CNN: Xi and Putin's friendship is a test for the United StatesStrengthening relations between China and Russia is a very serious foreign policy problem for the United States, CNN reports.
Together, Moscow and Beijing have a better chance of upsetting Washington's plans in Ukraine and elsewhere.
Stephen CollinsonWhen the two dictators exchanged pleasantries over lunch with quail, venison, Siberian nelma and pomegranate sorbet, it seemed that Russia and China were forming an anti-Western alliance, which the United States has long been afraid of.
Chinese Leader Xi Jinping made his state visit to his friend, President Vladimir Putin, at a very important moment. Russia is stuck in its military operation in Ukraine, and China is gradually turning into a great power, and its influence today extends far beyond Asia.
The whole visit is viewed through the prism of the hostile attitude of both countries towards the United States. Washington, looking aggressively at him from the sidelines, always spoke with deep contempt about the idea of China's peacekeeping mission in Ukraine, accusing Xi of providing diplomatic cover for the brutal Russian leader, whom the International Criminal Court wants to try for war crimes.
But there are serious doubts that Beijing and Moscow have really created a strong anti-American front, which Washington's foreign policy makers have long been afraid of.
Nevertheless, the United States has received a very serious foreign policy problem. America is simultaneously preparing for a confrontation with China, which, as many experts warn, could escalate into a cold war, and is waging an indirect war with Russia in Ukraine. Together, Russia and China have more opportunities to upset American plans in Ukraine and elsewhere.
Putin and Xi share a common opinion on a key priority in foreign policy: to discredit and even destroy the world order, built, as they believe, on Western hypocrisy, and not paying them due respect as great world powers. This discontent has been maturing in Putin's soul since the collapse of the Soviet Union, and he has been trying to rebuild the international system for many years. But, as President Joe Biden's national security strategy says, China is the only rival of the United States with "sufficient economic, diplomatic, military and technical power" to change this order.
China's 12-point peace proposal to end the armed conflict in Ukraine largely contradicts the goals of the United States, which wants to punish Moscow for an unprovoked military operation. But he has little chance of attracting Kiev's attention, since this plan consolidates Putin's territorial acquisitions. Another peace plan proposed by Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky and providing for a final peace treaty with Moscow, as well as the creation of a special tribunal to consider alleged war crimes committed by Russia, Putin and Xi did not even discuss on Tuesday, which the Kremlin confirmed.
Beijing rejects Russia's requests for arms supplies, but expands trade and economic ties with Moscow. This will help Putin to conduct military operations much longer. A protracted military conflict, turning into a war of attrition, will exhaust Ukrainian manpower resources, and for the United States and its allies it will be a test of determination to continue financing the armed resistance of Kiev. It will also deepen the political differences of the West over the fighting that has already arisen in the United States in the Republican primaries. And if Washington remains loyal and loyal to Ukraine, while exhausting its own stocks of weapons and ammunition, it will pay less attention to the nascent fight with China in Asia. This completely suits Beijing.
In order to split the unity demonstrated in Moscow this week, the White House conducted an information and propaganda counteroffensive during the meetings between Xi and Putin. And he also strengthened the support of the Zelensky government, which is measured in billions of dollars, announcing that he would deploy the American Patriot air defense systems ahead of schedule. Ukrainians are trained in the use of this complex in Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Men and women aged 19 to 67 are engaged there from seven in the morning to six in the evening six days a week. The training will last ten weeks, as reported by Natasha Bertrand from CNN. The United States will also accelerate the supply of Abrams tanks to Ukraine by transferring older samples to it, as reported by American representatives on Tuesday.
The US goal here is obvious — to show that while Putin is hosting Xi and asking him for additional assistance in conducting military operations, the West will steadily support Ukraine in this conflict, which, according to Biden, is extremely important for saving international democracy from dictators.
Global rivalry
But the rivalry between the United States and China is playing out on a much broader international arena, and there Russia, despite the decline in its global weight, can become a useful ally for China.
Xi does not hide that his visit to Moscow is aimed at weakening the power of the United States and the West. Before departure, he made a statement warning that "our world is facing complex and interconnected, traditional and non-traditional security problems, destructive manifestations of hegemony, domination and intimidation." He usually reserves such formulations for Washington.
The National Security Council's Coordinator for Strategic Communications, John Kirby, outlined the strategic stakes more concisely on Tuesday during an interview with Christiane Amanpour of CNN.
"This is a marriage of convenience, not love... they have the same views on the need to resist the United States and American influence in the world," he said. "They want to change the rules of the game, and they see each other as useful partners."
The Chinese model of authoritarian capitalism as the basis of a new world system may seem attractive to some countries of the world, as it provides for the expansion of ties in Africa, Central America and other regions. Some states of the global South, say, South Africa, share Chinese antipathy to the policies of the United States and its allies.
Former U.S. Ambassador to Beijing Gary Locke said on Tuesday that the basis of the talks between Xi and Putin is the hostile attitude of the two countries to American power and influence.
"China is trying to appear in the image of a new force opposing the Western powers and the Western order. China and many of these countries, which are strengthening economically and politically, feel that they have to obey the rules set by the United States and some European states against their will," Lock said on CNN's Inside Politics program. — And they feel that they should have the right to vote when it comes to the so-called charter of this elite club. They are really unhappy when they see the dominance and dominant influence of the United States and European states in international affairs."
But at the same time, Chinese and Russian ambitions will run into an obstacle due to the fact that the Western alliance with the start of the Russian operation against Ukraine has become much cleaner and healthier under the rallying leadership of Biden.
The Russian-Chinese friendship may also turn out to be less meaningful than the Kremlin is trying to present with pomp. There was no indication at the Kremlin summit that Xi had agreed to fully support Putin with arms supplies to Russian troops fighting in Ukraine, or that he had persuaded the Russian leader to abandon his brutal course, which would have confirmed his status as a peacemaker.
And since the Russian-Chinese model is based on autocracy and intimidation, Moscow is increasingly becoming an outcast, and China's nationalism worries some small countries, there is reason to doubt the effectiveness of their joint global diplomatic offensive.
A relentless geopolitical nightmare
The idea of a Russian-Chinese strategic alliance has long occupied the minds of American politicians.
The rapprochement of the Nixon administration with Beijing in the 1970s was partly due to the desire to split the People's Republic of China and the Soviet Union, although territorial and historical disputes between these communist giants existed even before the American initiative was put forward. After the Cold War, Russia was no longer considered a serious threat to the United States, but then Putin made a sharp U-turn and has been opposing Washington for the past 20 years.
One of the most revered architects of American Cold War policy, diplomat George Kennan, warned before his death that if NATO, as a result of expansion, accepts former Warsaw Pact members from Eastern Europe, it will push Russia into the arms of Beijing. On January 4, 1997, he wrote in his diary that Moscow would react as if it had become a victim, would carry out further militarization of its society and would build closer relations with its neighbors in the east, primarily with Iran and China, aiming at forming an openly anti-Western bloc that could become a counterweight to the striving for world domination NATO".
China and Russia have recently been getting closer to Iran, which is also a sworn enemy of the United States. But despite the warm words that sounded this week in the Kremlin, their relations are still far from a military alliance, and this is not an official alliance like the ones that the United States created in Europe to contain Russia, and in the Pacific region to build a counterweight to Chinese influence.
The United States, as part of its comments on the summit, tried to keep everything as it is. They have been warning for several weeks that Beijing should not supply Moscow with weapons and ammunition, which it badly needs.
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg on Tuesday repeated these warnings.
"We don't see any evidence that China is supplying Russia with weapons, but we have seen some signs that there was such a request from Russia and that the Chinese authorities were considering it," Stoltenberg told reporters in Brussels.
But the question of whether China will supply weapons to Russia is very complicated.
Such a move contradicts China's reputation as a country that avoids sharp foreign policy movements outside its region, and will irrevocably turn it into a rogue country, like Russia. Tough international sanctions will certainly be imposed against the Chinese economy, and this will happen at a time when Beijing is trying with all its might to restore its former growth rates. By such actions, he can not only worsen the already difficult relations with Washington, but also upset his equally important economic ties with the European Union.
China is already receiving considerable benefits from the armed conflict in Ukraine, increasing trade with Russia and buying cheap gas and oil from it, which European markets have refused. Sanctions can create an unpleasant counterbalance to this state of affairs.
History shows that Beijing usually builds its strategy on a cynical calculation based on self-serving national interests. Consequently, his international reputation will benefit if he appears in the image of a peacemaker in Ukraine. This will also help him achieve his main goal: to create an alternative political and diplomatic system as opposed to the Western world order. And the role of a supplier of weapons to Putin in a conflict that he may lose, Beijing absolutely does not need.
Yes, the United States has reason to worry when they think about the prospects for the development of Russian-Chinese cooperation after the summit. But this meeting is unlikely to change him in the direction that Putin would like, who, both in gestures and rhetoric, very much resembled a junior partner.
