 Good afternoon ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to today's event. I'm Hervé Lemayu, the director of research here at the Institute. And I'm very pleased to welcome you all to this event and conversation with Dr. Bobo Loh, non-resident fellow at the Lohy Institute and author of a new analysis paper out just yesterday, fresh off the press, Putin, G and the Russian invasion of Ukraine, which you can download for free, of course from the Institute's website and I think we also have copies available for you. Bobo is one of the world's finest observers of Russia and the Sino-Russian relationship. He has served as an Australian official, as a diplomat in Moscow, as a think-tanker at Chatham House in London, Ifri in Paris and at the Carnegie Moscow Centre. Importantly for us, he's a long-standing non-resident fellow here at the Institute since 2016, I believe. And in that capacity, he's published a series of fantastic papers, including in 2017, Bobo's Lohy Institute paper with Penguin Random House Aware Embrace, which was about the emerging Sino-Russian partnership. In 2019, he wrote an analysis paper, Once More with Feeling, Russia and the Asia-Pacific, and in 2020, Global Order in the Shadow of the Coronavirus. And these are just a number of highlights because he's written many more. But they're really a fantastic series of discussions, and much like the catchy title of his papers, Bobo has acquired a bit of a cult-like status within the building for his lucid, provocative and elegant writing. So I knew who to turn to when presented with the most serious conflict in Europe since the end of the Second World War, Russia's invasion of Ukraine in early February. I did a podcast with Bobo, I think, just on the day itself. And apart from anything else, it was clear to us then, and it is now as well, that the invasion is really a stress test of the partnership between Moscow and Beijing, between two strongmen, Presidents Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, and the evolution of their relationship in the aftermath of Russia's invasion of Ukraine will be important not just for the outcome of the war in Europe, but indeed for the future of the global order. So I came to Bobo with one question when commissioning this paper. The Sino-Russian relationship has arrived at a turning point, but to where? And Bobo certainly didn't disappoint us. The Institute is very proud to publish this paper. I will invite Bobo to make some brief opening remarks on the driving thesis of his argument, of his paper, and after which we'll sit down for a conversation between ourselves. So ladies and gentlemen, please join me in welcoming Bobo back to our beautiful offices at 31 Blyth Street. Thank you very much, Alveir, for that warm welcome. It's a delight to be here again. So I should just briefly outline some basic arguments that I've put in the paper. My first argument really is that Putin's war in Ukraine has highlighted the resilience but also the limitations of Sino-Russian partnership. You hear a lot of talk about Russia and China having being an alliance or an axis of authoritarians or erstwhile Prime Minister Scott Morrison's phrase, arc of autocracy. But really this is an interest-based relationship between strategically autonomous powers and geopolitical calculus matters far more in this relationship than a so-called convergence over authoritarian values. Now foreign policy coordination between China and Russia is limited by their very different views of global order. Now people think, well that's strange because surely they both oppose a rules-based international order. They oppose US global leadership and that is indeed true. But Beijing, I would argue and I argue in this paper, is invested in a global order, albeit one where its influence is much greater than a present and where US and Western dominance is much reduced. But it still believes in the principle of a stable global order, a stable international system. It's a revisionist power but not a revolutionary one. But Moscow, on the other hand, is an anarchist of the international system. It thrives on disorder and instability because it figures correctly as it happens that the more chaos and anarchy there is in the world, the more influence it has, the more play it has, the more chaos it can create. And I think these very different views of global order and disorder have been highlighted in the course of the war in Ukraine. Now a lot of people argue that China has been the big winner of this war in Ukraine. Well I would disagree. I think China has suffered on a number of fronts. Number one, it has suffered considerable reputational damage because essentially it's close association with, frankly speaking, an international delinquent. But perhaps even more telling is that the war has served to unify the West. Transatlantic unity is stronger than in years. The United States has recovered its leadership mojo. The Europeans are increasingly inclined to view China in adversarial terms. And liberalism and the very idea of a US-led rules-based international order has acquired some credibility which frankly didn't much have before the Russian invasion of Ukraine. And conversely, Putin's struggles in Ukraine have highlighted the weaknesses of authoritarianism. They've undermined the authoritarian brand, authoritarianism's reputation, the efficiency. Putin has been shown not only to be brutal but also acutely fallible. And from Beijing's perspective, Russian actions or mistakes over Ukraine have actually served to limit China's room for maneuver over Taiwan. I think that a forcible reunification of Taiwan with the mainland is now less likely than it has been for years. Now, the uncertain course of the war in Ukraine presents China with a really difficult conundrum because on the one hand it wants to preserve the Sino-Russian partnership. Russia is the closest country that China has to a friend. But on the other hand, China is part of that international system. China has been the single greatest beneficiary of the rules-based post-Cold War international order over the last three decades. So it's trying to sort of thread the eye of the needle. And how does it do that? How does it keep Russia satisfied without alienating the West completely, running the risk of sanctions? And so what Xi Jinping has done is he's pursued a sort of balancing act. He's offered full-sum moral and political support to Putin but just about zero material assistance. And so he basically hopes that Russia will be happy with moral and political support. On the West won't be so angry but they'll impose sanctions. The trouble is, the longer this war continues, the harder it will be to sustain this balancing act. Because you've got to ask, what happens if a frustrated Putin exhausts his conventional weapons playbook? He escalates to chemical and biological weapons, maybe even to a tactical nuclear strike. What happens if the war extends beyond Ukraine and becomes a more generalized conflict between Russia and NATO? And the problem is, if the war continues to go badly for Russia, then Putin might think, well, yes, words are all very well, but come on, you've got to deliver something more as our valued strategic partner. Now, I think however the war unfolds, now Putin could lose, he could win, there could be an accommodation or stalemate, we could have an uncontrolled major escalation. But I think whatever happens, in whatever scenario, the balance of power within the relationship will tilt heavily towards China. Really, Moscow's escalating confrontation with the West means that Russia, geopolitically and economically, is now more dependent on China than at any time in the two countries' history. Now, I think the Sino-Russian partnership will continue to exist in some form. But I think the long-term outlook for this relationship is, frankly speaking, unpromising. Simply put, Russia and China will soon be playing in very different leagues. They will have different interests, different priorities, and that makes it hard to develop any kind of really long-term, deep convergence. So the question I end up with really in the paper is, what should the West do? How should the West respond to this Sino-Russian partnership of, frankly, considerable limits? Well, I think the Western decision-makers should recognize several realities. The first is, China and Russia are not a conjoined entity. Their worldviews are different, their approaches to international relations are different, and as we've seen in Ukraine, their interests are not the same. Second, I would argue, and it's perhaps difficult to make this point to an Australian audience, but I would argue that Russia represents a considerably greater threat than China to international order, and this will remain the case while Putin sits in the Kremlin. Paradoxically, it is Russia's weakness that makes it dangerous, because unlike China, it doesn't have a variety of means to project power and influence. It really, fundamentally, only has military means. And so for Russia, the exercise of military force is a comparative advantage. They have it, and they, just as important, they have the will to use it. So, all this means that it'll become more, not less, disposed to use military power in the future. Ukraine is just one stage in a succession of stages that we will see in coming years. Third, the West's capacity to directly influence the Sino-Russian partnership is negligible. No amount of threats, incentives, flattery will persuade either Beijing or Moscow to distance themselves from each other. On the contrary, such efforts merely encourage them to leverage, to use this as leverage and to play Western decision makers for seconds. And finally, the West needs to understand that the importance of the Ukrainian moment, the heroic resistance of the Ukrainians has shown us really what is at stake, how precious, how fragile it is. But it's also bought the West time, time in which to revitalize liberal norms, values and institutions. And what does that mean in reality? Well, that means improving standards of governance, accountability, transparency in our own societies. It means addressing fundamental problems like global poverty and injustice. It means demonstrating that international order, a rules-based international order, is not just a Western construct made by the West for the benefit of the West. But it actually has broader application and broader value to a wider audience. And most of all, we need to be able to address 21st century threats and challenges, because these are the critical challenges, whether it's climate change, global poverty and inequality, the technological transformation, pandemic disease, or the information revolution. So I'll leave it there out there and we can develop some of these themes if you like. Thank you, Bobo. There's a lot to take in and to digest in this paper, and not enough time really to delve into every angle. But I thought I'd start with going back to the basics. Why did Vladimir Putin invade Ukraine? Okay, to sort of adapt a Cartesian logic, he was, I can, therefore I will. He had the opportunity and therefore saw that this was the right moment. But really there were deeper reasons. So one thing is that we tend to think of Vladimir Putin in the West as some sort of chess player, calculating genius, evil, sort of a kind of almost evil genius. But this is, he's actually quite emotional. And he feels viscerally about certain issues. And Ukraine is one of those. So he honestly believes that, I think Russia and Ukraine are one society, one civilization, one country, and that it's the perfidious West that has prevented this rightful destiny from being achieved. Then there is the element of unfinished business. In 2014, Russia annexed Crimea. But paradoxically, it lost Ukraine. It lost control of Kyiv. So what that meant was that whereas he'd been successful militarily in foreign policy in lots of other areas, that this was the great failure of his presidency. So therefore time to correct this historical anomaly, this historical mistake. But I think, you know, one of the questions people ask is, well, why now? Well, why now? Because circumstances could hardly have seemed more favorable to him. You had a US president that was obsessed with China, but also unable to get his domestic agenda through. So besieged at home and abroad, you had the debacle of the political withdrawal, military withdrawal from Afghanistan. You had Angela Merkel finishing up her 16 years as a Chancellor of Germany and sort of a nascent German coalition government. You had Macron getting ready for the French presidential elections. You had post Brexit and an utterly discredited Boris Johnson. So the question is not why, but why not? If not now, then when were you going to actually get a better opportunity? And he honestly, I think thought that, you know, yes, we'll invade. The Ukrainians will fold after a few days. The West will slap us on the wrist like they did in 2014. They'll chuck a few meaningless sanctions at us, sanction a few more oligarchs. Who cares? Basically, the West, Ukraine, the world will have to confront a new reality, whether they like it or not. So he liked his chances very much. And how was he disappointed? It's incredibly interesting that in the lead up to the war in Ukraine, there was, it seems, very good intelligence by the US that Putin was planning something concrete. No one necessarily, well, not everybody, including the Ukrainians, until the week before the invasion believed that. And the West, it seemed, was rather powerless to do much about it. I mean, they pursued every possible diplomatic avenue, I think. There was still in the Elysee and in DC, perhaps a view that Russia could be prized away from China, or that there was some sort of entente cordial that could be set up between Russia and the Europeans. You're very critical of that sort of powerlessness and passivity of the West. But you can also read it differently, which is to say, you have to exhaust every possible diplomatic avenue before confronting the inevitable, which was Putin's military intentions in Ukraine. The biggest problem with that reasoning, in my view, is that Western leaders have been trying to suck up to Putin for the best part of 15 years. Let's not provoke him. Let's not risk an escalation. Let's try and understand Russia's so-called legitimate interests. And where has that got us? Exactly. So far, we've got 2008 Russian war in Georgia. We've got 2014 invasion of annexation of Crimea and invasion of the Donbas. 2015 Russian military intervention in Syria, including encouraging and using chemical weapons against civilian populations. So how has this Western policy of conciliation of not wishing to provoke or escalate the situation? How has that gone? The problem with that is what, from our perspective, looks like a perfectly reasonable search for compromise falls down because we assume that Putin is a Western-style rational actor like us. Now, he is a rational actor, but in a very different tradition. And so, from his perspective, every time the West tries to reach out and try to be reasonable, what he sees is weakness. He sees a lack of resolve. And he thinks, well, you know what? I'll just keep pushing because it's worked so far, so why fix it if it ain't broke? And that's, I think, the biggest problem. Now, when Biden came into office on January the 20th, one of the first things he did was to ratify or to organize the five-year extension of the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks Treaty. Now, that was an important step. He needed to do that. There was nothing wrong with him reaching out to Putin, except he didn't really do that. He kind of ignored Russia for the first few months. It wasn't until the military build-up, Putin's military build-up in the spring of last year that Biden thought, oh, my gosh, this could be dangerous. Let's organize a summit. And then again, this happened in the autumn. Russian military build-up, Biden thinks, oh, no, let's organize a telephone summit. And so every time, my criticism is not that you have dialogue with Russia. That's perfectly reasonable. But you need to do it on its own merits and not just a reaction as a reaction to a Russian escalation, because that gives Putin a kind of escalation dominance in diplomacy as well as military. And it means that he's always taking the initiative and you're always on the back foot trying to mitigate the consequences. And so you're basically allowing him to frame the debate, set the terms of engagement, and you just lose if you play that game. And that's what he's counting on. And so at some stage, you have to say, no, we can't do that. We actually have to take the initiative ourselves. And I think there's a real sort of, it's almost like if I'm nice to you, it's like how you react to a playground bully. If I'm nice to you, maybe you won't hit me again. That's just no way to conduct international diplomacy. And one way that I mean, in retrospect, we might sort of view more critically the the ruling out preemptively of any military response to an act of aggression against Ukraine. I mean, it might have been a platform of strategic ambiguity that could have been applied. Look, I'm not saying that Biden or anyone else should have said we will react militarily. I think that would have been foolish. But to rule it out straight away, automatically gave Putin greater room for maneuver than he deserved, or maybe even expected. There was no question that it was going to be used. So if there was no question, why provide an answer? Just really, I mean, talk about blowing your strategic ambiguity is not just an intrinsic good. It's because it gives you certain tactical advantages. And so when you have that tactical blunder allied to the strategic blunder of an over emphasis on China as a threat relative to Russia, then I think that that just hands over the initiative to the outside. And now turning to China, take us back to the Winter Olympics. The infamous Xi Putin summit which has acquired an almost totemic status to use your words in the paper. We're I mean, you sort of think we misread or over read that joint statement about the no limits partnership. Why is that? Well, what does a friendship without limits mean? It's it's actually fairly meaningless phrase, because it just says our friend another way to read that a phrase like that is our friendship can grow. Well, yeah, of course it can. When you say there are no forbidden areas of cooperation, which the joint statement said, well, of course, there are no forbidden areas of cooperation, because in recent years, military cooperation is expanded 2021 was a record year in terms of bilateral trade. Yeah, I think these are these are perfectly fair things to say. I would also say that the no limits phrase has been around since 2016. So it's not exactly a stunning novelty in and of itself. But the problem is we've tried to over interpret those phrases in the light of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. We have assumed that Putin sought Xi Jinping's blessing. And Xi Jinping said, yeah, you go right ahead, mate. Now, this is what I think happened. I mean, I wasn't there. But I think it's highly likely that Putin would have told she that there was going to be a Russian invasion, because not to have done so would have been a betrayal of their so called special friendship. So he would have told him we're going in. But he would not have surely sought Xi Jinping's permission, much as Xi Jinping would not seek Putin's permission about how to deal with Taiwan or South China Sea. This is a this is like a classic core interest of Russian foreign policy. You don't mess. So Putin would tell Xi Jinping as a matter of courtesy, but he's not going to ask his permission. You know, foreign policy for both Russia and China is a full holy sovereign affair. You make your own decisions. And if you're nice, you'll tell your partner partially and selectively about certain things. And that goes to the crux of your argument, which is you believe there's still two strategically autonomous great powers. There is an agenda between them, but it's not an alliance because the alliance in some ways would compromise the core proposition, which is that both want to enhance their independence, their freedom of maneuver. Because then you would actually have to ask permission. That's the problem with an alliance. It ties you. It's much more binding than the current format of the relationship, which is a flexible strategic partnership. Now, China has, I think, asserted a form of pro-Kremlin neutrality described in different ways. Rhetorically, it stands firmly behind Russia. In terms of its actions, you've seen major Chinese companies like Huawei, Lenovo and others divest from Russia. The ADIB has stopped its loans into Russia or with Russia and Belarus. So the actions in the rhetoric don't exactly line up. And you argue that sort of exposes certain dilemmas for China. What are those dilemmas? The dilemma is this. It needs to keep everyone on site. And it's hard to do. So China and Russia share a 4,300 kilometer long border. So this is not the kind of enemy that China would want to have. Especially in the West, we tend to underestimate Russia. We tend to assume, well, you know, it's politically and economically stagnant. It's a bit of a joke country in many ways. But Russia remains, for all its many weaknesses, a formidable, disruptive and preventative power. And the Chinese understand this. They look at the experience of the West and they say, well, Russia may not be able to achieve much on its own, but it can sure as hell prevent other people from realizing their objectives. It can cause an immense amount of trouble. It can be a right royal pain in the arts. And the Chinese look at this Western experience and say we don't need the aggravation. So if we want to pursue our goals, say the Belt and Road through Eurasia, if we want to penetrate into the Arctic, it's not so much that we need Russia's active cooperation, but we need them not to be an obstacle. And I think this is the great lesson. That's why the Chinese big up Putin and Russia. They say Russia's a great power. Putin's a great man. Because they need them not to obstruct their goals. And so there's always the appreciation that in fact a weak Russia is an ordinary, awkward partner as well. So you've got to always tippy toe around and possibly a tail that works at all if it's too problematic. Yes, because what they don't want to have, they don't want a clientelist relationship, like say with North Korea. If Russia became a kind of outsized North Korea, what a nightmare for China would become then more a burden than an asset. But not a burden that you could just get rid of. So the danger from the Chinese perspective is Russia might be able to leverage its weakness, saying basically to the Chinese, you can't afford to let us fail. Fascinating. Now turning to the question of Taiwan briefly, actually. I mean, this is, we've had some good discussions about this yesterday. You assert that the Chinese are less inclined now than they would have been prior to the invasion of Ukraine to consider making a move on Taiwan through military action. The other way you could read the fact that these are two strategically autonomous actors is that it has no bearing in Beijing whatsoever on whether they make a move on Taiwan or not. Essentially it's not that they incentivize them one way or the other, they will do what they've always wanted to do. But you think there's actually growing disincentive and it's not just, or it's not because Russia exerts political influence, so these two countries are allies, but for military reasons, I think. Well, both military and political. So let's deal with a political side of things. It's striking how involved America has become in the Ukraine conflict and crisis. And yet Ukraine is, frankly, a peripheral priority of U.S. foreign policy. It's only Russian actions that have forced it to the forefront of American foreign policy. Now, if I were in Beijing and I would be thinking, well, if Joe Biden can get that exercised about a peripheral priority of U.S. foreign policy like Ukraine, how much more actively involved is America going to be when it affects a primary priority, not just Taiwan, but the whole U.S. system of alliances in the Indo-Pacific? So number one, the U.S. political will to actually do something to prevent the forcible reunification of Taiwan will be much greater, I think. And the second issue is the military side. Russia had just about every possible military advantage in Ukraine. Flat terrain. It occupied Crimea. It occupied Transnistria to the west of of Western Ukraine. It had a client state in Belarus to the north of Ukraine, and it had overwhelming, so we thought, preponderance of military might. And yet it struggled tremendously. So how much more difficult militarily is it going to be for the PLA, People's Liberation Army, to cross 100 miles of Taiwan Strait, to execute amphibious landings, conquer a well-developed, also mountainous country, by the way? That, I think, is just the military challenges are vastly greater, and that's even before you get to the relative military capabilities of Russia and China. The Russians have fought a lot of wars in recent times. They're battle-hardened. It's not just Ukraine, Georgia, Syria. It's also Mali, Central African Republic, Libya. They've had a lot of practice, and this is not even counting the two Chechen wars, by the way. What's China done in all this time? The last conflict, the last major conflict it fought, was in 1979, sort of a month, six-week-long incursion into northern Vietnam, which did not go well. So if the Russians, with their vastly greater experience and know-how, can't conquer a relatively simple target like Ukraine, what price the PLA being able to do Taiwan? I think those are questions that I think would give policymakers in Beijing plenty of food for thought. There's often a tendency to view Russia and China as interchangeable? Yeah. And one of the big points you make in the paper is that you really think there's a big gulf in terms of how they approach the world, but not only tactically, but also how they view the world and what their ultimate intentions are. And that leads you to conclude that Russia presents the bigger menace of the two. But can you just explain briefly the clash of world views? Because to many it seems as if there's a great overlap in world views. Okay. So the overlap is, as I mentioned in my opening remarks, is they both want to see U.S. dominance weakened. Neither of them believe in, or more than that, they seek to counter a liberal vision of a rules-based international order. So there are similarities. They also agree on many issues. So like a sovereign internet, for example, human rights. But the biggest difference between China and Russia is that China believes in a global order and Russia doesn't. Now, it seems to me that that is more than just the means by which you seek to achieve a goal. That is about a fundamentally different vision of the world. So China believes in a global order. It's, of course, it wants to change that global order. I would say the Chinese approach to the existing international system is almost, what I call parasitic and incremental. So it works from within the system to reform it, to change it in ways that advantage its interests. But it doesn't want to trash the order. Now, the Russian approach is different. It doesn't have the patience. It doesn't have the capacity to change the order from within. So therefore, its goal is not to reform it. It's to overturn it. It also realizes more generally that under any stable international order, whether it's a U.S.-led order, a multilateral rules-based order, some kind of U.S.-China condominium, that Russia will be a much diminished player. It will be a player who basically gets marginalized. So the reason that it's not that Russians intrinsically like chaos, it's that they realize that a situation of global disorder gives them more room for play, more room to prosecute their interests. So it's just a more favorable context. Their position is actually entirely logical. But that is a very, very fundamental difference between one side's vision, which is about achieving some kind of global order, some kind of stable international system, and the other partner which thrives on instability, disorder, uncertainty. Now, if Russia thrives on uncertainty and instability, because largely it's a declining power, its comparative advantages in terms of its military power, and there isn't much it can do to replace the rules-based order of the liberal international system, but there is a lot it can still do to disrupt it. Exactly. And if China is in the business of global order building, let's call it that way, because it's an ascendant power, what would then happen if and when China ceases to be on the ascendancy? When China realizes, and this may come soon, and we've published research on this revising down the rise of China, that its economic growth rate is slowing, that it's incapable of really sustaining or replacing the US as a global hegemon, that even in its near abroad, it is up against robust counterbalancing. Do you think that would change that worldview, that risk aversion that we've seen today? I still think the Chinese approach would be essentially conservative in the literal sense. I think they recognize that the international, let's put it this way, China has been the prime beneficiary of the US-led order over the last three decades, whereas Russians see themselves as the principal casualty, the victim. So, while the Chinese want to change the way global order works, they still have a vested interest in some kind of stable order, and that will continue even if their economic growth slows. They're still dependent on the US-led international system, on global trade and financial structures. The renminbi is in no position to replace the dollar, and they're practical people. They understand these realities. So, while they might look to change things, they don't want to wreck things, and I think this is almost an inertial force. This will remain, this will transcend even falling growth rates. Now, what if China goes into real crisis, sort of maybe another warlords period where the regime implodes? Then, of course, you could get an anarchic power like Russia. But I don't see it yet. You never say never, of course. But I think that's sometimes, I get the sense that's wishful thinking by Western commentators. They're busting for China to reap the rewards of its bad behavior over decades, and so they predict, they keep predicting its demise, but China keeps defying these predictions. So, I'm personally very skeptical about the China collapseists or declineists. Now, as you know, I mean, you arrived two days ago, and you've been following the news. The debate in Australia is overwhelmingly focused on China. And it was interesting to see how the war in Ukraine, I think, challenged different schools of thought on foreign policy in Australia. On the one hand, you had those like former Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, who embraced the concept of a let's call it a 360-degree new Cold War that was global in its remits that encompasses both Russia and China as an axis of autocracy. On the other hand, you had, let's call them Asianists, and these were both multilateralists who wanted us to do more with ASEAN, as well as alliance managers who wanted us to do more with the US in terms of the Quad. But irrespective, these Asianists were arguing, no, Russia is a total distraction. Europe is a sideshow. China is the main game. We have nothing, no business really to get substantively involved in that crisis, and it has no real bearing on any of the things that we are grappling with. Now, as I read your paper, I was thinking actually you are directly challenging both schools of thought. Yeah. And I wonder how you square that circle. Sure. Okay. Well, you said it. I think they're both wrong, and I think they're as wrong as wrong can be. So let's start off with your, well, let's start off with the arc of autocracy, the division of the world in this binarism that's very, that's popularized by the White House, and obviously is spread to other parts. Look, we live in an infinitely more complex world that can't be divided into neat sort of authoritarians on the one hand, democracies on the other. I think that's frankly a childish, primitive way of looking at the world. You know, it's almost like satisfying our craving for simplicity. But the world is infinitely more complicated. What do you, what does a country like Singapore fit in? What about Saudi Arabia? What about India or Poland or Hungary? Where are you going to put them? But we consider them Western allies. They are on our side. And yet many people would regard them as increasingly illiberal, not to say anti-democratic. So I have a major problem with that. I think we need to, we're better than that. We can be more sophisticated in our analysis of issues. And I think it's extremely unhelpful when we encounter a crisis like Russia's invasion of Ukraine to think, to adopt that kind of model or paradigm. Now, addressing the second school, the Asianists. There is a school of thought that, you know, rather like Chamberlain said about Czechoslovakia in 1938. You know, this is a far off country about which we know little and care even less. I'm adding that last bit. But I think that's a really, again, an immature, parochial way of looking at things. Because the crisis in Ukraine, the Russian invasion in Ukraine is not just about the fate of a single democratic sovereign democracy. It is about the post-Cold War settlement in Europe. But more importantly still, it is about the very principle of international order or a rules-based international order. So consider the consequences. If we say, oh, look, it doesn't matter. Let the Russians do their thing in Ukraine. Let's just get over it and focus back on China or whatever on some other issue. If Putin wins in Ukraine, the US leadership, global leadership, claims to global leadership, will be crippled. The idea of a unitary West will be seen as a joke. The notion of a rules-based international order and that other sort of bromide being on the right side of history, all that will seem nonsensical. Because what people see is if the West cannot even defend rules in the rules-based international order in the Western heartland of Europe, then what price is it going to be able to do anywhere else? So this is the thing. If we ignore what happens in Ukraine, it has global implications because it says disorder is the way of the world. So we move into a kind of Hobbesian dystopian vision of the world and all this stuff about order and rules and norms. That's just so much guff. It's just chat. It's not reality. So if we actually want to invest substance into principles like rules-based international order, then we can't just deliver bromides and self-congratulatory homilies. We actually have to show that Western liberalism, that rules-based international order, is not only virtuous, it's actually more effective at problem-solving than any of the alternatives. And that's our big challenge. That's Western democracy's big challenge in coming years and decades. Fascinating. Now, we have just over 12 minutes to go, so I'll go to questions in just a moment. So have your questions ready. One more question on my behalf. The other thing is, Bobo, you've been obviously reading about the Pacific and China's overtures there and there are a lot of Australian observers who will be looking at China's muscular diplomacy in our near and broad southwest Pacific and think that perhaps you understate China's ambitions. So what would be your response to them? Then I'll go to questions. Let's be clear. I mean, China is not a benign actor in the Indo-Pacific. It has clear strategic ambitions in the Indo-Pacific. In no way am I saying that we should be soft on China. In no way am I saying that we should ignore what China is doing in the Indo-Pacific. Of course, we should pay attention, but it's not enough to whine about it. We actually have to out-compete them. So that's one thing. But the other thing is China, you may not like what China is doing and we don't, but it's really at a certain level, it's between it and the Pacific Island countries. They're making a decision that maybe they want some more Chinese involvement. Now, that happens not to be in Australia's best interests, fine, but then it's, but the fact that China should at least try to do that is, well, frankly, a fairly rational behaviour on its part. But what Russia is doing is literally killing tens of thousands of people in Ukraine. So I mean, yes, China is a threat. It's a challenge and we need to pay very, very close attention and we need to out-compete it. But come on, let's keep a sense of proportion here. What's happening in Ukraine is the worst, the most devastating conflict since the Second World War and the worst breach of international order since North Korea across the 38th parallel in 1950. That's how serious Ukraine is. I mean, so compared to that, what China is doing with Solomon Islands and other Pacific countries, come on, that small beer, frankly. All right, I see a lot of hands up in the air. Why don't we begin from that middle row there? The gentleman on the far left or my far left. Yes, that's right. And if you can identify yourself, that's the question. Hello, I'm a retired Commodore from Bangladesh Navy, Kazi. So I'm just an independent researcher. I just want to add a few points. The first question asked to Mr. Babulo. Why Russia attacked Ukraine? Okay, if I say, USA had two options. Russia was warning USA that do not extend the NATO, but they are kept on extending NATO. So that is the opportunity for the USA. Either we extend, we go for the extension, or you impose war on Russia that in both the cases, USA is winner. So am I right or wrong? Okay, I'll address that. But this is the most conventional explanation of why Putin invaded Ukraine, that it was because NATO enlargement posed an existential threat to Russia. But this is not, this is an excuse, not an explanation. And it's important to make that distinction. Now, it's funny, I remember when I was in Moscow, and the Baltic states and others joined NATO. Putin actually reacted in a very relaxed fashion. He didn't care because he knew that it's not like NATO is going to be seriously strengthened by the addition of three Baltic states with populations of under two million. I mean, really. The other thing is it's not the United States that pushed the enlargement of NATO. It was these states begging to join NATO. And you have to say, thank God they did join NATO, because can you imagine a situation today if the three Baltic republics of Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, yeah, moving from the Baltics, Romania, Bulgaria, Slovakia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, if they were not members of NATO, then the kind of instability that we see today in Ukraine and in the Western Balkans would also be in Central and Eastern Europe. That is the reality. So I'm saying, thank God they are members of NATO. But I would point out this was not a Washington-driven initiative. This was countries begging to join NATO. And Washington, in some cases, really agreeing quite reluctantly, actually having to be pushed, not only by the applicant countries, but also by European countries like Jim. Next question is for Jim Spiegelman, the Low Institute board member. And there's a microphone coming, sorry. Thank you. One area in which China is not conservative is in the unequal treaties. And the three unequal treaties signed in May and King, as it was then known in 1860, includes one in which the Chinese empire allowed certain land to become part of Russia. And that's a significant slice of Siberia, as I understand it. How does that work for a long-term relationship between China and Russia? Okay. So it's quite striking. When I first started going to the Russian Far East in the 1990s, working in the Australian embassy, there was a lot of fear that the Chinese would try and regain the so-called lost one and a half square million kilometers, essentially the southern half of the Russian Far East. You know, enormous territory. But in fact, that's been one of the great successes of the relationship, that they come to a territorial settlement. And the Chinese haven't pushed it. Now, you might ask, well, why? Well, because they recognize that the gain of the trying to regain those territories, even in a relationship where they've increasingly dominant, is just fraught with risk. And they don't need it anyway. They already sense control that the economy of the Russian Far East, the Chinese side of the border with I think now 160 million versus 6.3 million on the other side, is so much more developed. So who needs the aggravation? Why would you take the risk? Where's the benefit? And so that really has been sort of kicked into the long grass, really. I mean, now maybe one day someone might look to regain it, but that's not really on the cards. And I think what I've noticed is that in the last, gosh, 2022, so I guess last quarter of a century, how Russian attitudes have changed, they become much more relaxed. They don't think the Chinese have any particular designs. Yes, they're occasional exhibitions that the Chinese stop the Russians from looking at, just because it might sort of set hairs running. But they don't, you know, this is not an issue. There are other issues that are more important. And the stability of each other's backyards. Absolutely. You know, I like to focus on their front yards. Exactly. Don't break it. Sorry, let's go to gentlemen just there in second row. Is there is there an off ramp for Putin to say face it and get himself out of Putin, out of Ukraine that would be acceptable to Ukraine and the West? Short answer, no, because we belong to various sort of discussion groups. And I think one, one, one areas of consensus is that for Putin and off ramp is the other guy's unconditional surrender. So the only off road, I'm only going to stop when you give up. The thing is, what Putin might do just tactically is he might go for a ceasefire at some stage. But the problem is he won't give up. So the methods might change. He might compromise on his methods. In fact, we've already seen that in the three months of the war. But the goals will remain the same. What are the goals? The destruction of Ukraine as a sovereign independent democracy, sovereign independent nation. Now, that doesn't mean being part of the Russian Federation. I think Putin's vision for Ukraine is similar to the Eastern Bloc countries during the Cold War. So Ukraine would be like Czech Slovakia or Hungary. So in other words, they'd have a certain degree of political and economic autonomy, but foreign and security policy would be dictated out of Moscow. That I think is Putin's aim and he will not stop until he achieves it. Well, it isn't doomed if we can summon up and sustain the resolve to present it. Sorry. Well, yeah. I mean, it's not just Ukraine losing the war. If it loses the war, it's us losing the war. And if that happens, then yes, you can kiss that goodbye, frankly. We have time for one more very brief question and I'll go to the very far end of the room there. The last, yep, that's right. Military force in an economy the size and with less complexity than Australia and New Zealand. And that seems to me the overwhelming lesson that's now emerged. If you look at China, you're totally different situation. It's a highly sophisticated, highly complex society, very well coordinated and with a strikingly effective and sophisticated economy. So I really don't never see how those two will emerge one and two. I don't really see how Russia is going to be able to project useful power in the future. The problem is that Russia's idea of projecting power is different from ours. So we tend to think of China as a multi-dimensional power. Traditional powers throughout history have been multi-dimensional. Russia doesn't care whether it is multi-dimensional. I mean, it'd like to be because it's nice to have a few options. But if it can be a formidable military power enough to beat up on most people and intimidate its neighbors, then that is going to be its comparative advantage. And that will be enough. I mean, it's like Machiavelli's dictum. If you can't be feared and loved at the same time, then at least be feared. And that's good enough because there's a sense that, for example, the Europeans, the Europeans don't understand hard power. Maybe they're starting to acknowledge it now. But that is Russia's great comparative advantage. It's not just having hard power. It's actually having the will to exercise it. And we might think that that's very 19th century, very 20th century. That's not very modern. They don't care because they think it gives them an advantage over countries and governments who are a bit squeamish and who are easily intimidated, as the Europeans, indeed, have been over the last two decades. So while ordinary logic would suggest that what you're saying is absolutely right, they view it through a different prism, yes, but they could still end up winning this war. It's been untidy at massive human cost, including their own. I mean, in the first two months, in fact, indeed, in the first six weeks of this war, they lost as many troops as in the 10-year invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, which was, by the way, one of the reasons for the fall of the USSR. But they don't care because they think that ultimately they will win out. Putin thinks he's meaner, tougher, smarter than any of his Western counterparts. He thinks that Russians have this some kind of not only messianic zeal, but also tremendous result. They can take defeat. They can take hardship so much more than their soft Western counterparts. And as long as he believes that, then he is going to, even at huge human cost, he is going to continue, and he will back his chances to win. And one of the things that worries me in Western coverage of the war in Ukraine is this, you know, we talk up Ukrainian successes and Russian failures, rightly so. But it worries me that we slip into, therefore Ukraine will win and Russia will lose. I think that Russia is a long, long way from being beaten in this war. So you'll have to read the paper to uncover all four scenarios, and one of which, I'm sorry, Bobo says of Putin, that whilst the win seems improbable, there are variables that would make it less so. One of which, of course, would be a victory by Donald Trump or a Trumpian candidate in 2024, which would certainly weaken Western resolve. And in bold in Russia, this is a long game. But thank you, Bobo, for your time, for your insights, for your knowledge, for your perspective, above all, the paper is turning point Putin G in the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for coming, and please join me in thanking Dr. Bobolo.