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All the effects of the war in Ukraine for the USA, China, India, Israel and Turkey

All the effects of the war in Ukraine for the USA, China, India, Israel and Turkey

How the world revolves around Ukraine. Role and expectations of the USA, China, India, Israel and Turkey. The point of Gianmarco Volpe, the global desk chief of Agenzia Nova

Joe Biden has a problem in Washington : midterm elections are in November, and the Democrats are almost likely to lose control of Congress. On the Ukrainian crisis, the White House has so far had the merit of coordinating every move with the Europeans (it was not to be taken for granted, given the precedents) and this has contributed to making the Atlantic Alliance more cohesive than, perhaps, it has ever been. On the other hand, of course, Biden did not take the opportunity to shake off the image of a weak leader. Ahead of the November vote, the Republicans will attack him and try to force the president's hand into adopting an even more assertive stance towards Russia. There is a though. The republican front, even in terms of war in Ukraine, is anything but compact: the Trumpian base has irrepressible Putinian sympathies and marked isolationist tendencies (follow Tucker Carlson, host of Fox News, for explanations); Conservative leaders in Congress play the hawks instead (Lindsey Graham, who is also a great friend and confounder of Trump, quietly suggested that the Russians kill Putin). Biden will probably decide to adopt new sanctions against Russia, trying to keep the risk of an escalation at acceptable levels. But he will not be the one to bear the burden of a diplomatic initiative.

In Beijing, Xi Jinping has a dilemma. He too has an important appointment in the fall, the twentieth congress of the Communist Party, on the occasion of which he will become the only Chinese leader to whom he has been entrusted with the post of general secretary for three terms. It is unlikely to attack Taiwan before that time. Instead of pushing China to action, as many observers have suggested, the conflict in Ukraine is encouraging Xi to be more cautious. The Chinese president will not have failed to record the very harsh Western sanctioning response against Putin, perhaps so harsh because it contains a message for Beijing. Nor will he have escaped the resistance of the Ukrainians on the ground, the same that in a much more complicated tactical context could be encountered by the invading Chinese army in Taiwan. In short, landing on the island will take time and it will not be possible to repeat the logistical errors and the underestimation of the enemy committed by the Russians. It is a time that Tsai Ing-wen will use to continue arming Taiwan to the teeth. Everyone in Taipei knows that sooner or later the Chinese will arrive, and when they do, they won't be able to throw candy at them.

Narendra Modi is in a very uncomfortable position in New Delhi. Rivalry and border problems with China have pushed India, in recent years, ever closer to the United States. And yet the country has always had privileged economic and military relations with Russia: this is why it did not explicitly condemn the invasion of Ukraine, did not join the international sanctioning campaign and abstained from the UN General Assembly. Modi is receiving strong pressure from Biden to take a clear position and will certainly have noticed how the political balance in his region is rapidly changing (the colleague of rival Pakistan Imran Khan, a great friend of China, was received in the Kremlin by Putin on the day of the invasion). But, perhaps, he wants to take advantage of his very particular position (he is the only important partner of the US to remain neutral) to propose his own mediation. The Indian premier needs a success in foreign policy to recover consensus after the disaster combined with Covid-19, but his intervention for now is political fiction.

In Jerusalem, Naftali Bennett has serious credentials to mediate. On Saturday he was in Moscow , previously he spoke with Scholz. Israel has historical, religious and cultural links with the Jewish communities of Russia and Ukraine. He also collaborated with Moscow in complex situations (such as in Syria, where the Russians were on the same side of the Lebanese Hezbollah movement that was instead bombed by the Jewish state) and wants to prevent the conflict from going as far as Odessa, where about 30,000 Jews live. (they were 200 thousand before the Second World War). Bennett is a leader of the religious right, these are matters to which his electorate pays particular attention. However, timing plays against the Israeli premier: is it possible that Putin is already ready to sit down – seriously – at the negotiating table? If so, it would mean that Russia views the Ukrainian campaign as an already lost cause. I'm afraid it's soon.

In Ankara, a separate chapter for the position of Recepire Tayyip Erdogan, the most acrobatic of all. Erdogan talks to Putin, blocks Russian ships in the Bosphorus, sells drones to Ukrainians but (unique among NATO leaders) does not join the sanctions against Russia. A mess. The Turkish president is an isolated leader and in extreme difficulty, the Turkish lira is falling almost as much as the ruble, inflation is galloping and next year there are elections. It is reasonable that, once the thrust of military action in Syria is exhausted, Erdogan wants to take advantage of a conflict on the other side of the Black Sea to become a protagonist again. But Turkey is hardly a disinterested spectator, and its leader does not have the international credibility to attempt meaningful diplomatic action.

(Extract from a post published on Gianmarco Volpe's Facebook page )


This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/primo-piano/tutti-gli-effetti-della-guerra-in-ucraina-per-usa-cina-india-israele-e-turchia/ on Sun, 06 Mar 2022 11:23:33 +0000.