You should not laugh at what this think tank is writing. I posted a link on the War on Ukraine thread with a PDF from another think tank which also made similar claims. Except they go into way more detail i.e. describing how to actually achieve that. And they also described how the US fomented this conflict. These guys really want to break up Russia, using Ukraine as a pretext.
The US instigating instability and conflict among its competitors, with the ultimate goal of divide and rule, is a given. This is how the game is played and what the British Empire was famous for - the US being the flag carrier for that empire and being far more powerful, internally, due to the land it stole from Native Americans.
The better question is, what are the target countries going to do about it? Putin's move was almost certainly the wrong one, and demonstrated an acute misunderstanding of facts on the ground, where he presumed that Ukraine could be taken / decapitated in two weeks, yet the war has now been going on for a year, with no signs of stopping. If the ultimate result is Russian defeat, it would not be an exaggeration to say that Russia would be at the mercy of NATO and that the blame would mostly be its own for not being able to correctly play the game.
The same situation faces China. If China cannot address its internal and external challenges, then any collapse - instigated by the West and its allies, or not - will still be its own fault. This is because we should expect foreign powers to be hostile. The world isn't "nice," despite liberal propaganda, and it's never been particularly "moral." So relying on it to be has always been a naive, irresponsible move - more fit for student protestors in Hong Kong, than for professional states men.
The price of defeat has always been high, so why are you surprised that the West wants to break up Russia? That's what they
should want. Because Russia is a geopolitical obstacle and given the opportunity, you remove your obstacles. Same with China, Iran, Cuba, North Korea, Iraq, etc. The West did not become supreme by being nice to other countries.
So rather than assume that other countries are friendly, and then be surprised when they aren't, we should assume that they are hostile, and that any weakness shown will be exploited to its maximum. When you play the game of geopolitics, you either win and do as you please, or you lose and suffer as you must. If China wants to avoid the latter, then it better be ready to wage an "all of society" war against the West, and win. Nothing less will do.
