On May 26, Emma Ashford was interviewed on SpectatorTV about Ukraine and Taiwan. Ashford drew distinctions between Russia’s war in Ukraine and a potential attack on Taiwan by the Chinese government. “There are these parallels, but the parallels are mostly at this sort of large, strategic, geopolitical sense. There are also some major differences that I think are worth bearing in mind here,” she said.
“One is that even prior to February 24th of this year, Ukraine and Russia were actually engaged in a conflict. This conflict goes back at least as far as 2014. There’s been this disputed territory in the east of Ukraine. In contrast, the Chinese Communist Party’s approach to Taiwan in recent decades, while they are clearly still trying to exert influence and pull Taiwan further into their sphere of influence, it has been primarily economic. It would be a shift if China were to start pursing military options towards Taiwan and that’s not how Russia has been approaching this problem.”
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