Deterring The Next Quasi-World War: China–Russia–North Korea Versus US

Authored by Joseph Yizheng Lian via The Epoch Times,

Russian planes recently flew into Polish and Romanian airspace to test NATO’s resolve while the world veers toward a conflict in Asia—one that could be far worse than the situation in Ukraine—where true deterrence and resolve remain largely absent.

Let’s backtrack a little.

On Sept. 3, Beijing staged a military extravaganza to parade a full suite of fearsome weapons. Many journalists were awed, and some defeatist experts advocated Chamberlainian appeasement. Others, mostly China observers, tried decoding the seating plan of senior Chinese Communist Party (CCP) officials atop Tiananmen Square for clues about the power struggles in Zhongnanhai.

However, what is often overlooked in the discussion about the event is that it represents the financing and support mechanisms behind a new type of quasi-world war. The ongoing Russia–Ukraine war is one example, and the potential invasion of Taiwan by the Chinese regime is another. Let’s explore this further.

The Xinhua images of the Sept. 3 event, featuring Chinese leader Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin, and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un consorting in solidarity, should be interpreted as a calculated response to the new tripartite model the West has devised for militarily supporting Ukraine. That model conveys that Kyiv identifies its military hardware needs, European allies provide the financing, and the United States produces and delivers the hardware.

The Beijing event showcased a parallel model: Moscow requests war materiel, including troops, China and North Korea supply them in exchange for cheap Russian energy, with India and a few other countries dipping in. Thus, even though the war’s actual fighting is confined within Ukraine and Russia, its financing involves a much wider array of adversarial states. The coalitional symmetry in this financing mechanism can prolong the bloody conflict indefinitely, which Russia and Ukraine, if left to their own devices, cannot achieve.

A way to stop the war is to break that symmetry, which seems to be the goal of U.S. President Donald Trump’s “secondary tariffs.” On Aug. 6, he doubled the headline tariff on India to 50 percent for buying cheap Russian oil. It is showing results. India reportedly bought much less Russian oil in August. Notably, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who attended the Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting in Tianjin from Aug. 31 to Sept. 1, quietly skipped the Sept. 3 military parade.

Now, Trump is pressuring Europe to immediately end its remaining reliance on Russian energy and join him in a similar effort against Beijing, and has called for imposing up to 100 percent additional tariffs on China for buying Russian crude oil. The EU leadership is not yet entirely on board, but has proposed to advance its target of ending all energy imports from Russia from 2027 to 2026 or even sooner.

But whatever happens to the war in Ukraine, the world would not be okay even when Putin agrees to call it quits, because Xi has all the intentions to do a sequel. Xi’s primary interest in supporting Russia lies in an expected reciprocation from Moscow if China invades Taiwan. What would a China–Taiwan war look like?

The Russia–Ukraine war is already a quasi-world war. Despite the combat space being narrowly confined, it nevertheless involves the participation of approximately 50 countries on four continents in various capacities.

A China–Taiwan war would likely be confined to the Taiwan Strait and its surrounding areas. However, Taiwan’s prowess in microelectronics manufacturing, which includes a near-monopoly on artificial intelligence-based data-center servers—aside from its more eye-catching and well-known 90 percent global market share in high-end microchips—means that its stability and survival as an independent state are far more critical to the world than those of wheat-exporting Ukraine. A Chinese invasion would conflagrate into a much more intense conflict, immediately impacting and pulling in all the advanced industrialized countries that depend on Taiwan’s high-tech exports.

An estimate of the total economic cost of the now three-year-old Russia–Ukraine war is around 3.5 percent of global GDP, or approximately $3.5 trillion. On the other hand, the global cost of a full-blown China–Taiwan war could easily be more than three times as large, reaching a staggering $10 trillion, according to Bloomberg Economics.

The United States, in contrast to its current peacemaking role and indirect involvement in the Ukraine war, would have no choice but to take center stage in combat. Japan would also be compelled into an important role due to geographic proximity and treaty obligations. The conflict would come closer to an actual world war.

Facing such a daunting possibility, the United States may have already begun strengthening its hand. The Senate’s Fiscal Year 2026 Defense Appropriations bill earmarks $1.5 billion for the Indo-Pacific Security Initiative, while the House version allocates $500 million for Taiwan via the Taiwan Security Cooperation Initiative. Once reconciled, the bill will be ready for the president’s signature.

Moreover, the week before the Sept. 3 Beijing parade, senior defense officials from Taiwan and the United States met in Alaska. That seemingly low-key event was leaked to the press on Sept. 4 and confirmed by a U.S. official on the same day. Apparently, the timing of the meet-leak-confirm sequence was a calibrated, premeditated U.S. answer to the Beijing parade. But can Trump really deter China? He can, if he successfully puts three pieces in his grand strategy together.

Trump needs to strengthen Europe by encouraging it to reduce its extensive welfare state and allocate more resources to its defense. The same applies to Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, and Australia, as they need to be aligned firmly along the First Island Chain. However, behind these two geopolitical pieces must be a thoroughly revitalized United States, which, unfortunately, has seen its strength sapped by decades of socio-economic decay. Trump is achieving this through a thorough revamping of American institutions and policies regarding culture, education, industry, trade, and defense—the essence of the MAGA movement.

Like a severely wounded beast whose blood flows to the core of its body to preserve its dwindling life force, the United States, as it restores itself, may seem isolationist to countries long accustomed to enjoying the economic openness and defense umbrella provided by Pax Americana. That is a dangerous misreading of Trump by many countries, friends and foes alike.

Views expressed in this article are opinions of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Epoch Times or ZeroHedge.