Önder Özar Diplomasi Sevgisi: The Washington Post- Today's WorldView : Macron's visit to China, China's new world order is taking shape and more....

By Ishaan Tharoor
with Sammy Westfall

China’s new world order is taking shape

French President Emmanuel Macron walks with Chinese President Xi Jinping during a welcome ceremony outside the Great Hall of the People in Beijing on April 6. (Ng Han Guan/Pool/Reuters/via REUTERS)

It was a bumper week for diplomacy in Beijing. Chinese President Xi Jinping accompanied his French counterpart, President Emmanuel Macron, on a three-day visit to the Chinese capital and the southern metropolis of Guangzhou. Escaping, if briefly, from the fiery protests taking place in his own country, Macron was received by adoring, excited crowds of students at Guangzhou’s Sun Yat-sen University. In between grand receptions and formal tea ceremonies, the two leaders saw a slate of French companies and Chinese state-run firms clinch some major business deals.

Macron gave Xi the optics he sought: A clear reminder to the United States — who Xi obliquely referred to as a domineering “third party” — of the gap between its hawkish stance on China and the more perhaps equivocating posture of many in Europe. It was less clear what Xi gave Macron politically: The French president urged Xi to bring Russia “to reason” over its invasion of Ukraine, but that was met by boilerplate rhetoric and little indication of the needle of the conflict being moved in any significant direction.

In what was framed as a joint call with France, Xi urged for peace talks to resume soon and called “for the protection of civilians,” while also reiterating that “nuclear weapons must not be used, and nuclear war must not be fought” over Ukraine. That latter point marked perhaps the biggest distance between Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin, who has periodically rattled the nuclear saber as the war he unleashed in Ukraine lurches on. Despite European entreaties, Xi made no definitive commitment to speak with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Macron was joined in China by Ursula von der Leyen, president of the European Commission. The two leaders sent somewhat divergent messages; von der Leyen bemoaned China’s “unfair practices,” particularly in trade, and arrived in the country after delivering a tough speech on the authoritarian challenge posed by Beijing. Macron, on the other hand, warned against the West plunging itself into an “inescapable spiral” of tensions with China.

Chinese commentators suggested that’s because the tables of history have turned and Macron recognizes the sheer weight and importance of China’s economy, not least at a moment when he’s trying to carve out a vision of a more robust, capable and independent Europe. “Although there are still concerns in France about our country’s increasing [global] role, China’s support is essential if France wants to exercise its soft power in global governance,” Shanghai-based scholars Zhang Ji and Xue Sheng wrote in a recent essay.

Iranian Foreign Minister Hossein Amirabdollahian holds hands with his Saudi Arabian counterpart, Prince Faisal bin Farhan al-Saud, and Chinese counterpart, Qin Gang, in Beijing on Thursday. (Ding Lin/Xinhua News Agency/AP/AP)

In the middle of Macron’s visit, another major summit took place in Beijing. The foreign ministers of Saudi Arabia and Iran — the Middle East’s feuding antagonists — conducted the highest-level meeting between their two countries in seven years in the Chinese capital. In Washington, a bemused clutch of regional experts looked on as China played the role of a stabilizing outside power in the Middle East.

The thaw between Riyadh and Tehran was long in the works and not exclusively because of Chinese efforts. “Analysts say the warming ties are due to a convergence of interests,” wrote my colleagues Kareem Fahim and Sarah Dadouch. “Iran, under Western sanctions and trying to suffocate a domestic protest movement, has looked to ease its global and regional isolation; Saudi Arabia, faced with security threats from Iran that threaten its plan to diversify the kingdom’s economy away from oil, is seeking to tamp down regional tensions — a strategy that has included pursuing partnerships with major world powers beyond the United States.”

But it does invariably show a waning of American influence, especially over the Saudis. “Many experts still assume that whoever is in the White House will guide Saudi policy on Iran, but that simply isn’t true today,” said Anna Jacobs, a senior Gulf analyst at the International Crisis Group, to the New York Times. “Saudi Arabia and Gulf Arab states are focusing on their economic, political and security interests and protecting themselves from regional threats.”

Enter Xi’s China, an economic juggernaut now flexing new geopolitical muscles. “China has in recent years declared that it needs to be a participant in the creation of the world order,” former U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger told Post columnist David Ignatius last month. “It has now made a significant move in that direction.”

The contours of this imagined Chinese world order are still difficult to sketch. We know about its vast economic ambitions, including the Belt and Road Initiative that has seen China finance and invest in major infrastructure projects around the world. But in recent weeks, Xi has touted a number of other new initiatives over “security” and “civilization” — still vague policy positions essentially challenging the architecture of the U.S.-led order, as well as the concept of universal values.

“It appears to be a counterargument to [President] Biden’s autocracy versus democracy narrative,” Moritz Rudolf, a research scholar at Yale Law School’s Paul Tsai China Center, told the Financial Times. “It’s an ideological battle that’s more attractive to developing countries than people in Washington might believe.”

China’s foray into Middle East great power politics, in particular, show a new capacity and willingness to act. “In the past we would declare some principles, make our position known but not get involved operationally. That is going to change,” said Wu Xinbo, dean of the Institute of International Studies at Fudan University in Shanghai, said in the same Financial Times story.

For some analysts, Macron’s visit is a reminder of the tough questions facing Europe. While the war in Ukraine and antipathy toward Russia have galvanized the transatlantic alliance, the question of China is thornier, with Chinese investment and trade vital to Europe’s future prospects. What that means for the grim scenarios that obsess Washington policymakers — including a possible future Chinese invasion of Taiwan — is an open question, and one that may elicit unwelcome answers on both sides of the pond.

“The paradox would be that, overcome with panic, we believe we are just America’s followers,” Macron told reporters traveling with him, before gesturing to current tensions over Taiwan. “The question Europeans need to answer … is it in our interest to accelerate [a crisis] on Taiwan? No. The worse thing would be to think that we Europeans must become followers on this topic and take our cue from the U.S. agenda and a Chinese overreaction.”

“What happens in Europe now — not just in terms of the outcome of this war [in Ukraine], but how Europeans define their relations with China in the future — will shape transatlantic relations,” wrote Andrew Michta, a nonresident senior fellow at the Atlantic Council. “And Europe’s choices when it comes to its China policy will greatly influence the outcome of U.S. competition with China in other theaters too.”

A global order defined — or heavily sculpted — by Beijing’s one-party regime would not be an attractive prospect to most countries. China is, in the Economist’s gloomy analysis, a would-be “superpower that seeks influence without winning affection, power without trust and a global vision without universal human rights.”

But its greater clout on the world stage need not always ring alarm bells. “Not everything between the U.S. and China has to be a zero-sum game,” Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.), who leads the Senate Foreign Relations Committee’s Middle East panel, told Politico in the context of Beijing’s Middle East diplomacy. “I don’t know why we would perceive there to be a downside to de-escalation between Saudi Arabia and Iran.”

1,000 Words

A painting by Emad — an Iranian artist in Tehran who described himself as “an objector to the Islamic Republic” — that represents violence perpetrated by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. (Emad)

A painting by Emad representing Iranian government repression and propaganda aired by state media. (Emad)

My colleague Miriam Berger profiled three Iranian artists whose recent work “reflects the hope, turmoil and tragedy of the popular uprising and the violent crackdown that followed.”: “It was incredibly risky to film or photograph the anti-government protests that swept Iran after the September death of Mahsa Amini. In the privacy of their homes and studios, however, some Iranian artists began to take inspiration from the scenes on the streets.”

Talking Points

• Dozens of classified intelligence documents leaked online, exposing an extraordinary range of detail about how the United States spies on friends and foes alike, report my colleagues Shane Harris and Dan Lamothe. The documents also offered tactical information about the war in Ukraine, including the country’s combat capabilities.

Among other secrets, they appear to reveal where the CIA has recruited human agents privy to the closed-door conversations of world leaders; eavesdropping that shows a Russian mercenary outfit tried to acquire weapons from a NATO ally to use against Ukraine; and what kinds of satellite imagery the United States uses to track Russian forces, including an advanced technology that appears barely, if ever, to have been publicly identified. The Justice Department is investigating.

• A Russian fighter jet nearly shot down a British surveillance plane in September of last year, according to a leaked U.S. military document, an incident more significant than was previously disclosed and that could have drawn the United States and its NATO allies directly into the Ukraine war.

• Israel conducted strikes on Syria early Sunday, targeting a military compound and radar and artillery posts after six rockets were launched from the country toward Israeli territory, briefly opening a new flash point as the domestic crisis in Israel simmers.

And, Israel’s government faced crises on multiple fronts Saturday as far-right officials denounced Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s response to this past week’s cross-border strikes and twin attacks on civilians, and anti-government rallies decried the government’s political agenda for the 14th week in a row.

• Twenty-five years ago, negotiators settled on a peace accord known as the Good Friday Agreement that largely ended three decades of fighting in Northern Ireland. President Biden and former president Bill Clinton are each making trips to Belfast to mark the occasion. My colleague Ruby Mellen explains what the Good Friday Agreement achieved.

Viewpoints

Why has peace endured in Northern Ireland? Hope and history rhymed.

By Bill Clinton | The Washington Post ● Read more »

Northern Ireland is far too quiet

By Clare Dwyer Hogg | The New York Times ● Read more »

Is the future of Christianity African?

By Tomiwa Owolade | The New Statesman ● Read more »

Rationing ammo

Ukrainian forces fire a 2S1 “Hvozdyka,” a Soviet-era 122mm self-propelled artillery installation, toward Russian positions. (Heidi Levine for The Washington Post)

DONETSK REGION, Ukraine — The artillery shells were stored in a shallow mud dugout, covered with a black plastic tarp to keep them safe. Just 14 rounds remained — evidence of a critical ammunition shortage that has the Ukrainians scrambling for ways to conserve supply until their Western allies can produce or procure more.

The artillery platoon, with the 59th Motorized Brigade in eastern Ukraine, used to fire more than 20 or 30 shells per day with their Soviet-era howitzer. Now, they typically shoot one or two, or none at all.

The ammunition that has pounded parts of Ukraine daily for more than a year has become a precious resource in the artillery war with Russia — and which side conserves shells and rearms faster could turn the tide on the battlefield.

In the dugout, a Ukrainian soldier reached for a round as his commander recited coordinates for their first shot of the day. “Fire,” yelled the commander, whom The Post agreed to identify by his call sign, Spider, due to the security risks. After the blast, he waited, staring at his phone for another order. He didn’t receive one, so he told his men to stand down, not knowing if the shell had hit its target or his commander just didn’t want to spend another one.

Even amid a shortage, Ukraine is firing some 7,700 shells per day, or roughly one every six seconds, according to a Ukrainian military official who spoke on the condition of anonymity. Russia, which may also be running low, is firing more — by some estimates triple that amount.

To keep up with their adversary and still conserve ammunition, the Ukrainian military is now pickier in selecting targets, often prioritizing equipment over small groups of infantry. Precision is key because misses mean wasted shells. And in underground workshops across eastern Ukraine, soldiers are using 3D printers and recycling unexploded ordinances to create alternative munitions.

In a secret location in the Donetsk region, Ukrainian military personnel fashion their own explosives to be dropped from drones on Russian equipment or infantry on March 28. (Heidi Levine for The Washington Post)

Artillery rounds for Ukraine’s Soviet-era guns, which make up the majority of their arsenal, have long been in short supply. That has forced a reliance on the artillery provided by Kyiv’s Western allies because they use 155mm caliber shells, which Ukraine has more of for now but for far fewer guns.

At the pace Ukraine is firing, those stocks could soon run out, too, as Western countries struggle to ramp up production.

Nearby Spider’s artillery position, the thunder of a U.S.-provided M777 howitzer, with its 155mm shells, roared every few minutes while he and his men drank tea in a foxhole. “Sometimes we just sit here and listen to the M777 shooting and the Russian creatures shooting back. It’s like a talk between them,” Spider said.

“We don’t have a lot of ammunition, so that’s why we don’t work a lot,” he said.

The countries that still have stocks of Soviet-standard 152mm and 122mm rounds are largely former Soviet republics, many of which are hesitant to sell to Ukraine because of their ties with Russia. Some African and Middle Eastern countries, which have received weapons and ammunition from Russia over the years, also have stocks of those shells. A few former Warsaw Pact countries have the capacity to manufacture the shells but not at the scale and speed Ukraine needs on the battlefield.

Occasionally, a third country friendly to Ukraine will purchase the ammunition — sometimes through a broker — and then supply it to Ukraine in secret to avoid any political fallout for the seller. Often, the result is that one artillery piece on the battlefield may have shells produced in several countries, which soldiers say may not fire the same, affecting accuracy. – Isabelle Khurshudyan and Kamila Hrabchuk