China set the precedent for Russian invasion of Ukraine
Michael Rubin
Russian President Vladimir Putin expected to digest Ukraine in two weeks. He did not succeed, but he shows no sign of relenting.
A half-million Russian troops are reportedly poised to enter the conflict. Putin will stop at nothing to absorb Ukraine into Russia. Prior to launching his attack, Putin explained his logic in a July 2021 essay: “Modern Ukraine is entirely the product of the Soviet era. We know and remember well that it was shaped — for a significant part — on the lands of historical Russia.”
CHINA’S EXCLUSION OF TAIWAN IMPERILS HEALTH AND NOW COUNTERTERRORISM
Putin’s claim that Ukrainian identity was artificial and illegitimate was outrageous. Nevertheless, Putin is motivated by both a sense that Russia should dominate its near abroad and that the Soviet Union’s collapse was a historic tragedy. The inspiration to use military force to reverse history could lie with China.
In the 20th century, the Chinese Communist Party was the world’s most murderous political movement, accounting for more deaths than Adolf Hitler, Josef Stalin, Idi Amin, and Pol Pot combined. It was also among the world’s most imperialist powers. In 1950, for example, Chinese forces descended upon Tibet. They forced its surrender and systematically destroyed more than 95% of its temples and other cultural monuments. What China now does to the Uyghurs is the slow-motion repeat of the cultural eradication it sought to practice against Tibet. Long before Chinese forces rolled into Hong Kong, threatened Japanese islands, or ran roughshod over the South China Sea, communist authorities also encroached on Mongolia and occupied a Maryland-sized chunk of India.
In turn, rather than believing history began with the Russian invasion of Ukraine, effective deterrence must show time does not launder aggression.
In the wake of Imperial Japan’s invasion of Manchuria, Secretary of State Henry Stimson declared that Washington would not recognize territorial changes executed by force. It is time that Secretary of State Antony Blinken channel his inner Stimson. Just as the United States maintains diplomatic relations with Taiwan, albeit under the guise of an American Institute in Taiwan, so, too, must it create a de facto embassy to a free Tibetan government and to a future Uyghur Republic in East Turkestan. These could mirror the Lithuanian Embassy and Estonian legation that successive administrations allowed to operate in Washington and New York prior to those countries reclaiming full independence.
Israel is an American ally, but the U.S. does not recognize Israel’s claims in the West Bank. American maps reflect this. Until the Trump administration brokered a Morocco-Israel recognition deal, neither the U.S. nor its maps recognized Moroccan sovereignty over Western Sahara. American diplomats reject Turkey’s ambitions in northern Cyprus. So why, then, do State Department and CIA maps recognize China’s possession of Inner Mongolia as anything other than disputed?
Russia’s occupation of even a square inch of Ukrainian territory is invalid. But if the U.S. truly wants to stand firm against such aggression, it is essential to show that it considers no exceptions. Stop giving Communist China a free pass.
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Michael Rubin (@mrubin1971) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential. He is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute.