CHINA, RUSSIA & THE US: 3 ACTORS, 1 IN SEARCH OF A ROLE (THE US)

Foreword

China's Xi Jinping and Russia's Vladimir Putin on May 16 2024 pledged a new era of partnership between the two most powerful rivals of the United States, which they cast as an aggressive Cold War hegemon sowing chaos across the world.

Xi, 70, and Putin, 71, signed a joint statement that proclaimed opposition to the US on a host of security issues and a shared view on everything from Taiwan and Ukraine to North Korea and cooperation on new peaceful nuclear technologies and finance.

Meanwhile, US generals warned of the renewed relationships between China, Russia and Iran in both the Middle East and Africa, suggesting alliances of geopolitical convenience intertwining the three could threaten America’s position in both regions.

Russia and China

Russia and China, pushing back against humiliations of the 1991 Soviet collapse and centuries of European colonial dominance of China, have sought to portray the West as decadent and in decline, with China challenging US supremacy in everything from quantum computing and synthetic biology to espionage and hard military power.

The joint statement singled out the United States for criticism: "The United States still thinks in terms of the Cold War and is guided by the logic of bloc confrontation, putting the security of narrow groups above regional security and stability, which creates a security threat for all countries in the region. The US must abandon this behaviour."

Anti-US alignment

China’s strong inclination to sustain its ties with Russia goes well beyond the Ukraine’s military adventure. Its return on investments is still framed by its response to the US's pursuit of a China containment strategy. Beijing believes its relations with Moscow might well bring a necessary solution in dealing with US policy in both economic and diplomatic terms.

Russia's invasion offers China a pointy lesson on its own economic resilience: a critical element of what President Xi referred to as comprehensive national security. In 2023, Russia overtook Saudi Arabia as the largest oil supplier to China. Since Beijing has placed energy security at the heart of its economic security, amid geopolitical rivalry with the collective West, these Russian supplies are vital.

In diplomatic terms, Beijing's long-term alignment with Russia is increasingly bound to their common resentment of US hegemony.  Deepened bilateral cooperation in recent years has allowed the two countries to demonstrate great-power status on the world stage to counterbalance US dominance.

War in Ukraine, Global South and BRICS

Meanwhile, the Ukraine invasion has inadvertently created an opportunity for China to renew its push to strengthen ties with the Global South, which does not see the war in Ukraine in the West's black and white terms.

The transformation of the BRICS grouping to BRICS Plus, with the addition of five new members (Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and UAE) and China's growing prominence in the leadership of most UN related institutions, are all part of Beijing's attempt to forge global partnerships in opposition to the US.

Isolation from the collective West could look like an unattractive option to China. But siding with the West against its nuclear neighbour in the north, with over 4000 km of shared borders, would be worse for Beijing at a time when the US is building a lattice of alliances to its south.

Beijing's ties with Moscow continue to test its diplomatic capability and economic resilience. China's ties with Russia are an example of how geographic and strategic necessity determine a country’s foreign affairs priorities.

Can US defeat China and Russia?

US strategists should take into account the experience of the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nobody can suggest that Iran, let alone Pakistan, is anything remotely resembling a serious rival of the US on the world stage. In Iraq and Afghanistan respectively, however, Tehran and Islamabad proved more powerful.

Unlike Washington, they are neighbours of those countries and had the ability to exert more power and run more risks than the US was ever willing and able to do.

Yet the US has challenged Russia, China, and Iran on ground where they hold vast and growing advantages. Washington is thus risking its main position by committing huge resources and, in the process, risking both exhaustion and defeat.

Ukraine: a future NATO member?

US high-tech weaponry has been important to the Ukrainian defense, but  Western countries cannot provide Ukraine with new soldiers to reinforce its severely depleted ranks, unless they go to war themselves..

The wise strategic course for the US is therefore to seek a compromise peace (akin to the 1955 Austrian State Treaty, negotiated with the Soviet Union) whereby the great majority of Ukraine is independent but neutral and the issue of the Russian-occupied territories is deferred for future negotiation (the approach Washington has taken to Turkish-occupied Northern Cyprus for the past 40 years). The minimum option is, anyway,  a purely military armistice as happened in Korea in 1953.

China and Russia common strategy

China and Russia have jointly pursued a clear grand strategy: compete with the US across numerous issues and geographical areas to force a reordering of the international system. They seek to diminish US foreign policy by testing the credibility of America's Indo-Pacific and Atlantic alliances and introducing new technologies and institutions that will transform the global economy.

As the Kremlin pushes to remake Europe's great power relationships at a continental level, Beijing is pursuing a far more ambitious project aimed at changing the foundations of the global order, ending once and for all the era of worldwide Western dominion.

The two states are allies on account of the old adage that the “enemy of my enemy is my friend.” Their partnership is largely practical, anchored in hard power principle. In this realpolitik alignment, both parties believe they have more to gain from continuing to work together than they risk losing.

China's advantages

As Moscow becomes increasingly dependent on Beijing, the latter will be able to demand access to key areas of military technology (hypersonic and nuclear propulsion technology) that the Russians have developed since the end of the Cold War, leveraging their post-Soviet designs and benefiting from access to mainly European technology.

It is fair to say that without China’s economic support, Russia would not have been able to brave the economic sanctions imposed on it by the West in the wake of Putin's invasion of Ukraine.

By backing Russia, China has taken risks. On May 1, Washington imposed sanctions on 20 companies based in China and Hong Kong. And yet Beijing has concluded that what Russia has to offer China in military technology outweighs the economic penalties.

The two great powers, by continuing to work in tandem, will be well positioned to control and dominate the Eurasian landmass: will that prevent the US to pursue its economic and security interests worldwide?

Iran's ties with Russia and China

“They're trying to get what they want. They're trying to replace the West and, moreover, the US in our access and influence across this crucial continent” US Africa Command chief Gen. Michael Langley told lawmakers”.

As wars rage in Gaza and Ukraine, senior US military officials sounded the alarm to lawmakers about the renewed relationships between China, Russia and Iran in both the Middle East and Africa, suggesting alliances of geopolitical convenience intertwining the three could threaten America’s position in both regions.

“I'm very concerned about this renewed relationship between Russia, China and Iran” US Central Command chief Gen. Michael Kurilla told a House Armed Services hearing. “What we're seeing is Iran is reliant on China and Russia is reliant on Iran.”

Kurilla explained that China buys 90 % of Iran’s oil, which is sanctioned by the US. In return, China uses Iran's influence as part of an effort to replace the US as one of the dominant forces in the Middle East.

“So in effect, China is funding Iran's subversive and malign behaviour in the region,” he said. Iran, meanwhile, has provided thousands of attack drones to Russia for its war in Ukraine and now has even “built a factory in Russia” to produce more locally, Kurilla said. The general said he couldn't discuss in an open setting what Russia is providing Iran for this help, but said that it was concerning.

In his testimony Kurilla didn't get complete the triangle, but US officials contend that China has provided at least non-lethal aid to Russia since Moscow's invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, and just prior to the invasion Russia's Vladimir Putin and China's Xi Jinping announced a no limits partnership.

Recently Iran conducted a maritime exercise with Russia and China, dubbed as Maritime Security Belt. The exercise reportedly took place in the North Indian Ocean and the Sea of Oman.

How to cope with Russia and China?

Moscow and China need to be managed, not won. Every great foreign-policy battle doesn't end with a decisive victory.

Rather than viewing Russia and China as existential adversaries that must be defeated, they should be seen as enduring challengers that must be managed over the long haul, perhaps indefinitely.

Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan were devastated militarily and surrendered, ending the Second World War, then later the Soviet Union collapsed, ending the Cold War. Today’s confrontations, however, are unlikely to end with such outcome.

The US and its European allies hope to see a triumph for Ukraine. It is tempting to imagine that this outcome would also deprive Russia of its military and economic resources.

But this sunny scenario is improbable. Far more likely is that even if Russia were to lose in Ukraine, Russia would remain revanchist and bitter, a country that, however much weakened, would still possess one of the world's twenty largest economies, the world's largest stockpile of nuclear warheads, and prodigious energy reserves.

Moreover, if President Putin were to resign or be ousted, his successor might be even more hardliner, and could seek not to limit but to expand conflict with the West.

A Ukrainian victory would not solve Washington's Russia problem. Instead, the US would have to consider how to contend with and manage an unpredictable, destabilizing Russia over the long term.

Considerations

China continues to emerge as a formidable competitor, especially in the economic realm. It is the largest trading partner for more than 120 countries.

China is narrowing America's military overmatch in Asia, the most critical theater of strategic competition, thanks in large part to the extraordinary build-up of the People’s Liberation Army Navy. Moreover, Beijing is widely improving its nuclear arsenal.

To achieve a Cold War–style victory over Russia and China separately would be challenging enough. The deepening partnership between the two countries would complicate that task.

For now the abrupt rupture in US-Russia relations and the steady deterioration of US-China relations mean that the Moscow-Beijing connection is poised to grow stronger.

Conclusion

Russia and China are united in seeking to reshape the current order to reflect their shared grievances and national interests. In particular, each wants to reduce US influence in what it sees as its rightful sphere of influence.

To that end, they have increasingly adopted each other's language on core issues: Russia characterizes Taiwan as an inalienable part of the China's territory, while China criticizes NATO's encroachment and disregard for Russian security concerns.

The US would be wise to assume that Russia and China are likely to pose enduring problems. Russia will remain a disruptive opportunist (North Korea and Vietnam have agreed to strengthen ties with Russia during recent Putin state visits) , and China a systemic challenger. But any attempt to drive wedges into China-Russia relation will likely only spur a tighter embrace.

The deepening Russia-China partnership is a fact. The best way to handle it will be to think of it as a condition needing management.

The way ahead is not a conflict to win but rather some manageable problems to handle. As the US looks to counter Russian aggression and to compete with China over the long haul, turning from notions of war-winning to cooler thoughts of problem management will be vital.