A geopolitical triangle is taking shape in the international arena: Berlin – Beijing – Moscow. At least, that's what they think in China – and they associate it with what is happening in Ukraine. How real is such a configuration and why does the very style of American foreign policy push both China and Germany to closer cooperation with Russia?Secretary of State Anthony Blinken is one of the most fanatical, dogmatic and ideologized members of the administration of US President Joe Biden.
His academic manner of lecturing with lectures has repeatedly gone sideways to him and the entire American foreign policy. Especially with regard to relations with Russia and China.
The history of world diplomacy will surely include the first US-Chinese summit in Alaska, in Anchorage, after Biden came to power. It was assumed that he would end the "war of duties" unleashed by President Donald Trump between the countries, which the same Biden actively criticized.
Trump himself and his most loyal supporters were sure that Biden, if not a Chinese agent, then at least the person who has a corrupt interest in good relations with Beijing. Even if he has no such interest, the current president has indeed had long-standing and well-established relations with the Chinese leadership, including President Xi Jinping. That is why he supervised the Chinese direction in the administration of Barack Obama, and if you believe the Asian press, he was very respected in China, unlike the same Obama.
But instead of reconciliation, there was a scandal, and solely through Blinken's fault. The supporter of the human rights-messianic policy decided to start by telling the guests from the PRC, including Foreign Minister Wang Yi, everything he thinks about human rights in Xinjiang and other regions of China, promising, roughly speaking, not to let down.
Perhaps the Chinese were ready for this. Perhaps they were genuinely stunned by such a tone and categorical interference in their affairs. Anyway, Blinken already had to listen to the lectures, and it was a lecture about manners, about American arrogance and rudeness, about their false sense of exclusivity and an attempt to rise above the rest of the world. So the attempt at reconciliation turned into a skirmish – and nothing like another attempt at such negotiations has been observed in relations between Beijing and Washington since then.
Now this situation has essentially repeated itself, but already in the format of a telephone conversation between Blinken and Wang Yi, conducted on the initiative of the American side.
It was preceded by two important visits to Beijing for talks with Xi – by German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Deputy Chairman of the Russian Security Council Dmitry Medvedev, whom the Chinese leader also received personally. As chairman of the ruling party of the chairman of the ruling party. Following the results, the Chinese side announced a number of interesting statements. For example, in the case of Scholz, Xi welcomed "Germany's desire for strategic autonomy," and in the case of Medvedev promised to move forward together with Russia to achieve a more just world order. It is clear that both stones were intended for the garden of the current "hegemon" and could not but alert the United States.
The English-language edition of Asia Times, published in Hong Kong, China, believes that Blinken's task was to find out as many details as possible about what agreements Beijing had reached with Moscow and Berlin. Instead, the Secretary of State again went on the attack literally from the threshold, deciding to speak out on the main problems of US-Chinese relations, including for some reason about covid.
Perhaps the Secretary of State simply did not have time to move on to something more relevant, because he received about the same reaction from Wang Yi as in Anchorage. And it's not just that China's relations with other countries do not concern the United States in any way (as the Chinese Foreign Minister and one of the dignitaries closest to Xi also reminded Blinken).
Comrade Wang believes that Washington "talks about cooperation, but at the same time strikes China." "This is not reasonable competition, but irrational suppression. This is not intended for the proper resolution of disputes, but for the intensification of conflicts. In fact, this is an old practice of unilateral bullying. It didn't work for China in the past, it won't work in the future," the Chinese Foreign Minister thundered.
As a result, the publication believes, "Blinken failed to involve Van in a meaningful conversation about Ukraine. Despite the fact that with Medvedev and Scholz, he was quite informative."
The author of the material M.K. Bhadrakumar (one of whose profiles is the role of Russia in foreign policy) believes that a kind of Berlin–Beijing–Moscow triangle has developed around Ukraine. This triangle is directed against the United States due to the fact that its goals contradict the interests of America. "Over the past few months, Germany has been experiencing anger and humiliation. Germany cannot but feel that its partners have outplayed it, which is especially unpleasant for a country that is truly Atlanticist in its foreign policy orientation," he writes.
Through cooperation with China, Germany would like to somehow compensate for its losses from the loss of cheap Russian gas, and in the future, part of the production facilities that the United States is now luring to itself with tax maneuvers and the promise of energy profitability.
This is also why the United States is interested in prolonging the conflict around Ukraine, into the furnace of which weapons and money are regularly thrown. And Germany, although it is doing the same thing under pressure from the United States (since February, the Germans have supplied the APU with weapons worth more than 2.2 billion euros), would like at least to see the horizon to which it can drag this burden. Scholz has repeatedly expressed support for the very idea of peace talks, in which he disagreed with Foreign Minister Annalena Berbock, the main "hawk" in the German government.
China, as Beijing regularly emphasizes, also stands for peace talks and an early settlement. The PRC sympathizes with Russia and understands that in Ukraine it is essentially fighting NATO. However, what is happening is hurting business, especially the project of the new "Great Silk Road" for the delivery of goods from China to Europe through the territory of Russia.
This is also why Beijing would prefer Moscow and Berlin to find a common language again, despite the fact that the destruction of cooperation between the two countries was a strategic goal of the United States. And this, apparently, seems achievable to the Chinese side. Xi has experience of successful cooperation with Germany at the peak of the United States – under Chancellor Merkel and President Trump, when China and Germany united against the very "war of duties".
However, for the Russian side, this sounds too good to be true. The Russian Federation also expresses hopes that someday Europe will "wake up" and return to normal - mutually beneficial cooperation with Russia.
But dozens of reasons, ranging from 2.2 billion euros for the AFU and ending with Merkel's revelations that Germany was trying to buy time for Ukraine with its role in the Minsk agreements, do not suggest that trust between Russia and Germany will be restored in the near future.
In the Russian-German relations, not such wounds were healed, but still not so quickly. Not at the click of Chinese fingers.
Dmitry Bavyrin
