The world peace is yet again threatened by the Ukraine Crisis as Russia is foreseen to invade Ukraine within days. The deployment of huge Russian army personnel, military build-up and large scale military drills on the Ukraine border is self- explanatory.
Though Russian President, Putin, calls it the manipulative western war hysteria, yet the threat is growing with every passing day.
The foreign nationals and diplomatic staff are vacating Ukraine; the US, Britain and Germany are sending troops, warships and planes to Poland, Romania, Estonia and Norway; the Ukraine youth are fast joining the national army and organizing anti-Russia protests in the capital city Kyiv.
Recent Russian shelling on Ukraine on 17th February certified the Western fears of an impending Russian attack on Ukraine, disproving thereby the Russian claim of having partially withdrawn troops from the Ukraine border.
International community’s intervention and months of diplomacy has failed to resolve the crisis. Even the one-to-one Biden-Putin phone talks yielded no desired results because of the die-hard stand of the parties in conflict: Ukraine, US, EU, NATO and Russia. Russia, for its direct border and geographical proximity with Ukraine and East Europe, is opposed to the NATO presence and its military activities in the entire region.
In contrast, Ukraine and its western allies are cynical to the huge deployment of Russian army and arsenal on the Ukraine border.
Although Biden is not for any direct military engagement with Russia in Ukraine, yet he has warned of tough economic sanctions against Russia should it ever invade Ukraine.
It could include eliminating Russia from the SWIFT financial system or blocking its financial transactions in energy market; obstructing its access to the US dollar in the global market and disconnecting it from the ‘global dominance’ of the US-created software and technology which facilitates the flying of war planes and passenger jets and empowerment of the smartphones.
The Russia-Ukraine conflict is actually a post-Cold War legacy. After break off from the former Soviet Union in 1991, Ukraine gravitated to the west for development and voted out the pro-Russia President, Viktor Fedorovych Yanukovych, from power in 2014.
In retaliation, Russia invaded and occupied Crimea the same year and sponsored the pro-Russian rebel groups in Ukraine’s Donetsk area.
China got into the conflict on the Russian side. It justified Russia’s security threats due to the overarching NATO activism in Ukraine and East Europe. It did so in the backdrop of its strategic partnership with Russia, which evolved over the years, beginning with their border settlement in 1991 and the deals of ‘constructive partnership’ in 1992 and ‘strategic partnership’ in 1996.
It culminated with their ‘Treaty of Good Neighbourliness and Friendly Cooperation’ in 2001 which was renewed for 5 more years in 2021. The visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping to Russia in 2013 reinforced the said partnership.
Putin hailed it as a booster to their ‘special relationship’ regarding the regional and global issues, mutual cooperation in the fields of security, defence, energy and economy and their compulsion to reassert their national identity in the international system.
This is particularly true of Russia whose image tarnished with the 1991 Soviet disintegration and the end of Cold War and the bipolar world. Despite their divergent world view, both China and Russia stand for a polycentric and ‘post-Western’ world, having a minimum space for the US.
The Sino-Russian strategic partnership is focussed to four major areas. One is the US and the NATO threat perception, which pronounced with the 9/11 ‘terror attack’ and US Afghan occupation in 2001. Like other countries, China and Russia joined the US in its “war on global terror’.
Soon, however, they realized that the US had a hidden agenda behind the Afghan invasion, at least to checkmate Russia and China within their own region and de-monopolise Russian hegemony on Central Asian energy transportation to Europe via Moscow.
The US threat perception deepened with its opposition to the China policies in Xinjiang, Tibet, Taiwan and South Pacific Sea; its projection of India as a counter to China in Asia; its trade embargo on Chinese goods in the US and its formation of the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, colloquially the Quad or QUAD, with India, Japan and Australia and later with India, Israel and UAE, presumably to sabotage the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) including China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) project and its swelling influence in the Pacific and the Arabian Seas.
Like China, Russia is embarrassed by the US’s discreet support to the anti-Putin demonstration in Moscow and other Russian cities, its NATO-led pro-activism in Ukraine and East Europe and its anti-Russian military adventurism in Syria and the Middle East. At times, the two countries seemed militarily clashing while dealing with the ISIS, Al-Qaeda and other militant groups in the region.
China and Russia adopted their own strategy to reckon with the US and NATO threat. For instance, they, overtly or covertly, supported the Taliban to regain power and drive out the US from Afghanistan.
They created the regional platforms of SCO and BRICS to subvert its hegemony on the global political and economic order. The BRI, in particular, is thought as a China’s stratagem to cut across the west-oriented neoliberalism, corporatism or globalisation. It accelerated with the resumption of Chinese power by President Xi.
Another area of their calculated cooperation is to allow each other pursuing individual or colonial plans elsewhere in the world, doesn’t matter, both are pledged in their 2001 Treaty to the sovereignty of other countries.
Thus, China backs Russian policies in Syria, Libya, Antarctica and, lately, in Ukraine and Russia reciprocates by supporting Chinese policies in Xinjiang, Tibet, Taiwan and South China Sea.
Russia is, thus, an exception to the global condemnation of China’s human rights abuses in Xinjiang and Tibet. Their strategic partnership is thus governed by the factor of one-to-one support in the regional and global perspective.
Another driver of their tactical collaboration is their mutual inter-dependence. The US-imposed economic sanctions have rendered Russia economically bankrupt. Obviously, it looks to China for loan and finance. On the other hand, China is dependent upon Russia for oil and gas imports, arms supplies and military technology build up.
Perhaps, last is their mutual understanding to exploit the post-Soviet Central Asian space as a ‘strategic backyard’. No doubt, both have conflicting interests in the region. Still they prudently pursue their individual interests in the region.
China does it for trade, investment, infrastructural development, and connectivity with Europe through Belt Road Initiative (BRI) and China Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), which skirts the traditional Moscow-bound or trans-Siberian connectivity networks.
Russia uses the post-Soviet Central Asian space to enlarge its trade benefits within the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU of Armenia, Belaraus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Russia), besides retaining its monopoly over the energy transportation from Central Asia to Europe and sustaining the Soviet times political and cultural influence on the people of the region.
Incidentally, the Chinese BRI and Russian EAEU have a common space for the Central Asian States, although these are skeptic about Russia’s policies keeping in mind Russia’s Crimean occupation and its upcoming Ukrainian invasion.
Tailpiece:
China’s present stand on Ukraine should be seen from the aforesaid perspective of China-Russia strategic partnership, since the US and the NATO are the core challenges which Russia resists for its own security.
Their partnership does not signify the NATO-like defensive alliance. But it is so designed as can involve both in an external war with either one of them.
However, only the time will tell whether it would sustain once the US threat is over; Russia recovers from the economic bankruptcy; China’s economic domination continues in what was the Soviet space before 1991 and Russia enters into war with Ukraine in the coming days, which is unlikely as all major powers are convulsed by the Covid-allied health emergency. Added to the US, is its recent debacle in Afghanistan.
Prof. Mushtaq A. Kaw, Former Director Centre of Central Asian Studies,
University of Kashmir, Srinagar
Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed in this article are the personal opinions of the author.
The facts, analysis, assumptions and perspective appearing in the article do not reflect the views of GK.