After the Ukrainian and Taiwanese populations shook off their prior masters – the Soviet communists and Chiang Kai-shek’s anti-communist dictatorship – they made clear their preference for liberal self-government and economic and political integration into the West. Their democratic example in both regions is a cause of anxiety for the autocrats in Moscow and Beijing.
Moreover, the geopolitical claims of China and Russia extend beyond the immediate disputes to the entire regions – and globally. Both seek to upend the regional and international order led by the United States and its allies and partners. China’s reach over the entire South China Sea and its mineral and maritime resources bears remarkable resemblance to Imperial Japan’s Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere. And Putin, who has called the collapse of the Soviet Union “the greatest tragedy of the 20th century,” openly seeks to reconstitute the former republics of the Soviet empire under Moscow’s rule.
The Chinese and Russian claims are not only similar to each other; they disturbingly echo the paranoid rhetoric and aggressive actions of 1930s Japan and Germany. In Orwellian fashion, they accuse defensive Western responses to their aggressive behavior as itself constituting aggression against which they must further escalate their offensive actions. Up is down, black is white, as they demand absolute security against conjured dangers at the expense of everyone else’s absolute insecurity in the face of their very real threats.
Even more worrisome, Beijing and Moscow seem on the verge of expanding their coordination against the West to a greater degree than Berlin and Tokyo managed in the 1930s and 1940s.
