As Russia seizes eastern Ukraine, China is slowly rolling back U.S. influence around the Pacific Rim

(Originally published May 11 in “What in the World“) U.S. Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines repeated Tuesday what others have already been warning—Russian President Vladimir Putin could resort to nuclear weapons if he feels he is losing the war in Ukraine.

Haines, the top U.S. intelligence official, told the Senate armed services committee that Putin could view the prospect of defeat in Ukraine as an existential threat to Russia, one that justifies the use of nuclear force. In the meantime, she said, Putin is hunkering down for a long battle of attrition.

But Russia isn’t losing the war in Ukraine. Despite flailing in its efforts to take Kyiv and Ukrainian gains around Kharkiv, Russia has managed to seize much of Ukraine’s eastern Donbas. And it has established a land bridge across Donbas connecting Russia to Crimea that, combined with attacks on Odesa, has effectively denied Ukraine access to the Black Sea and cut off its maritime trade.

In the Pacific, meanwhile, the United States appears to be losing World War II almost 77 years after using nuclear weapons to defeat Japan. Without firing a shot, China last month took the Solomon Islands, site of two pivotal WWII battles—Coral Sea and Guadalcanal, after clinching a security agreement with Honiara that could allow China to create a naval base there.

Yesterday, the Philippines may have fallen after the election of Ferdinand Marcos Jr. as the country’s next president. Marcos, the son of deposed dictator Ferdinand Marcos, has struck a pro-China, anti-U.S. tone in interviews ahead of the election.

The U.S. has been trying since the 1986 fall of Marcos Sr. to help the Philippines recover $2 billion in money Marcos stole from the government. But Marcos Jr. has refused to cooperate, even after being slapped with a contempt of court order by a judge in Hawaii.

Marcos Jr. has, meanwhile, rejected an international tribunal’s decision in favor of the Philippines against China’s seizure of atolls in the South China Sea under the International Law of the Sea. Marcos has said he prefers to negotiate a settlement directly with China, sparking howls of betrayal from his critics.

Naval dominance of the South China Sea and the Coral Sea would allow China to cut both South Korea and Japan off from trade with most of their export markets in Europe and Asia, as well as critical resources like oil from the Gulf. It would also allow China to cut Australia off from most of Asia.

It would also enable Beijing to further isolate Taiwan, potentially forcing it to negotiate reunification or face an invasion by China’s military. Haines also told the Senate armed services committee China was working to ensure it has the military capability to do so. “It’s our view that they (the Chinese) are working hard to effectively put themselves into a position in which their military is capable of taking Taiwan over our intervention,” she said.

As a sign of how nervous Western governments are getting about the emerging new Cold War with China and Russia, Canada is now reconsidering its 2005 decision not join the U.S. anti-ballistic missile system. Canada has already decided to spend an additional eight billion Canadian dollars on defense over the next five years, not including the C$19 billion purchase of 88 new F-35 fighter jets.

“We do live in a world at the present time that appears to be growing darker,” Canadian Defense Minister Anita Anand told the Canadian Global Affairs Institute. “And in this new world, Canada’s geographic position no longer provides the same protection that it once did. And in this new world, the security environment facing Canada is less secure, less predictable and more chaotic.”