Crimean conquest shows China the way

[unhappycamper]

http://atimes.com/atimes/China/CHIN-01-310314.html



Crimean conquest shows China the way
By Euan Graham
Mar 31, '14

Moscow's annexation of Crimea and continuing tensions over Ukraine are being felt primarily as a crisis in European and US relations with Russia. Yet Russia's challenge to the international order has global ramifications that extend to East Asia. Implications for the region can be understood in terms of three broad categories: demonstration, distraction, and disruption.

Some of Moscow's East Asian neighbors may be concerned about the direct threat that a revived, recidivist Russia could turn its focus toward them. The reality, however, is that Moscow is more concerned with maintaining its territory east of the Urals than expansionist adventures. Russia's Far Eastern demographic decline is especially pronounced, while its borders are largely fixed.

Demonstration

The "demonstration" value of Russia's recent actions, although indirect and contingent, carries more serious implications for East Asia. China is not the only relevant regional audience, but it is the most important given Beijing's prickly relations with the West, its budding partnership with Moscow, and rising territorial tensions with other Asian neighbors.

With the UN Security Council immobilized by Russia's permanent veto, Moscow has shown, first, that it can use undeclared military force against a neighboring state with virtual impunity, in open defiance of past treaty commitments and Western protests. Secondly, the March 16, 2014, referendum in Crimea and its rapid incorporation into the Russian Federation presented the West with a fait accompli "land grab" that poses fundamental challenges to the international order.