Putin's China gambit in Crimea

The US may not have seen it. Neither may have Europe and the rest of the world. But there is a tad of a Chinese element in the current Ukraine crisis. And China does not even have anything to do with it. And then of course Russian President Vladimir Putin will never admit it.

The crisis in Ukraine has everything to do with Putin's insecurities. As CNN international correspondent Jill Dougherty correctly put it, Russia feels increasingly hemmed in by an expanding NATO presence along his borders.

While before Russia can look westward toward Germany before seeing the first western line of defense, now he is seeing even Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in NATO uniform. The unrest in Ukraine therefore gave Putin the perfect pretext to move and show the West that it cannot move any further.

But Putin's seizure of Crimea is not exactly the bold move that the US and its allies see it. It is a fact that Crimea is a de facto satellite of Russia, what with Russia's powerful Baltic Fleet being based there, in addition to several other bases in the peninsula.

It may only seem like a bold move because the US and its allies never saw it coming. In fact, a former CIA covert ground operative interviewed on CNN says he is beginning to wonder if the US president is not so engrossed on terrorism that he has become oblivious to other security issues.

The former agent told CNN's Anderson Cooper that he is pretty sure CIA reports about Russian troop movements that started even way before the Sochi winter Olympics got underway were provided the White House for its daily security briefings. What he is not sure of is why nothing seemed to come out of the reports.

Anyway, let me go to my contention about a Chinese element in the Russian foray into the Ukraine. First let everyone be reminded that Russia is as much Asian as it is European. So, while Putin may have been looking westward to the encroaching NATO, this is not to say he has been oblivious to the goings on in the east.

And in the east, it is China that has been putting on a show worth noticing. And Putin, inscrutable though his face may seem, is not exactly impervious to what his country's chief Asian rival has been doing. And what China has been doing is very instructive.

China, as everybody knows, has been pushing its muscle in the east, annexing disputed territory and threatening to impose exclusive air and sea zones for its own. But that is not the only thing that the Russian president has seen.

More importantly, and instructively as well, the US, the so-called policeman of the world, has done almost absolutely nothing about China's aggressive and abusive posturing other than to issue the standard motherhood statements that China has quickly learned to ignore.

This US reluctance to go beyond mere rhetoric could not have gone past Putin without him considering if he might not as well test the waters against the US as China is so flagrantly doing. The problem is, Russia is no longer as strong as it used to be. And it has far more enemies than China.

Nevertheless, Putin must have decided that if the right circumstances presented themselves, he might as well test the US, inspired in no small measure by China's exploits. And the right circumstances did not take long in coming.

Ukraine was going up in flames. Its pro-Russian leader was ousted. Putin thought he can always use the pretext of protecting ethnic Russians in the Ukraine from possible harm in a country under turmoil. So he grabbed Crimea which, for all intents and purposes, was already Russia's.

Most analysts say the US and the West cannot afford to go to war over the Ukraine at this time. And as to when is just as uncertain. Economic sanctions could also backfire against a struggling Europe. So it might as well be goodbye Crimea, which is Russia in disguise anyway. Putin's China gambit could pay handsomely.