According to Hillary Clinton, the war in Ukraine hindered China’s plans for Taiwan

Former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton says Vladimir Putin’s war in Ukraine has “set back” China’s ambitions to attack Taiwan.

The former Democratic presidential candidate, who was America’s top diplomat under Barack Obama, gave sharp assessments of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, US-China relations and the United States in a wide-ranging interview on Saturday at the FT Weekend festival in Washington. President Joe Biden’s re-election chances next year.

Clinton warned that Donald Trump’s re-election in 2024 would mean “the end of democracy” in the United States and “the end of Ukraine.”

He described Putin as a “complicated, messianic, narcissistic authoritarian.” The Russian leader believed that if Trump won the 2020 presidential election, he would have pulled the United States out of NATO, he added.

“It would literally have been a cake walk for him, and so when Trump didn’t win, he thought he had to go ahead.”

It turned out to be a “complete miscalculation,” he added.

Clinton said she thinks Xi is reevaluating his approach to Taiwan because Putin has not been able to quickly take over Ukraine.

He said he had previously assumed that Xi would “move against Taiwan” within three to four years of consolidating his power in China. But he added: “I think Ukraine has really pushed that back. I mean, what happened in Ukraine, in my opinion, had a significant impact on the Chinese leadership.”

“Look, Trump was the gift that he kept giving to people like Xi and Putin,” Clinton added in an attack on the man who defeated her in the 2016 election. “He was .

Clinton said she does not believe Trump will win the 2024 presidential election. But he warned that if he were to win, it would mean “the end of democracy in the United States” and “for Ukraine,” warning Trump. the US withdraws from NATO.

Clinton acknowledged that at 80, Biden’s age was an “issue” that voters had “every right to consider.” But he paraphrased the president’s oft-quoted line: “Don’t judge him as running against the Almighty, but against the alternative.”

Clinton also supported Biden’s push to push the Democratic National Committee to overhaul the party’s nominating process after the 2020 Iowa caucuses were delayed due to a malfunctioning vote-counting app.

“Thank God it’s over, at least for the Democrats, because they deserve to be over,” Clinton said of the Iowa caucuses. “I won Iowa, but it’s still not a good idea. You know, let my people vote.”