The diplomatic tone and constructive approach demonstrated by the US president at the Geneva summit has aroused surprise and, at times, disapproval among many in America
It is possible that the reason for this is not so much Joe Biden’s desire to find common ground with Vladimir Putin but rather a clever ploy to destroy the Russo-Chinese alliance.
Joe Biden’s press conference following his talks with Vladimir Putin was essentially a half-hour spectacle. The White House host answered seven questions (the Russian president, by comparison, answered more than 20) and read the speech over the teleprompter, which, among other things, included a list of journalists who were to be given the floor. Of this, Biden himself simply admitted.
One of the questions was whether a new Cold War had broken out between Russia and the US. Biden responded that Putin, in his view, least of all wants a cold war now. And the American offered a rather unexpected explanation:
“I would be worried if you have a border with China thousands of kilometres long, China considers itself the strongest economic and military power, and your economy is suffering and needs to develop.”
In other words, out of the blue the US president suddenly decided to intimidate Russia with China.
Taking into account that the topic of relations with China was not raised at all during a much longer press conference of the Russian President, one could assume that we are dealing with another “Baidenism”. Especially since Biden almost called President Putin President Trump at the same press conference. The elderly man remembered China, he spluttered a line – let us not judge him harshly.
But a day later it became clear that the show had been scripted to the end and there were no casual remarks in it. At the Globsec 2021 forum in Bratislava, US Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs Victoria Nuland confirmed that at the meeting in Geneva, Biden urged Putin to consider whether Russia should increase its dependence on China.
Washington is thus purposefully driving a wedge between Moscow and Beijing.
Three days before these events, the final communiqué of the NATO summit attended by the same Biden described China for the first time as a country that poses a “systemic challenge” to the alliance. China’s foreign ministry responded with an angry rebuke, pointing out that the “challenge” was coming from NATO.
“The current antagonism between the US, China and Russia is entirely caused by Washington’s hegemony”, – the Huanqiu Shibao newspaper confirms in an editorial on the Geneva summit. By the way, Biden’s attack on China was not mentioned at all, because of local censorship.
All this makes one wonder why the Geneva summit, contrary to all forecasts, turned out to be quite successful and productive, and the US leader expressed to Russia “respects” atypical for his environment. For example, he called Russia, albeit along with the US, a “great power” which neither Barack Obama nor Donald Trump, who consistently avoided such expressions, did.
Among Washington pundits there are those who see China as the main adversary of the United States, and those who give that role to Russia. The former are dominated by Republicans, and their vote was Trump personally, while the latter group includes many Democrats who dream of revenge against Moscow (including, based on Capitol myths, for electing Trump).
Biden clearly belonged to the second group and never gave any reason to suspect he was loyal to the first. Moreover, he was thought to have many friends in the PRC leadership, and the Chinese Communists themselves had respect and sympathy for him – unlike, for example, Obama. As a consequence, Trump openly suspected Biden of corruption on the Chinese side, but was unable to play this card successfully in the election.
Nevertheless, it could have influenced US foreign policy formulation after Biden moved to the White House. After all, the subject of China has become as “toxic” for him as the subject of Russia for Trump. Being too soft on China may have fuelled Republican suspicions.
Add to this the inertia caused by a series of anti-China measures under Trump and the Democrats’ unquenchable desire to preach morality around the world. Then we have what we have – a deterioration in relations between Beijing and Washington under Biden that has gone against the predictions of most analysts.
In fact, on China, Biden is now continuing Trump’s policies, which he himself had previously criticised. And the Democrat-loyal media is publishing more and more articles suggesting that the coronavirus plaguing the planet may have been of artificial origin and broke free from a laboratory in Wuhan. When the same was said by Trump supporters and Trump himself, they were rebuked for xenophobia and ridiculed as conspiracy theorists in the same publications.
All of this has set the stage for the attention to those analysts that Democrats previously did not want to listen to. In Russia, on the other hand, they are often quoted and presented as rational Americans because they strongly oppose further escalation of relations with us and sanctions pressure on Moscow.
Such was the case with Matthew Rojansky, head of the Kennan Institute at the Wilson Center, who was denied a State Department nomination because his stance on relations with Russia was too soft. Now it seems that Rogansky’s position might have prevailed even without Rogansky himself, simply because he and other supposedly Russia-loyal US analysts are more Sinophobic than Russophiles. In their view, the more the US pushes Russia away, the stronger will be the Russian-Chinese alliance against America, and in the long run really dangerous for it.
It does not matter what Biden was cornered by – suspicion, inertia or the fact that China is indeed getting stronger and beginning to challenge the US on sensitive fronts. Importantly, he has clearly embraced this logic, in a context in which his Geneva correctness towards Russia and willingness to engage in dialogue with Putin takes on a very different flavour – a flavour of intrigue.
However, this intrigue has obvious problems, and they do not lie in the fact that the “Chinese threat” to Russia (as it is commonly understood) is still no more than a myth. After all, it must be admitted that we cannot avoid competition with China in the future if we so desire (in fact, it is already underway from Europe to Africa). The Chinese are massively nationalistic and opinionated, they genuinely want their country to be number one on the planet, and they are willing to wait and work for it.
But the “driving a wedge” trick is, firstly, too transparent and obvious for such an experienced politician as Putin to fall for it. Secondly, Biden does not have much real “bait” to interest Russia – his room for maneuvering in terms of “warming relations” is severely limited.
And finally, and most importantly, nothing pulls Russia and China together more securely than Washington’s claim to global hegemony and its desire to meddle in their internal affairs and methods of fighting for a place under the sun. That is something that neither Biden, nor Trump, nor anyone else who could claim the Oval Office of the White House is ready, willing, or able to give up.
The place is said to be cursed in that sense.
Dmitry Bavyrin, VZGLYAD