Net Beneficiary Of The Ukraine War Is China

 On The Hoover Institution's 'Goodfellows' podcast, historian Niall Ferguson and other panelists discussed the continuing war in Ukraine and how it benefits China in the long run.

"There's a more interesting question Victor that I have for you and that relates the Ukraine War to the attempt to improve relations with China," Ferguson said. "I think it is Dawning on people in Washington that the net beneficiary the number one net beneficiary of the war in Ukraine is in fact China, because although we thought cleverly we were bleeding Russia dry with Ukrainian Manpower and Western weapons in practice we're running down down our own stocks of weapons. And what's China's uh position? It gets Russian oil at very steeply discounted prices and it can sell all kinds of things to Russia Chinese exports to Russia are way up as long as it stays on the right side of our sanctions line."

"I think what they've realized is that this isn't working out quite as planned and they need to rethink their overall geopolitical strategy and one way of doing that is to try to improve relations with China," he said. "We can't know what's going on in Beijing that's a completely closed black box but I think we can tell a little bit better what's going on in Washington and what I see is a realization that that the grand strategy of the Biden Administration has got us into a pretty hard to stop ear, uh albeit one that we're fighting by proxy, but it's created a real vulnerability in the rest of the world. Not only in East Asia but also in the Middle East and I think the administration is legitimately worried that one more crisis in one of those places is going to make the situation very difficult indeed."

https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2023/02/10/niall_ferguson_the_net_beneficiary_of_the_ukraine_war_is_china.html