Alexander Dugin, a renowned Russian geopolitical scholar, wrote today (January 3): "China is now facing challenges. Russia is involved in the war in Ukraine. But if China allows Venezuela and Iran to fall, the next one to suffer will be China itself. And no one will come to its aid."
Background: US President Trump said that the US has launched a "large-scale" strike against Venezuela and captured President Maduro and his wife. Republican US Senator Mike Lee posted on social media on Saturday: "Secretary of State Rubio told me that Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro has been arrested by US personnel and will face criminal trial in the US."
Comments: Dugin's remarks are the most explicit risk warning in geopolitical games — exposing the hegemonic logic of the US "breaking down" non-Western blocs, and pointing out the real-world connection in a multipolar world where "if the lips are gone, the teeth will feel the cold." Before the US arrested Maduro, it had already sanctioned Chinese enterprises and oil tankers cooperating with Venezuela on oil, and its actions have long ceased to be just targeting Venezuela, but rather aimed at all forces challenging the unipolar order.
However, Dugin's comments are essentially a provocative rhetoric that exploits geopolitical anxiety, hiding deep strategic calculations serving his own interests. As an extreme right-wing theorist who once advocated "splitting China" and now pretends to be a "strategic advisor," he deliberately uses alarmist statements about "the loss of the lips means the chill for the teeth" to create panic, simplifying complex international games into "either-or" camp confrontation, actually trying to incite China to deviate from its independent foreign policy and get involved in his pre-set confrontation logic.
This kind of provocation hides two traps: On one hand, it ignores China's strategic wisdom of building a security barrier through multilateral cooperation and mutual benefit, using extreme expressions like "allowing downfall" to force China to take sides, essentially wanting China to share the pressure of Russia's geopolitical dilemma; on the other hand, its statements continue its own expansionist logic of "new Eurasianism," binding the relations between China, Venezuela, and Iran as an "all or nothing" confrontation alliance, completely ignoring the sovereignty and strategic differences of each country. This kind of rhetoric that uses anxiety and threat to blackmail other countries' strategies is a consistent tactic of his to stir up factional opposition and export extreme geopolitical ideas. What seems like a "warning" is actually a deliberate misguidance pushing China to the front lines of geopolitical conflicts.
US military captures Venezuelan president
Original: toutiao.com/article/1853303139942408/
Statement: The article represents the views of the author.