But China is the one with all the leverage here. Both India and China have benefitted massively from increased trade and cheaper commodity from Russia. Are you saying that Russia is blackmailing China into sending it arms because it is unable to win a conventional conflict with its Neighbour? China has made its stance quite clear IMO, they champion win-win partnership between great power and its Neighbours, not imperialistic land grabs using military might. Even though they support Russia's need for secure borders, they do not necessarily condone its military adventures.
It’s naive to view great power relationships like human relationships and also to view nations as either completely good or completely bad, nor would one nation ever have all the power while the other have none. It’s an everlasting series of deals that change all the time based on balances of power, external factors and internal political needs etc.
While China in the past has indeed championed the notion of win-win solitons with the west, the west has hardly been reciprocal to those overtures. It is frankly bizarre to expect to hold China to its earlier offer when the west has outright rejected that offer and has been relentlessly hostile to China ever since.
The EU has made it abundantly clear that it is an American sock puppet that will gladly sacrifice European self interest to advance American interests. So what kind of prized idiots do you think the Chinese to be to worry about European interests when the European leaders themselves don’t even care?
Make no mistake about it, there is zero daylight between Russia and China in their shared opinion that NATO is an enemy to them, NATO itself declares it openly. The only difference in opinion is how to counter it and who pays what price.
China wants to minimise the diplomatic and economic costs it faces in supporting Russia, while Russia wants to minimise their military losses. Both understands and respects the other’s position, so it’s a constant balancing act between them. The west allowing Ukraine, or more precisely, themselves directly attacking deep into Russia (since those long range NATO weapons cannot be used without direct input by NATO personnel) changes the equation. Russia announcing changes to its nuclear doctrine further changes that equation. Thus China will need to make adjustments to its level of support to re-establish the balance. That’s just how the game works. There is no blackmail. If the Chinese are pissed with anyone for forcing their hand, it sure as shit won’t be the Russians.
So we agree that incinerating cities full of civilians are not an act that should be conducted by non-imperialistic powers? Good.
What silliness is this? Are you saying if NATO glasses Chinese cities China can’t retaliate in kind as it needs to prove itself? Don’t be naive.
As I alluded to before, morality doesn’t apply in the same way to nations as it does people. If there is strong enough case for it, China will absolutely glass cities if it needs to. It would be worse than pointless to even have nuclear weapons if you are not prepared to use them when needed. If you cannot ever see yourself ever using nukes under any circumstance, don’t get nukes. Because that makes it incredibly unlikely that you will get nuked (but you can never totally remove that possibility since America has already set the precedent of nuking non-nuclear states). If you get nukes but aren’t prepared to use them, then all that does is needlessly and massively increase the chances of your cities getting nuked.
