US pressure on China will not stop Putin
- Beijing has neither the power nor incentive to stop the Russian offensive in Ukraine. Its best option is to stay neutral without adding fuel to the fire like the West does by supplying arms and encouraging partisan warfare that will surely turn the country into another Syria
Those of us old enough may remember how the dynamic diplomatic duo of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger tried to apply pressure on Moscow and Beijing to force communist North Vietnam to relent in the South.
The American pair never understood the North Vietnamese weren’t just communists, but first and foremost, nationalists. Their objective was less about spreading communism across the country than unifying it. That was the existential principle for which all sacrifices must be borne. It was absurd to think the Chinese and Soviets could force the Vietnamese to compromise when they were ready to lay down their lives.
Putin is rational
When it comes to China and the war in Ukraine, Americans of far lesser diplomatic calibre are today repeating the same mistake based on similarly flawed and false assumptions. These days, major Western news outlets are publishing daily stories and opinion pieces about how China must fall in line with the West – which is either to further isolate Moscow or talk some sense into Vladimir Putin.
Here’s a statement from the bipartisan Task Force on US-China Policy, which is fairly typical of such thinking in the United States. “Vigorous diplomacy” to press China to help stop Russia’s invasion is needed, it says.
“This approach will keep pushing China to consider its own national interests, the costs it is prepared to bear, and how flexibly its leaders can adjust course to reduce the political consequences, economic burdens and social ignominy of having Russia as its primary partner just as China seeks to take its place as a responsible great power on the world stage.”
Beijing must be flattered that the US thinks it has such power!
The Russians have bet the future of their country on the outcome of this war; they will not stop until their ultimate objectives have been attained. What those objectives are may be a matter of some debate. But Russian leaders are willing and ready to take the pain, especially when it’s mostly suffered by the little guys; their wealth may have been halved by the sanctions, but they are not – yet – personally threatened.
American voters facing rising food and fuel costs may sooner give up on Joe Biden than Russians on Putin, who, after all, doesn’t need to face an angry electorate. To think Chinese suasion or Western sanctions, however tough or unprecedented, will stop Putin is ridiculous. You can’t have your cake and eat it too, that is, for the West to refuse committing troops and yet expect Putin to stop. You can’t win a war without fighting, however fanciful your sanctions.
Putin and his gang are arch-nationalists. You can throw whatever bad names at him – revanchist, dictator, tyrant, war criminal – but at the end of the day, they have calculated, probably correctly, that redrawing the security map of central Europe now, however high the costs, is better than kicking the can down the road, when the security situation will be much worse, from Moscow’s perspective.
However poorly executed, the Russians are establishing facts on the ground with the war. This means Moscow has already achieved some key objectives. It has not only secured Donetsk and Luhansk as “independent” republics, but is likely to control the whole of the larger Donbas region. That in turn means providing a direct link through eastern Ukraine down south to the occupied/annexed Crimean peninsula. After all, most Russians and pro-Russian forces live in the eastern parts.
Moscow can’t, nor does it want to take over and occupy the whole of Ukraine. At this point, a regime change in Kyiv is probably out of the question. Many Westerners seem happy to encourage Ukrainians to take up partisan warfare against the Russians. Of course, that just means turning the country into another Iraq or Syria.
Moscow, presumably, doesn’t want another Soviet-occupied Afghanistan on its hands. However, dismembering Ukraine and permanently severing its eastern parts is already pretty much a done deal. Russia has a good excuse because it has all along claimed that giving the eastern population autonomy or independence – or at least a choice at it – is the goal of the two Minsk peace accords, which the Russians have accused Kyiv of undermining. They may yet be able to secure from President Volodymyr Zelensky a neutrality guarantee from Nato, which they will then try to use as a blueprint for other countries in the Baltic and Nordic.
Are these goals achievable for Russia, which in fact has enunciated them for more than a decade? It seems they are. Nor are they unreasonable from the point of view of great power politics, balance of power and spheres of influence.
China doesn’t have a choice
The West, especially Washington, insists Beijing either falls in line with the Western consensus or alliance against Russia or else it faces isolation, if not secondary sanctions, for supporting Moscow. First of all, Russia will fight on until it fulfils its existential objectives, regardless of China’s stance.
Since it was Washington’s overt and full-spectrum hostilities that have driven Beijing and Moscow – and Tehran – together, China will truly be isolated without Russia when the Ukraine crisis is over, as it will sooner or later. Let’s not forget the US is still “pivoting to Asia” and playing the Taiwan card against Beijing the whole time it has had its hands full with the Ukraine crisis. Why should China play ball and then be thrown under the bus when the current crisis is over?
It will keep some distance from Russia while “the heat is too much”, but will still maintain a lifeline through restricted trade with Russia. After all, European Union countries have been allowed not to join the US and Britain in their energy ban on Russia. And India now wants to increase trade with Russia using the two countries’ own currencies to bypass US dollar-based sanctions. Why can’t China? Again, Washington can’t have its cake and eat it too: squeezing China ever more tightly while expecting it to go along – against Russia!
The late US national security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski famously warned against the formation of the Iran-China-Russia axis, which has now been brought about through repeated miscalculations by successive US administrations. Having realised – all too late – its monumental strategic mistake, Washington is now trying to drive a wedge among the trio. That is the main reason it is suddenly trying to reach a nuclear deal with Iran and promising to ease sanctions. While the excuse is to use Iranian oil to fill the gap created by Russian energy sanctions, most experts think Tehran will not help meet current global demands.
Besides Iran, Americans are also cosying up to Venezuela’s President Nicolas Maduro for oil, after spending years denouncing and sanctioning both governments as autocratic. Washington, as always, is exchanging one set of authoritarians for another group, according to the exigencies of the moment.
It is for the same reason that Washington is spinning the tale that China can make or stop Russia, and it’s Beijing’s choice. In reality, the Chinese have no such choice or power to do so.