22.07.2021 – 18:27
President Biden has rightly made competition with China his top foreign policy priority.
In its first major political document, the Biden administration stated that China “is the only competition potentially capable of combining its economic, diplomatic, military and technological power to pose a challenge to a stable and open international system. ”.
“We are in competition with China and other countries to win the 21st century,” Biden said in a joint speech to Congress.
With Biden present, a NATO summit communiqué stated for the first time that China’s rise “has security implications for all allies.”
So for this administration, and much more to come, formulating effective strategies to address the rise of China will remain the focal point of U.S. foreign policy, not unlike the central role that the Soviet Union played for U.S. strategists during Cold War.
Therefore, some lessons from the Cold War are worth studying and repeating to deal with China today.
The others are not.
A successful Cold War game not worth re-executing is trying to oust Russia from China.
In the abstract, the idea of Russia pulling towards the United States to balance against China sounds appealing.
It is classical realpolitical logic.
Along these lines, Daniel Yergin recently praised US flexibility in sanctions against the German-Russian Nord Stream 2 pipeline as a possible “olive branch” that would encourage Russia to distance itself from China, in what is described as a “priority strategy for this administration “
Yergin’s look gives a sense that many self-described realists – sometimes publicly, often privately – express: Because President Richard M. Nixon managed to oust the People’s Republic of China from the Soviet Union during the Cold War, Biden must tries to push Russia towards the United States and away from China.
Conveying this strategy more comprehensively, an anonymous government official recently argued, “The United States must rebalance its relationship with Russia, whether it wants to or not.”
The current Sino-Russian partnership is troubling, and the impetus to look at all other foreign policy issues through US-China bilateral lenses is tempting.
But this particular work of the Cold War will not work today – and even if it did, it would not yield the same benefits it produced last century.
Proponents of the Nixon-going-to-China strategy forget the essential precondition for its success: the Sino-Soviet split.
By the time National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger made his first secret visit to Beijing in 1971, he had no need to persuade Prime Minister Zhou Enlai to distance China from Moscow; that the divorce had occurred long before.
In contrast, Sino-Russian economic, security, and ideological ties today are closer than ever.
Vladimir Putin frames international politics in ideological terms: autocrats versus democrats. He sees Xi Jinping as his most important ideological partner, while Xi, in turn, has called Putin “his best friend.”
So why would Putin abandon his autocratic twin soul to flirt with a democratic leader he has only met twice?
Moreover, the United States is a democracy, giving other actors – especially Congress – a say in foreign policy decision-making, especially when it comes to human rights.
In Putin’s view, Xi is a powerful, more reliable partner – in ways Biden and his successors can never be.
Even if such a policy change were to succeed, Putin’s rapprochement with Russia would bring some benefits and many disadvantages.
What exactly can the United States gain in its competition with China by having Russia on our side? The answer is not much.
China needs Russia’s energy exports, while the United States does not. Putin will never deploy additional Russian troops, missiles or ships to keep China in Asia. Maybe Putin can help isolate Xi in the UN Security Council and other international forums, but ultimately Beijing has its own veto.
Second, in exchange for the pivot, Putin would seek bad concessions, especially in relation to Ukraine and Georgia. This is a bad trade.
Worse still, closer ties with a Russian autocrat will undermine Biden’s aspiration to unite the free world, of which he has spoken so passionately for the past six months.
Some of the most embarrassing and costly mistakes of the United States during the Cold War came from its tolerance.
One day, the United States should seek deeper partnerships with Russia to control and compete with China.
But this policy must begin with a democratic Russia, not an autocratic Putin – no matter how distant the future may be.
Translated and adapted by The Washington Post / konica.al