At the time of this writing, the Ukrainian forces backed by Western weapons are launching a counterattack on the Russian forces stationed in eastern Ukraine, specifically in the city of “Kharkiv.” The success or not of this Ukrainian counterattack will cast a shadow over the entire Russian military operation. Ukraine is on the offensive and Russia is on the defensive, albeit temporarily.
Perhaps the most important paradox is that this current situation of the Russian army in Ukraine and the outcome of the war will not only determine the European security and geopolitical situation, but will also draw the features of the escalating confrontation on the other side of the planet in Southeast Asia, as China closely monitors the developments of the Russian-Ukrainian war, and evaluates The Russian strategy and its success in imposing a new equation, the strength and solidity of the Western response, the extent of the impact of sanctions, and the extent to which Western democracies will hold together in the face of the energy and food crises resulting from the sanctions on Russia.
What exactly does China want?
Chinese President Xi Jinping and leaders of the Chinese Communist Party agree with Russian President Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin's leadership in wanting to divide the world into spheres of influence dominated by a few major countries.
China wants to impose its political hegemony on East Asia, and Russia has a similar ambition in Eastern Europe, through which it seeks to impose a new equation on European security, for the two sides to force America to reduce its hegemony to be limited to Western Europe and the western half of the world.
Russian President Vladimir Putin (left) with Chinese President Xi Jinping (right) (Reuters)
This alternative system that the two sides want will not call for any alternative global values or human rights of a different kind. On the contrary, conservative values and the revival of local cultures will prevail in exchange for the values of liberalism and globalization, as the Chinese and Russian presidents see that liberalism, human rights and democracy are deceptions. To justify the Western sabotage of their systems, and that such ideas will soon become a remnant of an unstable international system that will fall under the weight of its internal contradictions, and will be replaced by a hierarchy based on the logic of explicit hard power in which each country knows its place in the general balance of power.
From this point of view, China is watching the Russian-European scene. At the beginning of the war, Beijing aspired for the war to confirm the internal Chinese propaganda about the West’s impotence and preference for its economic and commercial interests at the expense of taking a unified and firm political stance against Russia. If the West is unable to form a unified political will to deter Russia, China can go ahead with shaping its dream zone of influence in East Asia.
Indeed, “China has aggressively expanded on various fronts in recent years, especially in the East Asian seas, as it moves to consolidate its vast territorial claims. Today, Beijing is producing warships faster than any country since World War II, and has filled Asian sea lanes with Chinese coastal guards. and fishing vessels, and significantly increased their use of collision and air intercepts in order to push their neighbors out of the disputed areas.
Any talk of China's political ambitions immediately turns to Taiwan, where China has claimed sovereignty over Taiwan since the Chinese Civil War in the 1940s, when the Nationalists led by Chiang Kai-shek lost to Communist forces led by Mao Zedong and established a presence on the neighboring island. .
The Taiwan-China talks collapsed in 2016 after Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen took office at the helm of her political party, a party that opposes reunification with China. Taiwanese air.
Despite the complexity and sensitivity of the Taiwan file to China, Taiwan is part of a more complex link for China in East Asia.
Similar to Russia, China feels that the West and the United States have formed during the previous decades a geopolitical layer hostile to China, which drew a military barrier within the Chinese vital space designed to contain China and prevent it from expanding in its regional surroundings, a military barrier whose first layer is formed by the countries bordering China, primarily Japan, Taiwan, South Korea, Indonesia, Philippines and Vietnam.
This first layer constitutes a spearhead to deprive China of air and sea expansion, then comes the deeper and farthest layer in the geopolitical containment of China, consisting of countries such as India, Australia, Britain, and finally the United States. Here, we can look at the “Ocos” agreement that was signed at the end of last year within this framework.
In this context, it seems that China's rise in its regional surroundings will occur in the face of the United States and its Western and Asian allies alike, if China wants to extend its influence over East Asia, a scenario very similar to the scenario of the Russian confrontation with NATO and the West currently, but this scenario is of course Broader and more dangerous in terms of the repercussions of the possible confrontation in it if China decides to start its own version of the confrontation with the West to form a vital area and a regional sphere of influence, especially as it is a rising global power rather than a power in the process of fading like the Russian Federation.
China's Reticence, Russia's Reticence
Chinese President Xi Jinping (Getty Images)
By 2030, expectations indicate that China's gross domestic product will exceed its American counterpart for the first time, as well as the volume and balance of trade exchange between China and the United States and the West in general, which is in China's interest as well, and in return Russia depends mainly on the sale of raw materials and energy Three decades ago, the economies of Russia and China were about the same size, but now China's economy is ten times larger than its Russian counterpart.
Despite all of China's reservations about the international system, China has prospered under the current system in a way that no other country in the world has been able to do except for the United States itself, while Russia has been in decline since the economic crises of the Soviet Union in the 1970s.
Therefore, we find that China itself is reticent about the Russian intransigence in demolishing the foundations of the existing international system, as the leaders of the Communist Party want to review some of the rules of the system to serve their interests better and not only, and to secure its continuous and increasing rise from any Western reaction that may hinder the successful Chinese development process that It is led by the Communist Party, and in contrast to Putin, who has no other tool to exercise Russian influence than subversive threats and force of arms, and given its economic relations with America and Europe, China has a primary interest in stability within the international system unlike Russia.
The Chinese reservation on Russian intransigence has other reasons that are no less important for the Chinese government. The volume of trade exchange between China and Russia over the past year is 18% of the volume of Russia's trade with the whole world.
In contrast, the volume of trade between the two countries represents less than 2.5% of the volume of Chinese trade. With these numbers, China is Russia's most important trading partner, but for China, Russia is much less important. The most important point is that the volume of trade exchange between China and Russia's current enemies, the European Union and the United States, times the volume of trade exchange with Russia, and here again we find that China's position within the international system limits its options in confronting it.
Continuing with the same hypothesis, analyzes see that the presence of a relatively weak Russia suits China in some way, because Russia will have no choice but to be obedient to China after it almost lost the European market.
China wants to pressure Russia for access to northern Russian ports to accommodate growing Chinese interests in northern Europe, as well as a better negotiating position for cheap Russian oil and gas, sensitive military technology, and possibly advanced nuclear weapons designs.
The tragedy of great power politics
In light of this, the majority of analyzes agree that China will not go far in its support for Russia in the face of NATO, which has become clear to the eye that it has taken a strong push with the expectation of Finland joining the alliance, and talk is spread in the Western media about the possibility of Norway and Sweden joining, which makes Russia in front of A strategic defeat is certain with NATO reaching its northern border with its southern presence already in Turkey, regardless of any outcome Russia may get from its war in Ukraine.
This is in line with the analyzes coming from the decision-making circles of the Communist Party of China that NATO and the West will greatly increase in strength after the faltering of the Russian army in Ukraine, and its inability to impose a new strategic equation in Eastern Europe, where NATO will continue to expand and the political and cultural strength of the West will increase, and will increase The influence of the United States in and outside Europe, and liberal and human rights values will be strengthened throughout the world in return for the decline of all anti-liberal forces within the West, and the anti-Western forces around the world.
The Tragedy of Great Power Politics by John Mearsheimer
In the face of these data, and this new world under development, China is calculating its next steps well, which leads us in a simple preliminary analysis to the fact that China will not repeat what it sees as Russia's mistake in defying the West and the United States.
But with a broader analytical and historical view, it becomes clear to us that this prediction may be too optimistic, and in international relations a new concept emerges called “The Tragedy of Great Power Politics” sculpted by the American academic “John Mearsheimer” in a book with the same title “The Tragedy of Great Power.” Politics".
Mearsheimer has argued that the great powers, contrary to what their name suggests, do not have many options in the field of international relations and national security, and in the example of the growing Sino-American confrontation, Mearsheimer made it clear that the United States, as a superpower, sees China as a competitor at the international level and seeks To contain it early before it becomes a real threat to it in the future.
Mearsheimer's main point is that there is a security dilemma that governs the strategies of the great powers, which is that what one party does as a defensive act is seen by the other as a hostile move.
This is the tragedy of the policies of the great powers, which will lead the two sides, China and the United States, to enter into an intense security competition, as the great powers, by their nature, cannot bear the presence of an equal competitor in a space in which they see vital interests.
This brings us back to the scenario of the Russian-Western confrontation that was subject to the policies of the great powers themselves, where NATO began to expand in a containment and defensive measure in a way that Russia saw an attack on its historical and vital field, and a strategic encirclement, and then began a military escalation to protect its national security, which is the same view that it looks at By China to American and Western influence in Southeast Asia.
From this standpoint, it seems that competition and the politics of escalation are the fate that began to take shape years ago in Southeast Asia and the South China Sea.
China may retreat from its expansionist ambitions temporarily in the face of the Russian failure and the sudden cohesion of NATO led by the United States, and the war in Ukraine may drag on and turn into a darker and chaotic form in the form of a war of cities in which no one outright wins, with a series of peace talks and a cease-fire that collapses throughout the time.
And when the winter comes, and energy prices in Europe remain high, and the West continues to stand firm in the face of these challenges or collapses in favor of a softer stance towards Russia, all this will not shape the future of Europe alone, but will shape the future of the most dangerous confrontation on the other side of the world at the same time. Himself.