Around its periphery, China has engaged in provocations, confrontations and even violent clashes. Moscow has also actively supported armed groups and militias in some of these same countries and others.Īlthough China has also been active and assertive in the use of its armed forces beyond its borders in recent years, Beijing has eschewed large-scale combat operations. Russia under Putin has repeatedly dispatched its armed forces for combat missions overseas to a range of countries, including Georgia, Syria and Ukraine, as well as conducted major military interventions against other states, most recently Kazakhstan (albeit at the invitation of that country’s president). Xi Jinping’s China is not Vladimir Putin’s Russia, and Taiwan is not Ukraine. Beyond some broad-brush parallels - the most obvious parallel being that both Ukraine and Taiwan are peace-loving democracies that are the objects of belligerent irredentism on the part of more militarily powerful and threatening neighboring autocracies - there are also significant differences. One popular contemporary analogy is between Russia’s actions vis-à-vis Ukraine and China’s approach to Taiwan. Taiwanese helicopters fly the country’s flag through the capital Taipei. Almost inevitably people look to draw analogies-both historical and contemporary ones. Observers have grappled with the meaning of the act of aggression and scrambled to ponder the wider implications of the war. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine - the most consequential military conflict Europe has witnessed since the Second World War - has riveted the attention of the world.
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