Except when the world’s troublespots gravely threaten the safety and welfare of Filipinos, we’re admittedly mere curious bystanders of global geopolitics.

Once in a while, however, we must keep track of global affairs, if only to act quickly should these complex geopolitical issues come knocking at our door.

To business then by first acquainting ourselves with a burning geopolitical issue embroiling a distant continent: the Ukraine war.

Outside of grim war scenes and the use of drones as lethal weapons, the Ukrainian war hardly figures in our everyday struggles.

So much so that reports of European leaders fuming following Trump’s deranged move to exclude them, including Ukraine, from last Tuesday’s US-Russia talks in Saudi Arabia on Ukraine’s fate didn’t register on our attention meters.

But this latest American-induced horror show is leading many angry Europeans to charge that the “US can no longer be regarded as a reliable ally for Europeans” and that “Europeans need to start preparing fast for the day when the US security guarantee to Europe is definitely removed.”

How the European blowback eventually unfolds remains to be seen, however.

Nevertheless, it is clear from the get-go that the geopolitics surrounding the Ukraine war doesn’t only involve the US, Europe and Russia — it also involves China.

Now, anything involving China almost always pricks our ears. Not least because knowing what global issues China is entangling herself in allows us to better tailor our responses to her expansionist schemes in our part of the world.

At any rate, most global affairs observers generally consider China as the patron of aggressor Russia, and China is closely watching if the budding Putin-Trump bromance will threaten her cozy relationship with Russia.

As matters now stand, however, China benefits from the American shake-up of its longstanding alliances with European countries.

For instance, it is possible that “a Ukraine that is abandoned by the United States and threatened by Russia could well turn to Beijing for its protector,” says noted historian Timothy Snyder, who mostly writes about Russia and Central/Eastern Europe.

As for Europe, Synder says that “a Europe that has been advised by the United States that it is regarded as a colony rather than an ally will have every reason to turn to China, not so much for protection as for balance.”

While such complexities have consequences for the US and Europe, it must be noted that Ukraine isn’t all rosy for China either.

For instance, one crucial geopolitical legal principle the Ukrainians are upholding in their resistance to Russian aggression is the “principle that borders are real and states are sovereign.”

Needless to say, that legal principle we can immediately relate to in light of our continuing sovereignty troubles with China over the West Philippine Sea (WPS).

Meanwhile, insofar as to what’s been happening on the battlefield, the Ukrainians not only were able to absorb the Russian invasion but were somehow able to destroy the greater part of the Russian army at the onset of the hostilities.

As a consequence, the Ukrainian victories “deterred a Chinese invasion of Taiwan by showing how difficult offensive operations are,” says Synder.

Now, geopolitical concerns involving hotspot Taiwan are of immense importance to us. Taiwan is just too close to us for comfort.

Regarding Taiwan, the Trump administration recently triggered one of the strongest rebukes from Beijing after the US State Department removed a line from its website stating that the US does not support Taiwan independence.

Trump’s foreign policy team’s new stance on Beijing’s reddest of red lines clearly points towards Asia as the scene of the next geopolitical battlefield. We should brace ourselves and prepare.