It is almost three years since Chinese President Xi Jinping (習近平) and Russian President Vladimir Putin declared a friendship with “no limits” — weeks before Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022. Since then, they have retreated from such rhetorical enthusiasm. The “no limits” language was quickly dumped, probably at Beijing’s behest.
When Putin visited China in May last year, he said that he and his counterpart were “as close as brothers.” Xi more coolly called the Russian president “a good friend and a good neighbor.” China has conspicuously not reciprocated Putin’s description of it as an ally.
Yet the partnership continues to broaden and deepen, to Western alarm, across economic, political and military fronts. The US Council on Foreign Relations recently assessed it as “the greatest threat to vital US national interests in 60 years.” The past 12 months saw unprecedented joint military activity by Chinese and Russian forces — although the aim was probably to signal their combined might rather than pursue the interoperability that is foundational to the US-European alliance. In September last year, the US suggested for the first time that Beijing might be supplying direct support for the Russian war machine in Ukraine, beyond the kind of dual-use equipment it has been shipping and the essential role it plays as an export market for Russian oil. A flurry of books on the “new cold war” appeared last year.
The confrontation between the West and a Sino-Russian-led axis — this time with Moscow as the junior partner and taking in Iran as well as North Korea — has alarming echoes of the past. Long-dormant fears of nuclear war have reignited. An island — then Cuba, now Taiwan — could be a flashpoint. US President Joe Biden has sought to define the confrontation as a global struggle between an alliance of democracies and the world’s autocracies — although Washington embraces Saudi Arabia, while India refuses to take sides over Ukraine and is accused of assassinating critics in Canada.
There is plenty of evidence that there are, in fact, limits on the Sino-Russian relationship, as the war in Ukraine has shown. Notwithstanding the recent US remarks on lethal aid, China has been evidently reluctant to supply arms and ammunition. Russian businesses have reported growing obstacles to business as Chinese banks have tightened compliance with sanctions, because of Western threats, although priority payments seem to be proceeding unimpeded.
Analyzing the two countries’ recent statements on security reveals that they seem to be as much about controlling expectations and each containing the other’s ambitions as they do about amplifying power together. Just as Chinese support for Russia’s war in Ukraine is limited, although obvious, so Russia has made it clear that it does not want to go to war on China’s behalf.
Former US president Donald Trump’s re-election has also raised the spectre of a “reverse Nixon,” with the US embracing Moscow and cutting out Beijing, given his hawkishness on China and fondness for Putin. Yet Nixon’s rapprochement with China was made possible by the extraordinarily bitter Sino-Soviet split, which followed the Sino-Soviet alliance.
Both players have learned their lesson from that clash and would look beyond a single presidential term. More likely is that Russia would bank any inducements from Washington and continue to work with Beijing as it sees fit, although perhaps more discreetly.
The countries have very different strategies. Putin’s Russia is more disruptive, while Xi thinks the current order can be molded to Chinese interests.
It is an alignment and not an alliance, said historian Sergey Radchenko, an expert on Sino-Soviet relations. They are drawn together not by ideology but interests and grievances, threats and opportunities. However, that very limitation makes for a more pragmatic and flexible — and thus more sustainable — relationship.
Trump’s return highlights the frailty of the US-European alliance and the difficult task facing new NATO Secretary-General Mark Rutte in shoring it up. The internal problems and contradictions of Western democracies also embolden Russia and China. Yet, their own difficulties are becoming more evident. After years of dazzling growth, which propelled it close to overtaking the US, China’s economy has been struggling (some believe a slump might be the likeliest spur for China to invade Taiwan in the coming years, with nationalist pride taking center stage). Its diplomatic advances are accompanied by growing questions abroad about the costs of doing business with it. The war in Ukraine has exposed Russia’s military and economic challenges. The hammering of Iran’s “axis of resistance” and the ousting of former Syrian president Bashar al-Assad have highlighted other vulnerabilities.
This era looks to some analysts more like the 1930s, with its collapse of the global order, than the decades after World War II. Acts of violence in war have doubled over the past five years and one expert on global violence warned that we could be entering a “new normal” of war.
UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres last autumn warned of a “purgatory of polarity” that has allowed countries to act as they will with impunity. The Global South paid a high price for the Cold War, as it was played out in scorching wars that cost millions of lives.
Yet the conflict was, in the words of the historian Odd Arne Westad, “relentlessly bipolar” at its peak. This is a multipolar world, with powers such as India, South Africa, Turkey and Indonesia pursuing their own paths with more determination than ever.
We also live in a far more economically integrated world. The financial isolation imposed upon Russia has gone far beyond what might have been thought achievable. Western politicians’ attempts to reduce dependence upon China — call it decoupling, de-risking or what they may — are significant and its share of the world economy has fallen from its 2021 peak. Trump’s threatened tariffs would pummel it. Sino-US trade already fell sharply in 2023. However, it was still more than double China’s trade with Russia.
Economic links, common challenges and the unquestionable need for partnership on some issues — most of all the existential danger of global heating — do not necessarily lead to cooperation. The pandemic demonstrated the urgency of working together on global health, but also how often countries fall short, prioritizing national interests.
The world’s divides are likely to yawn wider this year. However, an escalatory spiral must not be regarded as either desirable or inevitable.
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