All experts agree that on most of the issues considered at the talks between Presidents Vladimir Putin and Dmitry Biden, the sides repeated their well-known positions, a rapprochement on which is hardly visible yet
The only exception was agreement to begin a comprehensive dialogue on strategic stability, backed by a joint declaration on the unacceptability of nuclear war. Indeed, holding the summit at the lowest point in the U.S.-Russian relationship is undoubtedly a positive development.
There was, however, one new element in the behaviour of the American delegation. The unconcealed desire, for the first time clearly expressed at such a high level, to bring discord to relations between Moscow and Beijing, which has recently become an obsession for Washington.
Taking this into account, it is easier to understand why the White House needed this meeting so urgently in the first place. How could the US President even talk quietly to the Russian President after he was subjected to appalling insults? As we will recall, even “arch-reactionary” Ronald Reagan, who nicknamed the Soviet Union an “evil empire”, did not use personal attacks, and did not call its leaders “soulless murderers”. So what happened that made the American leader start talking about equal relations with Russia as a great power, which sent the American establishment into a tizzy?
There have been two such major events, not much noticed by the world public. And they both poured a Niagara of cold water over the heads of Biden and his team.
First came the economic statistics for the first quarter of 2021 from China. Its economy is showing a growth rate unprecedented in the history of national statistics. The country’s GDP rose by 18.3% compared to the previous year, which it already fared much better than the other major powers, industry grew by 24.5% and output of high-tech products by 31.1%. Chinese ports are struggling to cope with the sharply increased flow of export goods. In the first five months of the year, the actual use of foreign capital in the PRC economy increased by 35.4%. These figures, of course, mask a considerable degree of the harshness caused by the “pandemic” in other economies and, over time, these figures will become more normalised. But it already seems clear from these figures that China will surpass the USA in GDP volume not only in purchasing power parity (which it did long ago) but also in direct exchange rates within the next 1 to 2 years. Until recently, this was not expected to happen until the end of this decade.
The Pentagon chiefs then took turns saying that in a hypothetical World War III, the United States could lose to combined Russian and Chinese forces. This, in particular, was stated in April at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing by Admiral Charles Richards, head of the US Strategic Command (STRATCOM), according to whom “Washington is seriously inferior to Moscow and Beijing in the field of strategic weapons … We will simply be destroyed”.
Then in May, General Mark Milley, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, in a speech to graduates of the Air Force Academy, warned of the danger of a “degradation” of relations with China and Russia. He made it clear that militarily, the US was inferior to the potential defensive alliance of these two powers and was “walking a dangerous line in maintaining an appropriate level of competition with China and Russia”.
The US publication Politico stated that US wariness over Russia-China relations had grown to the point of making it necessary for the US to discuss China in a face-to-face meeting between Biden and the Russian president. The publication also quoted former Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian Affairs D. Stilwell, who pointed out that any US attempt to take advantage of the disagreement between Moscow and Beijing must be “extremely subtle and careful”. Both sides “are very attentive to attempts to divide them and are focused on what they perceive to be the larger threat, namely the United States”. However, since Stilwell was in office under Trump, the White House has clearly not heeded his advice and conducted an “attack on Beijing” in Geneva with the finesse of an elephant in a Chinese china shop.
At the press conference the US President posed a rhetorical question, clearly formulated by him during the talks with the Russian leader as well. The gist of the question was that given Russia’s “thousand-mile border” with China, which aspires to become the most powerful economy and military power in the world, does it also need a “cold war with the United States”?
Apparently feeling that the message on China was too vague, Biden returned to the subject just before his departure. He said: “Russia is in a very, very difficult situation right now, China is putting pressure on it”. And then the US president went on to say “join us, get a barrel of jam and a basket of biscuits”. In his words, Russia is “desperate to remain a world power. He has, they say, “already given Putin what he wanted: legitimacy, the ability to stand on the world stage with the president of the United States. The Russians don’t want to be an “Upper Volta with nuclear missiles”. Biden seems to have wanted to flatter and play on the Kremlin’s ego, but he did so in an arrogant American fashion which provokes nothing but utter bewilderment and rejection.
Undersecretary of State Victoria Nuland, who flew to the GLOBSEC forum in Bratislava after the summit, went even further, exposing Washington’s main interest in the summit to the extreme. In her words, “We have advised Putin to think hard about whether he wants to increase his dangerous dependence on China, which has nurtured global ambitions.”
Naturally, these “subtle” diplomatic manoeuvres have also attracted attention in China. “Huanqiu Shibao” in an editorial in response to Joe Biden’s claims that “Russia is in a very difficult situation, it is being pressured by China”, reasonably argues. Who is strategically pressuring Russia? Biden wants to shift the blame for the enormous damage the US has done to Russia onto China. The facts of US pressure on Russia are undeniable, and Biden’s accusation that “China is ‘pressuring Russia’ is nothing more than spittle” “We hope,” the paper writes, “that Biden and his administration will not think twice about promoting the silly idea of splitting Russia and China.” Obviously, the futility of efforts to drive a wedge into Beijing-Moscow relations will be confirmed even before the end of this year, given V. Putin’s scheduled visit soon. Putin is scheduled to visit China soon.
Russian statements and the president’s answers at the press conference following the summit say nothing about China. This means that Russia does not intend to discuss its relations with its close strategic partner with anyone, especially in his absence. Naturally, it cannot forbid the other side, in this case Biden, to express its position on any issue.
Generally speaking, Americans are strange people. They even negotiate in a very specific way, not in the way some people, including those in Moscow, expect: “don’t get too close to China, and then we will make concessions to you. No, there are no concessions. In fact, the Americans are saying: “meet all our demands, and then we will help you fight China for our American interests.”
The first trade option is also unacceptable to Russia, since it does not sell out its friends. And the second is an untainted narcissism, counting on boundlessly naïve interlocutors. There were none of these in Geneva, however.
Dmitry Minin, FSK