China and Russia Turn Deeper Ties into a Military Challenge for Biden April20.2021

 

China and Russia Turn Deeper Ties into a Military Challenge for Biden

“You face a two-front war where we don’t have a two front military,” said one former Trump official.

BY JACK DETSCH, AMY MACKINNON

 | APRIL 20, 2021, 12:35 PM

 

Chinese President Xi Jinping (right) and Russian President Vladimir Putin smile during the welcoming ceremony on the final day of the Belt and Road Forum in Beijing, on April 27, 2019. VALERY SHARIFULIN/SPUTNIK/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

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Deepening military and diplomatic cooperation between Russia and China is worrying U.S. defense planners, who fear the two frenemies that share military technology and many foreign-policy goals will complicate the Biden administration’s plan to reassert U.S. leadership. 

China is carefully monitoring Russia’s military buildup near the border with Ukraine, which the U.S. Defense Department said this week is larger than the 2014 deployment, with an eye to its own pressure campaign on Taiwan and the South China Sea. Last week, China dispatched a record number of bombers and fighters into Taiwan’s air defense zone in a display of dominance; top U.S. military officials warn Beijing could try to seize the island by force in the next six years.

 “Our sense is that [China] is paying very close attention to what’s going on as they did initially with things in the Ukraine,” the senior defense official said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “I think it’s fair to say that they are looking closely to determine how they might leverage lessons learned into their own national interests.”

There’s no evidence so far to suggest Beijing and Moscow are actually coordinating their parallel pressure campaigns, according to 11 current and former officials and experts who spoke to Foreign Policy. But the buildups are stretching the U.S. President Joe Biden’s attention at a particularly bad time. As the Pentagon has broken with the 1990s-era concept of planning for two major wars at the same time, the split screen of Chinese fighter jets over Taiwan and Russian troops massing near Ukraine is giving the Pentagon’s strategic planners a particularly uncomfortable preview of what the future could hold.

“You face a two-front war where we don’t have a two-front military,” said Elbridge Colby, a former deputy assistant secretary of defense during the Trump administration. “If NATO is expecting U.S. forces to bail it out simultaneously with a fight over Taiwan, we can’t do them both. We don’t have the assets. That can create huge problems for us.”

The Biden administration is busy trying to make good on the long-delayed pivot to Asia by putting more military assets in the Western Pacific, but it is still trying to figure out how to manage Beijing’s growing axis with Moscow, which a 2019 U.S. intelligence assessment described as more aligned than at any point in the past 60 years. Chinese President Xi Jinping once described Russian President Vladimir Putin as his “best friend and colleague.” 

Russia’s recent military buildup near Ukraine’s border has also served as a reminder that although China may be the strategic priority for years to come, Moscow still has the capacity to wreak havoc in Europe.

“I want the pivot to Asia, but I don’t want it to come at the expense of focusing on the threat of Putin today,” said Michael McFaul, who served as U.S. ambassador to Russia under former U.S. President Barack Obama.

For years, China and Russia have engaged in a tactical alliance in the United Nations Security Council, banding together to counter the influence of the United States and its European allies—Britain and France—who have liberally pursued economic sanctions and military intervention. That cooperation has only increased in recent years, including on votes regarding Syria. Outside of U.N. headquarters, Russia and China have intensified their once-chilly relationship in recent years by redoubling bilateral trade in key areas like energy and arms. Both are interested in circumventing the U.S.-dictated financial order that helps undermine Washington’s global dominance. They have also united over their deep skepticism about U.S. efforts to promote democracy and human rights.

“We have to start thinking about how they also generate synergy in ways that amplify the challenge that both countries pose,” said Andrea Kendall-Taylor, director of the Transatlantic Security Program at the Center for a New American Security.