The bear and the dragon

Biden and Putin have just met in the Swiss city of Geneva under the shadow of China, absent from the meeting and present in the discussions, just as it had hovered over those that the American president had held earlier with European leaders. Because Russia worries us Europeans above all, the Americans are concerned about China and even more about the possibility that one day the Chinese and Russians will get along behind each other's backs and the Russians will thus return the trick Nixon played on Brezhnev in 1972 with that "Ping-Pong diplomacy" orchestrated by Kissinger with Chu En-Ali. This, reminiscent of the variable game of alliances between the three powers that divide up the Orwellian world of "1984", literally makes the Americans' hair stand on end. It makes the hair on the back of their necks stand on end. And no wonder.

There are factors that encourage rapprochement between Russia and China, while others hinder it.

Among the first is that both countries see the United States as the great geopolitical rival, the great power determined to impose a vision of international relations based on liberalism, democracy and the market economy, which are not exactly ideas that permeate their authoritarian political systems with capitalist but centralised, state-run economies. They believe that the US wants to continue to dictate the rules of how the world works according to principles and values that neither China nor Russia would be comfortable with.

Russia believes that the United States, having achieved the "great tragedy" (Putin dixit) that was the implosion of the USSR, now seeks to surround it with hostile NATO countries, from the Baltics to Poland and Romania, in breach of commitments that Moscow claims were made to it in 1991 and have not been honoured. That is why it has annexed Crimea, interferes in Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Armenia, and has just reminded Biden that Ukraine's mere rapprochement with the North Atlantic Organisation is a red line Russia will not let cross. Vladimir Putin is an ambitious man trained in the hard school of Soviet intelligence services and with a nationalist soul that makes him undisguisedly long for the days when the USSR shared the planet with the United States in spheres of influence that both respected. And that was the world Putin liked because it placed Russia, as the head of the Union, on a par with the United States and not as it is now when he has to put up with Obama's dismissive labelling of him as a "regional power" one day. Putin has never forgiven him because he sees Russia as a nuclear power, the world's largest country in terms of land area, with a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, with veto power.... and no shortage of reasons for not wanting to be "ignored" by Washington.

China under Xi Jinping has abandoned Deng Xiaoping's caution of not scaring and "hiding capabilities" to embark on an expansionist policy based on the Confucian tradition, authoritarianism, personalism, nationalism ("China is back"), Marxism-Leninism and the dictatorship of an omnipresent Communist Party (90 million members) that controls everything. Xi legitimises himself with the economic success of being the world's second largest economy (14% of the world's GDP) after having 600 million compatriots out of poverty. On the downside, there is a harsh political repression that is now being dramatically felt by the Uyghurs of Xinjiang, but is also felt in Hong Kong, Tibet and the population as a whole thanks to digitised and omnipresent systems of social control. Other problems have to do with weaknesses in its economic structure and a shrinking population.

Xi and Putin think the West is in decline but also know that they are not yet ready to confront the US and resent what they perceive as Washington's dirty tricks to prevent China and Russia from taking their rightful place in the world. They prefer to wait, while the Americans perceive a real and present risk of confrontation with China: Michelle Flournoy warns of the danger of "miscalculations" especially in the South China Sea, which is precisely the scenario chosen by Admiral Stavridis for his "2034, a Novel of the next World War". Graham Allison speaks of a "Thucydides Trap" .... and the Pacific military commander has just informed Congress that an attack on Taiwan is not expected "in the next two years". This is not exactly reassuring, and there are voices in Washington warning against this warmongering view that many believe overestimates Chinese capabilities.

China and Russia share a common authoritarian mode of governance that is gaining favour around the world, and both feel battered by hostile US policies. Long gone are the days of enmity between the two powers, which went so far as to clash militarily on the Siberian Usuri River (1993). Today Russia may be tempted to listen to China's siren calls for rapprochement in order to confront together what both see as harassing US practices. That is probably Washington's greatest nightmare, the possibility that Xi and Putin will do to Biden what Nixon and Mao did to Brezhnev in 1972. This rapprochement has already resulted in increased Russian gas and arms sales, frequent joint military exercises, and the creation of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation. Russia has just left the American Space Station and announced its participation in a Chinese project to build a base on the moon. This rapprochement, which has been defined as "never against each other, never totally with each other", has limits because Russia is wary of the progress of the Silk Road land infrastructure network in Central Asia, in the countries that emerged from the Soviet empire (Kazakhstan, etc.) or in Mongolia itself, regions where the two are secretly competing for influence, and above all because Russia would be the junior partner in this hypothetical alliance and the alpha male that is Putin would have to cede primacy to Xi Jinping, something he would find very hard to accept. This is also why Washington has to keep the pressure on Moscow to a minimum, so as not to force it to take such a step.
 
World geopolitics thus points to an imperfect bipolarism between the US and China in which Russia tries to have a voice and succeeds, at least in the military sphere. Whether that voice will be accompanied by China's remains to be seen. But there are no mistakes to be made.

Jorge Dezcallar/ Spanish Ambassador.