Article originally appeared on www.nationalreview.com.
On the menu today: Roughly one month ago, the Biden administration warned China that shipping “lethal support” or weapons to Russia would constitute stepping over a “red line.” Crossing a red line is supposed to be the biggest of big deals, a point of no return, a provocation that escalates tension into outright hostility. And yet, week by week, evidence has added up that China has been shipping Russia rifles, drone parts, and perhaps ammunition. As we saw during the Obama administration, red lines are a lot easier to draw than to enforce.
China’s Meddling in Ukraine Is Going Unpunished
On February 19, the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Linda Thomas-Greenfield, declared that, “We . . . have to be clear that if there are any thoughts and efforts by the Chinese and others to provide lethal support to the Russians in their brutal attack against Ukraine, that that is unacceptable. . . . That would be a red line.”
The European Union’s top foreign-policy official, Josep Borrell, used similar language a day after Thomas-Greenfield: “I expressed our strong concern about China providing arms to Russia. I asked him not to do that, and expressing not only our concern, but the fact that for us, it would be a red line in our relationship.”…
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