Why do people talks so easily about US starting war with Russia? They each have thousands of nukes and if it devolves into nuclear war then earth is fucked beyond repair for at least a few centuries. This is not WW2 anymore, a war doesn't mean dropping with a bunch of soldiers on a beach, it means an apocalyptic destruction of earth.

I'm by no means an expert in international relations. However, with respect to your last paragraph, I do think that China monitors the development carefully. I would even go so far and assume that they won't act on Taiwan until the situation in the Ukraine is decided. Not because the cases are so similar, but because China and Russia seem to be important partners for each other. Right now, China is supporting Russia financially by buying resources from them (if I'm not mistaken) and also supporting them with equipment embargoed by the EU/US. China will probably know what it's risking when they attack Taiwan and I doubt that they want to create that sort of situation while one of their most important partners (might be mistaken here) is in a war that binds their resources and weakens their support for China.

On the other hand, they could also try to start the war on Taiwan soon, hoping that NATO/US stretch their support too thin.

Tl;Dr: I don't know either.

Russia can then ingest Ukraine, continue to seed political distrust in Western countries and then potentially start another war in Europe a few years later.

Holy shit this is the most mapgame-brained comment of all time. You mean Russia will get enough war score to annex Ukrainian territories, wait a few years for aggressive expansion to die down, spend some admin points to press the "sow discontent" button, then war when the casus belli is ready? Like a classic EU4 blob?

Stop gaming and read some books.