My latest piece for the Lowy Institute explores just some of the lessons that the government of Taiwan is learning from its observations of the war in Ukraine.
Russia, with the fall of Syria, is well and truly screwed - huge columns of Russian military vehicles and hardware are headed out of the country, and it's a good bet that a lot of it will be left behind - they don't have the shipping capacity to take it off - see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZ5aRVyjFXg from this Azerbaijani source. The loss of two Russian tankers in the Black Sea is also interesting - not sure which of lack of maintenance, bad loading procedure, or Ukrainian naval drones, or some combination, was the cause.And Putin's Federation may be in trouble, according to this Turkish source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-TCInR8SbM . The way things are going, Putin may not have much if any negotiating position left by January 20 - and I doubt that Trump is going to bail him out, "friendship" notwithstanding.
And China's financial position isn't great, there's a real debt - and demographic - problems there, so they could get overextended like has happened to Russia in Ukraine, and suffer the consequences...
Russia, with the fall of Syria, is well and truly screwed - huge columns of Russian military vehicles and hardware are headed out of the country, and it's a good bet that a lot of it will be left behind - they don't have the shipping capacity to take it off - see https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GZ5aRVyjFXg from this Azerbaijani source. The loss of two Russian tankers in the Black Sea is also interesting - not sure which of lack of maintenance, bad loading procedure, or Ukrainian naval drones, or some combination, was the cause.And Putin's Federation may be in trouble, according to this Turkish source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-TCInR8SbM . The way things are going, Putin may not have much if any negotiating position left by January 20 - and I doubt that Trump is going to bail him out, "friendship" notwithstanding.
As for Taiwan, they appear to be moving some - perhaps all - of their high-tech manufacturing plant to the US - https://www.tsmc.com/static/abouttsmcaz/index.htm - and the big reason China wants Taiwan is this technology, If it has "flown the coop", then the advantage to China may not be worth the trouble to gain it, political claims notwithstanding - and it's doubtful that the Taiwanese people - as indicated by their most recent election -https://www.csis.org/analysis/taiwans-2024-elections-results-and-implications - despite CCP interference - https://globaltaiwan.org/2024/01/a-preliminary-assessment-of-ccp-political-warfare-targeting-taiwans-2024-elections/
And China's financial position isn't great, there's a real debt - and demographic - problems there, so they could get overextended like has happened to Russia in Ukraine, and suffer the consequences...