On that day this year, China will be celebrating the 80th anniversary of its Victory Day, which has to be the most risible such event in recent memory. After all, communist China had no part in that victory, for the simple reason that it didn’t even exist.
The Nationalist China that was among the victors in the Second World War is now ensconced on Taiwan. Mainland China is heir to the communist guerrillas who waged war not against Japan, but against the China that was part of the victorious coalition against Japan.
The communists won their civil war in 1949. And in 1971, China’s partners in the wartime coalition betrayed her.
Henry Kissinger’s shuttle diplomacy scored the first success in its sustained effort to sell the West’s ally down the Yangtze River. Maoist Albania proposed, and democratic America supported, UN Resolution 2758, moving “to expel forthwith the representatives of Chiang Kai-shek from the place which they unlawfully occupy at the United Nations and in all the organisations related to it”.
China’s rightful seat went to the illegitimate monster of Mao’s PRC, but it wouldn’t stay illegitimate for long. On 1 January 1979, the US formally established diplomatic relations with the PRC and recognised it as the sole legitimate government of China.
On 3 September this year, the communists are planning an obscene spectacle to celebrate an event in which they played no part. A massive military parade will be held in Peking’s Tiananmen Square, the site of the 1989 massacre of protesters.
That will be followed by a gala that foreign leaders will attend. And there’s the rub: both Putin and Trump are among the invited guests. Will they turn up?
As applied to Putin, this is a superfluous question: Russia is China’s vassal, dependent on Xi’s munificence for its survival. Putin can no more turn down Xi’s invitation than a lowly employee can refuse to step into his boss’s office as requested.
But will Trump accept the invitation? This is an interesting question and one not without certain piquancy.
A week ago, on 14 July, Trump issued a much-trumpeted 50-day ultimatum to Putin. If no ceasefire is signed before the ultimatum’s expiry, Trump will… do what exactly?
Oh well, he’ll step up armament supplies to the Ukraine and hit Russia with 100 per cent tariffs. While at it, he’ll levy similar secondary tariffs on any country that continues to keep Russia afloat by buying her oil and flouting international sanctions.
Now, Russia’s oil sales last year amounted to $192 billion, most of it, minus small change, to China and India. How likely do you think will Trump be to hit those two countries with exorbitant tariffs?
Remember his earlier threat to impose punitive 145 per cent tariffs on China? Trump had to retreat sharpish, his tail between his legs, after China announced prompt retaliation, and US domestic manufacturers screamed bloody murder because they heavily depend on Chinese imports.
Exactly the same things will happen in September if Trump acts on that threat, which is why he won’t. China knows it, which is why Xi dismisses Trump’s ultimatum for the empty bluff it is.
So does India. Back in February, Trump announced that: “Starting this year, we’ll be increasing military sales to India by many billions of dollars. We’re also paving the way to ultimately provide India with the F-35 stealth fighters.”
Trump is notoriously imprecise with his numerals, but “many billions of dollars” has to be a large amount any way you cut it. So do you think Trump is going to jeopardise this ‘deal’ by punishing India for naughtily buying Putin’s oil? He isn’t, says any sensible assessment of Trump’s character. The Indians are as likely as the Chinese to call his bluff.
As an aside, where are those F-35s going to come from? Just a few days ago, Trump complained that America’s exorbitant supplies to the Ukraine had emptied her own arsenal of essential means of self-defence. Yet now Trump seems to have a loose fleet of F-35s to sell to India at $100 million a pop.
His threat to step up armament supplies to the Ukraine is no more credible. Speaking to NATO Secretary General Mark Rutte the other day, Trump said that 17 PATRIOT systems would arrive in the Ukraine “within days”, provided the EU paid for them.
How many days? Five? Ten? A thousand? And what does 17 PATRIOT systems mean? Each PATRIOT battery costs about a billion dollars. Multiply that by 17, and one wonders if that’s what Trump meant. Or did he mean 17 PATRIOT interceptor missiles, at about a million dollars each?
When that magic 17 number was waved in the air, reporters besieged the Pentagon, asking its officials for elucidation. The latter couldn’t oblige though: they themselves didn’t know. It appeared that Trump had mentioned those 17 PATRIOTs on the spur of the moment. It just sounded good.
Assuming that the US doesn’t have 17 spare PATRIOT batteries gathering warehouse dust, the systems will have to be manufactured. That will take Ratheon months, more likely years, making the 1,000-day delivery mentioned above quite plausible.
Actually, Trump’s plan is to use third parties. “They’re coming in from Germany and then replaced by Germany,” he explained. Alas, he had forgotten to inform the German Defence Ministry of that development, whose spokesman said that he “cannot confirm that they [the deliveries] are currently underway.”
And earlier in the week Germany’s Defence Minister Pistorius explained that Germany didn’t have enough to share with the Ukraine unless the US provided more.
“We only have six left in Germany,” he said. “That’s really too few, especially considering the NATO capability goals we have to meet. We definitely can’t give any more.”
At their joint press conference, Chancellor Merz and our own dear Sir Keir confirmed that those deliveries aren’t imminent: “At this very hour, the ministries of defence are discussing the details of how we can ensure the delivery of PATRIOT systems to Ukraine in a short timeframe. This may take weeks. The talks are very specific, the American side is ready to move forward, but we do not yet have a final result.”
Allow me to translate from the political into English. The Ukraine isn’t getting those PATRIOTs before the expiry of Trump’s ‘ultimatum’. And here’s an interesting detail: the ultimatum expires on 2 September, the day before China’s big celebration.
Since we realise that Trump isn’t going to spoil the festivities, what will his tripartite talks be about when, or if, he sits down with Putin and Xi? What kind of ‘deal’ will he try to thrash out?
China is Russia’s ally in the ongoing war, buying Putin’s oil, building drone factories in Siberia, using North Korea as its proxy to send troops to Russia, along with more artillery shells than NATO had given the Ukraine, supplying high-tech components Russia is no more capable of producing herself than the Soviet Union was.
(We used to joke that the hammer and sickle symbolised the level of domestic technology Russia could manufacture without foreign imports).
China’s foreign minister said the other day that his country doesn’t want Russia to lose this war. What he didn’t say was that neither does she want Russia to win it. China has a vested interest in the war continuing for ever, since that way America’s attention is diverted from the Far East. Russia will take that outcome too if she can’t annihilate the Ukraine’s statehood altogether.
What Trump wants, no one knows, including, one suspects, himself. What he doesn’t want is clear enough though: spending money to save Ukrainian lives. There his interests converge with those of some other NATO members, notably France, Italy and Czechia, who have already stated they aren’t going to buy US weapons for the Ukraine.
The fate of the Ukraine is a matter of indifference for Trump – he is only interested in countries he regards as major geopolitical players, meaning Russia and China. His ultimatum is merely a carte blanche for Russia to go on murdering Ukrainians without Trump being bothered about such trivialities for 50 days. Lately he has been talking tough about Putin, but no serious observer can possibly take Trump’s words at face value.
Boris Johnson doesn’t qualify as such, which is why he wrote:
“Over the past few weeks, my optimism has deepened because something has unquestionably changed. There has been a real hardening in his language about Putin, a real sympathy for the plight of the Ukrainians.
“After a bizarre glitch in the Pentagon, when some MAGA official seems unilaterally to have paused the flow of some weapons, the kit is flowing again. The Ukrainians are getting more of the PATRIOT missile defence systems they so badly need, as well as other crucial technology, such as ATACMs.”
This is bilge. The flow of weapons wasn’t paused because some MAGA official took the initiative. No such step would have been possible without a direct order from the White House. And if the Ukrainians are indeed getting those PATRIOTs, it would be kind of Boris to tell us when. No one else seems to know, including Trump.
I’m afraid 3 September, 2025, is the day when the Ukraine will be sold down the Dnieper, just as Trump’s predecessors sold Nationalist China down the Yangtze. And for once I’d be happy to be proved wrong.