Putin - Biden talk, the lesson for China.
Putin demands guarantee that NATO stops eastwards expansion and no deployment of offensive weapons on Russia's border, or else.
Biden says if Russia invades Ukraine, the West will put unbearable economic sanctions on it.
not even threat of response in force! this is US's response to an invasion at NATO's doorsteps.
back to the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait, the US wants to change its ambiguous policy, it wants to use force explicitly.
lesson for China: act forcefully, and more forcefully in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait.
You are literally comparing apples to oranges here.
The sole reason Putin gets to be so gangster in Europe is because America wants to keep its focus on China on Asia. Because while Russia is an annoyance, only China is a true threat to the western world order these days.
Back during the Cold War, when the USSR was comparatively far stronger than Russia is today compared to NATO, what was NATO’s attitude towards Soviet war threats again? In contrast America was tying one hand behind its own back in Vietnam terrified of drawing China formally into the war if it took the fighting too close to the boarder.
Today the roles are reversed. If China started behaving like Russia, there is almost certainly going to be war with the US. That means China needs to be both certain that whatever it is that is at stake is both worth the cost, and that the Chinese military can actually win the fight.