Why crisis in faraway Ukraine matters to Asia

China's diplomats have every reason to feel satisfied with their handling of the Ukraine crisis.

On the one hand, China expressed its support for Ukraine's territorial integrity, an implicit rebuke to Russia, which seized Ukraine's Crimea region.

But at the same time, Beijing has abstained from all anti-Russian votes at the United Nations, and let it be known that it won't be supporting anti-Russian sanctions.

Beijing's determination to have its cake and eat it, to be caught neither on Russia's side nor on the West's, is based on the assumption that whichever way the stand-off over Ukraine is resolved, China stands to gain from the crisis.

Yet, such assumptions are fundamentally misconceived. For the Ukraine episode is a misfortune for Asia as a whole. And China may soon discover that, far from being an indirect beneficiary, the crisis in far-away Ukraine will confront Beijing with new and costly security challenges.

It is easy to see why, at least in the short term, China may benefit from events in Ukraine. An isolated Russia subjected to Western sanctions will be far more willing to sell oil, gas and weapons to China on preferential terms; Mr Igor Sechin, Russian President Vladimir Putin's top energy boss, admitted as much in comments to the media last week.

Can China copy the Russian model?

A United States concerned with handling a European crisis will have far less time to deal with its "pivot" to Asia. And, although nobody in China suggests that Beijing should copy the Russian model of grabbing territory, the fact that the Russian action has met with no serious reaction from the US must serve as an inspiration for Chinese strategists who hope that their country may one day be able to resolve its own territorial disputes in a similar manner.

For if the Russians can subdue Crimea - a relatively large territory with two million inhabitants - in a few days and without firing a shot in anger, why can't China do the same to a few strings of uninhabited rocks?

All very true but only part of the story. The more one looks at the potential ramifications of Ukraine, the higher the fears that everyone in Asia - including the Chinese - will be affected by this European crisis.

The fact that force was used to change borders in Europe may not alarm China unduly. But the methods that Russia resorted to in occupying Crimea, and the justifications it made for this action, should elicit deep concern, even in Beijing.

Russia claimed to itself a right to use force in any neighbouring country where ethnic Russians may be in danger, and is now distributing Russian passports to all its diaspora in order to reinforce this claim. Russia also held a snap referendum in Crimea in order to justify the incorporation of that Ukrainian province into Russian territory, elevating what it likes to call "self-determination" as a principle justifying territorial changes.

Both these ideas are toxic for Asian security. The Russian model of offering "protection" to its "co-nationals" may become attractive to some Chinese nationalists who are already arguing that Beijing has not done enough to protect ethnic Chinese in other countries. But the more someone in Beijing may be tempted to copy the Russian example, the more ethnic Chinese throughout Asia will be treated with suspicion; the nexus between ethnic minorities and their so-called "mother state" was responsible for unleashing two world wars in Europe.

And holding referendums in order to decide borders is precisely the kind of principle China does not want to see established.

The results of such a vote in, say, Xinjiang or Tibet are fairly predictable. And while China has the resources necessary to ensure these votes never take place, what can Beijing do if the fashion for referendums is picked up in Taiwan and Hong Kong?

Strategic challenges for Beijing

Nor are many of the strategic benefits, which China assumes it can derive from the Ukraine crisis, that real.

Take the prospect of increased deliveries of Russian oil and gas as an example. It is true that, as Europe seeks to diversify its supplies away from a hostile Russia, the Russians will be forced to sell their energy products to China, their next big market.

And it's equally true that in this buyers' market, the Chinese will be able to call the price.

But shifting supplies away from Europe to Asia is a gigantic task. Russia will have to build the same networks of pipelines it currently has in Europe - an effort that won't leave much change from an estimated US$50 billion (S$63 billion), and will require years, if not decades.

Meanwhile, China may be called upon to defend the energy resources it has already secured in Central Asia. Until now, the Chinese were winning the battle for influence in Central Asia against the Russians - the region's old colonial masters - in a patient, peaceful way, through offers of trade opportunities that Russia can never match.

But victory in Ukraine may encourage the Russians to reassert their influence in Central Asia, where large pockets of ethnic Russians live.

The northern part of Kazakhstan, Central Asia's biggest and richest nation, is entirely dominated by ethnic Russians who can be easily incorporated into Russia proper, especially since, like in Ukraine, Russia can use military bases it already has throughout the region for this purpose. In short, the Ukraine crisis can make China's northern borders with Central Asia less, rather than more secure.

Impact on US pivot to Asia

But the most important error that the Chinese or anyone else in Asia could make is to assume that the Ukraine crisis will translate into a reduced Asian footprint for the US, or in a diminished American global reputation.

Barring an actual war with Russia, which nobody currently predicts, the US can contain Russian power in Europe without pouring in new military resources by simply galvanising its European allies in the Nato alliance to do things differently. A shift of Nato bases and soldiers from their current western European locations to the territory of central and eastern Europe will be relatively swift and cheap, but sufficient to pin down the Russian military for years to come.

So, the Ukraine crisis may end up having no impact on the "rebalancing" of US forces to Asia, which could continue.

Indeed, the pivot may actually intensify if, as a result of the current showdown with Russia, the US Congress refuses to accept the cuts which President Barack Obama has pencilled in for the US armed forces.

Nor is it true, as some Chinese analysts have privately suggested, that the US' decision to do nothing in response to Russia's military intervention in Ukraine has devalued the credibility of the US security guarantees to other nations.

Ukraine is not a member of either Nato or the European Union, and the US pledge to that country's security was in the realm of the moral, rather than legal.

What the Ukraine episode has shown is that, as Professor Victor Cha of Georgetown University in the US shrewdly put it, "power matters less than commitment".

As powerful as the US remains, it was not committed enough to Ukraine's security to use its formidable strength to defend that country's integrity. Yet, the lesson that Asian nations will draw from this is not that US security guarantees are now worthless but rather, that in order to make sure that such guarantees remain effective, Washington's Asian partners will have to work harder to reinforce US commitment to their security. And that's precisely what Japan and South Korea - to name but a few of the region's nations - are now doing.

Nobody should therefore see the Ukraine crisis as anything but a misfortune, and the response may be a tightening of alliances with the US and a greater quest for regional collective security arrangements, as the only structures capable of preventing a repetition of a Ukraine-like scenario in Asia.

That much was clear when the UN General Assembly last week adopted a resolution supporting Ukraine's territorial integrity - the only Asian country that voted with Russia was North Korea.

With friends like these, Russia no longer needs enemies.

Get a copy of The Straits Times or go to straitstimes.com for more stories.