Table of Contents
This past Friday, the final nail was hammered into the coffin of the Ukrainian war effort. President Trump’s meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky rapidly devolved into shouting, with Trump accusing Zelensky of “gambling with World War Three.” Trump’s Kremlin-esque rhetoric has been reinforced by his actions as on Monday, he suspended military aid to Ukraine. On Tuesday, Zelensky offered terms of a partial ceasefire.
The result of this war will now almost certainly favor Russia. Russia will likely occupy large swathes of Ukrainian territory in perpetuity. NATO membership for Ukraine is almost certainly impossible. And Ukraine will likely end up without any durable security guarantees for the future.
But Russia today is not some restored, mighty, and ascendant empire. Instead, Putin’s Russia, after three years of war, has transformed into a prostitute state, a diminished power that continually sells itself out to its biggest customer and the real winner of the war in Ukraine: China.
The geopolitical reality is that Russia is a power in a rapid decline that the war has only accelerated. Russia’s government is hopelessly corrupt and incompetent. In a nation where more than 20% of its people don’t even have indoor toilets, a small class of billionaire oligarchs control a staggering 21% of its GDP mostly through stakes in state-owned enterprises like Gazprom. Officials from military officers, to local bureaucrats, to Putin himself all indulge in this kleptocratic frenzy. This class of oligarchs and political elite splurge on super yachts, English mansions, and soccer clubs while average Russians struggle to afford groceries.
Russia’s military losses have been staggering: almost a million personnel, tens of thousands of armored vehicles, and hundreds of aircraft. While young Muscovites attend strip parties, the poorest Russians from the most impoverished regions are disproportionately dying on the frontlines, getting turned into dust by Ukrainian drones and artillery. This is merely an echo of the past: During the Second Chechen War from 1999 to 2009, on the night Russian troops began their bloody assault on the Chechen capital Grozny, Putin himself was enjoying an erotic bullfight at a St. Petersburg strip club.
The territory Russia occupies in Ukraine is ravaged by war and offers virtually no strategic or economic value. Hundreds of thousands of young Russian men have died, only worsening the country’s massive gender imbalance and accelerating the country’s population collapse. Thousands of Russia’s brightest minds have fled, creating an irrecoverable brain drain. The economy is a ticking time bomb, with inflation on the rise, liquid reserves dwindling, and GDP growth being propped up by unsustainable military spending. Internationally, Russia has permanently severed its ties to Europe. It has lost a key ally in the Middle East with the collapse of the Assad Regime. Russia can’t even exert power on tiny neighbors anymore, as evidenced by Azerbaijan’s lightning offensive against Armenia which violated a ceasefire Russia was supposed to mediate.
Russia will be crippled for decades, perhaps even indefinitely. It is the sick man of Eurasia. Putin thought that he was Peter the Great. A more apt comparison is Nicholas II, the tsar who’s incompetence led Russia to defeat in World War I and eventually put him at the end of a Bolshevik gun barrel.
In stark contrast, however, China has benefited from the war in Ukraine on an unprecedented scale. Throughout the conflict, China’s leadership has carefully and deftly walked a fine line of neutrality, allowing it to benefit in a multitude of different ways. Trade between Russia and China has surged, as China buys Russian natural gas at highly discounted prices, with resource trading increasingly being settled in yuan instead of dollars. With sanctions slapped on Russia throughout the West, Chinese consumers became natural recipients for exports of Russian vodka and sausages while Chinese technology companies could sell Russia critically needed chips and electronics, which helped fuel Russia’s war effort.
By not providing Russia with lethal military aid, however, China has maintained ties with Europe. Through the Belt and Road Initiative, China has shown Europe that it is a reliable trading partner and is willing to deepen cooperation on economic initiatives. While China’s massive electric car industry has been unable to bring any vehicles to the U.S., Chinese vehicle companies in Europe have plans for massive expansion. Even if Europe has concerns regarding China’s warm ties to Russia, America’s increasingly erratic foreign policy will only further convince Europe that antagonizing China will be disastrous for the future.
The biggest win China has received from this outcome of the Ukraine war is regarding Taiwan. America’s unwillingness to defend Ukraine and Trump’s criticism of Taiwan has further deteriorated Taiwan’s already weak geopolitical position. Certainty that American forces won’t intervene on Taiwan’s behalf will only embolden the Chinese. Europe has made it clear that Taiwan is not an issue they will intervene for and Russia has steadfastly stood by China on the one-China principle. It’s likely that in the next 10 years, Taiwan will become just another province of China.
Russian leadership certainly isn’t happy to be dependent on China, but like any prostitute, they have already sold themselves out. Russia has shot itself in its own foot by embarking on a completely irrational and idiotic conquest, and China’s leadership knows well that it can take easy advantage of Russia’s mistakes. Yes, Russia and Russians may grumble about China’s encroaching influence on them, but they have little ways of countering China. They have no power, hard or soft, military or diplomatic, that can dampen the Middle Kingdom. A prostitute complains about their profession, but time and time again still has no choice but to sell themself out.
And frankly, even if Russia isn’t terribly happy with its relationship with China, it’s far better than the alternative. The U.S. provides fundamentally little value to Russia even if it can stop aiding the deaths of young Russians. Economic ties that were severed by the war will be hard to restore especially as Russia has been cut from SWIFT and is increasingly settling trade with Chinese yuan. Europe, which will remain fiercely anti-Russia, sits between the U.S. and Russia, complicating relations on a geographical basis. Furthermore, Russia’s pre-war gas exports to Europe were far greater than their gas exports to the U.S. Gazprom endured a financial mauling following the start of the invasion, as its exports to Europe decreased by 75% and it had a net loss of over $17 billion. That loss simply can’t be made up by the U.S.
Westerners often forget that China shares a long border with Russia and the CCP is fundamentally an ideological ally of the Russian government as they both seek a multipolar world. Even if the U.S. now is being friendly toward Russia, there’s no guarantee that a future U.S. president will continue that same policy. Russia is making the best out of a bad situation and has decided to throw in its lot with China.
Conservative voices in America praise Russia as a bastion of traditional values and Christianity, and decry the atheist CCP as a threat to America. In reality, religion is actually in decline throughout Russia, a nation that has legalized domestic abuse and serves beer to citizens in order to combat its degenerate alcoholism. Such Americans think that playing to Russian interests aligns with their own political beliefs. In reality, our myopic foreign policy has only strengthened the CCP and consolidated China’s position on the global stage.
China still has a litany of domestic problems including its declining population and a massive economic crisis. But on foreign policy, China’s prospects look better than ever. If China plays its cards right, it will fully capitalize on America’s foreign policy blunder in Ukraine and beyond.
