRs like they're still economic tributaries to Moscow.

Russia (Putin) got mad because Ukraine threatened to turn into a functioning democracy. That was a massive threat to Putin because people at home might get ideas - ideas like "maybe that could work here, too".

A democracy should respect popular vote. That isn't exactly what happened in Crimea though…

Reply on news.ycombinator.com