In the post-Cold War tripartite power balance between super-powers China, The United States and Europe, Russia is the pivotal ally that determines the weight on the scale of the balance of power. That fact has largely been ignore since the end of the Cold War by the west that view Russia as the sole defunct challenge to Europe and the west and China as more or less a distant concern of the United States. Thus Europe and select U.S. leaders have felt free to advance N.A.T.O. toward the Russia borders in converting N.A.T.O. from a necessary defense force of resistance to the Soviet Union into a European Union military organization serving to build up the European Union to the state of a global super-power and regarding the Ukraine as the first fruits of Europe’s new age colonialism.
What was ignored in the irrational exuberance of the rise of the European Union and its claim upon the formerly Russian land of Ukraine was the effect a protracted military and economic battle with Russia over Ukraine would have on the global balance of power. China has an economy equal in gross national product to the United States, and its prospects for growth exceed those of the United States in that rapid industrial growth outpacing the west is likely to continue until the average income of Chinese is equal to that of those of the west. That means its overall G.D.P may exceed that of the United States and the European Union combined. With its larger population its military budget will scale up too. The Ukraine war has alienated Russia from the west and driven that nation entirely into very close military, technical and business relationships with China.
The close relationship of Russians and Chinese driven by sanctions and war upon Russia has also created a tighter BRIC economic relationship that lays outside the G-8. The G-8 is primarily the European Union, the United States and Japan. A world military and economic division has been engendered by the Ukraine conflict. Iran as a neo-ally of Russia was an extra-territorial weapons supplier to Russia from exports of drones and missiles. Reducing Iran’s weapons production technology has paradoxically coincided with an increase in the EU provisioning of rockets and drones to the Ukraine/EU side of the war while the EU and the Democrat Party of the United States plus Sen. Lisa Murkowski have opposed the war to end Iranian prospects for enriching weapons grade Uranium and rockets and drones able to deliver nuclear weapons packages along target vectors.
Russia will be China’s reliable oil, gas and natural resource supplier will China is able to manufacture components for weapons systems for Russia to use in Ukraine. In some respects the Third World War has already started on a slow burn course of development. At some point China may feel emboldened to attack Taiwan- a strategic mistake since the valuable Taiwanese chip economy would be destroyed and the Chinese economy would suffered devastating infrastructure losses from missile and drone attacks on key industries, power and transportation. Yet China would not even consider that aggression of Russia were an ally or a fully integrated economic partner of the west without sanctions and with Ukraine shared between the EU and Russia along the Dnepro River- possible with East and West Ukraine being tax free import/export nations.
