U.S. has pushed natural competitors into becoming strategic collaborators
The strategy of driving a wedge between China and Russia helped the West win the Cold War, not militarily, but geopolitically.
Richard Nixon’s most lasting achievement as U.S. president was orchestrating a diplomatic opening to China two years after Beijing had engaged in seven months of bloody border clashes with the Soviet Union.
Nixon’s co-optation of China, crowned by his February 1972 visit to Beijing, resulted in an informal alliance geared toward containing and rolling back Soviet influence and power. This two-against-one tag-teaming contributed to the Soviet Union’s imperial overstretch and ultimately to the West’s triumph in the Cold War without global combat.
Today, however, the U.S., instead of playing China off against Russia, is becoming the glue that holds the pair together. As a result, an already overextended U.S. seriously risks accelerating its relative decline through strategic overreach.
Alas, it is U.S. President Joe Biden’s foreign policy that has helped turn two natural competitors into strategic collaborators.
A forward-looking approach would have avoided confronting Russia and China simultaneously, lest it drive the two nuclear-armed powers into an unholy alliance. But Biden has managed to lock horns with both Moscow and Beijing simultaneously, though it should be noted that his China policy is comparatively softer and more conciliatory.
It is striking that China and Russia today are more firmly aligned than at any time since the 1950s. Chinese President Xi Jinping and Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin openly share a vision of reshaping the world by ending the era of Western dominance.
The outcome of the recent Xi-Putin meeting marked a defining moment in the two leaders’ commitment to bringing about a “new era.” Their joint statement cast the U.S. as an aggressive hegemon with a Cold War mindset that fosters global insecurity and divisions. “The U.S. must abandon this behavior,” the statement demanded.
China and Russia seem to be providing cover to each other’s expansionism, with Putin extending support to Beijing over Taiwan and Xi endorsing Russia’s efforts to ensure its “sovereignty and territorial integrity” in oblique reference to Putin’s war on Ukraine.
Meanwhile, the rapid advance of Chinese and Russian space capabilities has prompted the Pentagon to quietly embark on a new “Star Wars” plan.
At the global level, the U.S. has only one real challenger — China, which dwarfs Russia in terms of economic output, military spending and other material measures. It is Beijing that seeks to supplant America as the world’s foremost power.
Yet China has been the main beneficiary of Biden’s forceful response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. Unprecedented sanctions, which have included the weaponization of international finance, have been a boon for Beijing, turning it into Russia’s banker and expanding international use of the yuan. Russia now generates much of its international export earnings in the Chinese currency and keeps these proceeds mostly in Chinese banks, in effect giving Beijing a share of the returns.
The sanctions, and America’s deepening involvement in the Ukraine war, have left Russia with little choice but to move closer to China, with which it has had a checkered history marked by periods of both cooperation and bloodstained rivalry.
Bilateral trade reached $240 billion last year, a jump from 2020’s $108 billion level. In return for providing a lifeline to the sanctions-stricken Russian economy, China has gained access to some of Russia’s most advanced military technologies.
China has racked up strategic win after win. Nixon’s rapprochement with Beijing led to a 45-year U.S. policy of aiding China’s economic rise, which resulted in the creation of the greatest strategic adversary America has ever faced.
Biden’s punitive approach toward Russia is now effectively further strengthening an aggressive and expansionist China by helping it to accumulate greater economic and military power.
With Russia’s Ukraine aggression tying the U.S. down in Europe, Xi might believe that China has a window of opportunity to achieve the “historic mission” of forcibly annexing Taiwan. Xi recently made his Taiwan goal clearer by declaring that the essence of his national rejuvenation drive is “the unification of the motherland.”
Still, there are limits to how far Beijing is likely to go to cement its “no limits” partnership with Moscow, given the underlying competitive dynamics between the two neighboring powers, including in regions like Central Asia, Northeast Asia and the Artic which each side regards as part of its strategic backyard.
America’s sanctions on Moscow might have spurred China to strengthen its energy security through greater overland imports from Russia that could not be interrupted even if Xi invaded Taiwan. Yet China is wary of overreliance on Russia, which is why it continues to look to other sources of energy supply, in the Middle East and even the U.S.
Russia, for its part, is doing what it can to avoid being seen as China’s junior partner. To Xi’s chagrin, Putin has openly co-opted North Korea as a strategic partner.
Yet the perceived strategic imperative to join forces against their common American enemy, is tying Beijing and Moscow closer together.
Biden’s personal diplomacy with Xi has achieved little in terms of stemming Beijing’s growing alignment with Moscow, which threatens to unravel America’s global preeminence and undermine its national security.
A formal strategic and military alliance between China and Russia, by effectively spawning a pan-Eurasian colossus, would be America’s worst geopolitical nightmare come true.
To forestall that scenario, the U.S. must recalibrate its foreign policy by focusing its attention less on regionally revanchist Russia and more on globally ascendant China. This should include shoring up its deterrent posture in the Indo-Pacific region. If it puts its mind to it, Washington can find a strategy to exploit the historical strategic mistrust between Moscow and Beijing.
Brahma Chellaney is professor emeritus of strategic studies at the Centre for Policy Research in New Delhi and a former adviser to India’s National Security Council. He is the author of nine books, including “Water: Asia’s New Battleground.”
Stagecraft and Statecraft 