As U.S. troops train Ukrainians in Germany, U.S. and Chinese navies joust in the South China Sea

(Originally published Jan. 17 in “What in the World“) Here’s a recipe for potential disaster: the USS Nimitz carrier group is steaming through the South China Sea after voyaging across the Pacific from San Diego to conduct what the Pentagon calls routine exercises. China, to retaliate, has launched exercises in the South China Sea from its own Shandong carrier group.

Such voyages by U.S. Navy vessels are indeed routine, in that Washington has since 1979 tasked the U.S. Navy with conducting “freedom of navigation” voyages through international waters any single nation claims as its own. China claims almost the entire South China Sea. Another U.S. carrier group, the Makin Island Amphibious Ready Group, is meanwhile somewhere near Singapore after conducting exercises there.

Russia and Belarus, meanwhile, have launched “defensive” air force exercises, which have heightened concerns Belarus may be about to join a new offensive against Ukraine. The news follows a report that a missile that destroyed an apartment building in Dnipro, killing at least 40, may have been a ballistic missile fired from Belarus.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who has now convinced the West to provide him every weapon system he has requested except attack drones, fighter jets and long-range missiles, demanded on Monday that the West speed it up. This week Finland, Poland, and the United Kingdom promised to send Ukraine battle tanks. That followed an earlier promise by France, Germany, and the United States to send armored personnel carriers and pledge from Germany and the U.S. to supply Ukraine with Patriot anti-missile batteries.

In Germany, the top American general, Gen. Mark Milley, visited Ukrainian troops being trained by U.S. forces there. It was Milley, the chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who last November sent the White House scrambling to reassure Zelensky after Milley said victory for Ukraine was impossible without Putin’s downfall and suggested Kyiv needed to negotiate with Russia.