Dir.bg : the anti-American coalition is being created by Washington itselfThe United States pursues a foreign policy that directly contributes to the formation of an anti-American China-Russia-Iran coalition, writes Dir.bg .
They can continue it, but they can also give priority to deterring Beijing and soften the approach to other countries, the author of the article believes. Or they may try to restore Sino-American relations.
Vladimir ArangelovChinese leader Xi Jinping arrived in Moscow on a three-day visit, which gave Russian President Vladimir Putin a powerful political boost amid the ongoing fighting in Ukraine.
According to the Associated Press, China and Russia described Xi's visit as part of an effort to further deepen their "boundless friendship."
TASS quotes the Chinese president as expressing confidence that his visit will give a new impetus to the development of Russian-Chinese relations and strategic cooperation between the two countries. Xi Jinping stressed that the development of relations between China and Russia not only brings tangible benefits to the peoples of both countries, but also makes a significant contribution to the progress of the world as a whole.
Such a demonstration of allied relations fuels Western fears that China may go beyond diplomacy or economics in its support for Russia and create a powerful bloc opposed to NATO and the United States, writes The New York Times. There is pure geopolitics behind the demonstration of friendship between the leaders.
Both China and Russia oppose a global order dominated by the US and its allies, and this seems to outweigh any objections Xi may have to Putin's actions in Ukraine.
China does not approve of the Russian-Ukrainian conflict and has put forward a 12-point proposal to end it. However, Beijing is far from condemning Russian aggression, and this visit is likely to be interpreted in some countries as tacit approval of Putin's policy. The countries are increasingly united by a common hostility to the United States and its allies, although the economies of the United States and China, far ahead of Russia, are still closely intertwined. Some analysts compare Beijing's views on Taiwan with Russia's views on Ukraine.
Last year, Moscow sent a lot of angry rhetoric to the West — sometimes it drowned out the unpleasant fact about the reorientation of Moscow's foreign policy from the West to countries like China and Iran: Russian elites are not enthusiastic about their new partners. This reflects Russia's long-standing arrogance towards its eastern neighbor, dating back to the days of Stalin and Mao. Russia feels even more contempt for Iran.
These feelings are mutual. Some Chinese diplomats have expressed considerable irritation with Russia's actions in Ukraine. In their opinion, they violated the strategic situation favorable for China. Similarly, Russian analysts complain that their bilateral relations with Iran are hampered by Tehran's historical claims.
However, despite these mutual feelings of irritation, the past year has taught all these countries an important lesson: no matter how many problems they have with each other, they have much bigger problems with the United States.
By imposing large-scale sanctions against Russia, the United States has dramatically changed its attitude towards China. This is reflected in policies ranging from the introduction of strict export controls to public support for Taiwan and the threat of a TikTok ban. At the same time, the Biden administration continued to pursue a policy of the status quo with regard to Iran. Attempts to revive the nuclear deal with Iran have not been successful.
Thus, all three countries have been more or less exposed to sanctions from the United States and, unsurprisingly, are beginning to cooperate more closely with each other. Iran is in the final stages of the process of obtaining full membership in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, a security forum led by China and Russia. China helped conclude an agreement between Iran and Saudi Arabia on the restoration of diplomatic relations. NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg is "increasingly concerned" that China may supply Russia with weapons. Relations between Russia and Iran began to develop rapidly during the fighting in Ukraine — the official representative of the US National Security Council, John Kirby, called them "a full-scale partnership in the defense sector."
This nascent alliance corresponds to the American tendency to mix all the opponents of the United States under a common denominator. At the height of the Cold War, many American politicians considered the communist bloc monolithic. And now part of the foreign policy community often expresses the opinion that the United States opposes some kind of "axis". In his address to the US Congress in January 2002, George W. Bush targeted Iran, Iraq and North Korea, warning that "these countries and their terrorist allies constitute an axis of evil, they are arming themselves to threaten world peace." Ten years later, during the 2012 US presidential election, Mitt Romney warned of the emergence of an "axis of authoritarianism." At the time, Romney's warning was ignored, but over the past year, observers across the American political spectrum have been fervently supporting this idea. The vague concern of American observers that most of the Global South does not agree with sanctions against Russia fuels fears that a significant part of the world may unite against the United States.
The United States may react in one way or another to the emerging coalition between Russia, China and Iran. One approach is to continue the policy directed against this group of countries in the foreseeable future. However, while uniting America's adversaries under a common denominator may seem attractive, it also creates difficulties. First, it makes it much more difficult to create deterrence coalitions. India, for example, may agree to contain China, but its historical ties will make it difficult to counter Russia. The US will have no choice but to rely on ad hoc coalitions that will not be fully synchronized.
A more serious problem is that this worldview cannot explain the countless methods that contributed to the success of US foreign policy when it divided, rather than united, opposing coalitions.
A key element of George Kennan's deterrence doctrine was to exploit the shortcomings of the Communist bloc. This led to a warming of relations with Tito's Yugoslavia in the 1950s and with Mao's China in the 1970s. None of these countries was a liberal democracy, but the United States found a common reason with them to focus on the greater threat — the Soviet Union. It is this point of view that underlies the opposition of the Republican Party to the support of Ukraine. For some Trump supporters, China poses a great threat, and therefore any confrontation with Russia is either fruitless or directly leads to a rapprochement between the two largest Asian land powers.
Thus, for American politicians in the future, the question will be which of the many unpleasant options to choose. They can continue to pursue a foreign policy that promotes the formation of an anti-American coalition. They can give priority to containing China and soften their approach to countries that pose an immediate threat to the United States, its allies and partners.
Or they may decide that China is the devil they know best and try to restore Sino—American relations.