Presidential wannabes agree that China is the greatest geopolitical threat and that the solution is economic decoupling. But decoupling from China will be economically disastrous for Americans while leaving unaffected China’s mission to unseat the American superpower. Its partner in this mission is Russia. That’s why the war in Ukraine matters.

Candidates haven’t mentioned our adversaries’ plans because voter priorities are the economy and preserving freedoms. This makes sense. Voters don’t prioritize unknown issues, and American education, unlike education in China and Russia, doesn’t focus on maintaining the nation’s strength and integrity. No one learns that, if Russia and China are ascendant, that endangers American freedoms, breaks the economy, and introduces world chaos. Presidential candidates should explain that economic decoupling won’t protect America from its greatest geopolitical threats and then articulate how their approach will.

China’s and Russia’s missions are rooted in righting the perceived wrongs of history. For 500 years, from 1453 to 1945, a contest for global supremacy took place between the Chinese, Russian, European, and Turkish empires. After WWII, the United States was central to creating a new rules-based world order.

Memorialized in the U.N. Charter, empires were to be dismantled and made part of history, and all nations committed to honoring sovereign borders. However, the signatures of Russia and China didn’t signify agreement. Their conduct demonstrates that they reject the Charter’s principles, which reflect Western influence and a Western rules-based order.

Image: Xi and Putin (edited). YouTube screen grab.

One of China’s goals is to restore the most expansive borders of the Chinese Empire. Taiwan is first. Next up could be Arunachal Pradesh’s disputed border with India or Russian Manchuria.

Russia’s goal is to resurrect the dismantled Soviet empire. Ukraine is first among fourteen target sovereign states, including three members of NATO. Putin’s strategy is the same “Military First” approach used by Russian leaders from the time of Peter the Great (1682-1725) onward.

Russian leaders know their place on the world stage relies on military power because economic power has been elusive. If they stop flaunting military power, they become the unthinkable—a second-rate power. Military First works because Russians have learned that they must sacrifice quality of life because their sovereignty is always at risk.

China’s strategy is psychological warfare. The Chinese have always viewed nations using weapons to secure power as feeble-minded. But armed nations inflicted a “Century of Humiliation” on China. In 2023, the Chinese know that weapons, like their 340-plus warships and a partner that is the world’s nuclear superpower, can play an important role in psychological warfare. This complements their traditional psychological focus of painting adversaries as inferior powers. China (and Russia) offer an echo chamber for Biden/Harris’s obsession with slavery, gender, and sex as personal variables and policies abdicating personal responsibility.

American voters who think addressing wokism isn’t a priority don’t know how profoundly our adversaries use progressive policies to paint America as an immoral, unequal, divided, declining superpower. Russia loves it when the White House threatens new defense outlays unless it includes free travel for soldiers seeking abortions. Add repurposing American media coverage of insurrections, unfair elections, and corrupt political families, and it’s easy to depict America as inferior.

Inferior nations are also dependent on others. China uses its economic heft to secure the real and psychological dependence of foreign nations. When Russia, the Turks, and Europe secured global power through colonial empires, China did so with a global tributary empire that sees foreigners, including Westerners, validate Chinese superiority and submit to Chinese demands. In exchange, China allows them to trade in peace.

China knows that economic ties are binding ties that wreak havoc when broken. “No one weaponizes [economic] interdependence more than China.” Today, China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has, at last count, 147 indebted clients, with positions indistinguishable from tributes sucked into China’s orbit.

Even absent BRI, Taiwan’s economic dependence on China places it in the same orbit as most nations, including Ukraine, Russia, and many Western nations. The latter are bracing for Chinese responses to economic decoupling. First up are restrictions on the metals the world needs for green energy, semiconductors, and defense materials.

To achieve their goal of diminishing America on the world stage, China and Russia have been using education to prepare their people for the road ahead. Some Russians initially protested the war in Ukraine, but then they learned that they were “in the middle of a global confrontation with the West, and so, right or wrong, they need to take their country’s side.”

In 2022, Russia launched a new patriotic history that indoctrinates Russians so they can “draw correct conclusions from the past.” In 2023, Russian universities began teaching “Fundamentals of Russian Statehood,” which prepares students for ongoing wars with the West because it’s necessary for “Russian peace.” They teach Western inferiority. “Abortions, veganism, and childfree lifestyle have been labeled as the cult of death.”

When China lost the Cold War, the Chinese Communist Party immediately implemented a “Patriotic Re-education Campaign“ to indoctrinate students in the who, what, and why of China’s Century of Humiliation and China’s long-term goal. It’s a history of victimization by white oppressors and a goal of a world taking the lead of benevolent China.

Is it chance that this campaign’s message is remarkably like lessons taught in many American schools about white oppressors, or that China’s lessons unify the nation while America’s divides? China’s spies have infiltrated the U.S. Congress and law enforcement, so why not America’s education system?

While Russia has a bullseye on the West, China’s is on white people, and this includes Russians. China’s greatest humiliations came from Japan and Russia. Russia forced China to cede Russian Manchuria, prevented China from re-annexing Mongolia, and invaded Xinjiang. The 1968 Brezhnev Doctrine threatened interference in Chinese sovereignty. The mutually acrimonious 1969 Sino-Soviet split included armed border clashes over parts of Russian Manchuria. Recently, China began calling areas in Russian Manchuria by their Chinese names.

China has disguised its Russian animosity with its psychologically potent “no limits” partnership. It’s not happenstance that there is growing cooperation on advanced military and nuclear technology between Russia, North Korea, and Iran. Russia has allied with Iran for drones and possibly missiles, and North Korea, which is a Chinese satellite, is supplying its ammunition. All this concerns America and its Israeli, South Korean, and Japanese allies. It’s also not a coincidence that China stays on the sidelines, orchestrating a benevolent power image that allegedly complies with multilateral sanctions against Russia.

China knows that “Russia’s military image and credibility have crumbled.” But Russia remains useful for depleting Western ammunitions, flaunting its nuclear arsenal, distracting America’s allies, and enabling images of bombed-out Ukrainian cities. Add China’s military buildup and Taiwan’s economic dependence, and China has a potent psychological campaign to encourage Taiwan to wave a white flag. Meanwhile, Xi can smirk at Big and Little Russians (also known as Ukrainians) killing each other while sending its troops to Arunachal Pradesh and bolstering the harassment of Taiwan.

What could go wrong if America’s adversaries achieve their mission? Economic impairment, freedoms imperiled, a return of sovereign infringing empires, more nations choose autocratic dictates over a western-rules-based order, and China humiliates white people and becomes the new solo economic and military superpower without firing a shot. It would be good if presidential candidates helped voters to understand the what and why driving geopolitical rivals, in addition to what’s at stake, and endeavored to convince voters that they have what it takes to outsmart calculating adversaries executing strategies to achieve a new autocratic-centric world order.