Alexander Gabuev
Carnegie Politika is a digital publication that features unmatched analysis and insight on Russia, Ukraine and the wider region. For nearly a decade, Carnegie Politika has published contributions from members of Carnegie’s global network of scholars and well-known outside contributors and has helped drive important strategic conversations and policy debates.Learn More
“Biden did something that was unthinkable. He drove China and Russia together. It's the one thing you didn't want to do because they're basically natural enemies,” U.S. President Donald Trump told Fox News after his Alaska meeting with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. This week’s summit in China, where Putin was Xi Jinping’s guest of honor, does not support that characterization. Fueled by resentment toward the U.S., the China-Russia relationship is only set to deepen – increasingly on Beijing’s terms. America’s chances of reversing this trend remain elusive, and recent tariffs against India may only push Putin closer into Xi’s embrace.
In Trump’s telling, the partnership between China and Russia is unnatural, which may enable the U.S. to drive a wedge between the two. A key source of distrust is supposedly demography. “Russia has tremendous amounts of land. China has tremendous amounts of people, and China needs Russian land,” Trump told Fox News. The asymmetry between the vast and empty Russian Far East, home to just 7.9 million people, and China’s 1.4 billion population, is indeed hard to miss. Historically it has caused a lot of alarm in the Kremlin. But as China’s population has started to shrink, those fears have now been mostly alleviated.
Still, Trump is not wrong when he talks about “natural friction” between China and Russia. Its root is not demography, but growing economic and technological asymmetry. While China has emerged as a manufacturing and technological powerhouse of the 21st century, Putin’s Russia is a pale shadow of its former self. And by setting itself on a course of deepening isolation from the West, Russia has provided China with more leverage.
No comments:
Post a Comment