Category Archives: Europe

China, Europe, Politics, Russia, United States

The strengthening partnership between Russia and China?

GEOPOLITICS

Intro: Relations between China and Russia have been growing closer since the end of the cold war. But while the crisis in Ukraine has drawn Russia closer to China, the relationship is far from equal

The commemorations in Moscow to celebrate the capitulation of Nazi Germany 70 years ago speak volumes about today’s geopolitics. On May 9th, Western leaders stayed away in protest against Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, an important proclamation as this was the first annexation of sovereign territory in Europe since the second world war. China’s president, Xi Jinping, was the guest of honour of his friend, Vladimir Putin. Western sanctions over Ukraine, and what looks set to be a long-term chilling of relations with America and Europe, has given Russia no other option than to embrace China as tightly as it can.

In the coming days, in a further symbol of the growing strategic partnership between the two countries, up to four Chinese and six Russian naval vessels will rendezvous to conduct live-firing drills in the eastern Mediterranean. The exercise, which follows several similar ones in 2013, is aimed at sending a clear message to America and its allies. For Russia the manoeuvres send a strong signal that it has a powerful friend and a bonding military relationship with a country that has growing geographic reach and influence. For China, such an exercise of this kind speaks of increasing global ambition that is line with Mr Xi’s slogan about a ‘Chinese dream’, one which he says includes a ‘dream of a strong armed-forces’. In taking part, China is sending its ships from anti-piracy duty in the Gulf of Aden.

But this also provides an opportunity for China to display its Type 054A guided-missile frigate, which it would like to sell to the Russians. It also brings with it operational experience in an unstable region in which it has an expanding economic presence. In 2011, China organised the evacuation of more than 38,000 Chinese from Libya during that country’s upheaval. And just last month its navy disembarked several hundred of its citizens out of Yemen, which is being torn apart by civil war. There are believed to be at least 40,000 Chinese working in Algeria and more than 1m across Africa.

Relations between China and Russia have been growing closer since the end of the cold war. For different reasons both countries resent America’s ‘hegemony’ and share a desire for a more multipolar world order. Russia, for all its bravado, is a declining great power, and is looking for ways to recover at least some of its lost status; whereas China, a rising power on the world stage, bridles at what it perceives as American attempts to constrain it. As fellow permanent members of the UN Security Council, both with autocratic governments, Russia and China find common cause in expressing grievance at Western liberal interventionism. The two countries settled all of their long-standing border disputes in 2008, just prior to the Russian-choreographed war in Georgia. This provided the onset for Russia in concentrating more of its military forces in the west as a deterrent against the further expansion of NATO.

Despite the strengthening partnership there have been the occasional tensions. For example, Russia played a key role during the 1990s in helping China to reform and modernise its military forces. Russia was able to preserve a defence-industrial base that would otherwise have withered from lack of domestic orders. But since the middle of the last decade, irked by China’s pilferage of its military technology and its consequent emergence as a rival in the arms market, Russia’s weapons sales to its neighbour have slowed.

Moscow’s wariness of becoming little more than a supplier of natural resources to China’s industrial machine speaks volumes of Russia’s humiliating position that until recently saw China as backward. As long as Russia could sell to Europe all the gas required to keep the Russian economy growing, it could arbitrarily put deals with China on hold. These included plans for two gas pipelines from Siberia into China that were announced in 2006 and then quietly dropped as the two sides argued and bickered over prices.

All that has changed. The continuing crisis in Ukraine has forced Russia to ‘pivot’ its economy towards Asia in an effort to lessen the impact of Western sanctions by finding alternative markets and new sources of capital. For China it is a golden opportunity to gain greater access to Russia’s natural resources, at favourable prices, as well as being in a better position to secure access to big infrastructure contracts that might have gone to Western competitors and to provide financing for projects that will directly benefit Chinese firms.

Russia’s incursions into Ukraine and its seizure of Crimea violated two of China’s most consistently held foreign-policy tenets: non-interference in other states and separatism of any kind. Yet, while China abstained from voting on the UN Security Council resolutions condemning Russia (with the Chinese media giving Russia strong support) it has quietly welcomed a new cold war in Europe that might distract America from its declared ‘rebalancing’ towards Asia.

Additional and striking new evidence of the new closeness between China and Russia was a $400 billion gas deal signed in May last year under which Russia will supply China with 38 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas annually from 2018 for 30 years. China has insisted that the gas comes from new fields in eastern Siberia by passing through as yet an unbuilt pipeline, a plan that will ensure supplies are not diverted elsewhere. Other deals have followed too. The biggest was a preliminary agreement signed in November for Russia to sell an additional 30 bcm a year through a proposed pipeline from Western Siberia. In every such new instance it is probable that China was able to drive a hard bargain on price.

Other clear signs of Russia’s weakness have also become clear. Its recent decision to resume high-tech arms exports to China most noticeable. In April it agreed to sell China an air-defence system, the S-400, for around $3 billion. This will help give China air dominance over Taiwan and the Senkaku islands (Diaoyu to the Chinese), who dispute Japan’s claim to them. In November, too, Russia said it was prepared to sell China its latest Sukhoi-35S combat aircraft. Initially it had refused to sell any fewer than 48, in order to make up for losses it suffered as a result of China’s purloining of the designs. Now it has agreed to sell only 24.

Looking ahead problems seem discernibly clear. One is that both countries are competing for influence in Central Asia, once Russia’s backyard. Mr Putin wants to establish his Eurasian Economic Union partly to counter growing economic power in Central Asia, through which China wants to develop what it calls a Silk Road Economic Belt. China is using the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO), of which Russia and Central Asian nations are also members, to boost its security ties in the region as well. Another difficulty is Russia’s military and energy links with countries such as India and Vietnam, both of which are rivals of China. But the biggest problem of all seems likely to be Russia’s irritation with being forced into an increasingly subservient role in its relations with China.

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Britain, Europe, Foreign Affairs, Government, NATO, Politics, Society, United States

Britain’s shrinking influence on the global stage…

BRITISH FOREIGN POLICY

SOME two decades ago the British foreign secretary, Douglas Herd, decreed that Britain should aim to ‘punch above its weight in the world’. Today the country seems hesitant, reluctant even, to enter the ring. Some, such as a recently retired British NATO chief, have even complained that the prime minister, David Cameron, has become a ‘foreign-policy irrelevance’. America continues to despair of Britain’s shrinking armed forces and has openly criticised Britain’s ‘constant accommodation’ of China. Allies are worried, and so they should be given world events as they are. For example, consider Britain’s non-adoptive approach over events between Russia and Ukraine.

Yet, despite the world’s tensions, the country’s politicians, who are fighting to win a general election on May 7th, appear unbothered by those expressing concern. That is a mistake. Britain’s diminishing global clout and influence has become a big problem, both for the country and the world.

A powerful force in relative decline, Britain’s propensity is to veer between hubristic intervention abroad and anxious introspection at home. Following Tony Blair’s expeditionary misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan, conflicts which cost us heavily, Britain’s coalition government was always going to shun grand schemes. Now, it would seem, is that our ruling politicians are not so much cautious, but apathetic, ineffective and fickle.

The prime minister did make a brave and passionate case for armed intervention and assistance in toppling the Libyan regime of Muammar Qaddafi. But like so many other examples concerning foreign intervention he did not reckon for the day after and Libya is now in a state of internecine civil war. He led America to believe that Britain would support it in bombing raids over Syria, only to find that his parliamentary vote was bungled by strong political opposition. Britain may have been one of the moving forces behind the workings of the 1994 Budapest memorandum, which ostensibly guaranteed Ukraine’s security when it gave up its Soviet-era nuclear weapons, but the prime minister has been almost absent in dealing with Russian revanchist aggression against it. Last year, too, as host of a NATO summit in Wales, David Cameron urged the alliance’s members to pledge at least 2% of their GDP to defence. Just months later, a fiscally straightened Britain intent on deficit reduction at all costs looks poised even to break its own rule.

David Cameron’s pledge of an in-out referendum on Europe if he wins the election has given the impression of Britain being semi-detached. Rather than counteracting that position through vigorous diplomacy, the prime minister has reinforced it. In European Union summits, for instance, he has often been underprepared and zealously overambitious. His rather humiliating and embarrassing attempt to block Jean-Claude Juncker from becoming EU president of the Commission left him with only Hungary for company as a dissenting voice. Mr Cameron’s insistence of pulling the Conservatives out of the EU’s main centre-right political group has had the unintended effect of cutting Britain out of vital discussions with other centre-right leaders, such as Angela Merkel of Germany.

And what of Labour? Ed Miliband, the party’s leader, may well be pro-European, but he has no more connection of American foreign policy than Mr Cameron does. He apologises for Labour’s interventionist history so strenuously and unreservedly that he leaves little or no room for liberal intervention. And, of course, differing arguments abound from all political parties over the submarine-based nuclear-missile system that is seen by the Conservative Party as a pillar of Britain’s relations with America and NATO – an argument that swings to total rejection when it comes to the Scottish Nationalist Party, a position which rankles right-wing politicians as the SNP could end up propping-up a potential Labour minority government through confidence and supply motions.

Those who defend the prime minister say that Britons are war weary and impoverished. What do they say, then, of Mrs Merkel and François Hollande, the French president, who have shown that you can have an active foreign policy while dealing with an economic crisis?

Liberal values and promoting international co-operation require defending, especially so just now. New emerging powers, particularly China, want a far bigger say in how the world works. By seizing Crimea at will, and invading Ukraine, Vladimir Putin’s Russia has challenged norms of behaviour that were established after the Versailles Treaty and Second World War. If Britain now refuses to stand up for its values, it will inherit and become part of a world that will be less to its liking.

Britain is still well placed to make a difference. With a great diplomatic tradition, a permanent seat on the UN Security Council and reasonably strong ties to Europe and America, Britain ought to be pushing hard to extend open trade, human rights and international law as well as providing impetus towards new agendas against crime, terrorism and climate change.

If Britain is to make its voice heard, it needs to bulk up its diplomacy and armed forces. Pledging to spend 2% of GDP on defence may seem arbitrary but it is a crucial sign to America and other countries that Britain is prepared to pull its weight in exchange for NATO’s guarantee of joint security. This should make more sense than the obscure commitment to spend a lavish amount of 0.7% of GDP on foreign aid.

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Asia, China, Economic, Europe, Government, Intelligence, Middle East, Military, National Security, NATO, Society, United States

US Defence Strategy…

(From the archives) Originally posted on January 7, 2012 by markdowe

SHIFT IN AMERICA’S DEFENCE STRATEGY

On Saturday, 07 January, 2012, the Editorial of the Daily Telegraph focused on America’s shift in defence strategy, following Thursday’s announcement by President Barack Obama. The US is to focus less on Europe and more on Asia following the rising threat of China.

The Editorial states:

‘The Pentagon briefing room rarely hosts all of America’s service chiefs, let alone the president. Its use by Barack Obama to announce the conclusions of his defence review was designed to add a sense of drama – and the occasion certainly lived up to its billing. Future historians will probably conclude that this was the week when America’s entire foreign and defence strategy pivoted decisively away from Europe and towards the Pacific. More ominously, it might also mark the onset of a new, if concealed, arms race between the US and its aspiring rival, China.

First things first: America’s military dominance will remain unchallenged for the foreseeable future. Mr Obama might have announced spending cuts of almost $500 billion over the next decade, but this amounts to a light trim for a defence machine with an annual budget of $650 billion, amounting to 45 per cent of all military expenditure in the world. America is not axing capabilities in the foolish fashion of British governments; rather, its power is being focused on the great strategic challenges of the next century. These can be simply summarised: the struggle for mastery in Asia, home of the world’s most populous countries and fastest-growing economies, and responding to sudden crises. To this end, the US will reduce its presence in Europe, cut 90,000 soldiers and bulk up in the Pacific, with new bases in Australia and elsewhere. As for other flashpoints, few will be surprised that the US policy stresses the goals of containing Iran and guaranteeing free passage through the Strait of Hormuz.

On a purely military level, two points stand out. The US might be cutting its army, but it has ruled out reducing its fleet of 11 aircraft carriers, each of which packs more punch than the entire air forces of most countries. While China’s defence budget has recorded double-digit increases for the past decade, it has still launched only one carrier – an old Russian model of doubtful combat value. Second, Mr Obama stressed his determination to invest in “intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance”. Put simply, the US will seek to extend its lead in the most advanced combat systems: where scores of troops – and hundreds of support staff – might once have been required to dispatch a senior al-Qaeda operative, now one unmanned drone can do the job.

America’s new course could well be shifted by a strategic shock akin to the September 11 attacks. Nevertheless, this plan will have momentous consequences for Europe and Asia alike. For decades, the US has underwritten the security of the Atlantic as well as the Pacific, effectively allowing Europe a free ride and permitting a string of Nato members the luxury of running down their defence budgets. This era is rapidly coming to a close. Yet with a few honourable exceptions, such as Britain and France, European powers have failed to fund their armed forces adequately, or deploy them when needed. Germany, in particular, must overcome the burden of its history and face up to the responsibilities that go with being the Continent’s leading economic power.

Mr Obama’s address studiously refrained from mentioning China, the country that probably has most at stake. Beijing’s leaders will now have to make far-reaching choices of their own. As events in Burma have shown, China’s “peaceful rise” has alarmed many of its neighbours: for most countries in the region, American power and values remain far more appealing. Moreover, China has grown rich largely thanks to trade, not least with the US. Faced with the net of containment that America is quietly laying across the Pacific, China will search for the Achilles’ heel of the US Navy, perfecting a new generation of missiles capable of destroying aircraft carriers from hundreds of miles away, working out how to cripple the internet, and how to blind the US satellite network, on which all its military assets now depend.

The world will pay a bitter price, however, if this veiled arms race between America and China escalates. History shows that free trade and military rivalry – however disguised – make for uncomfortable bedfellows. Beijing has gained rapidly in both wealth and power. The manner in which it chooses to pursue them now will have consequences for us all.’ [sic]

 

MD responded:

Whilst the US has declared China as a threat and announcing Asia as a priority, America is also to invest in a long-term strategic partnership with India. India will become the new powerful Asian ally of the United States in the region. In rolling out its new strategy, the Pentagon has made clear that the fronts for potential conflicts are shifting towards China. The US says that all of the trends – whether that is demographic, geopolitical, economic or military – are shifting towards the Pacific and, that over the long-term, China’s emergence as a regional power will have the potential to affect the US economy and security in a variety of ways.

It shouldn’t be in any doubt that China has unsettled its neighbours over several years with the expansion of its navy and improvements in missile and surveillance capabilities. The Pentagon is anxious about China’s strategic goals as it begins to search for a new generation of weapons.

The US defence strategy followed a major diplomatic push by Washington to expand security partnerships with its allies in the region. Last month, the US, India and Japan held their first trilateral meeting in an attempt to counter China’s rising influence in the Asia-Pacific.

China has advanced its influence in the region, along with allies like North Korea, Pakistan, Myanmar and Sri Lanka. Over recent years it has established itself as a growing, and sometimes bullying power in the Pacific, particularly in East Asia. Most of the countries, though, in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have festering territorial disputes with China. America’s new emphasis on Asia and the containment of China also stems from the fact that the Asia-Pacific region now constitutes the centre of gravity of world economic activity.

But is America’s new stance the beginning of something that could fan Cold war-style antagonism?

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