February 18, 2021
How to Chart a New Course for
Russia
Instead of
making Russia a scapegoat, America should seek to drive a wedge between it and
China.
Today, the People’s Republic of
China is recognized almost universally as not just an economic competitor, but
as hell-bent on dominating and intimidating its neighbors and supplanting the
United States as the world’s dominant economic, political, and military power.
President Joe Biden and future occupants of the Oval Office can ill-afford to
underestimate or ignore the nature of the threat it poses. The fact that
Beijing and Moscow seem, after decades of estrangement, to be coming together
in unified opposition to the United States makes the threat even more serious.
President Richard Nixon visited
China in 1972 not because he had any illusions about the nature of Mao Zedong
or Chou En-lai, but because the United States and the West were facing a
growing existential threat from a Soviet Union aligned with Beijing. He
believed that a rapprochement with Beijing would enable him to drive a wedge
between the two Communist allies that would enhance U.S. security interests. It
worked because while the two totalitarian partners had much in common, neither
trusted the other.
Many saw Communist China and the
USSR then as part of a monolithic Communist bloc that shared a common ideology
and an implacable desire to defeat and destroy the United States in their quest
for world domination. The reality was more complicated. Suppressed border
disputes, doctrinal differences, and personal animosity between their leaders
made Beijing and Moscow uneasy bedmates. Mao considered the Soviets too
weak-willed to defeat the United States and even broke relations with Moscow
for a time over the USSR’s failure to go to war with the United States during
the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962.
Soviet leaders considered their
Chinese allies a little crazy and feared they could spark a new world war while
and stationed hundreds of thousands of troops along the Chinese/Russian border.
By 1969, Russia was considering a preemptive strike to cripple China’s growing
military and nuclear might. Much of this tension resulted from the fact that
the USSR was superior in economic and military terms and felt that Mao and his
colleagues should accept the role of junior partners and essentially do what
they were told.
Problem China's J-20 Stealth Fighter Doesn't Have a
Gun
This rankled for as Nixon
observed in his memoirs, “the real problem between China and Russia was that,
deep down, the Chinese consider themselves superior and more civilized than the
Russians.”
Today’s alliance reverses the old
balance and will ultimately require Moscow to recognize a new reality; that
Russia is no longer the senior partner and will have to kowtow to Beijing.
Thus, today’s alliance that looks like the recreation of a monolithic
anti-Western bloc is as fragile as it was in the nineteen seventies, fifty
years ago.
History has a way of repeating
itself with twists. China and Russia are aligned once again in what many see as
another cold war. Both see the United States as their enemy, but the
differences that Nixon was able to exploit in 1972 remain. Russia has far more
to fear from China than it did then and at some point, that reality will
provide the United States with another opportunity to drive another wedge
between China and Russia.
Even though this rebalancing is
not possible in the short-term, the United States should have a policy for
accomplishing it later.
Presidents Xi and Putin have good
reasons to collaborate. Job number one for every dictator is to stay in power.
They are by nature insecure.
They view the United States and
the Free World as a threat both strategically and by being an example of how
free people live and what they can achieve. It is the desire for material and
spiritual freedom that makes tyrants most uncomfortable as they see themselves
facing both external and internal threats to the security of their rule. The
rulers of China and Russia fear demonstrations such as those taking place in
Russia today or that threatened the stability of Beijing’s rule in the days of
the Tiananmen Square protests and tend to blame such internal threats on
outside interference. The fear is quite personal. Putin has often told
visitors that Muamar el Ghaddafi of Libya, Saddam Hussein of Iraq, and Slobodan
Milošević of Yugoslavia/Serbia were deposed by the West and later executed or
died in jail.
Both countries are aggressive in
their near abroad and fear the Free World’s rebuke. In such cases,
dictatorships benefit from each other’s support against United Nation’s
condemnations and Free World economic sanctions.
China and Russia are going to
great lengths to advertise their partnership. Presidents Xi and Putin meet
often, as do other Chinese and Russian officials. The two countries hold
massive joint military maneuvers, sign large economic agreements, and encourage
cultural exchanges. Chinese and Russian security forces collaborate as well.
But as was the case in the seventies, there is less to this partnership than
meets the eye.
This is not an
alliance. There is no treaty; their militaries maneuver together but there is
no interoperability between them as between NATO countries or between the
United States and Japan or South Korea.
Their economic ties
are unequally important to them. Russia is subject to broad international
sanctions and really needs China’s business. China imports and exports are key
to the Russian economy, largely energy and weapons. But China’s largest export
partner is the United States with 19 percent of the total and Russia is only
twelfth at 1.9 percent. And their economies are not integrated like those
of the European Union.
China and Russia share little
cultural affinity. China has a sophisticated Asian civilization of several
millennia built around Asian religions and Xi like his Marxist/Leninist
predecessors persecutes Christianity and religion in general. Russia has a
centuries-old culture in the European tradition, revived since the collapse of
the Communist regime. Orthodox Christianity is practically a state religion.
Forces pulling
China and Russia apart
Future trends will only
exacerbate the differences between China and Russia. China has a population of
1.4 billion and the world’s second-largest economy with a GDP of $14 trillion.
Russia has a population of 145 million, more than Mexico but less than Brazil,
and a GDP of $1.7 trillion, smaller than that of Italy or Texas. China’s
economy is diversified, technologically advanced, and grew in 2019 at 6
percent. Russia’s is heavily dependent on energy products and grew at 1.3
percent. China’s population is expected to stay flat to 2050 but Russia’s will
shrink.
Militarily dynamics are also
unfavorable to Russia. China spends four times more on its military than
Russia. In global weapons sales, China has moved from a customer of Russia to a
competitor and in today’s technological world, they produce weapons that tend
to be superior to those produced and deployed by Russia.
A powerful and more aggressive
China poses both a potential and real threat to major Russian interests in the
Russian Far East, Central Asia, and the Arctic. Many Chinese believe that much
of the Russian Far East, including the port of Vladivostok, were unfairly
acquired by Russia in “unequal treaties” in the 19th century.
There are seven million Russians in the Russian Far East. Across the border in
Manchuria are 100 million Chinese. At some point, Russia will perceive China’s
economic encroachment in Central Asia as just as threatening as NATO’s military
encroachment in its European near-abroad.
However, the most powerful force
pulling these two nations apart will be the need for economic reform in Russia.
China’s gross domestic product, GDP, per capita is $10,300 to Russia’s $11,600.
France, Germany, Japan, and England have a GDP per capita of around $40,000 and
the United States more than $60,000.
China achieved extraordinary
economic growth since the 1970s driven by market reforms that freed up much of
its economy. But under Xi it is reverting to a traditional Communist reliance
on centralized control of the economy. Today’s Chinese economic policies
resembles those of the Maoist era more than those of Deng Xiaoping era. And
China will become less dynamic and entrepreneurial as a result. Putin and
others within the Russian leadership know where traditional Communist economic
policies lead. Russia needs economic reform and its leaders will find better
economic models in the West.
Russia’s possible
shift away from China and towards Europe
Over time, Russia will become
increasingly uncomfortable as a junior political partner to a powerful China
and as raw materials supplier to a more technologically developed nation.
Whether the current season of protests succeed or fail, the prosperity of the
Russian people will demand economic and political reforms best accomplished by
following the Western rather than the Chinese model.
Russia is a proud nation. Moscow
will not want to be perceived as aligning with the United States and thereby
exchanging one senior partner for another. Moving closer to Europe though,
where the cultural and distance ties are stronger, would be more acceptable to
leaders and citizens. Russia would be a major military power in Europe, the
country with the largest population, and an important economic partner. Europe
is where Russian elite send their children to school, park their money,
vacation, and buy second homes.
Throughout its history, Russia
has been torn between its European and Asian roots. Today, autocratic Russia
feels rejected and even threatened by democratic Europe and the West in
general. To find a place in Europe, though, Russia would have to improve its
democratic credentials and abandon its historic habit of threatening its
neighbors. It can be done. Germany and France, historic European competitors
and enemies have avoided war with each other for 76 years; France and England
for 151 years.
What can the United
States do today to encourage this change?
Rapprochement will
be difficult with Putin in control, but he won’t be around forever, and the
United States should prepare now for the day when Moscow’s leaders will realize
that Russia’s national interests require a different foreign policy.
This doesn’t mean we should
abandon our continuing effort to discourage Russia’s dictatorial and expansionist
actions through sanctions imposed together with Europe and the rest of the Free
World. Moscow must realize that her behavior toward her neighbors matters and
that bullies have few friends. It does mean that we should make it clear that
we would welcome a friendlier Russia into the western family of nations and
that we should avoid knee-jerk hostility to Russia. Whatever her faults,
today’s Russia is not the existential enemy we faced down and defeated in an
earlier day.
10.7M
5.8K
Problem China's J-20 Stealth Fighter Doesn't Have a
Gun
It is important that we develop
ties with a new generation of Russian politicians who will be the ones to
eventually chart a new course for their country. Talking about “regime change”
in Russia is counterproductive. A new Russian foreign policy will come from new
leaders from within the existing establishment who recognize the need to
change. This will eventually lead to lifting sanctions on Russia as part of
comprehensive negotiations with the United States and Europe.
Better future relations can also
be aided by increased people-to-people contacts. Such contacts have diminished
in recent years. It is time to reverse course. Our quarrel has never been with
the Russian people but with the actions of some of her rulers. The United
States has always polled well in Russia, but less so recently.
Russian interference in U.S. and
European politics has been real, harmful, and unacceptable. But exaggerating
its impact and imagining Russian interference where it does not exist is not in
our long-term interest. Before the authenticity of the Hunter Biden emails
could be verified, for example, many politicians and media people rushed to
label it Russian disinformation, an assertion contradicted by the then Director
of National Intelligence. Making Russia a scapegoat for domestic political
purposes is counterproductive to our important geopolitical goal of creating a
wedge between China and Russia.
Ordinary Russians as well as her
leaders need to know that a Russia that respects international law will be
welcomed as a friend by the United States, Europe, and the rest of the Free
World. And that she will not be forever demonized for real and imaginary sins
of the past.
David Keene is a
member of the Board of Directors of the Center of National Interest and was
chairman of the American Conservative Union for 28 years.
No comments:
Post a Comment