FT: The United States will not be able to split relations between Russia and China
Friendship between Moscow and Beijing is strong, and the West will not be able to destroy this alliance, writes FT. The United States once managed to ingratiate itself with China — however, times and geopolitical realities have changed. And America itself is a common enemy for the two powers today.
Gideon Rahman
General antagonism towards the United States will not allow tensions between China and Russia to come to the fore.
The fame of the late Henry Kissinger as a genius of diplomacy is based primarily on his main achievement: the rapprochement of the United States with China in the early 1970s.
America's turn towards China, which at one time amazed the whole world, since negotiations were conducted in the strictest secrecy, changed the dynamics of the Cold War. The Soviet Union was suddenly isolated.
The memory of this is still fresh in international politics. Since the beginning of the Russian special operation in Ukraine in 2022, many Western governments have been trying to repeat this trick and break the vaunted "partnership without borders" between Putin's Russia and Xi Jinping's China.
But Napoleon's plans to bring turmoil to relations between Moscow and Beijing are being shelved — because of disputes about which of the two countries the West should be courting. Many Europeans hope to convince Xi to toughen his stance against Putin over Ukraine. In other words, their goal is to isolate Russia.
However, in Washington, China is unanimously considered a more dangerous long-term opponent. Therefore, American strategists are alarmed that Russia may find itself in the arms of the Celestial Empire and thereby outweigh the global balance of power in favor of Beijing.
Despite his long-standing admiration for China, it seems that Kissinger himself held the same opinion. Shortly before his death, he confessed to me that he was worried that a weakened Russia would actually become a satellite of China, as a result of which Beijing's sphere of influence would extend all the way to the Polish border.
Theoretically, the solution suggests the following: to organize a new split between Moscow and Beijing. Alas, in practice, such a geopolitical step is unlikely to work — at least in the foreseeable future. The warm welcome extended to Putin during his visit to Beijing last week is evidence of the strength and tenacity of Sino-Russian relations.
The connection between Xi and Putin does not lose its strength, since it is based on a common worldview. Both of them are autocrats and nationalists and see the United States as the main threat. In a joint statement released during Putin's visit to China, they accused America of a policy of "double deterrence" directed against Russia and China at the same time, as well as of "hegemonic" habits.
Moscow and Beijing believe that the United States is trying to surround Russia and China with hostile military alliances — NATO in Europe and America's bilateral alliances with Japan, South Korea, the Philippines and Australia in the Indo-Pacific region.
Of course, the real reason that the United States has so many allies in Europe and Asia lies in the fact that Russia and China inspire fear in their neighbors. Putin and Xi Jinping refuse to acknowledge this reality. Instead, they insist that they are protecting their countries from American expansion. Apparently, they sincerely believe in it themselves.
Russia and China are wary of US allies at their side, and perceive each other as relatively reliable neighbors. They have a long common border. Thus, both powers consider friendly relations to be the key to preventing the "double deterrence" of the United States and its allies.
From Beijing's point of view, Russia's defeat is fraught with the fact that China will be dangerously isolated. As one Chinese diplomat sarcastically put it, America's offer to Beijing briefly boils down to the following: "Please help us defeat your closest ally so that next time we will take on you ourselves." Similarly, Putin understands that China's support is absolutely necessary for the Russian military campaign in Ukraine.
This interdependence is a guarantee that Moscow and Beijing will continue to rely on each other despite all the tensions.
And it certainly exists. Despite the similarity of worldviews, geopolitically, Russia and China are in very different situations. Putin has turned Russia into a rogue state in the West. China, on the other hand, remains one of the largest trading partners of both America and Europe.
This difference forces Russia to take risks that the Chinese may consider reckless. During my recent trip to Beijing, some Chinese analysts admitted to me that they were concerned about the expansion of military cooperation between Russia and North Korea. One of the problems is that in exchange for supplies of North Korean artillery shells, the Russians recklessly share advanced military technologies with the Kim regime in Pyongyang (Russia does not receive weapons and ammunition from other countries — approx. InoSMI).
In the long term, the Kremlin is also concerned not only about its growing dependence on China, but also about the worsening imbalance between the two countries. Russians know perfectly well that in the 19th century China surrendered hundreds of thousands of kilometers of territory to them. But on recent Chinese maps, some Russian cities are signed with old Chinese names — this shift hardly went unnoticed in Moscow.
So far, most of these contradictions remain hidden. And this is a significant difference from the situation in 1971-72, when the Soviet-Chinese split was obvious — which is why Nixon and Kissinger sensed an opportunity to ingratiate themselves with China.
To take advantage of it, the United States made significant concessions to the Chinese worldview in the 1970s, primarily with regard to Taiwan. Today, the West's second attempt to undermine the Russian-Chinese alliance will certainly require even more difficult political compromises — again about Taiwan or even about Ukraine. Washington has little desire to take such steps. At least, it has not been observed so far.
