President Joe Biden will hold a secure video call with Russian President Vladimir Putin December 7 against the backdrop of a menacing Russian military build-up near Ukraine. U.S. intelligence believes the Russians may amass 175,000 troops near its western neighbor early in 2022.

Does Putin intend to invade Ukraine? He could be bluffing. In April, the Russian army deployed a large force near Ukraine but did not act. On the other hand, given the scale of ongoing military preparations and the hostile rhetoric pouring out of Moscow, Putin may mean it this time.

It is also possible that Putin has not yet made a decision. He likes options and might hope the threat of force will secure concessions from Kyiv toward settling the simmering conflict in Donbas in eastern Ukraine on Moscow’s terms. In any case, the Biden-Putin conversation may offer one of the last best chances to affect Kremlin calculations of the costs of an assault on Ukraine.

Biden has said he would make it “very, very difficult” for Putin to attack. He should lay out the potential costs to ensure his Russian counterpart fully understands what would follow a Russian invasion. Those costs are substantial:

• A West-Russia freeze. Small positive developments in the U.S.-Russia relationship have occurred since Biden and Putin met in June in Geneva, including a broadening of diplomatic contacts and a strategic stability dialogue that both sides report as constructive. Nothing would kill those prospects more quickly than a Russian invasion of its neighbor. The same is true of relations with other Western countries; Putin should anticipate pariah status.
• New sanctions. Biden should explain that military action would trigger new Western sanctions targeting Russian state-owned enterprises, bans on holding Russian state debt, and visa bans and asset freezes on individuals and their families (let Russian oligarchs explain to their spouses why they cannot make their annual shopping trip to London). Even expulsion from the SWIFT international payment mechanism could be on the table. Biden should add that, if Germany and the European Union do not shut down the Nord Stream 2 pipeline project, he would not waive U.S. sanctions as he did in May, and that he would work with European countries in a concerted effort to expand their access to alternatives to Russian energy.
• Bolstering NATO’s defenses. Following Russia’s seizure of Crimea in 2014, NATO deployed battlegroups to Poland and each of the Baltic states. Biden should remind Putin that each battlegroup numbers less than 1,500 soldiers and that NATO still abides by its 1997 assurance that it would not permanently deploy substantial combat forces on the territory of new members. However, if the Russian military assaults Ukraine, then the Baltic states, Poland, and others in Central and Eastern Europe will request more NATO military power and infrastructure on their territory — and Biden would consider such requests sympathetically.
• Military assistance. Biden should note that individual NATO members have exercised restraint in the kinds and amount of assistance and equipment they have provided Ukraine’s military. That could change.
• A potential military quagmire. Lastly, some in Moscow apparently believe the Russian army would be welcomed in Ukraine. Biden should note that the Ukrainians will fight and, even if losing, would extract a price from Russia. He might recall the experiences of the Soviet Union and United States in Afghanistan: getting in proved relatively easy; the real casualties and costs came later.

Biden should also tell Putin that Washington is prepared to engage more actively on diplomacy. He should offer to join the German and French leaders in the Normandy format process aimed at mediating a resolution between Russia and Ukraine. He should also reaffirm the U.S. position supporting the Minsk agreements.

Biden might offer two qualifiers regarding Minsk. First, all parties must implement the agreements, including Russia. Second, U.S. support does not mean acceptance of Russia’s desired interpretation of undefined Minsk provisions. For example, “special status” for Donbas should not include the right to veto national-level policies.

Questions about Europe’s security architecture and how Ukraine and Russia fit in underlie the Russia-Ukraine conflict. Biden should offer Putin a discussion on those issues, while noting that they cannot solve the questions over the heads of the Europeans. The Ukrainians, in particular, need to be at the table.

Biden can tell Putin there is no enthusiasm within NATO for putting Kyiv on a membership track now. But the alliance will not reverse its “open door” policy. Doing so would require consensus, and not many members — let alone all 30 — would agree to such a reversal. “Not now but not never” for Ukraine would defuse the question by kicking it down the road. If Russia genuinely worked with the United States and NATO members to mitigate the tensions that now divide Europe, its relationship with the alliance could well change.

Biden can also tell Putin that he would be ready to take due account of legitimate Russian security interests. For example, Putin expressed concern about deployment in Ukraine of U.S. missiles that could strike Moscow.  Biden can tell Putin that, in the right context, Washington would assure Moscow that it would not deploy offensive missiles on Ukrainian territory.

The U.S. president should aim to leave Putin with an understanding that military action would have painful costs for Russia but that U.S. diplomacy is prepared to engage more actively to resolve the problems at the root of the crisis. That just might help stop a war.

Originally for Brookings

The Walter H. Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center (APARC), Stanford University’s hub for interdisciplinary research, education, and engagement on contemporary Asia, invites nominations for the 2022 Shorenstein Journalism Award. The award recognizes outstanding journalists who have spent their careers helping audiences worldwide understand the complexities of the Asia-Pacific region. The 2022 award will honor a recipient whose work has primarily appeared in American news media. APARC invites 2022 award nomination submissions from news editors, publishers, scholars, journalism associations, and entities focused on researching and interpreting the Asia-Pacific region.  Submissions are due by Tuesday, February 15, 2022.

Sponsored by APARC, the award carries a cash prize of US $10,000. It alternates between recipients whose work has primarily appeared in Asian news media and those whose work has primarily appeared in American news media. The 2022 award will recognize a recipient from the latter category. For the purpose of the award, the Asia-Pacific region is defined broadly to include Northeast, Southeast, South, and Central Asia and Australasia. Both individual journalists with a considerable body of work and journalism organizations are eligible for the award. Nominees’ work may be in traditional forms of print or broadcast journalism and/or in new forms of multimedia journalism. The Award Selection Committee, whose members are experts in journalism and Asia research and policy, presides over the judging of nominees and is responsible for the selection of honorees.

An annual tradition since 2002, the award honors the legacy of APARC benefactor, Mr. Walter H. Shorenstein, and his twin passions for promoting excellence in journalism and understanding of Asia. Over the course of its history, the award has recognized world-class journalists who push the boundaries of coverage of the Asia-Pacific region and help advance mutual understanding between audiences in the United States and their Asian counterparts. Recent honorees include Burmese journalist and human rights defender Swe Win; former Wall Street Journal investigative reporter Tom Wright; the internationally esteemed champion of press freedom Maria Ressa, CEO and executive editor of the Philippine news platform Rappler and winner of the 2021 Nobel Peace Prize; former Washington Post Beijing and Tokyo bureau chief Anna Fifield; and Editor of the Wire Siddharth Varadarajan.

Award nominations are accepted electronically through Tuesday, February 15, 2022, at 11:59 PM PST. For information about the nomination procedures and to submit a nomination please visit the award nomination entry page. The Center will announce the winner by April 2022 and present the award at a public ceremony at Stanford in the autumn quarter of 2022.

Please direct all inquiries to aparc-communications@stanford.edu.

Click here for a transcript of “We Need To Rethink Our Assumptions about China’s Strategic Goals”

Where China Was in the 1990s

Twenty years ago, the Chinese-Taiwan invasion plan was to take a couple of fishing vessels and paddle their way across the strait. In the 1990s, China had very limited, and often no ability to fly over water, or at night, or in weather, and their ships had no defenses.

For many, many years we knew that China was willing to fight if Taiwan declared independence. Fighting a war in any country that is big and resolved is problematic. But it was never the case that the United States was going to lose that war; it was always a matter of, “How many days?” How many days is it going to take us to win?

Where China Is Now

In the intervening years, China's military has changed both quantitatively and qualitatively. Now they have the largest navy in the world, and those ships are some of the most advanced surface ships that can be comparable to those of the United States. Same with their fighters; they have fifth generation airplanes and the largest airforce in the region. They’ve put all these capabilities online, and at the same time, they [have also] started developing capabilities to reach out and touch the United States with.

They developed the capability to hit moving ships at sea, which is something the United States doesn’t have the capability to do. They have a huge cruise and ballistic missile program that basically can take out a U.S. base like Kadena  in the region in a matter of hours, should they ever be willing to make a direct hit on the U.S.

This doesn't mean that China is more powerful than the United States; China still can’t project power outside the Indo-Pacific region, and even there it’s mostly through space, cyber, and nuclear weapons. But most of the contingencies we're talking about are really close to China, so it doesn’t really matter that they can’t project power. So, on the conventional side, I’m very concerned.

Why Taiwan Matters

The whole goal of the Communist Party, since its founding in 1949, has been to resolve this Taiwan issue.

Now they have the ships, the aircraft, and they’ve reorganized their whole military so that they can do joint operations, so that the navy and the air force can do an invasion of Taiwan. And a lot of those efforts came to a successful conclusion at the end of 2020. And that's why people like myself, not because of  the capabilities, but because when I was in Beijing and talked to the Chinese military and government officials, they said, “We could do this now, and maybe we should think about it.”

We know from behavioral economics that countries and people are much more willing to take risks to not lose something that they think is theirs, versus when they are trying to get something which they don't think is theirs. In the Chinese mindset, Taiwan, the South China Sea, East China Sea, etc. is already theirs, and the United States is trying to take it from them. That makes the situation even more problematic. 

What the United States Should Do

The Biden administration is doing a lot of political maneuvering to show that the United States is willing to defend Taiwan. And I think it’s just upsetting Beijing, because they think we’re changing the political status quo. It also does nothing to enhance our deterrence, because it doesn't signal anything about our capability to defend Taiwan.

The Chinese basically assume the United States will intervene. Their big question is, can they still win? We need to show China that they cannot win, and that’s about showing out capabilities in the region. It’s about aggressively negotiating new host arrangements, more access for the U.S. military, and new international institutions and treaties that constrain the ways China leverages power.

I'm a military person, but I'm totally on board with leading with diplomacy. But I don't see those types of efforts coming out of the Biden administration. They seem to want to double down and do the same things, just with more allies and partners.  I'm supportive of it, but I just don't think it's enough.

On October 21, 2021, the APARC China Program had the opportunity to host Peter Martin, Defense Policy and Intelligence Reporter for Bloomberg News, for a program on Chinese displomacy. In honor of his recently released book, China's Civilian Army: The Making of Wolf Warrior Diplomacy, Mr. Martin gave us a deep dive into the origins of this contentious diplomatic style and what it tells us about domestic politics in China. The panel was moderated by Professor Jean Oi, William Haas Professor of Chinese Politics and director of the APARC China Program.

As many who follow Chinese politics will be aware, Chinese diplomacy in the past several years has become increasingly assertive and its diplomats have used sharper language. Based on Chinese action movies of the same name, this pointed style of communication has earned these diplomats the title "wolf warriors." Some of the more stand-out examples of wolf warrior diplomacy include China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Zhao Lijian's claim that COVID-19 was actually created by the United States, or the uncomfortable exchange between American and Chinese diplomats at the US-China Alaska summit in March, 2021.

In this program, Mr. Martin traced the roots of China's approach to diplomacy back to the communist revolution of 1949 and told the story of how it has evolved through social upheaval, famine, capitalist reforms, and China's rise to superpower status. His book draws on dozens of interviews and--for the first time--on the memoirs of more than 100 retired Chinese diplomats. The program was followed by a robust Q&A session between Mr. Martin and the audience. Watch now: 

For more information about China's Civilian Army: The Making of Wolf Warrior Diplomacy or to purchase a copy, please click here.

Watch on Sky News Australia

Thousands of refugees and migrants became pawns at the border between Belarus and Poland in recent weeks. Many had flown to Belarus anticipating a route into the European Union but couldn’t proceed farther because of Poland’s hard-line policies barring them entry. A number of stranded migrants died of cold and a lack of access to food and health care.

Read the rest at Monkey Cage