Biden’s European meetings and Putin-Biden talks have once again demonstrated the West’s unwillingness to reckon with the reality of a multipolar world
It has been confirmed that the West intends to re-establish its hegemony in world affairs by imposing an order based on Western rules.
Strengthening of China and Russian-Chinese interaction is a barrier to this course.
The objectives of Biden’s European tour were focused firstly on uniting U.S. European allies around a comprehensive strategy of contingent Western competition with China, and secondly, on easing tensions with Russia in the expectation that this would help Washington create the preconditions for alienating Russia from the PRC.
On the eve of the Geneva meeting a senior Biden administration official in an interview with POLITICO reasoned as follows: “Either you involve Russia and China in containment simultaneously, or you try to separate the approaches and improve relations with Moscow.
The core of the strategy of confrontation with China is to contain China’s economic growth, in which the conventional West sees the source of its geopolitical power. Notable here is the agreement by G7 leaders to agree on efforts to ensure “sustainable supply chains” to “support each other’s democracies”. This implies the exclusion of China from global supply chains of components for the global market for high-tech products, most notably microelectronics.
The Build back better initiative of the G7 as an alternative to China’s Belt and Road infrastructure project is noteworthy. The initiative is expected to raise hundreds of billions of dollars for infrastructure projects to neutralise China’s influence in developing Asian and African countries.
China’s criticism of “human rights in Xinjiang”, “forced labour in agriculture, light industry and solar energy” in the final G7 communiqué had economic overtones in addition to the aim of rallying the US and its allies. Since the end of 2020. The US has launched a campaign to boycott Chinese producers of cotton and polysilicon (needed in solar panels), which dominate global markets. In the context of the Biden-lobbied climate agenda and the growing demand for solar panels, with Western MNCs counting millions of dollars in lost profits, this aspect of China’s “fight for human rights” looks particularly piquant.
The reference to the PRC as the source of NATO’s security challenges is relatively new in the final communiqué of the meeting of the alliance leaders. The document calls on NATO members to respond to China’s challenges “together as an alliance. Until now, China has only appeared in Western documents as an economic competitor.
During Biden’s European tour, sources “familiar with the Pentagon’s internal discussions” revealed that the US Department of Defense was considering establishing a permanent naval task force in the Pacific “to counter China’s growing military power”.
At the same time, US allies, joining the overarching strategy of deterring the PRC on almost all fronts, opposed radical anti-Chinese language. When discussing the final G7 communiqué, some US European allies, most notably Germany, Italy, and the EU leadership opposed categorical accusations of China on the subject of “forced labour” and “genocide” in Xinjiang. Not everyone in Europe agrees to recognise China as an “existential threat”.
The unified Western position reflected in the documents masks the differences between the US and Europe on the China issue. However, the depth of the disagreement between the U.S. and its European allies should not be overestimated. Two years ago, at similar meetings of Western leaders, China was not discussed in the context of a military threat to the Western world and was not mentioned as a major geopolitical competitor. There is now a gradual convergence between the U.S. and European positions on the issues of confronting China.
In China, the outcome of Biden’s European tour has been assessed critically, distinguishing between the position of the U.S. and the European Union. Chinese experts point out that major European countries have avoided expanding political conflicts and ideological disputes with China into trade and economy.
In Europe, it is believed that the gains to most US allies from cooperation with China outweigh their “strategic concerns about China’s rise”. Therefore, US attempts to impose an interest in American hegemony on the Europeans as a collective Western interest and to draw Europe into a geopolitical confrontation with China are unlikely to be feasible.
Chinese experts are unanimous in the opinion that in addition to strengthening its defensive capabilities, China should demonstrate that it does not pose even the slightest threat to Europe and “make Europe, which is strengthening its strategic autonomy, understand the importance of China as a partner”.
U.S. attempts to break up Russia and China in the PRC are closely monitored, but are not cause for concern. The friendly relations between the two countries are based on the convergence of their core interests. China values Russia’s reliability as a strategic partner, quoting the Russian president’s official position that it is impossible to undermine trusting Russian-Chinese relations. As Chinese experts emphasize, these relations have an independent value, outside the context of confrontation or friendship between Russia and the United States, and American calculations to change anything here are futile.
Biden’s clumsy attempts at the press conference to shift responsibility for the harm caused to Russia on China’s shoulders amid numerous systematic US sanctions against Russia and a rampant anti-Russian information campaign have caused justifiable indignation in China. The Chinese call attention to Biden’s insulting attitude towards Russia: the US president evidently believes that by pointing to the strengthening of China and the length of the Russian-Chinese border he can block American hostility and make Moscow forget about friendly relations with the PRC.
The U.S. has nothing to offer Russia that would fundamentally improve U.S.-Russian relations.
To rectify relations, Washington needs to end Russia’s “squeeze on strategic space,” which has been limited to the limit by NATO’s repeated eastward expansions and control of some of the former Soviet republics.
Clearly, Washington will not go for it.
Victor Pirozhenko, FSK