THE WORLD OF "GLOBAL CHINA"

We are seeing this week another example of the results that come from Doing Almost Everything Wrong in American foreign policy since 1945.

The visit of Chinese President-for-Life/Emperor Xi Jinping to Russia and the declaration of a “no-limits” friendship, is being taken by Those Who Usually Get It Wrong as a sign of a coming Sino-Russian alliance.

Nope. It’s the business deals that count.

A strong China is bolstering a weak Russia. That’s the real headline that describes the showy meetings in Moscow this week. On the second day of Xi’s visit to Russia, an agreement was signed that will expand the natural gas trade as well as other economic ties. While on the surface the proposed deals represent a “lifeline” for Putin, who is now isolated from the West because of sanctions imposed after his decision to invade Ukraine, it’s the details that count.

At the center of the agreement is a new pipeline, “Power of Siberia 2,” that will supply China with about 50 billion cubic meters of Russian gas annually. The pipeline will pass through Mongolia and has been under discussion for years. But the project is now more important for Russia after its natural gas trade with Europe ceased last year. Puitin announced that, by 2030, Russia will supply China with at least 98 billion cubic meters, in addition to 100 million tons of liquefied natural gas, through the new pipeline.

What this really means is that a humiliating new reality has just been called into existence. The logic of the deal effectively means that Russia will become a Chinese “resource colony.” One Russian source close to the Kremlin was quoted in the Financial Times pointing to the expanding role of Chinese tech companies in Russia. “Our servers will be from Huawei. We will be China’s major suppliers of everything. They will get gas from Power of Siberia. By the end of 2023 the renminbi will be our main trade currency.”

I’m sure that most readers are not aware that in recent years, Emperor Xi has unveiled the Chinese parallel vision of “The New World Order,” called the “Global Security Initiative.” The initiative currently is a vague set of principles about world peace and neighborly relations. But it is the Chinese plan to move the Global South away from the alliance systems and global security architecture that the United States put in place following World War II.

In various forums including meetings of the BRICS nations and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, in countries as far-flung as Kenya and the Solomon Islands (site of great battles in World War II, now about to become a naval base that welcomes the Chinese Navy) Chinese officials have touted the “GSI” as a new platform for global partnership. And the formerly colonialized countries, which see Chinese investment through programs like the Belt and Road Initiative as promoting things those countries need, which the U.S.-led West ignores while lecturing those governments on “financial responsibility,” are open to what Xi is selling.

China has carefully constructed what is a basically Asian and then global order. Up to now, this has appeared to be based on economic programs like the huge infrastructure programs that are being created in the Belt and Road Initiative that has Chinese state companies investing in major infrastructure projects around the world. But as was largely ignored until last month, China as a capable political actor in international relations. The Biden Administration was caught unaware of this when it was announced last month that China had brokered rapprochement between the two major Muslim nations - Sunni Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran. By mediating the Saudi-Iranian normalization agreement, China has changed its foreign policy from economic exchange to negotiated conflict resolution. And this accomplishment is something the United States failed at for the past 20 years.

This foreign policy opportunism is matched by an overt sense of ambition, as shown in yesterday’s agreement with Russia, which took advantage of Putin’s international weakness to fundamentally alter the relationship of China and Russia. Keeping the two countries apart has been a foundation stone of U.S. foreign policy since Nixon’s trip to China in 1972. In an interview with geopolitical analyst Bruno Maçães, Zhou Bo, a retired colonel in the People’s Liberation Army and a senior fellow at the Center for International Security and Strategy at Tsinghua University in Beijing, explained what is going on: “We are talking about Global China. China is ubiquitous. China’s influence is everywhere.”

The Biden administration is now confronting China in various ways, from engaging in a full-blown trade war over key technologies, increasing security partnerships with other regional powers in Asia as seen in the AUKUS nuclear submarine program, and has declared we are the leader of an ideological struggle between liberal democracies and autocracies everywhere.

But this perceived American hawkishness is seen as a source of tension for countries in Southeast Asia. China’s cooperation with Myanmar and Pakistan to develop major infrastructure programs in the Belt and Road initiative will result in a future of Chinese regional hegemony; but for countries the United States either lectures (Pakistan) or has no relationship with (Myanmar) the result of allying with China are programs that lead to economic development those governments desire. The United States is not accompanying its increased military movement in South and Southeast Asia with any sort of major economic assistance, let alone programs like the Chinese are supporting.

Because the Chinese do not apply any ideological requirements on the governments they are willing to work with, this has allowed them to support regimes we will not work with and opened more space for China on the international stage to be recognized for international leadership.

Too often American foreign policy is seen as making demands and issuing threats and condemnations. China is increasingly seen as doing the opposite.

Returning to what’s going on in Moscow now, China’s dominance over a weaker Russia will take many forms in the coming years. Russia will depend more and more on demand from China and other Asian customers’ these countries can negotiate agreements that are favorable to them due to Putin’s self-created weakness. As this continues, China’s economic sway is growing in central Asia and in Russia’s own far east.

China’s hard power in space, cyber, robotics and artificial intelligence increasingly dwarfs Russia’s and challenges us. The Chinese are the ones planning a moon base, not the Russians. The Russian Navy still looks like the “tenements” we saw and sneered at 60 years ago. I saw the Chinese Navy a few years back when a Chinese destroyer visited Long Beach: it looked smart and capable, the way the front line warships in the navy I served in looked like “back in the day.” Their aerospace industry is close to being the equal of ours and no one laughs about the capability of the People’s Liberation Army Air Force.

We forget that while we celebrate Western victory in World War II as a victory for freedom and democracy, the formerly colonialized nations of the Global South remember things like the East Indian Famine of 1943-44, which was the result of British imperial policy in their Indian colony, a famine that Winston Churchill - who the west venerates as a fighter for democracy - refused to take any responsibility for solving.

The Global South looks at what the United States did in Southeast Asia 60 years ago, which those countries are still recovering from, and what the United States has done to destabilize the Middle East over the past 20 years, and they don’t see us as promoting FDR’s Four Freedoms we claimed we were fighting for 80 years ago.

The world has not dealt with a fully unified Chinese Empire led by a strong Emperor since the 1400s. Xi’s emerging role as the leader of a Eurasian bloc presents dilemmas for the U.S. The idea that a vast swath of the world is dominated by a China that stands against freedom and democracy is chilling when other countries who want what China appears to have achieved look at the nation that was prostrated by European imperialism 100 years ago and has now achieved what it has in spite of the West.

The one thing I have learned in writing the histories I have is that the United States never learns the right lesson from the wars it fights. What we are looking at now is the result of failing to understand events since 1945 and look at our actions through the eyes of those who see us as oppressors rather than the liberators we consider ourselves.

Every time I write about this, I think of what might have been, had FDR lived. He foresaw this world, that the colonialized nations would fight for independence, and he saw it as right and proper. His plan was for the world’s first anti-colonial power - the U.S. - to support the fight for colonial independence, to take the lead internationally. What kind of world would that be, rather than the world we have - created by those who saw the opportunity of 1945 as their moment to become the new British Empire and promote the Pax Americana? Which has given us what we have.

The news we have from Moscow yesterday is the direct result of that failure.

UPDATE 3/22: Despite Russian hopes that the pipeline deal would be signed during Xi’s visit, as it turns out the Chinese demurred, bringing up costs of the project. Given Russia’s situation, this may be “hard bargaining” on the part of the Chinese to take advantage of Russia’s weaker negotiating position now.

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