Russia and Ukraine flashpoint

[shavenferret]

Ryuu96 said:

Biggerboat1 said:

Wouldn't China prefer to end this conflict asap, as the longer it goes on, the more likely Europe is to wake up, remove their heads from their asses and meaningfully up their spending on & investment in their militaries?

I.e. if Europe feels safe they'll stay complacent & militarily weak, whereas if Ukraine continues to cause alarm, enough political will could build for us to properly tool up. 

Or are there angles I'm not seeing? 

Nah, a distracted America and Europe is a good thing for China, they likely don't believe that Europe will wake up either and even if they do it may be too late for Ukraine and even if it isn't, does it nescessarily mean Ukraine will win? Not when they all still enforce a bunch of stupid restrictions on Ukraine and are unwilling to put themselves in uncomfortable positions, the more likely scenario is they hoard the equipment for themselves and that doesn't help countries outside of NATO, to put it bluntly, if Ukraine loses then it will give the greenlight to every imperialist country that any country not in NATO (and doesn't have nukes) is on the table cause it isn't like NATO will protect them.

Another thing to consider is dictators like Putin always get overconfident though, even though there's countless examples of that biting them in the ass, Russia may have made a bit of a shitshow of the invasion but it doesn't mean China will be put off by that if Xi Jinping is just as delusional. Keeping Europe distracted with Russia will allow China to make moves elsewhere unnoticed.

shavenferret said:

If anything, I would think that China would want Russia to lose the conflict in order to safely keep Russia in the #2 spot. 

Nah, the CCP hates the West, ours is a business arrangement but the CCP hates everything about us outside of money, we just need each other but China would absolutely side with Russia over us because "West bad" in CCP's eyes. Doesn't mean they want Russia all powerful though, basically China will play both sides, whether Russia wins or loses they'll end up sucking the teat of China.

China's end goal will be Russia dependent on them and a West whose credibility is battered on the international stage.

If China's end goal with russia is their dependence then you would think that they would favor a long drawn out war resulting in a loss rather than a quick win. A more powerful Russia would have an easier time solving its industrial supply issues, and thus would need china for fewer things.