Russia And China Are Asserting Themselves On The World Stage

Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin

Michael Auslin, Wall Street Journal: This Is What Escalation Looks Like

Russia mobilizes in Syria while China militarizes the South China Sea, filling a power vacuum created by an absent America.

Vladimir Putin’s air forces are deliberately targeting U.S.-backed Syrian rebels. China is building islands in disputed waters in the South China Sea and militarizing them with airfields, ports and antiaircraft and radar sites. This is what escalation looks like. Either the Obama administration responds to the danger of aggressive powers undermining or directly attacking U.S. interests, or it will risk the erosion of America’s position abroad and invite conflict with Moscow and Beijing.

Escalation takes many forms. In the 1930s, Hitler nibbled and carved away parts of Central Europe for several years before invading Poland. The Japanese invaded Manchuria in 1931 and China proper in 1937 before deciding on a coordinated attack on Southeast Asia and Pearl Harbor. During the 1990s, al Qaeda escalated from bombing U.S. naval vessels and embassies to preparing for 9/11. What these cases have in common is that the great powers failed to deter the aggressors, emboldening them to ever larger actions.

WNU Editor: For the moment it is the big powers .... China and Russia .... who are now asserting themselves with the knowledge that the U.S. will do nothing. Where it will get tricky is when the smaller powers (i.e. North Korea) start to believe the same thing.