We don’t like to say: “told you so!” and point triumphantly to our own prescience. But we do recall a little piece we penned not long after the war began(LSS 22 3 22) wherein we suggested the possibility that Russia would become a satellite to China. There’s an irony here. Whatever the rights and wrongs of the Russian and Ukrainian causes, the attempt to bolster the power of the Russian Federation ends in a total loss of political and economic independence!
It’s happened in the past to other powers, and not so long ago. In 1914 Britain was a proud and wholly independent empire. By 1945 it had been reduced to total economic and political subservience to the United States. While its true that the US bailed out the UK with war loans such as Lend Lease, the price extracted in terms of territories and commercial agreements was crippling. The final nail came in 1956 when Britain was stripped of its influence in the Middle East, and America scooped the pot of the world’s oil resources. The loss of the Singapore Naval Base in 1942 had already been the kiss of death for Britain’s eastern empire.
Which is why it is interesting to record eerie parallels with contemporary Russia. Both are from The Conversation. The first[1] by Martin Kaczmarski and Natasha Kurht explains how deep Russia’s dependence on Beijing has become. The second, by Basil Germond, suggests that the great naval base at Sevastopol, a jewel in the crown since Tsarist times, may now be abandoned. [2]
Putin has always hated western countries , and Britain in particular. How ironic if he has lead his own country down the same shameful path to loss of independence and junior status!
#china #russia #britain #united states #second world war #ukraine war
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