The American writer Fareed Zakaria says that America’s best strategy towards China now is the defeat of Russia, explaining that China bet Russia’s strong support on the eve of the recent “invasion” of Ukraine. And if they somehow make it back, China will learn an ominous lesson, which is that the West cannot prop up its rules-based system against a persistent onslaught.
He explained - in an article in the Washington Post - that although "Vladimir Putin's Russia" is not a rising giant, it is determined to challenge and divide America and Europe and tear up the rules-based international order, referring to Russia's wars in Georgia and Ukraine. Syria and Chechnya, and "(Putin) sending assassination squads to Western countries to kill his enemies, using money and cyber attacks to disrupt Western democracies, and recently threatening to use nuclear weapons", to say that Putin's Russia is the biggest spoiler in the world.
He said that the phenomenon of a declining power becoming the greatest threat to world peace was not a new phenomenon;
In 1914, the country that sparked World War I was Austria-Hungary, then an empire in decline, yet bent on using its army to show the world that it still mattered.
The current top priority
The writer called for America's top priority now to ensure that Russia does not win its aggression against Ukraine, saying that things are currently going in the wrong direction;
Russian forces are consolidating their gains in eastern Ukraine, after Moscow guaranteed sky-high oil prices, and money continued to flow into Putin’s coffers. Moscow is also offering a deal to developing countries that require these countries to cancel Western sanctions against Russia in exchange for its help in importing grain from Ukraine and Russia avoid famine.
And Ukraine's leaders say they still lack the weapons and training they need to respond effectively.
He criticized a speech delivered by US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken last May, describing it as containing nothing new and repeating the idea that China is the greatest danger, and that he chose - in the middle of the first major land war in Europe since World War II (in 1945) - not to put strategy for victory, but instead changed the subject.
Not being aware of the seismic changes
He added that Washington's foreign policy establishment is so immersed in thinking about the pre-crisis period that it cannot comprehend that the earth has shifted seismically from under its feet, citing a phrase said by American politician Henry Kissinger, "We are currently living in a completely new phase."
Zakaria said that most of the people in the top positions in the Biden administration were senior officials in the administration of former US President Barack Obama, when Russia launched its first "invasion" of Ukraine in 2014, annexed Crimea and intervened in eastern Ukraine, and they were unable to reverse Moscow's aggression. Or even make Putin pay a heavy price for it.
He concluded by saying that Obama's men may have seen - at the time - that the biggest threat to the global system was the Islamic State, or they were focusing on Asia and China, or that they did not give Ukraine enough priority, to find that they now have a second chance, "but it is likely to be Last".