This perspective suffers really badly from Main Character Syndrome. The United States didn't win World War II by itself, nor did the Axis powers position themselves directly against the United States, but the article spends a lot of time acting like both of those are true. And then it talks about upcoming American decisions in a vacuum, as if it doesn't have current and potential allies who would be quite important in a world war scenario!
It also severely misrepresents the relationship between the USSR and Germany. Hitler made no secret of the fact that one of his chief aims was to destroy the Soviet Union. The Soviets feared a German invasion and pursued an alliance with France. The USSR wanted to intervene to prevent a German invasion of Czechoslovakia, but after the British and French signed the Munich agreement with Hitler, the Soviets feared the western powers would let the USSR and Germany fight it out and moved to make their own accommodation with Hitler. Both sides regarded that deal as temporary, and knew that it would come to war later. The Soviets wanted to buy time to build up the Red Army.
This narative omits the contradicting fact that Soviet Union decimated Poland and others it conquered in alliance with Germany. If the alliance was just to buy time for Red Army, then it would not make sense for Red Army to spend time massacring the elites and armies of conquered states [0] that could become their buffer against Germany or even become their allies. This narative, which I started hearing after the start of last Russian war, is therefore pretty naive attempt of current day Russia to spin the story of their initial alliance with nazi Germany which was definitely real.
> If the alliance was just to buy time for Red Army, then it would not make sense for Red Army to spend time massacring the elites and armies of conquered states
The USSR did not have to expend much effort in taking eastern Poland. It moved in after the Polish army had been largely defeated by the Germans in the West. The USSR's actions here were opportunistic.
> This narative, which I started hearing after the start of last Russian war
This "narrative" has been around for many decades, and is not particularly controversial. Even at the time, the fact that the USSR and Germany signed a pact at all stunned the world, because they were arch enemies.
It was not a marriage of love, and calling it an "alliance" is a major stretch. It was an opportunistic move by two enemies that each had their reasons to temporarily put off their conflict. The Red Army was in turmoil because of the purges and Stalin was deathly afraid of a German attack. The Germans wanted time to go after Poland and the western powers.
A central tenet of Nazism was its hatred for Bolshevism (and that was tightly connected to the Nazis' antisemitism as well). Hitler had openly stated his goal of destroying the Soviet Union, and it was clear that any pact could not last.
The USSR did not have to expend much effort in taking eastern Poland.
The poster above wasn't referring to the effort expended in "taking" eastern Poland militarily -- but in subjugating the population and massacring the elites. This was not an accidental byproduct of the invasion; it was part of its intent. Along with the extremely rapid and violent annexation of the Baltic states in the same period.
It wasn't like Soviet troops wandered in these countries, and didn't know what else to do with the local population. The Bolsheviks were against the independence of all 4 of these countries after the end of WW I, and in the years 1919-1920 tried and failed to conquer each of them. Each attempt was swiftly (enough) repulsed, providing the Bolshevik regime with the first of its many deeply embarrassing setbacks.
The main trigger for the M-R pact was of course the question of how to deal the Germans. But judging by how the Soviets focused their energy and attention in these countries 1939-1941, and its relations with them in the interwar years -- it wasn't their only motivation.
> The Bolsheviks were against the independence of all 4 of these countries after the end of WW I, and in the years 1919-1920 tried and failed to conquer each of them.
The Soviets accepted the independence of Finland, and it was Poland that invaded Soviet Russia in 1920, not the other way around.
I know, and I'm pretty sure you know that I know. The context was M-R, so that's the time frame I was referring to. Your bringing Finland into this just didn't make sense any sense otherwise, so if I misread you there, that was why.
The war began with ...
Look - I see why you're saying what you're saying. But you're misstating the details, and the overall narrative you're presenting just doesn't add up, given the full context of surrounding events. I'd dissect the matter further, but I just don't think you're engaging in good faith here (either with me, or with the other commenter who jumped in at the same point in the thread). Which is a pity because you're obviously quite knowledgeable about lots of things. But you're also reading things into what people say that just aren't there, and your responses seem to attempt shift the topic rather than address what they're saying.
> in the years 1919-1920 tried and failed to conquer each of them
Then when I pointed out that the Soviets accepted Finnish independence, you switched to talking about the Winter War, which is 20 years later.
> I know, and I'm pretty sure you know that I know.
I can accept that you know when the Winter War occurred, but then I can't understand why you would raise it to justify a point you specifically made about 1919-20. During the revolution, the Soviets let Finland go. They accepted its independence. You claimed they tried to reconquer it in 1919-20, which is not correct.
> A central tenet of Nazism was its hatred for Bolshevism (and that was tightly connected to the Nazis' antisemitism as well).
Another central tenet of both Nazism and Bolshevism is their hatred for capitalism and democracy. Their alliance allowed to suffocate Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia and Finland (attempt failed), and expand their borders until they met, as they had agreed in the secret protocol to the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact - without triggering a direct conflict between Germany and the USSR.
The obsolete narrative that portrays USSR as the victim or opportunistic bystander fails to explain why the USSR murdered Polish officers, scholars and other members of the national elite by tens of thousands, and unleashed similar terror in every other occupied country, or why the USSR tried to invade Finland and allocated a significant part of its entire military to the task while it was allegedly so worried about German attack, or why it supplied Germany with incredible amount of raw resources bypassing the British naval blockade, or why Germany initiated large technology transfer to the USSR, including drawings, performance testing data and actual samples of their latest fighter planes and bombers and a ton of other equipment.
The argument that Germany and USSR were on long-term collision course in terms of ideology doesn't change the fact that the alliance was very beneficial to both of them while it lasted and allowed them to maul Europe with impunity. That's why USSR denied until its final days that the secret protocol to the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact even existed; the protocol and events that followed completely shatter the myth of USSR as opportunistic bystander.
Even in the present day, Russian goverment (including Putin personally) can't make up its mind whether Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania all saw "working class uprisings" at the same time and joined the USSR "voluntarily" (one narrative), or whether USSR performed a clever trick on Germany and invaded those countries on its own initiative to win time (another narrative). The narrative keeps shifting to whatever is convenient at the moment; it has become a meme.
> Another central tenet of both Nazism and Bolshevism is their hatred for capitalism and democracy.
Nazi Germany was a capitalist country. The reason why German conservatives brought the Nazis into government was in order to smash the German socialist and labor movement. Portraying Nazi Germany as anticapitalist is deeply ahistorical.
Your argument, that the repression carried out in Poland and the Baltics by the USSR proves it wasn't motivated by fear of Germany, does not logically follow.
> why the USSR tried to invade Finland and allocated a significant part of its entire military to the task while it was allegedly so worried about German attack
The USSR's invasion of Finland was intimately bound up with its fear of German invasion. I'm just reciting some basic history here - nothing new or groundbreaking. The USSR wanted a buffer outside of Leningrad, which was directly on the border, and the right to use naval bases in the Baltic sea. The Soviets did not believe that a small country would be able to remain neutral when push came to shove, so it did not trust Finnish promises of neutrality. Those were the considerations that led the USSR to invade Finland.
I think USA now is in a very weak position, starting for their leadership and potential candidates. It is not acting as a world superpower which is to decide a course of action for the following decades and not oscillating or simulating that they are not a super power: the nuclear weapons, the F-35s, etc. Also, I don't think the new generations in USA could tolerate a war, educationally speaking. There will be massive peace protests around the country by people that never experienced a war like previous generations.
Iran could do whatever they want via proxies. China is making deals everywhere, and Russia continue to move forward while Europe... is sleeping.
Not sure Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran are really aligned.
China probably feels the same way about Vladivostok as they do about Taiwan, another territory lost in an "unequal treaty" during "a century of humiliation". They've been on the brink before
Anybody who neighbors Russia is concerned about being overrun with tanks and Spetznaz. Iran was a reliable anti-communist ally of the US in the time of the Shah because of the geopolitical situation of Iran.
All of those countries have an interest in the US and NATO being overstretched, but I don't think China really cares if Russia wins or loses in Ukraine and Russia does not really care if China takes Taiwan.
If China intends to take Taiwan and ultimately go beyond that into other parts of Asia, they have a strong interest in having parts of NATO's forces being tied down defending Europe and the Middle East. And vice versa. North Korea will presumably also help to tie down forces in South Korea.
China is not an expansionist imperial power as your comment seems to imply, quite the opposite, it always talks about how they have no intention to expand beyond its borders... but of course, it sees Taiwan as an internal affair (and most other countries in the world acknowledge it and accept its one-China policy). Taiwan was very much a part of China before the Japanese invaded it in 1895 [1] (though it had also been temporarily colonized by European powers before then), and again once the Japanese lost the war in 1945. Taiwan was then controlled by the Republic of China (ROC) "Party". When the civil war ended in 1949, the ROC lost to the Community party in mainland China and millions of its members fled to Taiwan[2] and hoped to later unify China with itself, but that obviously never happened. They continued to claim to be the legitimate government of all of China (and even parts of neighbouring countries), and apparently some of them still do!
From the Wikipedia article:
"The ROC was a founding member of the United Nations, and held the seat of China on the Security Council and other UN bodies until 1971, when it was expelled by Resolution 2758 and replaced with the PRC. Since 1993, the ROC has petitioned the UN for entry, but its applications have not made it past committee stage.[281][282] Due to the One China policy, most UN member states, including the United States, do not wish to discuss the issue of the ROC's political status for fear of souring diplomatic ties with the PRC."
I believe both sides actually want an eventual unification, Taiwan just doesn't want to lose all its autonomy and have a change of political system (it's a democracy, unlike mainland China).
If China can convince Taiwan to democratically rejoin the PRC then that’s fine. If they do it using military force then the issue isn’t really that complicated.
Again, this assumes some kind of overarching relationship among these countries with a shared goal. But what does North Korea gain by, say, keeping South Korea busy while China invades Taiwan? It basically means Pyongyang is flattened by artillery fire and missiles, with a more-likely-than-not chance of regime change.
Taiwan is not a part of NATO. The US may, directly or indirectly, help to defend it, but it is not a military concern for other NATO countries.
But frankly, I find it very difficult to believe it could happen in the near future because Taiwan is already very well prepared for an invasion. So unless the Chinese leaders are as badly informed as the ones from Kremlin, they would not attempt a full-scale war over dead bodies and ruins. They attempt the opposite - to lure the Taiwanese, encourage friendly exchanges etc. A war would completely destroy everything. And I don't believe this is the Chinese aim (yet).
(I don't event mention Chinese loses because they can throw a lot of people and equipment just like Putin did and not care about huge loses.)
> Taiwan is already very well prepared for an invasion
The most likely possibility according to the article is not a direct invasion of Taiwan but China controlling Taiwan's borders so that it can decide what trade gets in and out and what doesn't. I don't think Taiwan is in any position to stop that from happening.
Beyond semantics though, russia would have been in much worse shape without iranian drones, nk ammo and chinese everything (no pure military gear yet, but plenty other material)
> "The enemy of my enemy is my enemy's enemy. No more. No less."
Politics makes strange bedfellows, as they say, and so does war.
The WW2 "alliance" between Germany and Finland ? Something along the lines of "The enemy of my enemy is not necessarily my friend, but we can do business".
China, historically, has for most part chose to not commit to any alliances -- out of fear of being dragged into an unwanted war. This is largely still true today with the exception of perhaps North Korea today and during the early part of the Mao era with the USSR. According to Kissinger, China instead uses a system of "parallel analysis" where if two parties look at the same facts and arrive at the same conclusion then they will act towards a common goal. This was what China did when it was in a quasi-alliance with the US during the Cold War after the Nixon trips. Something similar might be happening now with Russia in regards to both countries want to see the US attention occupied and resources stretched.
Furthermore, Russia is resource rich but industry poor. China is the reverse. This makes them ideal trade partners. As sibling comments have pointed out, the border disputes between the two countries are now resolved. I guarantee you the PRC does not feel the same way about Vladivostok as they do about Taiwan. Taiwan isn't even foreign in their eyes -- it's an unresolved issue from their civil war. Vladivostok is lost to another country and its loss has been accepted.
> I don't think China really cares if Russia wins or loses in Ukraine and Russia does not really care if China takes Taiwan.
I agree. I think China just wants the war over one way or another. That said, I think they would prefer it if Russia comes out of it with their prestige intact simply because China has so few partners as it is (because of their aversion to alliances).
Lastly, I would add that, if you imagine China abandoning Russia as the US and EU want them to, what would they gain in return? A pat on the head and then what? More requests to comply with the system of liberal democracies? China's foreign policy has a very strong realist bend and is driven by very concrete gains and losses calculations. They don't place as much value on softer things like good will. Why would they jeopardize their energy and resource security for something as nebulous as good will from the US and EU?
Maybe because russia has repeatedly signed then broken border agreements? What goes around comes around, there were statements about Alaska being rightfully russian too.
A return to isolationism would be best. The next 1000 years belong to China, for demographic reasons--this or that sort of "Great Game"-style meddling won't fix anything.
"It is worth recalling today, as Russia and China confront the United States, that the proximate reason for America’s entry into World War II was its determination to save those two countries from extinction."
Nonsense! Great powers act in their own interests. The US entered the war because of Pearl Harbor. Hitler welcomed the opportunity to wage unrestricted submarine warfare on the US shipping supporting UK & USSR in the struggle against Hitler; hence his declaration of war on the US. Above all the US did not want Nazi/Japanese dominance over Europe, Asia and the Pacific.
The US entered the war because of Pearl Harbor, but long before then, the US was working in favor of Great Britain as hard as possible short of war. They were also working against Japan.
And the Pearl Harbor attack was an attempt at a saving throw as the US had blockaded Japanese oil supplies as the latter's imperial expansion threatened the US colony of the Philipines.
(not trying to portray the US as the aggressor in any way, just agreeing that the author's model is utterly broken)
The US openly entered the war because of Pearl Harbor. But the US had already been secretly involved in the war for some time before that. And a major part of that was Lend-Lease aid to the Soviet Union.
The case for the US wanting to save Nationalist China from extinction is much less clear since US aid to them was much more lukewarm and inconsistent.
Also, it's kind of amazing that they consider that it's China who is "confronting" them. China has enormous trade with the US, it has not attempted in any way to diminish that, quite the opposite, it's been trying really hard to increase trade! What action has China taken that shows it wants to "confront" the US???
Why do you consider China's instance on Taiwan (i.e. the one-China policy) to be confronting the USA? It's not like Taiwan belongs to the USA. It boggles my mind how people still see the USA as the police of the world, with rights to determine which countries can and cannot do what, even on the very other side of the planet.
Haven't finished reading this but I do wonder about the (still fairly common?) belief that Russia and China very much distrust and despise each other. They're much different than they were in the middle half of the 20th century when their animosity towards each other was based on who they though should be the vanguard of the communist-socialist Leninists-Marxist world revolution.
And if people still believe in this split, incorrectly, will that cause people to incorrectly analyze the situation? As a general principle Russia and China are each untrustworthy of other countries so perhaps they're playing the "keep your friends close but your enemies closer" card. And it's at this point I start to feel that my analysis is too circular, and that China will continue to assist Russia only so long as it suits them (the self interest argument that someone else posted about).
In the medium term, the named states all see benefit in moving the world back towards a multi-polar environment with regional spheres of influence and richer individual sovereignty. That's the common cause that sees them coordinate, cooperate, and simply borrow from the windows of opportunity that each opens.
Further out, many can of course anticipate conflict with their neighbors and peers, but those challenges arrive in their own day, in their own way, and only after American influence gets pushed out from their purported domains.
