[The Epoch Times, March 04, 2022](The Epoch Times reporters Andrew Thornebrooke and Gary Bai / Takasugi) A former U.S. Air Force general said that without the support of the Chinese Communist Party, Russia’s war against Ukraine would not have happened.
On Thursday (March 3), Gen. Robert Spalding, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, told The Epoch Times: “Actually, China (CCP) It’s the real point of leverage (to change the balance of things), not the Russians, because without the backing of China, Russia couldn’t have done what they did.”
“China basically just told the Russians ‘don’t invade during the Olympics’,” he said. “They knew Moscow was going to invade Ukraine, but they just didn’t want it to steal the Olympic limelight.”
Spalding pointed out that China has not joined the sanctions against Russia imposed by Western countries. He also said that Russia’s reliance on China, which waged the war against Ukraine, raises a crucial question: whether the West has the economic courage to impose corresponding sanctions on China.
“The question now is whether we’re going to impose economic sanctions and isolate China because of its support for Russia,” Spalding said.
He also added that China is acting as a “safety valve” for Russia, providing Russia with much-desired cash flow as the rest of the world tries to turn off the taps of Putin’s war machine. On the first day of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the Chinese government lifted restrictions on imports of Russian wheat and said trade with Russia would continue as normal.
Meanwhile, the United States and its allies in Europe and elsewhere have announced a slew of sanctions targeting Moscow, including banning some of Russia’s biggest banks from using the SWIFT global payments system and limiting the Russian central bank’s access to $640 billion in foreign reserves.
For that matter, Spalding doubts that the West can truly come together to punish the CCP leadership for giving Russia support. Western elites are too reliant on business ties with China to take such punitive action, he said.
“The Chinese Communist Party has done a lot of work in broadly fighting for elites in the free world,” Spalding said. “A lot of their wealth is closely tied to the U.S.-China relationship.”
“If you want to fundamentally make a country do what you want, you have to put pressure on the country’s elites. And, in essence, this is the CCP entangling itself with the fate of the (Western) elites. And then they’re able to pressure them, push and lean on them, and that’s the problem.”
Spalding said the belief in maintaining business ties with the Chinese Communist Party at all costs is undermining democracy around the world. And America’s reliance on the CCP is encouraging authoritarianism at home.
Spalding explained: “People will say: ‘Oh, we can’t cut ties with China, because they make everything now’. And if you want to keep getting these goods, the price you pay is to put your society From a democratic society to…a more authoritarian society. Then, that becomes a real problem.”
“That’s the deal we’ve made with these regimes. And, unfortunately… if we’re not willing to face that, and the pain that comes with it (after decoupling from the CCP), then we’re going to slowly slide into This abyss…authoritarianism is going to win, and you’re going to see authoritarianism continue to grow around the world.”
At the same time, Spalding noted that violence in Ukraine is still escalating due to China’s role in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and the West’s hesitancy to impose sanctions on China.
There are now reports that the Russian military is bombarding civilian infrastructure at will. Russia’s actions in the first week after the invasion have led to charges that it is committing war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Spalding said that while the current horrors are evident, the situation may only get worse.
“People forget what Russia did in Chechnya before,” Spalding said, referring to Russia’s massive indiscriminate indiscrimination during the second Chechen war from August 1999 to April 2000. The bombing campaign resulted in the deaths of tens of thousands of civilians.
“I suspect we’re going to start to see that Russia is going to use many of the tactics that ended up in Chechnya back then, which was to raze cities to the ground,” Spaulding said.
Spalding said that to prevent future carnage, the United States and its allies must recognize that the growing alliance between totalitarian states is already a threat to the international order.
Spalding said: “This is a long-term task that really depends on whether the free world can realize that China, Russia, Iran, North Korea and other authoritarian regimes must be confronted head-on, and they must be isolated economically, otherwise totalitarianism The regime will swallow the whole world.”
Responsible editor: Ye Ziwei#