China-Russia Lovefest – USA Gov Policy

DARIA NOVAK served in the United States State Department during the Reagan Administration, and currently is on the Board of the American Analysis of News and Media Inc., which publishes usagovpolicy.com and the New York Analysis of Policy and Government. Each Friday, she presents key updates on China.

On January 19, 2021, Secretary of State Michael Pompeo released a final Trump Administration statement condemning China for its atrocities in Xinjiang against the minority Uyghur Muslim population. As we move into 2021 under the new Biden Administration it seems appropriate to look at the current state of relations among the big three: US, China, and Russia. Although there remains an underlying current of distrust between Beijing and Moscow, the leaders of the two communist states continue to work together to undermine the status of the United States as leader of the free world and the most powerful nation on earth.

President Biden assumes office at a time when the United States cannot afford to underestimate the short—term geopolitical consequences of expanding and deepening China-Russia cooperation. For the duration of the Cold War, the US was able to play the “China card.” During the Nixon years when Beijing decided it needed a market for its fledgling export trade, it moved toward the US. The time was ripe for rapprochement. The great state players remain the same today, but the game has changed.

President Xi Jinping over the last decade has driven his country to develop advanced, offensive military capabilities, a large and relatively sophisticated export-based economy, and he has carved out a global political role he believes is befitting that of the head of the former Middle Kingdom. Neither China nor Russia abide by the norms of the international rules-based system. Unlike the Soviet Cold War era, however, China is a rising aggressive state that poses the greatest national security to the US and the entire West in modern times. President Xi has stated that his goal is no less than to remake the world in China’s image.

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Until President Trump assumed office no Administration since that of President Reagan had the political willpower to push back against the Chinese state. In 2021 the China-Russia alignment represents a very real and present threat to West. Russia’s expanding support of its ally in the east extends from joint naval exercises in the Mediterranean to acting as a force multiplier by complementing China’s military adventurism. Again, the amplified challenge is real. Russia is supplying its ally with advanced weapons that are speeding China’s takeover of the South China Sea and reducing the likelihood that the United States will be able to maintain a free and open Indo-Pacific in the future.

A report published last week from the Center for New American Security says: “Russia and China are popularizing authoritarian governance, exporting their best practices, watering down human rights norms, backing each other up to defend strategic interests in multilateral forums, creating norms around cyber and internet sovereignty, and bolstering illiberal leaders and helping them stay in power.” The anti-democratic synergy these states create is magnified across a number of fields and designed to push authoritarian systems as the solution while diminishing the influence and power of the United States.

By working together Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping are teaming up to reduce the impact of American sanctions and export controls. If they are successful Washington will have little leverage over China’s actions abroad in the near-term. Although the two communist giants do not agree on all issues, they have a unity in purpose when it involves working in tandem to counter-balance US global influence. Now that China and Russia have resolved most of their territorial issues, and the 1950’s dispute over Russia’s reneging on its promise to give China the bomb are fading, the world cannot count on the Russian-Chinese relationship deteriorating any time soon. Moscow’s political analysts view Washington as the immediate threat. That means playing the “China card.” In the defense sector, on democracy and human rights issues, inside the world of technology and cyberwarfare, and the economic realm China and Russia today find more reasons for synergy than cynicism. That should greatly concern the incoming Biden Administration.

Photo: China Defence Ministry

Quick Analysis

Putin’s Saber Rattling

Earlier this week, President Biden reversed his 2022 decision, authorizing the provision of antipersonnel land mines to the Ukrainian government. It follows an earlier Administration authorization to allow the use of an advanced American missile system capable of striking as deep as 100 miles inside Russian territory. The US election season may be ending, but both Russia and the West show no indication of stepping down the conflict. Russian propaganda continues to swell as the Kremlin increases its threats to use nuclear weapons against the West. Last week Andrey Sushentsov, program director of the pro-Kremlin think tank Valdai Discussion Club (VDC), published an article on growing nuclear tensions in the region. Official Russian language in the last few years has been threatening. Since the US election, rhetoric like that in the Sushentsov article, has approached the level of nuclear blackmail. The VDC article’s main theme centers on Russia’s intent to directly confront the West militarily if the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) becomes involved in Russia’s conflict with Ukraine. “On the one hand, these threats are intended to frighten the West, but on the other, Russian propagandists themselves are starting to believe in the inevitability of escalation,” according to Ksenia Kirillova of the Jamestown Foundation. On November 11, Sushentsov wrote that “The conflict will reach a completely new level, with unpredictable consequences for Europe and the entire world.” Kirillova points out that Putin’s distorted image of the world is divorced from reality and is causing the Kremlin to issue demands that are impossible to fulfill. Financial and other Russian resources needed to support Putin’s war are growing scarcer at the same time. This week the Kremlin announced a reduction of payments to its soldiers. Recently North Korea acknowledged it was sending soldiers to fight in Ukraine as Putin is running out of bodies to use as cannon fire. The war is not going well for Russia. One question floating around the Washington intelligence community is whether Putin will act out of desperation before President-elect Trump assumes office. In recent months the Russian propaganda machine is spewing out materials from fairly reputable analytical platforms inside the country. Kirillova says that “Kremlin ‘experts’ do not conceal that such threats are only intended to break the West psychologically, as they themselves are not prepared for full-scale nuclear war.” Despite Russia’s lack of preparation for an all-out war with the West, the expanding nuclear rhetoric carries with it an increase in the threat of a full-scale war in multiple theaters of operation. In June 2023 a founder of the Russian Council on Foreign and Defense Policy, Sergey Karaganov, called for “delivering a pre-emptive strike of retaliation” on Poland to force the West to surrender. In the previous month, Dmitry Suslov, a direct of research programs at the policy center proposed organizing “a demonstration nuclear explosion” aimed at intimidating the West. In September, President Putin announced a reappraisal of Russian nuclear doctrine after speaking earlier in the year at the plenary session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum and jokingly calling Suslov a “scary person.” Pavel Baev, writing in the European Daily Monitor, says “Putin intends his announcement to mark an escalation of nuclear brinkmanship and influence the proceedings of future Ukrainian peace efforts.” Putin is expanding the list of environmental conditions that are acceptable for using a nuclear weapon and incorporating it into Russian military doctrine. Baev adds that “The ups and downs of Russian brinkmanship are disconnected from the kinetic battles of the war, correlating instead with Ukrainian peace offensives, such as Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s first peace summit in Bürgenstock, Switzerland.” Despite the increase in vitriolic language, in a You Tube video published a week before the US presidential election, Karaganov openly assured the West the primary goal of the escalation is to break the American spirit and that of the West, not outright nuclear war. By Election Day in the US, with political prognosticators predicting a win for former president Trump, Karaganov changed his tune and called for an increased role in nuclear deterrence. Kirillova points out that Western concessions to Russia are unlikely to reduce the risk of nuclear escalation. The distorted reality inside the Kremlin continues to push that President-elect Trump is an adherent of “world government,” that Ukraine will create a nuclear weapon, and Russia must prepare for a nuclear conflagration to achieve its ambitions for a new world order. President-elect Trump has indicated he will not agree to concessions that destabilize Europe, the Middle East or other regions. Going forward a strong US foreign policy may be the most stabilizing course the West can count on to restrain Putin and his intent to rebuild the Russian empire. Daria Novak served in the U.S. State Dept. Illustration: Pixabay

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