Strained relations between Moscow and Washington are making Russians more accepting of Chinese military power.
Analysis
Brian Milakovsky: Economic Relations with Uncontrolled Territories in Moldova and Ukraine
It is still too early to gauge the chances of President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s push for a negotiated settlement of the Donbas conflict which could lead to the political re-integration of the Russia-controlled portion of that region. However, it is increasingly clear that his administration is seeking an alternative economic policy to the current economic blockade for these territories.
Paul Robinson: A Tale of Two Museums
It’s a common among critics of the ‘Putin regime’ to complain that it encourages Soviet nostalgia, has failed to properly denounce communist rule and disassociate itself from it, and so in the process has facilitated the continuation of authoritarian attitudes and systems.
Daniel R. DePetris: Donald Trump Has Less Than a Year to Save the Last Nuclear Arms Treaty
At a time when U.S.-Russia ties are in danger of falling off the cliff, saving New START will preserve some desperately needed stability in the broader relationship.
Amb. Tony Kevin: East-West strategic temperature is rising in the Asia-Pacific
My former professional background as a policy planner ( 1985-90) in the Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and related areas where I worked for 30 years enabled me to hone the skills of ‘joining the dots’ between apparently disconnected facts. It was particularly easy to do so, as I read three stories about China on page 11 of the AUstralian Financial Review on Wednesday 24 July.. The first story concerned the significance of the latest Chinese Government defence white paper (the first in four years), which unusually singles out by name Australia as a country which ‘is seeking a bigger role in Asia-Pacific security affairs’ , and as a country that China sees as ‘a new source of uncertainty in the region’.
Rory Medcalf of ANU National Security College and a former senior Australian Government defence planner was reported by AFR as commenting that he thinks this naming of Australia in the Chinese defence paper is a good thing, ‘because it acknowledges Australia is a country to be taken seriously. It doesn’t mean we are a target.’ This is one of the sillier things Rory Medcalf has said publicly about Australian national security since becoming a respected part of this public conversation , from which I am excluded because of my radical global political views. There is no possible way in which it is a good thing to be named by China in this negative way. It shows that China has finally rejected Australian claims , of provenance going back to Prime Minister John Howard’s time, that Australia can be a good economic partner of China and at the same time a strong military ally of the US against China.
Our attempts since Howard’s day under successive Labor and Coalition governments to ride these two horses have been correctly understood by China as self-deceiving hypocrisy and doublethink. The Chinese government has come to despise Australian efforts to pretend, on the one hand , that it truly values China as an investor , our largest export market, and major source of property investment and education mega dollars: while thinking that we can without punishment from China increasingly lock ourselves into the American -led attempts to contain China strategically, as seen in myriad ways in the strategic decisions and expressed attitudes of Australia’s defence planning and national security sectors of government .
Every decision like the Huawei 5G rejection, noisily stepped-up US military basing in Darwin, singling out of China and Russia as the main targets of the Australian 2018 foreign influence legislation, declared strategic competition with China in the South Pacific, expressed enthusiasm for the unviable Quad strategic grouping , the kind of defence procurement decisions Australia makes aimed at helping the US to project longrange military power in the Asia-Pacific region, and reliably hostile mainstream media commentariat reaction to every Chinese or Russian assertion of strategic interests – with no Australian counter-opinions ever permitted to be expressed in mainstream public debate – sends the same Australian elite message to China and Russia: that however much we are happy to take their money in trade and investment, we see them au fond as the strategic enemy.
Now China, after being immensely patient for many years , giving our elites far more time than they deserve to come to see the error of such inconsistent indeed hypocritical strategic thinking, has served us up in their latest defence white paper the most unambiguous warnings of the consequences of our fecklessness. But Rory Medcalf, in one of his more idiotic statements, thinks this is ‘a good thing’. And nobody in the mainstream Australian strategic world challenges him. The second report on page 11 of the AFR last Wednesday was that important China-US bilateral trade talks are about to resume after dramatic suspension in May. This resumption is a consequence of the degree of US-China civil dialogue re-established between Xi and Trump at the June G20 summit in Osaka. The resumption of these vital trade talks, after their abrupt breakdown in May, means both sides are seriously contemplating the renewed possibility of reciprocal bilateral trade concessions, whose negotiation will focus primarily on the self-interest of both sides.
Trump, a transactional president, will not worry about the interests of third parties like Australia. And why should China do so, when we are now officially listed by Chinese defence planners as a new source of strategic uncertainty in the region , and a country that seeks a bigger military role for itself? Not a friend, clearly. And our trade diplomats would be naive to expect otherwise. The third news story on page 11 of Wednesday’s AFR reported the first Russian-Chinese joint longrange air patrol in the Pacific , by three Russian and three Chinese military aircraft. They flew together through a ‘South Korean Air Defence identification zone’ (a zone whose legality is not recognised by China) and they flew over an island whose sovereignty is contested by South Korea and Japan.
Reportedly, according to South Korean officials, ‘hundreds of warning shots’ were fired at them by South Korea. Russia’s Defence Ministry said the Russian planes had been airborne 11 hours and covered 9000 km, and that ‘foreign fighter jets had escorted them on 11 separate occasions’. It did not deign to report any shooting. Perhaps warning shots were fired from a prudent distance, and ignored by the visiting aircraft? Clearly this flight did not lose its way and accidentally stray into South Korean airspace. Its route was a major test of resolve and can be expected to be followed by other such flights in future . The route would have been carefully planned and executed in unison by both highly expert airforces. These were no ‘air space incursions ’ as alleged by a US Defence spokesman , but deliberate assertions of Chinese and Russian freedom to fly in international airspaces as close as possible to Korea and Japan, as a demonstration of Chinese and Russian military capacities to operate as allies in the North Pacific.
The joint flights show how quickly Russo -Chinese military cooperation at the high- tech level is progressing. This is a lot more impressive than driving tanks together around the snowy Siberian tundra, and swapping friendship pancakes in military headquarters as Putin and Xi did a year and a half ago.. This was a delicate precision navigational exercise to fly a fleet of three Chinese and three Russian military planes (I note equal parity of forces , which itself sends an important diplomatic message) just outside Western alliance territorial borders. It would have required mutual Russian- Chinese military trust and mutual cool heads to ignore the warning shots and fly on together, an Impressive and significant military demonstration by any measure. To the extent this was reported at all, as in the AFR article, it was reported as an escalation and a provocation of the Western alliance by Russia and China. It was neither : it was a legitimate assertion of determination to protect mutual strategic interests close to Russia’s and China’s nearby borders in the North Pacific, through forward projection of both nations’ high – tech military power.
But do not expect Australian atrategic planners, defence academics, or mainstream media elites, to join these three important dots and discuss their significance for Australia’s national security. And do not expect me to be invited to speak or write on these matters in any mainstream forum anytime soon My writing will continue to be safely confined to the silos of my Facebook Page and personal email contact list. Our reading and listening public, which fondly assumes it will read and hear truth and freely contested views in our mainstream media on important issues of national security, will continue to be deceived by our elites.
Tony Kevin is an Emeritus Fellow of Australian National University and a former Australian diplomat and foreign policy analyst 1968-98. He is the author of ‘Return to Moscow’ (UWA Publishing, 2017)https://www.uwap.uwa.edu.au/products/return-to-moscow
Paul Robinson: Constitutional Update
Since Vladimir Putin suggested amending the Russian constitution and set up a commission to discuss proposals, some 900 amendments have supposedly been submitted to the commission.
Elaine Scarry: Sleeping Through the Alarm
With virtually no democratic oversight and over 6,500 missiles in the United States alone, the use of nuclear weapons is almost inevitable. So why is it so hard to think about nuclear war?
Col. Ann Wright: Americans are unaware of the largest U.S. war games in Europe in 25 years
In an effort to generate U.S. national support and publicity for the revival of the Cold War, U.S. military units will come from 15 U.S. states, including important electoral states of Arizona, Florida, Michigan, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, and Virginia to take part in Defender 2020, the largest military exercise to take place in Europe in a quarter century.
Hilary Appel: Interpreting the Russia-China Rapprochement
The blossoming of relations between the Russian and Chinese presidents has been prominently on display.
Politico: EU top diplomat urges better Russia, Turkey ties after Syria deal
The European Union’s foreign policy chief called Thursday for better relations with Russia and Turkey as the two countries announced a cease-fire in Syria, a move that highlighted once again how much leverage they wield over the EU.
Geoff Roberts: The Russia Anxiety
The wave of Russophobia sweeping through Western states and societies today is, according to Mark Smith’s compelling book, powered by a “fake history” that he aims to refute.
For Smith, recurrent outbreaks of Russophobia express the Russia Anxiety – a long-term pattern of thinking and feeling about Russia that alternates between fear, contempt and disregard for the country. This pattern has repeated throughout the 500 years since the 16th century when Russia was established as a player in the great game of European politics through the expansion of Muscovy under Ivan the Terrible. Smith views the Russia Anxiety as pernicious and persistent, but not as permanent; rather “it is a syndrome whose symptoms come and go”.
Hysteria, whipped up around Russia’s supposed threat to Western civilization, has been based on such “fake history” as the 19th-century publication in France of Russia’s 14-point plan for world domination – the Testament of Peter the Great. This blatant forgery is but one example of what Smith calls the “Black Legend” of Russian history – the idea that expansionism, aggressiveness and authoritarianism are inherent and indelible to the country’s identity.
Much of Smith’s book is devoted to showing that far from being the threatening, exceptional state depicted in the Black Legend, Russia’s international interests are unexceptional and its patterns of behaviour predictable. It was and remains as “normal” as any other European great power in pursuit of its interests. When Russia has deviated from mainstream European history – for example during the period of Soviet socialism – this was the result of chance and contingency.
Geopolitically Russia is a Eurasian state and contains within its borders many different nationalities and cultures. It was, and always will be, part of Europe, as long as we don’t succumb to the orientalist fantasies of those seeking to turn the country into a threatening, subversive Other.
‘Miscast scenario’
Smith notes that fear, contempt and disregard are not the only motifs in the history of Russian-Western relations. “The Anxiety could quickly dissolve when circumstances demanded,” he writes. Russia has often been the West’s partner and its saviour, as well as its apparent nemesis. Tsar Alexander I defeated Napoleon and Stalin overcame Hitler and the Nazis. And it was Mikhail Gorbachev, the Soviet Union’s final visionary leader, who tore down the postwar iron curtain, ending the cold war and reunifying Europe. Nor was any foreign leader firmer in their support for the United States than Vladimir Putin after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
While Russia Anxiety may seem absurd and superficial, it can also be deadly dangerous. In July 1914, Germany precipitated a World war because its leaders feared Russian power and calculated they should tackle and defeat this assumed adversary sooner rather than later. Could such a miscast scenario be repeated in the 21st century? We must hope not. Yet in our nuclear age there is a chilling ring to hyperbolic Western claims that Russia is waging a “hybrid war” against EU nations and NATO members; that Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election was equivalent to Japan’s sneak attack on Pearl Harbor; and that Putin is a dictator who seeks to re- expand the Russian empire and spread illiberalism across the globe.
So we should be thankful that the Russia Anxiety is not a universal phenomenon. Neither China nor other Asian states suffer from this particular apprehension and there is little sign of the syndrome from African or Latin American states. Even in the West, public opinion is split and the Russophobes do not have things all their own way.
Moral certitude
In a particularly effective passage Smith captures what many people feel when they encounter the hypocrisy and evasions generated by the Russia Anxiety:
“Is external interference in an election more egregious when it happens to the United States? Has Russia’s Syria policy done more to destabilise the Middle East than the interventions of the United States? Is ‘hybrid war’ in Eastern Europe different from CIA covert action in Nicaragua, El Salvador, Honduras and elsewhere? Is Russia’s choice of partners any different from America’s selection of friendly dictators? Is the projection of Russian power through social media in the same category as American cultural diplomacy? Are the human rights interventions of the twenty-first century any different from the imperialism of the nineteenth? Is hacking worse than drone strikes? Are oligarchs worse when they are Russian?”
As Smith says, simply asking such questions destabilises the Russia Anxiety and helps to deflate the excessive and bombastic moral certitude of Western policy towards Russia.
Smith’s cure for the Russian Anxiety is authentic, not fake, history, especially comparative history, which reveals Russia to be a state that conducts itself no better or worse than any other big power. Russian history is many layered, Smith argues, and the deeper we dig the more apparent it becomes that the tropes of Russophobic history bear little or no relation to reality.
Smith’s narrative is much enlivened by the inclusion of biographical sketches depicting those who have created, resisted and lived with the Russia Anxiety. As a Russian history specialist, he deploys his deep knowledge of the country’s culture, society and peoples to capture with verve and imagination the grand sweep of its history, and combines this with an astute commentary on contemporary politics.
Geoffrey Roberts is Emeritus Professor of History at University College Cork and a Member of the Royal Irish Academy. His latest book is Churchill and Stalin: Comrades-in-Arms during the Second World War
David Bromwich: Thoughts on Super Tuesday
A recent leak from a misinterpreted fragment of a report by the Director of National Intelligence became a two-day Red Scare. Was Putin once more gearing up to steal an election? Was Sanders complicit, or was he merely duped? All this while the planet burns.
Mary Elise Sarotte: How to Enlarge NATO: The Debate inside the Clinton Administration, 1993–95
The expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to include Central and Eastern European (CEE) states represents one of the most controversial strategic choices of the post–Cold War era.
Nathan Robinson: It’s time to forget the Mueller-fuelled impeachment fantasies
Democrats complaining about Russian interference have always seemed like “sore losers”. Instead of grappling with the very serious reasons why working-class people of all races are disillusioned with the Democratic party, prominent figures focus on litigating the various ways in which they were robbed of their rightful prize.
Curt Mills: Flying High: the Rise of Jamie Fly At Radio Free Europe
Longtime neocon operative Jamie Fly will take over Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty effective next month, it’s been announced.
Ed Lozansky: Is it about Western values or geopolitics?
When it comes to U.S. foreign policy, what we frequently hear from politicians and mainstream media is that it must be based on the well-known foundations of Western values, such as freedom, democracy, defense of human rights, and the supremacy of the rule of law.
Nicolai N. Petro: Volodymyr Zelensky’s Landslide Victory in Ukraine May Become a Slippery Slope
The new president must heal enormous social distrust if he doesn’t want to go the way of the previous administration.
Doug Bandow: Time to Kick the Islamizing Turkey Out of NATO
It is unlikely that the alliance, despite being so eager for new members, would invite Turkey to join today.
Krystal Ball: How much damage has MSNBC done to the Left?
“Rachel Maddow, you have some explaining to do…”
Stephen F. Cohen: Peace in Ukraine? The friends and foes of a Kiev-Moscow settlement.
The election of Ukraine’s new president, Volodymyr Zelensky, who won decisively throughout most of the country, represents the possibility of peace with Russia, if it—and he—are given a chance