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Considering how much of current American culture war debates revolve around national identity, sovereignty, and international influence, it makes me wonder: are conflicts like Russia’s move into Ukraine and China’s posture towards Taiwan fundamentally rooted in the same security dilemma, rather than pure expansionism?
I’ve been thinking about the deeper drivers behind Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and China’s stance on Taiwan.
For Russia, Ukraine joining NATO would have meant that a major military alliance would sit directly on its border, severely shrinking Russia’s strategic buffer zone. Similarly, for China, the growing U.S. military presence around Taiwan raises a direct security concern.
Since U.S.-China relations have deteriorated, there has been increasing discussion about the possibility of the U.S. deploying missiles or even establishing a permanent military presence in Taiwan. Given Taiwan’s geographic position, major Chinese cities like Fuzhou, Xiamen, and even Shanghai would fall within the range of intermediate-range missiles.
This makes the Taiwan issue not purely about nationalism or ideology, but also about very tangible security calculations.
In 2024, U.S. defense reports indicated a rising focus on “hardening Taiwan” against potential Chinese action（https://media.defense.gov/2024/Jan/19/2003375866/-1/-1/1/2024-NDS.PDF”
China has repeatedly emphasized that foreign military deployments in Taiwan would cross a “red line”（https://www.reuters.com/world/china/china-says-us-should-stop-official-exchanges-with-taiwan-2024-03-05/）
That's the wrong framing. "Realist" defense concerns play little role in Russia, otherwise it wouldn't have emptied its borders with NATO to feed the grinder in Ukraine. There've been a gish-gallop of contradictory reasons how x or y impact and threaten Russia's security posture, but they are trivially rejected when looking at Russia's actions and the arguments in totality. Rather, for both Russia, this is a question of self identity:
The standard Russian self-image includes Ukraine, where the reformers (1654) and leaders of the church for most recent history, where the first educators, language reformers, where your ancestors (1000 years ago and 80 years ago) came from, where the very fairy tales happened! At the same time, most of Ukraine was not Slavic until the Russians came and took the South, letting the central planes populate, now safe from Turkic slavers. Over time, Russia developed into a great, welcoming multiethnic empire, a true melting pot for its peoples with the sternest nationalist smiling on his Muslim Tatar friends and the president kissing the Quran, brought man into space and brought the arts and mathematics to great heights (otherwise abandoned in most of the West, today). Yes, this great project has had many struggles, but... How can you believe your brothers spit on this, abandon your shared history, authors, everything and move out? (Think of your wife showing you divorce papers...) Love turns to hate, spite, evil, post facto justifying the split.
Translated to American sensibilities, imagine Philadelphia succeeding, the great colonial cities, home of the liberty bell, the continental congress etc. and insisting you have nothing in common, you New Yorkers and Georgians just oppressed them and they don't even want to speak English anymore, but create some new literary tradition etc. etc.
The same process happened in Yugoslavia (which one common Russian narrative holds, broke hope of Russia-West integration.) China is not identical (Taiwan being far smaller and weaker, today and lacking historic relevance), with explicit reunification rather being an important political point. But most importantly, China has already won, as it races past the West in wealth, cultural power and future shaping vibrancy, the growing support for reunification will see Taiwan (even if only by creative interpretation) in the PRC's sphere.
The worst part about Russia in this is that, had they just gone in in 2014 or integrated the Donbas, instead of turning it into a mafia run hell hole, Ukraine wouldn't really have resisted now - indeed, had Putin not invaded, but worked with Zelensky who won on a pro-Russia platform, none of this would have happened. This is a self-own the US is now copying. (For lack of time, I will not go into polyphonic government, where seeing your neighbors thrive might inspire you that there's a better way. Squashing this threat by incorporating or forcing Ukrainians out helped regime stability.)
I'd like to dunk on Mearsheimer as a broken clock which looks right twice a day, but actually that's a stain and it's missing hands entirely. For one thing, he repeatedly stated that Russia would not invade Ukraine (as I too believed) and after it started began “There is no evidence that Putin wanted to take over the whole of Ukraine” yet somehow people claim he predicted everything? Baffling! He constantly praises Russia on the field, claims victory's just on the horizon, that Odessa and Dnipropetrovsk and and and will soon fall, while the lines haven't shifted a day's walk since the end of 2022.
The American national identity is not based on common descent from some decrepit yankee cities.
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