All eyes will be on Moscow when China’s President Xi Jinping arrives in Russia for an official state visit Monday-Wednesday, March 21-22.
China wants to strengthen its relations with Russia, and Russia is sending a clear signal to Europeans and Americans that they can safely do without the support of Western nations. After all, two-thirds of the world’s population now live in countries that are either neutral or directly opposed to the sanctions imposed on Russia by Western countries.
Political scientists and politicians in the western world have been arguing for almost a decade about what should be the best policy towards Russia, which is no longer a superpower. Nonetheless, it remains an important nation with tremendous access to energy sources.
The realist school of thought, exemplified by University of Chicago professor John J. Mearsheimer, has argued that there is no need to provoke Russia through NATO eastward expansion, and a former adviser to Mikhail Gorbaytov, Professor Jeffrey Sachs from Columbia University has openly claimed that the former Soviet Union has been reassured that NATO is not expanding eastward, recognizing Russia’s concern for stability and security.
But already under Bill Clinton’s presidency in 1999 the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland were admitted to NATO. The Russians were taken aback but too weak to protest. In the second round in 2004, NATO was expanded to include Estonia, Bulgaria, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Slovakia and Slovenia. Russia again watched as NATO neared its borders, but again its objections were barely heeded.
When NATO proposed at a Bucharest summit in 2008 to include Georgia and Ukraine, Russia again seriously objected, and fortunately France and Germany opposed the move by the US administration under George W. Bush. Russia intervened in Georgia and took control of separatist regions in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, making it clear to the western world that the frontier had been crossed. Still nothing has changed.
When a coup to overthrow Ukraine’s democratically elected leader took place in 2014, Yanukovych was backed by the West, then Deputy Secretary of State for Europe and Eurasian Affairs Victoria Nuland admitted in an interview with CNN that the US was pouring $5 billion into the Invested in promoting democracy in Ukraine, ie supporting the coup. Moscow responded by invading Crimea and annexing it to Russia, since almost 60 percent of the population there were already Russian-speaking Ukrainians. There were plenty of signals from Moscow that times had changed and that they were no longer willing to accept NATO’s eastward expansion to its limits.
Russia has recognized that if NATO were to get a Black Sea fortress, its maneuverability would be drastically reduced. When NATO wouldn’t budge an inch to accept Russian terms of making Ukraine a buffer state, Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 and the rest is history.
The realists, like the aforementioned John Mearsheimer, wrote a 2014 book called The Tragedy of Great Power Politics, in which they made it abundantly clear to Western leaders that China’s rise would be problematic for America and therefore would be in the West’s interest to tell China and Russia apart. The message fell on deaf ears, as in Washington the realists did not call the shots and no one was willing to see the world from a multipolar perspective. Realists were extremely disappointed in the US, arguing repeatedly that America was unable to act in its own interest and that it was in the US interest to show understanding for Russia’s efforts to maintain physical distance from NATO to protect the armed forces.
Russia could easily have played a constructive role in containing China, which is a real economic power and therefore a real threat to the dominance of Western influence.
China is siding with Russia because it is in its best interest to embroil the West in other wars. The liberals, who have pushed democracy and adhered to the ideals of liberty and a state’s right to sovereignty and its own decisions, have done their best to support Ukraine and the Biden government, made up of liberals and neocons has already donated more than $100 billion in support to Ukraine, which includes both humanitarian and military assistance.
The current administration in Washington has rejected the warnings of the realists and has so far clung to liberal ideals. But how long?
Scientists who are experts in atomic energy and bombs recently warned in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that the doomsday clock shows 90 seconds to midnight. One of the articles published in the Bulletin puts the scenario of all-out nuclear war between the US and Russia at up to 360 million lives. You can’t escape nuclear war if you live in Europe. The lives of Europeans are in danger.
Russia, contrary to all predictions, has the upper hand in the war in Ukraine and, most likely, after the fall of Bakhmut will be able to consolidate its positions, and in the near future Ukraine would not be able to regain its territory.
Meanwhile, Western countries are increasing their support and continuing to promise shipments of deadlier weapons, and it seems the war is escalating to such a degree that it’s likely that NATO countries could easily be drawn into the conflict. Russians claim that NATO forces are getting caught fighting in Ukraine, and the downing of an American drone in the Black Sea is another warning to all of us that things can easily go wrong.
We can hope that some sanity will prevail and as Professor Jeffrey Sachs warned in his recent Oxford University address, it is time to be truly afraid.
The war in Ukraine is becoming increasingly dangerous and can easily lead to direct involvement of some belligerent NATO members such as Poland or the Baltic States and have unpredictable consequences.
It’s time to listen to the nuclear scientists and realists and de-escalate the conflict from nuclear brinkmanship.
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The views expressed above are the author’s own.
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