The Daily Signal - INTERVIEW | New Axis of Evil Rising on First Anniversary of Russia’s Invasion of Ukraine?

Episode Date: February 24, 2023

Friday, Feb. 24, marks one year since Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine, which has cost hundreds of thousands of lives. Ahead of the one-year anniversary, Russian President Vladimir Putin met Wednesday with China's top diplomat, Wang Yi. Dakota Wood, a senior research fellow in defense programs at The Heritage Foundation's Center for National Defense, says the visit wasn't that "out of the ordinary, in terms of the relations that exist between various powers." (The Daily Signal is the news outlet of The Heritage Foundation.) However, "the unusual part would be this very overt effort between China, [the] Chinese Communist Party, Xi Jinping, to work more closely and overtly, very explicitly with Vladimir Putin, Moscow, Russia as a whole," Wood says. "So, is it an alliance? I don't know that. ... It's an alliance in practice, as opposed to some kind of a formal alliance that we saw in World War I, World War II amongst Axis powers." Wood adds:  So, from the perspective of Moscow and Beijing, isn't it better to join forces in a sense such that together, operating in our own spheres, it causes more problems for the United States, who is increasingly unable to address two major competitors at the same time, keeping us off balance, dividing attention, and really putting a stressor on the resources we have available. Wood joins today's episode of "The Daily Signal Podcast" to discuss reporting that the U.S. is increasing its troop presence in Taiwan, lessons from the war in Ukraine, and the potential for China to supply Russia with weaponry.  Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

It's the Nissan Black Friday event where you can... Wait, wait. Isn't it like a month long now? Nissan Black Friday Month? Does that work? It's the Nissan Black Friday Month event. On remaining 2025 Rogan Centra, get 0% financing. Plus, get $1,000 Nissan bonus on kicks models.

This Black Friday, you've got a whole month to catch all the exclusive offers waiting for you. See your local Nissan dealer or nisson.ca for details. Conditions apply. The top diplomat visiting Putin, to be followed by, I believe it's Xi Jinping, himself, also traveling to Moscow, a very worrisome of, you know, developments from the perspective of the United States. This is the Daily Signal podcast for Friday, February 24. I'm Samantha Sherris. And that was Dakota Wood, a senior research fellow in defense programs here at the Heritage Foundation. Today marks one year since Russia invaded Ukraine, and this week China's top diplomat met with Russian President Vladimir Putin. The top diplomat reportedly said that China is willing to work with Russia to deepen mutual political trust,

strengthen strategic coordination, expand cooperation, and safeguard each other's interests. So, was this visit out of the ordinary? Is China planning to send Russia weaponry as the war in Ukraine continues on? Dakota and I discuss these questions and much more on today's episode. We'll get to my conversation with Dakota right after this. Hi, I'm John Carlo Canaparo. And I'm Zach Smith. And we host Scotus 101. It's a podcast where you'll get a breakdown of top cases in the highest court in the land.

Hear from some of the greatest legal minds. And of course, get a healthy dose of Supreme Court trivia. Want to listen? Find us wherever you get your podcasts or just head toheritage.org slash podcast. Dakota Wood is joining today's podcast. Dakota is a senior research fellow in defense programs here at the Heritage Foundation's Center for National Defense. Dakota, thanks so much for joining us again. Oh, what a hoot. This is going to be great. Thanks for having me on. Of course. Now, there has been a lot of news this week relating to China. And to kick us off,

I want to discuss some reporting that the U.S. is increasing its troop presence in Taiwan. The Wall Street Journal reports that between 100 and 200 troops will deploy to Taiwan over the next few months. And for more context, about 30 troops were there a year ago. Dakota, first and foremost, what is your reaction to this news? Not surprising. You know, these are not combat troops. It's not like we're beefing up our presence on Taiwan like we had in Germany, for example, during the Cold War. I mean, these truly are trainers and liaison types.

So if you sell another country, a new weapon. weapon system, you know, Taiwan's buying aircraft or an anti-ship cruise missile. Well, you could send it to them in a package, but how do they figure out how to use it, right? So we usually send personnel that can help train them up, not only on operating the system itself, but what's the care and feeding, you know, the maintenance that goes along with that contacts with the contractor who probably have technical representatives on the ground. You know, you get a bad error code or you don't quite know how to tighten the screw on the fitting or something like that, right? So this increase in personnel would be associated with the increases we're seeing in the discussion between the United States and Taiwan with the provision of more and more modern military equipment, right?

There's been that relationship of military support from U.S. to Taiwan for a very long time. And, you know, it's against the background of China's reaching out to Russia, a growing China-Russia alliance by default or de facto as opposed to a formal agreement. But, you know, Russia's ongoing war against Ukraine has had it looking for additional sources of supply. So China has made some noise about providing what they term and everybody calls a lethal aid as opposed to humanitarian aid. munitions, ammo, various types, missile systems, that sort of thing. So if you're in Taiwan and you're looking at that, this very muscular, aggressive China, the statements that Xi Jinping has been making about China's ambitions and look at all those things, and you look at your Taiwan, you look to your friends, very few in number, the United States

being the primary friend, they would like more military support and we're going to then provide the personnel that would be associated with those packages of support to help train and educate and act as a liaison. Well, someone who recently brought up the idea of arming Taiwan and really spoke to the threat that China poses to Taiwan with Senator Josh Hawley. He was just here last week at Heritage. And he spoke about this pressing threat from China. Specifically, he said, if China invades Taiwan, they would prevail.

Let me say that again. If China were to invade Taiwan today, they would prevail, which is why we are at an inflection point, a moment when we have to make some tough decisions. And I would just submit to you a moment for real change. What do you think of Senator Holley's assessment? I think it's accurate. The U.S. military today is roughly half the size it was during the Cold War. Some variations on that, but roughly half. So if we even look at the Navy alone, we've shrunk from the 1980s, 580 ships thereabouts to today, 295, 24 somewhere there.

It's going to drop to 280. In the Cold War, we kept about 100 ships deployed on a daily basis. Today, we still keep 100 ships. So how can you keep the same number of ships deployed with half the fours? Because you're working the ships twice as much and the crews twice as much. of those hundred maybe 60 or in the Indo-Pacific. So we would have 60 ships. How many are actually available in other places of the world to surge in that direction?

That it would take weeks to get there, not that many, you know, 40, 50, 60, something like that. The Chinese Navy today has 360. So a six-to-one advantage just in naval ships. And then you have China's shore-based anti-ship missiles, shore-based what we call maritime patrol aircraft, an airplane that can carry an anti-ship missile. And all that's right there on China. So our forces would be operating six or seven thousand miles from home. All of China's stuff is right there 100 miles away from Taiwan.

Okay. So their ability to generate military power and have it immediately useful in huge numbers in any kind of fight over Taiwan, that's China's advantage. The United States advantage is the closest base that we have are in Japan. Still kind of close, but the four sizes aren't significant. And there's Guam, Hawaii, ports in California, airfields in the western part of the United States, some stuff up in Alaska. See, if you just think about the geography involved, very hard for the United States to quickly flow substantial military power. and then to be able to sustain that with ammunition and fuel and repair parts and replacing combat losses.

So the numbers are heavily in favor of China. And so Senator Hawley is saying these things that if China decided to move today or tomorrow or whatever, just by numbers alone in geographic proximity, they would probably carry the day. And so this idea of being more forward-leaning in our support to Taiwan, making it very clear that we've got a commitment, if not a legal commitment. There's no treaty alliance, but we've certainly said things over the years to assure Taiwan that we would help to prevent a takeover by force from China. So I think he is raising a very clear, compelling and understandable argument for the dangers that loom. And it all goes back to how much are we doing in Ukraine, but you can't walk

because of the potential for a Russian win in Europe and the implications for a larger geostrategic interest in the United States. And so the big takeaway here is how much have we allowed our own military to atrophy and to shrink and what are the implications for the United States being able to secure its interests in many different parts of the world at the same time? Well, you just brought up the war, the ongoing war in Ukraine. And today is the one-year anniversary of that invasion by Russia into UK. Ukraine. And earlier this week, as, you know, as we saw the news that President Biden was meeting with

Zelensky, we saw that President Vladimir Pugin was meeting with China's top diplomat. And that diplomat, Wang Yi said, as NPR is reporting, that China is willing to work with Russia to deepen mutual political trust, strengthen strategic coordination, expand cooperation, and safeguard each other's interests. What's this visit out of the ordinary and should the U.S. be concerned? I don't know that it's out of the ordinary in terms of the relations that exist between various powers. They're always looking over their shoulder and kind of outside to say who might be able to challenging my interests or frustrating my attempts to grow those interests and to secure So the unusual part would be this very overt effort between China, Chinese Communist Party,

Xi Jinping to work more closely and overtly, very explicitly, with Vladimir Putin, you know, Moscow, you know, Russia as a whole. So is it an alliance? I don't know that it's an alliance in practice, right, as opposed to some kind of a formal alliance that we saw in World War I, World War II amongst access powers. But if we took the United States in its totality, easily overwhelms either a China or a Russia if you could get all your stuff where you wanted it to be at one time and be able to use it effectively. But if now you have two major competitors, Russia and China, and you throw in a problematic

country like Iran or North Korea with its nuclear inventory or just a problem. other issues in the world, you can't handle all those at the same time. And so from the perspective of Moscow and Beijing, isn't it better to kind of join forces in a sense, such that together operating in our own spheres, it causes more problems for the United States who was increasingly unable to address two major competitors at the same time, keeping us off balance, dividing attention, and really putting a stressor on the resources we have available. So these discussions back and forth, you know, China offering potential lethal aid, weapons, ammunition, et cetera, to Russia for its war in Ukraine, the top diplomat visiting Putin, to be followed by, I believe it's Xi Jinping himself, also traveling to Moscow, a very worrisome of, you know, development from the perspective of the United States and our friends and allies around the world. Yes, I'm so glad you brought that up because I had been reading some reports that Xi Jinping.

was, you know, potentially visiting Russia over the next couple of months. Obviously, from the U.S. perspective, not a very positive move, not a very reassuring move. He doesn't travel much. I mean, he doesn't make many trips out of the country. So for one of these few to be to Moscow, says a lot. Yes, it definitely does. And you've been talking about, you know, China's potential arms transfer to Russia. and I just want to get your thoughts and pick your brain on this.

Obviously, we've been talking about how today is the one-year anniversary of Russia's invasion. And if China were to supply Russia with weaponry, what would that mean for this war that unfortunately doesn't seem to be ending anytime soon and also for the world? Yeah. So it's a year ago, right? If you looked at the inventories on both sides of the battle, Russia and Ukraine, Russia had four to five times as much equipment and, you know, it's old Cold War stocks of munitions. I mean, it's just dramatically outnumbered Ukraine. In the initial weeks and few months, badly handled its offensive

operation, just a lot of very stupid things tactically wasted a lot of ammo. And Ukrainians, you talk about a heroic defense, really outshone any expectations that they would be able to put up a fight, right? So they did what they did. did with their own material equipment, willingness to fight, all those sorts of things, right? Their ability to sustain that fight was only made possible because of the sustained support from the West. So once they used up all of their own organic ammunition and their initial set of tanks and those sorts of things was blown up to be able to replace that stuff, you know, in quantity and

improved quality has made it possible for Ukraine to do what it has done up to this point in time. So Russia has also been consuming Cold War supplies, and it has been also reaching out to other sources. So it's gone to North Korea. There's been conversations with Iran. Iran is widely known to have been providing Russia with the unmanned aerial vehicles, you know, the UAVs or drones that have been used against Ukraine. So now if China, to see, to open up its inventory of artillery and short and long-range rockets and all the other things that it could provide, like we have been supporting Ukraine with, right? It just enhances Russia's ability to continue this assault on Ukraine.

And nobody is providing Ukraine bodies, you know, in terms of NATO forces, and nobody is even proposing to do that. But what that means is Russia's limited population. how long can they tolerate continued battlefield losses? If support from the West in terms of ammunition and equipment, that kind of stuff, if that starts to dry up, because of the reduction to worry some levels in Western inventories for ourselves, what does that mean for their ability to sustain the fight, right? So this promise or the potential for Chinese support to Russia gives Russia a huge lifeline

to continue a level of fighting that just, just cannot be matched by Ukraine unless it continues to receive similar types of support from the West. Oh, gosh. What a mess. It's a mess. Yeah. Oh, my gosh.

And, I mean, we now have, I mean, we've, you know, a year with this war in Ukraine, this pressing threat from China, potential invasion into Taiwan. And, you know, if, Josh, if Senator Hawley is correct, they would prevail in intaking Taiwan. Are there any lessons that we could learn from the last year and the fighting that's been going on in Ukraine that could translate to a potential invasion of Taiwan? Yeah, so I think in two ways. There are positive lessons at the cost of Ukrainian blood. The West should be taken from this. But there are also insights or lessons or what have you that China can be taking.

That if Russia wins in Ukraine, then it's a validation of the idea. that you can use military force to take what you want, right? In spite of the threat of sanctions or becoming diplomatically a pariah state or what have you, right? All that stuff has been levied on Russia. Putin doesn't care. He's in a land grab. He's used this Ukrainian territory as rightfully Russian, part of Russia. And so he's expanding these frontiers for that primary objective.

Similarly, in China, China have used Taiwan as rightfully. rightfully Chinese, and it wants to bring this renegade province back under Beijing's control. So if it works for Russia and Europe, you know, right there up against NATO allies of the United States, right? Why couldn't it work for China against Taiwan when all of Taiwan's supporters, very few and number are so far away, right? You would think that the problem set for China is that much easier. So much of the world is economically dependent on trade with China. Who in the world did any trade at all with Russia, right? So China could, their takeaway could be this is very doable.

We probably want to do it sooner than later because as everybody wakes up to the reality of war and they start to rearm like Japan is just beginning to do, that will take years to make material changes in the Japanese self-defense force and other countries in that region. So instead of waiting until their potential opponents are ready for it, this incentivizes China to move more quickly. The positive lessons for the United States is, in spite of all the rhetoric before the invasion in Ukraine, you know, modern countries would never go to war with each other. There's too much to be lost economically. You remember those arguments, right? And yet war occurred. So it seems that large-scale conventional war that kills thousands of people and destroys countries,

is still a feature of 21st century geopolitics. Yes. And I think we have largely forgotten that in the West. This is a brutal reminder that it still is the case, and it could also be a case in the Indo-Pacific, with China's move against Taiwan. So we just can't dismiss that as some artifact of a bygone era. Yeah, that is such a great point.

And really, you know, just a reminder, like what we've been talking about is it's not out of the purview. It's completely possible. And just before we go, Dakota, I wanted to ask about what we're hearing from the White House and if there's been any response from them ahead of, you know, leading up this week to the one-year anniversary of Russia's invasion and this pressing threat from China. Well, the rhetoric is always pretty good because it's easy to craft a speech that says all the right things, right? where the breakdown occurs is, do you see actions that correspond to the words that follow up fairly quickly?

So President Biden in his speech in Kiev and in his speech in Warsaw, and even statements coming in the White House, would talk about our ironclad guarantee that we would defend every square inch of NATO. Okay. I mean, who hasn't said that in the past? NATO country hasn't been attacked yet. So it's easy to make that promise. if Article 5 of the North Atlantic Tweed Organization paper, you know, that tree document was invoked so that if one NATO member is attacked, all NATO members are attacked.

But Article 5, if you actually get into it, it doesn't dictate how other member states would respond to that. It doesn't guarantee or obligate a military response. You could just say, well, we're going to cut off diplomatic relations or impose tariffs or sanctions or something like that. So the words sound good. It's like the words of assurance to Taiwan and finger wagging at China, you know, to say, you better not move against Taiwan because the United States will stand fast with its friends, right?

Okay. I mean, I buy that rhetoric. I want to hear those sorts of things. But what is the material action behind the scenes? Have we seen a dramatic shift in forces to the Indo-Pacific? that we've seen a dramatic expansion in the defense budget to get more ships and aircraft which should be needed. Are there large investments in munitions manufacturing to replace what we've given to Taiwan and build the inventory that you would probably need in a war with China, right?

So until we see actions that follow the rhetoric, I think we still have to question the sincerity of the White House. Well, Dakota, thank you so much for joining us today. I wish we had happier topics to discuss. Well, I appreciate your insight and your willingness to come on and talk about this. Definitely scary times that we're living and terrifying, I'd say. I appreciate it. And hopefully next time you join, we'll have some better news to talk about. Thank you so much.

Thanks for having me on. God bless. And that'll do it for today's episode. Thank you for listening to my interview with Dakota Wood. If you haven't gotten a chance, make sure you subscribe to the Daily Signal. wherever you get your podcast and help us reach even more listeners by leaving a five-star reading and review. We read and appreciate all of your feedback. Thanks again for listening. Have a great day and we'll be back with you all this afternoon for top news.

The Daily Signal podcast is brought to by more than half a million members of the Heritage Foundation. Executive producers are Rob Louis and Kate Trinko. Producers are Virginia Allen and Samantha Asheras. Sound designed by Lauren Evans, Mark Geinney, and John Pop. To learn more, please visit DailySignal.com.