China Has Tools to Help Russia’s Economy. None Are Big Enough to Save It. Any financial lifeline that Beijing can offer Moscow involves taking on risk and won’t have the power to reverse the damage of sanctions imposed by the United States and its allies......... To help Russia evade sanctions, China would have to offer a viable substitute to the American dollar. But Chinese money — the renminbi — is barely used outside of China. Only 3 percent of the world’s business is done using the redback. Even Russia and China conduct their trade mostly in U.S. dollars and euros. ............ China is the world’s largest exporter, and is paid for its goods mainly in dollars. ........ It could facilitate cross-border transactions — allowing China to continue to sell to Moscow many of the goods it makes for the rest of the world. It could make investments in Russian energy firms on the cheap. It could let Russia’s central bank cash in some of the $140 billion it holds in Chinese bonds. Beijing could even set up a rogue bank to help move Russian money around like it has done for Iran and North Korea. ........ “China will not save the sinking boat of the Russian economy,” said Eswar Prasad, a Cornell University economist. But, he added, it could “perhaps allow it to float a little longer and sink a little more slowly.” ........ The Chinese-led Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank — an investment bank that Washington sees as a World Bank rival — last week said it would put its lending to Russia and Belarus on hold over the war in Ukraine. Some Chinese banks have cut back on the financing of Russian commodities. ........ Western countries have locked Russia out of the Swift financial messaging and payments system, effectively excluding Russian banks from international transactions. ........ After Visa and Mastercard stopped their operations in Russia, several Russian banks turned to China’s UnionPay, which offers payment options in some 180 countries. ........ what China National Petroleum Corporation did in 2009 when it bought a small bank in China’s northwestern province of Xinjiang and renamed it Bank of Kunlun. The bank helped Iran conduct hundreds of millions of dollars worth of transactions. ....... “You’ve got some of the most valuable energy companies in the world now trading at mere fractions of their real value,” said Taylor Loeb, an China analyst at Trivium, a consulting firm. “Developed countries won’t touch these companies. That basically only leaves China. It might be really bad PR, but the price may just be too good.” .
How Does It End? A Way Out of the Ukraine War Proves Elusive. . There are three separate back-channel efforts underway to start negotiations — by the leaders of France; Israel and Turkey; and, in a recent entree, the new chancellor of Germany. But so far, all have hit the stone wall of President Vladimir V. Putin’s refusal to engage in any serious negotiation. At the Pentagon, there are models of a slogging conflict that brings more needless death and destruction to a nascent European democracy, and others in which Mr. Putin settles for what some believe was his original objective: seizing a broad swath of the south and east, connecting Russia by land to Crimea, which he annexed in 2014. .......... Just as the last two weeks revealed that Russia’s vaunted military faltered in its invasion plan, the next two or three may reveal whether Ukraine can survive as a state, and negotiate an end to the war. So far even the most basic progress, such as establishing safe humanitarian corridors, has proved elusive. ...... there is the possibility that Mr. Putin, angered by the slowness of his offensive in Ukraine, may reach for other weapons: chemical, biological, nuclear and cyber. .......
Dmitri Peskov, the Kremlin spokesman and a confidant of Mr. Putin, said that if Ukraine changed its constitution to accept some form of “neutrality” rather than an aspiration to join NATO; recognized that the separatist areas of Donetsk and Lugansk were independent states, and that Crimea was part of Russia; the military strikes would stop “in a moment.”
....... In an interview with ABC News the next day, President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine seemed surprisingly open to the idea. He said he had “cooled down” on joining NATO, saying it was clear the Western alliance “is not prepared to accept Ukraine.” And while he did not say he could accept a carve-out of part of the country, he said that “we can discuss and find a compromise on how these territories will live on.” ....... A French government account of a call to Mr. Putin on Saturday by Mr. Macron and Mr. Scholz termed it “disappointing with Putin’s insincerity: He is determined to continue the war.” .......... Despite his military’s logistical problems, Mr. Putin appears intent on intensifying his campaign and laying siege to Kyiv, the capital; Kharkiv, the country’s second-largest city; and other Ukrainian urban centers. ........ But even as Mr. Putin presses on with his strategy to pound Kyiv into submission, Russian air and ground forces are confronting Ukrainians motivated to fight ........ Mr. Putin has demonstrated in past conflicts in Syria and Chechnya a willingness not only to bomb heavily populated areas but also to use civilian casualties as leverage against his enemies. ........ Russian and Ukrainian forces are now pitted in fierce street fighting in the suburban towns around the capital. Russian forces greatly outnumber the Ukrainian Army, but the Ukrainians have been ambushing them with Javelin anti-tank missiles ......... it could take up to two weeks for Russian forces to encircle Kyiv and then at least another month to seize it. That would require a combination of relentless bombardment and what could be weeks or months of door-to-door street fighting. ........ Progress in the east and south, while slow, has been grindingly steady. But it also hints what a divided Ukraine might look like. ........ And if Russia can seize Odessa, a pivotal Black Sea port city, and perhaps the remaining Ukrainian coast to the southeast, it would deprive Ukraine of important access to the sea. ......... Yet the Russian attacks in western Ukraine over the past two days underscore Mr. Putin’s continued determination to control the entire country, starting with Kyiv. It remains unclear how he would find the forces to occupy it, which could require a bloody, yearslong guerrilla war. ......... “The most probable endgame, sadly, is a partition of Ukraine,” said Mr. Stavridis, pointing to the outcome of the Balkan wars in the 1990s as a model. “Putin would take the southeast of the country, and the ethnic Russians would gravitate there. The rest of the nation, overwhelmingly Ukrainian, would continue as a sovereign state.” .China finds itself in a tricky position — stuck between the White House and the Kremlin The Biden administration is telling Beijing that it's courting disaster by supporting Putin. But China may be too big to sanction. ........
When the U.S. invaded Afghanistan in 2001 — turning its attention to war and nation-building in Central Asia — China’s economy was roughly the size of Indonesia’s today.
......... Now it’s 18 times larger, nipping at the heels of the U.S. for the outright title of the world’s biggest. ........ As Russian troops lay siege to Ukrainian cities, China has tried to walk a tightrope: abstaining from condemnations of Moscow, maintaining trade with its neighbor, and professing a bland sympathy for the thousands of civilian deaths thus far. ........ explicit warnings from the Biden administration and Congress that the U.S. won’t hesitate to sanction China for supplying Moscow with arms. ........ It’s the world’s second largest economy and the origin point of countless global supply chains. Russia, despite its energy and banking sectors (and some oligarch’s expense accounts at Harrods), was relatively unimportant to the functioning of Western economies, making it relatively easier to sanction. ........ as Norway, South Korea, Lithuania and Australia know all too well, Beijing can inflict painful economic counterattacks when it feels threatened. ......... the Chinese government had declined to provide spare parts to Russian airlines, forcing them to turn to possible suppliers in Turkey or India. ....... China’s interests — to maintain an equilibrium between its relationship with Russia without sacrificing economic and diplomatic links with the international community built over the past 50 years — would appear to preclude providing obvious military support for Russian President Vladimir Putin. ....... “Chinese officials have been framing China’s position on the war in Ukraine as above the fray — an arms-length observer hoping for peace talks, de-escalation and a diplomatic settlement. It’s harder to maintain the credibility of that posture when you’re seen to be funneling supplies to the side that initiated the conflict and is pummeling its smaller neighbor.” ........ There are faint calls from Chinese foreign policy think tanks for a rethink of Xi Jinping’s alignment with Putin.Russia’s aggression is evoking near-universal revulsion across the globe: It’s rippling, if unevenly, through developing countries in Africa and Latin America
, threatening to undermine Beijing’s soft power aspirations underwritten by billions of dollars for Xi’s signature Belt and Road Initiative infrastructure investment program. .......... devoted three words to Ukraine (“the Ukraine issue”) and 332 words to Chinese concerns about the U.S. position on Taiwan, Xinjiang, Tibet and Hong Kong ........ “If China were to decide to be an economic provider [to Russia] … they only make up 15 to 20 percent of the world’s economy,” White House spokesperson Jen Psaki said Monday. “The G7 countries make up more than 50 percent. So, there are a range of tools at our disposal in coordination with our European partners should we need to use them.” .......... “Since China is 10 times more engaged with the world economy than Russia, the economic dislocation in China will be enormous” ........ “I think that [the international community] will not be as united against China, which means that the sanctions will be weaker, which means the impact might be less.” .4 ways China is quietly making life harder for Russia . "China is not a party to the [Ukraine] crisis, and doesn't want the sanctions to affect China," Foreign Minister Wang Yi said Tuesday during a phone call with his Spanish counterpart. ........ Beijing also gave its full backing Wednesday to comments made earlier this week by China's ambassador to Ukraine. "China will never attack Ukraine. We will help, especially economically," Fan Xianrong was quoted as saying in a press release from the Lviv regional government. ....... China is attempting to strike "a delicate balance" between supporting Russia rhetorically but without further antagonizing the United States. ...... Chinese banks cannot afford to lose access to US dollars, and many Chinese industries cannot afford to be deprived of US technology. ....... While China is Russia's No. 1 trading partner, Beijing has other priorities. Trade between the two countries made up just 2% of China's total trade volume. The European Union and the United States have much larger shares ........... allowing the Russian currency to fall against the yuan, Beijing isn't doing Moscow any favors. ....... Chinese phone brands like Xiaomi and Huawei are hugely popular in Russia ....... Chinese car makers, such as Great Wall Motor and Geely Auto, occupy 7% of Russia's market, selling more than 115,000 vehicles last year. Great Wall Motor has stopped supplying new cars to dealers in Russia because of the exchange rate fluctuations. ........ Currently, about $25 billion of China-Russia trade is conducted in yuan ....... Russia's finance minister Anton Siluanov said this week that the country wanted to use yuan reserves after Moscow was blocked from accessing US dollars and euros ......... "The long-term gains of moving closer to Russia might not match the impact of Western investors suddenly losing interest in China" ....... China has refused to send aircraft parts to Russia as Moscow looks for alternative supplies. ........ China's foreign ministry reiterated Beijing's opposition to sanctions adding that China and Russia will maintain "normal economic and trade cooperation." .
Sanders camp quietly pushes Khanna presidential bid Top progressives are encouraging the California congressman to run in 2024 if Joe Biden doesn’t seek reelection. ...... Roughly half of Americans don’t expect Biden, now 79, will run for a second term ..... a key part of Sanders’ brain trust is looking to Khanna, a close ally to the Vermont senator, as his heir apparent. ....... Ro is basically saying, ‘Is there a way in which we can reconstruct the economy so that all of the wealth is not just being generated on the East Coast, West Coast, or out of my congressional district?’” .......... “It’s crystal-clear that Ro Khanna is a part of the next generation of progressive leadership in America.” ........ The 45-year-old is a die-hard liberal who happens to also represent the startup paradise of Silicon Valley. He calls himself a “progressive capitalist” and envisions a future in which America’s eroding democracy is strengthened by spreading well-paying technology jobs across the heartland. ...... Allies of Khanna, who is the son of Indian immigrants, think he could tap financial support in the Indian American community and appeal to immigrants of all stripes. Indian Americans — one of the fastest-growing immigrant groups in the country — have been working diligently in recent years to increase their political clout, and Khanna has developed close relationships with Indian American leaders. ....... Unlike some other high-profile progressives, Khanna’s style has been less combative and more aimed at building relationships with other parts of the Democratic Party. In perhaps an extreme example, in the 2018 primary, Khanna endorsed both then-Rep. Joe Crowley (D-N.Y.) and the left-wing challenger who defeated him, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez........ “I think it would be great to have a President Ro,” said Ben Cohen, the Ben & Jerry’s co-founder who served alongside Khanna as a co-chair for Sanders’ 2020 campaign. “He’s just an honest, sincere guy who really wants what’s best for the majority of Americans.” ...... Khanna backs the now-familiar list of progressive goals that Sanders popularized, including Medicare for All, free public college and a $15 minimum wage. Sanders and Khanna have also worked on a number of bills together. In 2019, the two lawmakers spearheaded the passage of a War Powers resolution to end the United States’ involvement in the war in Yemen. ..... he would explore the possibility of a 2024 Senate bid if Dianne Feinstein, California’s 88-year-old incumbent Democratic senator, does not run for reelection. .
It’s Time to Offer Russia an Offramp. China Can Help With That. . Casualties are mounting in Ukraine. Bombs continue to fall. More than 2 million refugees have fled the fighting. Vladimir Putin seems to have assumed he could get a swift victory, underestimating the fierce resistance from Ukraine.a ........ Two weeks in, Russia is intensifying its assault on Ukraine, and Western nations in turn are intensifying their financial and economic punishments against Russia, including by triggering the financial “nuclear option” — banning some Russian banks from the SWIFT payment system. Meanwhile, Mr. Putin has put his actual nuclear forces on high alert. ........ it is time to offer the Russian leader an offramp with China’s help. On Tuesday, President Xi Jinping of China held a virtual summit with President Emmanuel Macron of France and Chancellor Olaf Scholz of Germany, urging a diplomatic solution. ........ Ukraine itself sees the potential of Chinese-led conflict resolution. ...... China has a significant economic interest in a quick resolution to the Russian-Ukrainian war. China enjoys strong ties with Russia and Ukraine and is both countries’ largest single trading partner, though each trades more with the E.U. bloc than with China. Russia and Ukraine are crucial components of the Belt and Road infrastructure program as well as conduits for China’s trade with Europe. China-Europe rail transports have experienced a hundredfold increase since the beginning of the 2010s, but the ongoing conflict threatens to disrupt these trade flows. ........ China’s demand for resources that Russia has in abundance — food and energy — as well as a mutual dissatisfaction with the current state of the U.S.-led world order have increasingly drawn the two countries together. ........
Russia may possess a mighty military, but its economy is in long-term structural decline, with a G.D.P. not much larger than that of Spain.
For all the talk of ties with Moscow, it is worth remembering that China’s economic interests with Russia are dwarfed by those it shares with the West. In 2021, trade between China and Russia may have jumped by 36 percent compared to the prior year, to $147 billion — but that’s still less than a tenth of the combined trade with the United States ($657 billion) and European Union ($828 billion). .......... The longer the war lasts, the more it will reinvigorate the Western alliance around the idea of a values-based confrontation between East and West, bringing the United States and the European Union into even closer alignment while driving military budgets up around the globe. That is not good for China, which would prefer to maintain lucrative economic ties with the West and focus its resources on domestic development. .......... The longer the war goes on, though, China may find itself in a position of diminishing returns in its close relationship with Russia. ........ Beijing’s goal would be to find a solution that gives Mr. Putin sufficient security assurances that can be presented as a win to his domestic audience while protecting Ukraine’s core sovereignty and NATO’s open-door policy. Finding a landing zone for such an agreement is challenging but not impossible. Some creative diplomacy could solve this, such as a formula for NATO expansion that rules out Ukrainian membership in practice while preserving its sovereignty and NATO principles in theory. ...... Securing a multilateral resolution to the crisis in Ukraine will be a tough and risky challenge, but there is no country better placed to do so than China. .This Is How World War III Begins World War II didn’t so much begin as it gathered, like water rising until it breaches a dam. We, too, have been living through years of rising waters, though it took Russia’s invasion of Ukraine for much of the world to notice. ............ Before the invasion, we had the Russian invasions of Georgia, Crimea and eastern Ukraine; the Russian carpet bombing of Aleppo; the use of exotic radioactive and chemical agents against Russian dissidents on British soil; Russian interference in U.S. elections and massive hacks of our computer networks; the murder of Boris Nemtsov and the blatant poisoning and imprisonment of Alexei Navalny. ......... the West has mainly spent 22 years placating Putin through a long cycle of resets and wrist slaps. The devastation of Ukraine is the fruit of this appeasement. ......... Arming Ukraine with Javelin and Stinger missiles has wounded and embarrassed the Russian military. Providing Kyiv with MIG-29 fighter jets and other potentially game-changing weapon systems could help turn the tide. Refusing to do so may only prolong Ukraine’s agony. .......... There is now a serious risk that these illusions could collapse very suddenly. There’s little evidence so far that Putin is eager to cut his losses; on the contrary, to do so now — after incurring the economic price of sanctions but without achieving a clear victory — would jeopardize his grip on power. ....... If he uses chemical weapons, as Bashar al-Assad did, or deploys a battlefield nuclear weapon, in keeping with longstanding Russian military doctrine, does he lose more than he gains? The question answers itself. He wins swiftly. He terrifies the West. He consolidates power. He suffers consequences only marginally graver than the ones already inflicted. And his fellow travelers in Beijing, Tehran and Pyongyang take note. .
Here Are Three Reasons Putin Might Fight On . “Putin will try to press this as far as he possibly can before it’s blunted and then look for a way to spin it as a win.” Allies, she added, should try to help him find a face-saving way to stand down. It’s also possible, she said, that officials in Moscow “can nudge him onto a different track.” .
Russians Must Accept the Truth. We Failed. . No one in Moscow believed there could be a war, even though it’s painfully clear now that the Kremlin had been gearing up for it for years. Were we, the millions of Russians who were openly or secretly opposed to President Vladimir Putin’s regime, merely silent witnesses to what was happening? Even worse, did we endorse it? .......... Though we protested, organized, lobbied, spread information and built honest lives in the shadow of a corrupt regime, we must accept the truth: We failed. We failed to prevent a catastrophe, and we failed to change the country for the better. And now we must bear that failure. .......
It’s not just that we couldn’t stop this senseless and illegal war — we can’t even protest against it.
........ It is as if we’re being viewed as criminals not only by our own state but also by the rest of the world. Yet we are not criminals. We did not start this war, and we did not vote for the people who did. We did not work for the state that is now bombing Ukrainian cities. .......... The invasion of Ukraine marks the end, definitively, of Russia’s postwar era. During the 77 years since World War II, Russia was regarded — no matter what other perceptions it carried — as the country that helped to save humanity from the greatest evil the world has ever known. Russia was the heroic country that defeated fascism, even if that victory forced 45 years of Communism on half of Europe. Not anymore. Russia is now the nation that unleashed a new evil, and unlike the old one, it’s armed with nuclear weapons. ........ Russia is a very individualistic society, in which people, to quote the cultural historian Andrei Zorin, live with a “Leave me alone” mind-set. We like to isolate ourselves from one another, from the state, from the world. This allowed many of us to build vibrant, hopeful, energetic lives against a grim backdrop of arrests and prison. But in the process, we became insular and lost sight of everyone else’s interests......... and accept our common responsibility for the war. Such an act is, first and foremost, a moral necessity. But it could also be the first step toward a new Russian nation — a nation that could talk to the world in a language other than wars and threats, a nation that others will learn not to fear.It is toward creating this Russia that we, outcast and exiled and persecuted, should bend our efforts.
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5/8/23 Update: Goshen (NY) puts Third World corruption to shame, thanks to greedy, corrupt, unethical lawyers like Andra Dumais. ..... I toppled a Third World dictator and German Radio called me Robin Hood On The Internet. I am not going to get intimidated by some small-town racist. Andrea Dumais is a small-town racist. ....... You are treating me worse than the people 2,000 years ago.
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