In the 1984 film “Red Dawn,”
the beleaguered Wolverines, teen partisans defending the middle
of America against a Soviet Union and Cuban invasion, ask a downed US fighter pilot
(played by Powers Booth) what started the war. His answer? “The two toughest kids on the block,
I guess. Sooner or later, they’re gonna fight.” That’s the way many analysts see the current
situation between the United States and its allies, primarily NATO, and China and its
main military ally, Russia. With all of the military spending on both sides, it only
seems inevitable that they will eventually use the power they have built up to forward
their global agendas. The current situation between the authoritarian east and liberal west
has not been this tense in about half a century. The invasion of Ukraine has brought NATO and the
United States into as close to an all-out hot war with Russia as we’ve seen since the Cuban Missile
Crisis. But while that previous series of events cooled off before shots were fired, the Ukraine
war has seen hundreds of thousands of casualties. Russia feels that many of the deaths on their
side are due to the military and economic aid sent by NATO and the U.S. to Ukraine. Putin and his
political henchmen have repeatedly threatened NATO with nuclear weapons if they feel the existence
of their country is threatened any more than it already is. Matters weren’t made any better
when Great Britain almost had one of its RC-135 reconnaissance planes shot down in September of
2022, which would have raised tensions even more. There was another close call in November
of 2022, when an errant Ukrainian air defense missile missed its intended
target—another Russian missile barrage indiscriminately targeting Ukraine’s civilian
infrastructure—and landed in neighboring Poland, killing two people. NATO has a very specific
section of its agreement, called Article 5, which states that any attack on a member
nation is an attack on all of NATO. For a moment, talks of an all-out war between
Russia and NATO filled the blogosphere. Russian officials have sought to paint
NATO as aggressors in the war, continually claiming that poor little Russia was directly
fighting against the massive enemy of NATO, while the US and its allies have said
they are supporting Ukraine’s defense with military aid and unspecified intelligence
sharing, but not with boots on the ground. Meanwhile, on the other side of the globe, China
continues to make threatening gestures towards Taiwan, including recent armed jet intrusions
of Taiwanese airspace following Speaker Pelosi’s trip to the island in 2022, and then Speaker
McCarthy’s trip in 2023. Following the more recent April trip, China effectively closed
Taiwan’s airspace with waves of fighter jets, and for the first time, made it seem like they
were able to interdict any US support from the east of the island. There is even talks that China
may begin to require ships transiting the Taiwan Strait to undergo “boarding and searching,”
which Taiwan says they will vigorously oppose. Are We Close to a Hot War? First off, let’s make one thing clear. The
US and China are not “on the verge of war.” On March 31st, 2023, General Mark Milley, the
Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff said, “I don't think at this point I would put (the
possibility of imminent war) in the ‘likely’ category. And I think that the rhetoric
itself can overheat the environment.” However, General Milley did admit that
“It is possible that you could have an incident or some other trigger event that
could lead to uncontrolled escalation. So, it's not impossible.” That incident would most
likely evolve around an attempted Chinese invasion of Taiwan. President Xi has publicly stated
that he wants the People’s Liberation Army (the PLA) to be prepared to take Taiwan by force
as early as 2027. So that risk clearly does exist. Let’s take a look at the two main theatres of
such a potential war: NATO and the European elements of the United States’ forces arrayed
against Russia, and the US forces in the Pacific, mostly naval forces, against the might
of the Chinese army and navy. Of course, such a comparison will not include the opposing
nuclear forces. Any of the combatants have enough warheads to turn vast swathes of the world into
an unlivable nuclear wasteland. For the purpose of this comparison, we will hope that all sides would
agree not to resort to such catastrophic weapons. The Opposing Military Strengths in Europe Before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, most of
the world perceived Russia as the second most powerful military in the world. They had
massive numbers of tanks and artillery, their air force was seen as a
peer with the American air force, and their navy was capable and feared, even if
it didn’t have comparable numbers to the US navy. Russia’s military fiasco in Ukraine has proven
their tanks are outdated and poorly designed, their logistics vanish once they leave their rail
network, and their air force has been fragile enough that they don’t dare fly over Ukrainian
territory for fear of being shot down. The only two legs of their military that remain unbowed by
these defeats are its artillery, still numerous though notably inaccurate, and its nuclear
forces, which remain unused and still unproven. As of April 2023, the widely-respected
research organization Oryx has documented and confirmed an astounding 10,000 vehicles
losses by the Russian armed forces, including over 1900 main battle tanks – half of what it
reportedly had pre-invasion – along with 830 armored fighting vehicles, 2200 infantry fighting
vehicles, 800 pieces of artillery, 79 aircraft, 81 helicopters, and 12 surface vessels,
including the flagship of the Black Sea Fleet, the Slava-class guided missile cruiser Moskva.
This is in addition to an estimated 200,000 Russian military casualties, with anywhere
between 45,000 to 50,000 killed in action. These numbers are incredibly high
from just over a year of fighting, and are far greater even than what Russia suffered
in its ten-year losing war in Afghanistan. The losses are so high that in early 2023, Russia
began returning 75-year-old T54/55s into service, the equivalent of the US using Korean
War-era M-47s. The Russians also lost a reported 1500 officers, including
160 top-level generals and colonels, and it’s clear the once-feared Russian
military is a shell of its former self. Standing opposite the vastly depleted
and shaken Russian military is NATO, now more united and stronger than
at any time in its 74-year history. With Finland’s admission into NATO in
April of 2023 as its 31st signatory nation, the organization can now boast a combined troop
strength of just over 3.5 million soldiers, airmen and sailors. That includes,
however, the US and its 1.4 million strong standing army (not all of which will
be fighting in Europe), and Turkey’s 425,000 (not the most committed of NATO’s members). That
means the rest of NATO’s 29 members contribute only 1.7 million troops total. France, Germany,
the United Kingdom, Poland and Italy each have 160,000 or more active personnel, while other
countries have smaller forces to rely on. It must be stated, though, that NATO considers
itself a defensive organization. How involved they’d be beyond their own borders is anyone’s
guess. It’s important to note that the current war in Ukraine has shown that the NATO
members, mostly led by Poland and the US, are willing to supply lethal aid, from missiles
and artillery to tanks and fighter jets, to a non-signatory nation whose defense is of
a vital interest to the nearby NATO members. Since Russia launched the invasion in February
of 2022, NATO members have increased both their military budgets and pledged a greater
amount of military spending per capita. They’ve also benefited from sending Ukraine
their Soviet-era tanks and fighter jets, which have been replaced with upgraded models,
many of them being state-of-the-art models from other member nations, like the US F-35
stealth fighter and M1A2 Abrams tanks. NATO can also count on around 1500 Leopard 2's
and about 2500 M1 Abrams main battle tanks, the majority of which are M1A2's, with
the rest being the earlier M1A1's, with an additional 800 or so British Challenger
2's, and French Leclerc's and Ariete's. And while the numbers of aircraft on both the
NATO and Russian sides appear about equal, NATO forces employ more fourth- and
fifth-generation fighters like the F-35 and the improved and updated versions
of the F-16, while Russia is still reliant on more outdated MiG‑29s (introduced in
1982), MiG‑31s (introduced in 1981) and Su-27s (introduced in 1985). These three plane
types alone account for more than 750 of their total of 1100 available pre-invasion fighter
aircraft, a disproportionate number of outdated and non-modernized platforms. And as has been
seen in Ukraine, many of these aircraft have not been maintained sufficiently in order
for them to be combat-ready any time soon. It’s clear that a war between only the European
forces of NATO and the struggling military of Russia would be a one-sided affair. But how
would China fare against mostly US forces? The Opposing Forces in the Pacific China, it should be obvious, has not suffered
from an equivalent loss of military strength as Russia has over the past year. In
fact, the modernization and expansion of its military has been impressive, and has
caused its neighbors, like Japan, Australia, India and the Philippines, to increase their
own military expenditures. Yet China is still missing major components that will allow it to
go toe-to-toe with the US Navy. These missing elements suggest China would be better off
waiting at least five years, and possibly as much as ten years, before it initiates an
open military confrontation with the West. For example, the People’s Liberation Army Navy, the PLAN, currently operates twenty-five of
its modern 10,000-ton Type 052D destroyers, with its own version of the Aegis-type radar
system, along with eight of the more advanced 13,000-ton Type 055A destroyers, along
with six of the earlier 7,000-ton Type 052C ships. There are up to twelve additional
destroyers currently under construction. But while these ships are designed specifically
for missile and aircraft defenses, they have yet to deploy with the planned HQ-26 medium-range
ship-to-air missile system, which was based on the Russian 9K37 Buk, first developed in
1972. This new missile system is reportedly equivalent to the U.S. SM-3 missile used by
the Aegis ballistic missile defense system, and was expected to be able to engage
short- and medium-range ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and both manned and unmanned
aircraft out to 400 kilometers. However, this capability is expected to be implemented
around a year or two from first deployment, and will be even longer before it’s
deployed fleet-wide. Until then, China’s missile-defense destroyers like the
Type 052 and 055 will have to make do with the upgraded HQ-16B with a reported maximum range
of only 70 km, a system that dates from 2011. The biggest weakness in the PLAN, of
course, is its aircraft carrier fleet. They currently operate three carriers, the
oldest being a 1990s-era, Ukrainian-built, Russian-designed ship renamed the
Liaoning with its ski-jump ramp, which is also a staple of its second carrier,
the Type 002 Shandong. The Liaoning isn’t really considered a front-line carrier, and is
relegated to the role of a training carrier. It’s third carrier, the Fujian (currently
being fitted out), is equipped with advanced electromagnetic catapults, similar to those on
the US supercarrier USS Gerald R Ford (some say copied directly from it). But that means the
PLAN will have to train its carrier pilots on two types of takeoffs, and will need two
different types of carrier planes to operate on these carriers. Its current training model,
the JL-9G, a single-engine twin-seat aircraft first deployed in 2011, can’t be used to
duplicate emergency landings on any of its current carriers because it’s too weak to take
the continual pounding of carrier landings, and it’s too underpowered to immediately
take off in case of a missed landing. That leaves only simulated takeoffs and landings
on ground-based mockups. This inability to field a true carrier trainer has led to
a huge deficit in trained carrier pilots. This problem with the PLAN trainer is just
the opposite of its carrier combat aircraft, the J-15 Flying Shark, which was mocked by
Russia for trying to be a back-engineered version of an Su-33 prototype, the T-10K-3,
which they bought from Ukraine back in 2001. At a reported 17.5 tons, its upgraded version
is now thought to be the world's heaviest carrier-borne fighter; in comparison, the US
Navy’s F/A-18 weighs only 14.5 tons. The J-15 suffers from either having to carry less
than optimal fuel (giving it less range) or less armament (giving it less lethality), if it
intends to take off from the two ski-jump-equipped carriers. It has since been nicknamed “the
Flopping Fish” by the normally reserved Chinese press for its underwhelming performance.
China has begun deployment of the Chengdu J-20, somewhat comparable to the US F-22 stealth
fighter, and have produced around 200 of them. But this aircraft cannot be adapted to
carriers, and remains a standard land-based air superiority fighter. China hopes to make up
the difference in carrier forces with hypersonic missiles, though their reliability and
readiness is still under discussion. At present, there is speculation but
no confirmation that China is building a fourth carrier, though at least one
recent satellite image suggests that a fourth may be under construction.
But the PLAN doesn’t even have enough carrier pilots for its current two
front-line carriers, let alone a fourth. In comparison, the US currently operates
11 Carrier Strike Groups, each of which is comprised of one of its nuclear-propulsion
Nimitz or Ford-class supercarriers able to field 70 to 80 aircraft, one or two Ticonderoga-class
Aegis guided missile cruisers (for air defense and coordination), two LAMPS-capable warships
(focusing on anti-submarine and surface warfare), and two to three Arleigh Burke-class
guided missile destroyers. Each Strike Group is accompanied by assorted logistics
and support ships, and an undisclosed number of nuclear-powered attack submarines (usually one
or two) that coordinate with each Strike Group. The new Ford-class supercarriers currently
in use by the US Navy are undoubtedly the most powerful warships ever produced, with
one in service and four more planned or currently under construction to be delivered
between 2024 and 2034. There are literally no carrier groups of such lethality in any navy
in the world, though the British and French navies do have their own carrier battle
groups with somewhat comparable strengths. The US also deploys several Amphibious Ready
Groups, built around the Wasp-class amphibious assault ships (in essence a small carrier), which
can handle 6 fighters like the F-35 Lightning II, and up to 24 helicopters like the Cobra gunship
and the VF-22 Osprey transport vehicles. The Amphibious Ready Groups also include a
Landing Platform Dock ship (LPD) from the San Antonio-class, capable of deploying up to
600 troops and 14 amphibious assault vehicles, and a Landing Ship-Dock (LSD) like the Harpers
Ferry-class and the Whidbey Island-class landing ships, which can load and unload conventional
landing craft and helicopters. These Amphibious Ready Groups can also launch dozens
of autonomous drones like the X-47B. Normally two to three ARGs are forward deployed:
one in the Mediterranean Sea/ or the Persian Gulf–Indian Ocean region, and one or two in
the western Pacific Ocean area. Currently, one ARG is based out of Sasebo and Okinawa,
Japan. The ARGs are usually attached to a Carrier Strike Group, which provides protection
for them from both land- sea-based attacks. The US can also count on 26 Los
Angeles-class, 3 Seawolf-class, and 21 Virginia-class nuclear-powered attack
submarines, as well as dozens of ballistic missile submarines each with ICBM-capable launch tubes.
On the other hand, the PLAN operates 6 Shang-class nuclear submarines, and 40 older diesel
electric submarines of much lower capability. Many experts point to the PLAN’s superiority
in total numbers of ships over the US Navy, 340 to 300. But we must consider that the
PLAN’s numbers include 150 “patrol craft,” which are more equivalent to the US Coast Guard’s
cutters, designed for coastal engagements only, and not really capable of the kind of blue-water
combat that the main naval units would engage in. In addition, while the US Navy appears perfectly
capable of handling the current PLAN on its own, any shooting war will likely involve other
countries that are either wary of or outright opposed to Chinese naval power projection,
including Japan, South Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand
and India. Following continued efforts by China to claim the entire South China
Sea as their own personal swimming pool, each of these countries has begun
to beef up their own naval might. Japan, for instance, is building two of the
largest destroyers in the world. At 20,000 tons, they dwarf even the US’ 16,000-ton
Zumwalt destroyers. These will complement and support Japan’s two new Izumo
and Kaga carriers, converted from previous “helicopter destroyers,” and will operate the
F-35B Joint Strike Fighter. Once complete, the two carriers will be Japan’s
first since the Second World War. Along with Japan’s increasing naval might,
Australia has entered into a long-term agreement with the US and Great Britain to build a
fleet of state-of-the-art nuclear-powered attack submarines. India has also increased its
own naval strength, while the country is still aching from violent confrontations instigated
by China along its northern Himalayan border. China’s True Achilles Heel And that brings up the most crucial component
of any possible shooting war involving China: the fact that the country must import 70-75% of
all their oil and natural gas through a long naval route from the Baltic through the Atlantic and
past Africa, India and Indonesia. If the US or its Pacific allies wanted to interdict the flow of
petroleum to China—and such a lengthy supply chain would be impossible for China to protect—then
China would be looking at a three-month delay before its countrywide truck transport
system would shut down due to a lack of fuel, and six months before it ran out of the necessary
components for the production of fertilizers, which its farmers desperately need. Their
economy would collapse within a year and massive famine would break out, even if they
did manage to hold off the superior US Navy. This dramatic and inevitable failure of their
economy and the catastrophic famine that would follow might be the main reason why China
isn’t looking to launch a full-scale war anytime soon. Not only is it a heavy importer
of raw petroleum, it’s also the world’s largest importer of food. Between 2000 and 2020,
the country’s food self-sufficiency ratio decreased from 93.6 percent to 65.8 percent.
China’s leaders know that if it cannot win a war outright in a very short period of a few
months—and the vast capabilities of the US Navy, let alone its numerous Pacific allies,
suggests that this just isn’t a reliable possibility—then they are dooming their
country to losing their position as the second most powerful economy in the world,
with a disastrous famine soon to follow. The lessons of the Ukraine war are also a stark
reminder that a determine, well-equipped country, no matter how small, can resist an invader far
more easily with today’s advanced technological weapons. And while Ukraine has done a phenomenal
job in gaining that capability in a mere eight years since the first Russian invasion in 2014,
Taiwan has been preparing itself for a Chinese invasion for more than seventy years. They are
also a much more technologically capable nation, and have a large 80-mile moat of an ocean that
China would have to navigate in case of an invasion. This would not be the easy cross-border
incursion that Russia attempted and failed, but would require dozens of landing craft, easy
targets for missiles and waiting artillery. The Fragility of a Russia-China Alliance: In addition to the logistical problems of
overcoming the US Navy and the watery moat around Taiwan, China faces another hurdle: the
weakness of any long-term alliance with Russia, an alliance that would be merely a castle
built upon sand. Any full-scale war, short of a nuclear engagement, would find Russia’s
military virtually destroyed within the first few weeks of the conflict’s launch, leaving
China virtually alone. The Ukrainian invasion has spotlighted why Russia is nowhere near a
military peer to the US, China, or even NATO. As previously mentioned, the Russian armed
forces have lost over 10,000 military vehicles, including upwards of 1900 main battle
tanks, along with around 200,000 troops. The main reason they threaten the West so
often with nuclear weapons is because they know they’d never stand a chance against the combined
forces of NATO, which have more advanced equipment and better trained troops, and now might
actually hold a numerical advantage as well. There are multiple reasons for the failure
of the Russian military. First and foremost is the endemic corruption that riddles
every layer of the Russian government, including the military. There are
estimates that corruption has cost from 25% to 30% of Russia’s total annual
GDP. And the sanctions Russia has endured since the start of the war has caused a
massive drain of its remaining economy. Not only is Russia’s economy collapsing due to
the surprisingly efficient Western sanctions, but that smaller economy’s spending on
its military is actually much less than the projected numbers. The sanctions have also
shrunk the Russian economy to the size of Italy, and now puts it behind the individual
states of California, Texas or New York. Russia’s nominal $1.4 trillion GDP is miniscule
when compared to the EU’s combined economic strength of about $15.28 trillion. Add the
U.S. and EU GDPs together and you get about $35 trillion, more than 40 percent of the world
GDP. Russia will simply never be able to outspend the EU and its NATO counterpart,
much less the US and the EU combined. Second, Russia has never had a coherent NCO
training program. Russia has lost at least 150 officers of colonel rank and above
simply because their orders have to be passed almost directly from the leadership to the
front-line troops. The members of NATO, the US, and even China understand that the sergeants and
other NCOs have to have the independent authority to assess the war from the front lines,
and make immediate and effective changes in response. Russia has never had that level
of independence, which leads their military to dogmatic, inflexible attacks that usually
require masses of tanks, waves of infantry, and massive artillery bombardments, none of
which are effective in a modern battlefield environment that is overwatched by drones,
surveillance satellites and reconnaissance planes. Third, Russia has never had the ability to
manage their logistics at any distance from their rail network. The ignominious “40-mile-long
traffic jam” north of Kyiv from late February to March of 2022 was one glaring example of how
their military cannot perform the simple task of keeping their tanks and transports full
of fuel and moving. This lack of logistics has been further exacerbated by the introduction
of HIMARS long-range rocket artillery systems, which can hit targets over 50 miles away, and
newer smart ammunition including ground-launched small-diameter bombs (GLSDB) which can hit
targets 93 miles away. These have been used to great success by the Ukrainian forces against
Russian depots that have often been placed too close to the front, mostly due to their
lack of logistical transport capabilities. The Inherent Weakness of an Unequal Partnership There are additional signs that China is
aware of Russia’s much weaker role in any potential alliance, and has been capitalizing
on this inequality for some time now. At first, it was the Soviet Union that held a
predominant role in any bilateral negotiations, allowing them to often bully China into
accepting unequal agreements. Things got so bad that the two countries almost launched
a major war over a border dispute in 1969, one of several border disputes between
the two countries since the 1920s. But Russia eventually decided it was better to arm
the Chinese communist government, in order to have an ally against the West. China, however, decided
on its own it would be better to copy and/or steal whatever it could get, rather than pay the full
price for products coming from the Soviet Union. Starting in the 1990s, China has openly copied
and stolen Russian technology, leading at times to Russia having to swallow their pride as China
sold knock-offs of their own front-line equipment. For example, in 1996, China debuted
the J-11 aircraft, its first fighter made after the fall of the Soviet Union to
feature significant Russian input. At first, it was an officially licensed, Chinese-made
copy of the Russian Su-27 multirole fighter, whose sales were welcomed by the cash-poor
post-Soviet state. Before long, however, China canceled the agreement and began producing
the aircraft independently, eventually building over 400 unauthorized J-11s, equaling an economic
loss to the USSR of more than $10 billion. Russia continues to sell its best or
almost-best military gear to China, even though they know the technology
is likely to be copied, reducing what little technological superiority Russia still
maintains over China. This policy dilemma has been compounded by the post-Ukraine effect
on Russia’s struggling manufacturing sector, which has left the shrinking Russian
economy increasingly reliant on China’s much larger economic base, further eroding any
remaining compatibility in their relationship. More recently, President Xi has tried to
bring China to the forefront in worldwide diplomacy. So when the U.N. held a
vote to condemn the Russian invasion, China surprisingly abstained from the
141-5 vote to condemn the invasion, and in fact was a key leader of thirty-four
other countries who also abstained. This was the first time that China had a chance to publicly
support their “partner,” and they openly refused. This hand’s off approach demonstrates
China’s desire to maintain its currently neutral stance regarding the Ukraine war, in
hopes of trying to establish Beijing’s bid for global leadership. But they can’t do
that if they supply lethal aid to Russia, so they’ve refused to supply such support,
despite Putin’s pleas to the contrary. When Presidents Putin and Xi met in Russia in
March of 2023, Putin had hoped that Xi would offer a deal to create a direct pipeline between
the two countries, making China more reliant on Russian crude oil and natural gas, and giving
Russia a direct buyer for their primary export, but no such agreement was reached. Xi did say
publicly that China and Russia would continue “to resolutely uphold the fundamental norms of
international relations based on the purposes and principles of the U.N. Charter,” but that
statement blatantly ignores the illegality of Russian’s invasion in the first place, which
directly violates the Charter’s core precepts. Putin’s hopes for any concrete agreements for aid
and mutual development never materialized. The summit was summed up by historian Sergey
Radchenko with an old Chinese proverb, “Loud thunder but few raindrops.” He then
modified that statement as, “Scratch that: even the thunder wasn’t all that loud.” In fact, the Putin-Xi meetings actually
caused further support for Ukraine, as Japanese Prime Minister Kishida used the opportunity to make a surprise trip to
Ukraine to met with President Zelensky. Despite Xi’s efforts to lead China into a
role of a peacemaker and world negotiator, he still has to deal with the hawks in his own
government. On the heels of the Moscow summit, the Guangming Daily wrote an extensive
article, more of a semi-official position piece, declaring the four “no’s” that
China says they will not put up with: 1. The US should not make irresponsible remarks
on “normal exchanges between sovereign states.” 2. The US should not compare China-Russia
relations with the “small circle of US allies.” 3. The US should not undermine China’s efforts
to promote peace talks on the Ukraine issue. 4. The US should stop using the Ukraine crisis
as an excuse to attack and sanction China. Some of this rhetoric is no
doubt simply strong words, but they may also signal an effort to
lay the groundwork for China to ramp up its military support for Russia’s war,
though so far, there is no evidence of that. It Gets Worse for Russia In addition to everything else that bodes
ill for Russia, President Xi might not be willing to go all-in on supporting a leader
of Russia whose future appears very uncertain. Putin has been rumored to be in ill health
for years. He was filmed walking with a limp when he visited Crimea in March of 2023, and in
April, there were widespread reports that he had suffered from intense head pain, a numb tongue,
and blurred vision. There have been numerous indications he may be suffering from Parkinson’s
Disease, which manifests as an uncontrollable shaking in the extremities, primarily in
the hands and feet. And there are additional signs that he may be undergoing chemotherapy,
which can result in excessive weight gain. There are also signs that Putin has killed off
anyone near him that might pose a threat to his continued dominance of the Russian government.
Since just before the invasion of Ukraine, over forty of Russia’s top managers, businessmen
and high-level officials have died under unclear but very suspicious circumstances. Those deaths
include being found in apparent murder-suicides: Vladislav Avaev, Vice President of Gazprombank,
his pregnant wife and 13-year-old daughter were found dead in a Moscow apartment,
while a former top manager of Novatek, Sergei Protosenya, was found hanged at
his villa in Spain, with his wife and 18-year-old daughter also found murdered in
the house. And Pavel Pchelnikov, director of communications at Digital Logistics
LLC, a subsidiary of Russian Railways, supposedly shot himself at his home
in Moscow. The deaths have become so numerous that one media sources has given the
wave a name: “Sudden Russian Death Syndrome.” But by far and away, the most conspicuous means of
death has been the archaic mid-18th Century habit of defenestration, that is, falling out of a high
window. Ravil Maganov, Vice-President of Lukoil, fell out of one at the Central Clinical Hospital
of the Presidential Administration in Moscow, and in February 2023, Marina Yankina, head
of the financial department of the Defense Ministry was found dead after supposedly
falling from the 16th floor of her apartment. Even when a suspect is in government custody,
their lives aren’t safe. Most recently, Igor Shkurko, deputy general director of firm
Yakutskenergo, was discovered dead “of unknown causes” in his cell in a detention center
in Yakutsk, Siberia, on April 5th, 2023. The extremely high number of potentially
murdered rivals paints Russia in a bad light, an unstable dictatorship afraid of its own
best and brightest, while making enemies of its own nascent leadership. Couple
that with Putin’s rumored ill health, and it’s just one more reason why President
Xi may want to wait a year or two before cementing any permanent relationships with
whoever is in charge in Russia post-Ukraine. What will Russia and Ukraine do? China and Russia are in an unenviable position.
Both countries are seeing an inevitable shrinking of their populations, with China admitting
an over counting of its population during its last census by as much as 100 million. The
Pew research Center forecasts a decline from 1.4 billion people this year to 1.3 billion by 2050,
and a staggering reduction to below 800 million by 2100. That’s according to the UN’s “medium
variant,” or middle-of-the-road projection. Russia’s upside-down population pyramid is no
better: they’ve already experienced a massive brain drain as a repercussion from its Ukraine
fiasco, which was followed by as many as 400,000 young men who left to avoid the first
conscription callup in September of 2022. Combine that with an aging population, a
lower birthrate, and a decrease in life expectancy of 15 years since early 2022,
and Russia’s population is in freefall. Both of these troubled countries might believe,
then, that their only window to have enough young males to support a war is rapidly shrinking.
That leaves Putin and Xi with a difficult, if not impossible decision: launch a war now that they’re
not ready for and probably can’t win, or wait a few years, when their populations and economies
are even less capable of enduring such hardships. It’s an unenviable decision
for any leader to make. Want to get a glimpse into what a east
VS west nuclear war would look like? Check out I Survived 100 Days of World War
III, or click this other video instead!
