The leadership in Beijing must be secretly delighted watching the struggle between Russia and the West. The Ukraine mess can seriously poison Moscow’s relations with Washington and Brussels for a long time to come, thus reducing their mutual ability to coordinate policies on the major issues in world politics. One such issue is the rise of China.
Up to the present, Russia has pursued a relatively balanced and circumspect policy toward its giant Asian neighbour. Although China has recently signalled that it would welcome closer strategic ties with Russia — perhaps even a security alliance — Moscow so far has been reluctant to transform their current ‘strategic partnership’ into a full-blown geopolitical entente. In particular, Russia has not been ready to back Beijing’s assertive stance on various territorial disputes in East Asia.
Western political and economic sanctions will inevitably push Moscow toward Beijing, increasing the likelihood that China and Russia will align their foreign policy toward the West. This, in turn, will reinforce the Middle Kingdom’s strategic positions in Asia. Having acquired Russia as a safe strategic rear area, as well as privileged access to its vast energy and minerals base and advanced military technologies, China would feel far more confident in its rivalry with the United States for primacy in the Asia Pacific. Events in Ukraine are likely to finally clinch a Russia–China gas pipeline deal long delayed by haggling over fuel prices. Western sanctions will certainly make Moscow more compliant with Beijing, landing China a bargain that will provide it with a stream of cheap Siberian gas.
China’s response to the recent developments around Ukraine is telling. Ever since the crisis began to develop late last year, Chinese media have tended to blame Western meddling. After Russia took over Crimea and declared its readiness to use military force, the Chinese Foreign Ministry blandly urged ‘the relevant parties in Ukraine to resolve their internal disputes peacefully within the legal framework so as to safeguard the lawful rights and interests of all ethnic communities in Ukraine’. Discussing the crisis with Putin, China’s President Xi Jinping remarked, somewhat enigmatically, that ‘the situation in Ukraine, which seems to be accidental, has the elements of the inevitable’. China’s official press commentary is sympathetic with Moscow, stressing that Putin’s determination to protect the interests of Russia and Russian-speaking citizens is ‘quite understandable’.
Beijing has abstained at the UN Security Council vote on Crimea, and made it quite clear that it disapproves of using the UN to pressure Russia, with China’s foreign ministry commenting that the Security Council’s vote on the US-prepared draft resolution ‘will only lead to confrontation among all parties, which will further complicate the situation’.
What really matters is China’s willingness to go along with the sanctions against Russia. However, there is zero probability that Beijing will support any political or economic penalties on Moscow. China’s stance amounts to a sort of benevolent neutrality toward the Kremlin. One suspects that, in exchange, Beijing will expect the same kind of benevolent neutrality from Moscow: for example, with respect to its actions in East Asia and the Western Pacific.
In the 1990s, Zbigniew Brzezinski likened Eurasia to a grand chess board, emphasising the geopolitical interconnectedness of various parts of the supercontinent. The metaphor is now even more relevant. What is now occurring in Ukraine and around it will inevitably affect the games being played out on the opposite side of the board, if only because the players are often the same. This is well understood by some American strategists, who worry that excessive pressure from the West ‘may alter the geopolitical balance by putting Russia closer to China’. However, Washington has not still made up its mind as to who is America’s top geopolitical competitor in this grand chess game: Russia or China?
When the US enjoyed its ‘unipolar moment’ in the 1990s and the first half of the 2000s, Washington could easily pursue a dual containment policy. Since that time, the balance of power has changed significantly. America is hardly in a position to confront two great powers in Eurasia simultaneously. Americans have to decide which region is more important to them — post-Soviet Eastern Europe or East Asia. The choice may be unpalatable, but indefinitely postponing it will have consequences.
It is eerily fitting that the Ukraine crisis should have broken out on the hundredth anniversary year of the First World War, which was triggered by a dispute in the seemingly insignificant Balkans. Russia’s current stance toward Crimea and eastern Ukraine is reminiscent of past Austro-Hungarian attitudes towards the Balkans. The fear of losing control over the Balkans drove Austria-Hungary into the embrace of Imperial Germany, even though Vienna and Berlin had traditionally vied for control of Central Europe and fought a war in 1866. The alliance of Germany and Austria-Hungary contributed to Europe’s splitting into two camps and eventually the general war.
Sino-Russian relations, of course, have been historically complicated, but this may not preclude them forming an entente, as long as they perceive a common adversary. Hopefully, the current Ukraine situation will not result in war, but it could well become a major step toward transforming the international order into a confrontational bipolarity, with the US-led West facing a Sino-Russian axis. The Western push to ‘isolate’ Russia may prove self-defeating. Rather than forcing Moscow to withdraw from Ukraine, it will draw it closer to Beijing.
Artyom Lukin is Deputy Director for Research at the School of Regional and International Studies, Far Eastern Federal University (Vladivostok, Russia). He is also Associate Professor at the Department of International Relations.
A version of this article originally appeared here on the Foreign Policy Research Institute website.
Ultimately, what is at stake here is peace in the 21st century. Learning from the history of the causes of WW I, WW II, and the Cold War, international community understands that Ukraine’s crisis has important implications for the broader domain of world peace in the 21st century. As such, it is essential to settle the post-Cold War strategic landscape that will lead to peace via learning from history.
By focusing on bashing China, Artyom Lukin overlooked the deeper problem of what had caused WW I, WW II, and the Cold War. After 1870, the alliance system of Europe was dramatically altered with the creation of a united Germany. Hope for a peaceful world order went out of season as the geographical scale of conflict between the Triple Alliance (Germany, Austria-Hungary, Italy) and the Triple Entente (Russia, France, Great Britain) made it very difficult for political and military leaders to control events in the eve of 1914. Germany supported Austria-Hungary’s interests at the expense of Russian ambitions in the Balkans, while French feared of German aggression and the Russian searched for access to the Mediterranean. The Triple Alliance and the Triple Entente divided Europe into two competing diplomatic spheres. Since 1914 to now 2014 hundred years later, we need to ask what does Germany, the de facto power of the European Union, want in terms of expansion of liberal democracy which resulted in changing domestic politics that led to more countries increasing alliance with the EU. In other words, after the unification of East and West Germany, what are Germany’s intentions in the post-Cold War?
During WW II, Hitler moved to achieve his main aim to secure the oil fields in the Caucasus, and to achieve this was to take Stalingrad. Likewise, the Russians could not let the Germans get hold of the oil fields in the Caucasus. As a result, the battle of Stalingrad descended into one of the most brutal battle in WW II. Here again Artyom Lukin overlooks the fact that post-Soviet Eastern Europe, East Asia, and the Middle East are already linked. While the EU is expanding in Ukraine, Japan under Abe has made contracts to revive the Ottoman Empire by modernizing both conventional and nuclear capability for Turkey. With Hiroshima on August 6, 1945 and Nagasaki on August 9, 1945, the United States thus did not impose sufficient reparations on Japan which resulted in Abe’s failure to appreciate peace.
Certainly, conventional wisdom has it that we must not let the combination of these moves and countermoves propelled the superpowers into the cold war again as what Stalin and Truman did. One implication of the United States’ treatment of China-U.S. relations can be seen through the recent trip of United States First Lady Michelle Obama’s visit to China to further reinforce the positive relationship to the next generation by expanding student-exchange between the two countries. Understanding the importance of China to its national security at the Grand Strategy level, the United States has the first non-White president, who has a Chinese Canadian brother-in-law, so as to avoid the racial attitude that had been blocking the relations. For the same reason, the United States appointed Chinese American as United States ambassador to China as shown in the photo in Stephan Fruhling’s article titled “When a Cold War in East Asia is not a Cold War”. Taking Eurasian issue seriously, neither China nor the United States benefits from conflict with each other should interest those who analyze world peace in the 21st century.
As well coined by Mr. Orwell the 2 giants are back into the arena with raging gladiators
Since from the collapse of USSR in 1989 the term COLD WAR was lost somewhere but now it seems that the thunder clouds sre back. Now coming to the point Russian move of merging Crimea has stirred up the vibrations in the west Furthermore this has further enhanced the interpersonal integrity and co-operation of the Oriental Countries as China and India.
Now Russia being the nuclear shop of the Orient it is quite inevitable for the Asian countries to step aside from the hassle .