U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo arrived in the Black Sea city of Sochi to meet with President Vladimir Putin on May 14. According to President Putin’s foreign affairs adviser Yuri Ushakov, the two sides had a good substantive dialogue and pushed for a communications channel to improve Russia-U.S. relations.Ushakov emphasized that there was no breakthrough in Russia-U.S. relations, but the US showed a pragmatic attitude.
Moscow has always hoped to ease Russia-US standoff. As for Washington, it has an additional consideration for improving U.S.-Russia relations: it hopes to divide China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership of cooperation and transform Russia from a rival into a strategic lever to squeeze out China.
Beijing’s attitude is frank: it is happy to see the US and Russia improve their relations. China has shown a high degree of confidence in the all-round development of China-Russia relations, while Russia is wary of Washington’s provocation of China-Russia relations.The US had intended to take China into the U.S.-Russia arms control negotiation, but Russia publicly expressed a cold attitude.
Since early 1970s, the US has joined forces with China to resist the Soviet Union. Today, China is regarded as the number one strategic opponent by the American political elites. In turn, it seems logical and coherent vice versa. In fact, there are policy makers who do think that way in Washington.
However, they do know that there is little chance of doing it. Instead, they settle for the second option: to ease U.S.-Russia relations and strategically change the direction of Moscow’s anxiety, pushing the latter to pay more attention to its differences with China.
What we would like to point out in this article is that the Trump administration has too many unrealistic ideas. For example, maximum pressure could force major countries such as China to bow their heads? Putting up a smiley face to Moscow could reset the long-term strategic pattern formed among China, Russia and the US? We can’t help doubting if Washington’s policy circle is being managed by a bunch of amateurs who are making decisions based on the instinct distorted by selfishness.
The relations between Russia and the US should have been improved long time ago, which has been fueled largely by the irrational tensions caused by the radical policy of Washington. However, the current improvement in Russia-US relations is rather superficial, only being changed from glare to mutual kindness. The US is far from being psychologically prepared to “fully restore” relations with Russia, which is confined to President Trump’s personal will. The US is far from forming such strategic consensus.
The US still regards Russia’s huge nuclear arsenal as a major concern and is trying to establish an overwhelming military advantage over Russia. The US has not yet got rid of the idea of NATO’s eastward expansion, continuing to strengthen the anti-Russian countries in Eastern Europe as its new strategic grounds. On specific issues such as Ukraine, Syria, Venezuela and Iran, the two powers’ positions are still at odds. In addition, the US still maintains many sanctions against Russia. Trump’s desire to lift them will be fiercely opposed by the domestic establishment, which is almost inoperable as the 2020 presidential election approaches.
China and the Soviet Union were in a state of confrontation in the 1970s. China felt a grave military threat from the Soviet Union and therefore joined forces with the U.S. due to huge common interests. Facing the threat from the Soviet Union, the differences between China and the U.S. appeared to be much smaller. In addition, there was a great disparity in strength between China and the U.S., for which the US did not have to “guard against China”. The situation is very different from that between today’s US and Russia. Therefore, the US was later able to accept the conditions of breaking diplomatic relations with Taiwan. However, for now, the US is unable to withdraw from Ukraine and agree to resume Moscow’s influence on the Baltic countries and other former Soviet Union countries, or even the former Warsaw Pact countries.
In addition to these external factors, China-Russia relations have formed strategic stability. The relations between the two countries have begun to strengthen when the relationship between Russia and the West was good during the Yeltsin era. Most of its ties have endogenous tenacity, regardless of the pressure from the US and the West. The strategic concept of the two countries and the policy orientation of focusing on development are very close. This is an equal partnership between two major powers. The friendly cooperation between China and Russia is beneficial without harm, which has promoted the long-term stability of the long borders between the two countries and increased their respective strategic initiatives in the world. Neither side will harm the China-Russia relations in order to please third parties.
In conclusion, Beijing is truly happy to see the improvement of U.S.-Russia relations and we are very confident when we say this.
Disclaimer: This article is originally published on Global Times, and is translated from Chinese into English and edited by the China Military Online. The information, ideas or opinions appearing in this article do not reflect the views of eng.chinamil.com.cn.
