Amid the crisis over Ukraine and the perennial tension between Beijing and Washington in the East, Vladimir Putin’s Russia and Xi Jinping’s China signed an expansion of their military cooperation aimed at containing the US and its allies.
It is not a de facto alliance, but both countries have agreed to expand their strategic exercises and air patrols throughout the Indo-Pacific region. In addition, an agreement was renewed for Russians to help Chinese monitor nuclear missile launches against their territory.
The movement comes as the turmoil in Eastern Europe grows day by day. This Wednesday (24), both the Kremlin and Kiev began military exercises amid mutual accusations of provocations aimed at starting a war, which the US says could be imminent.
Russian Defense Minister Serguei Choigu said in a videoconference with his Chinese counterpart Wei Fenghe that the increase in American bomber activity is taking place not only in Europe, but also in the Sea of Okhotsk.
The region is close to both Russia and China, and has seen 22 flights of nuclear weapons capable of launching this year, up from 3 in 2020. “With this backdrop, Russian-Chinese coordination is a stabilizing factor in world affairs,” he said. Choigu, according to the Tass agency.
Recently, Russians and Chinese have carried out naval maneuvers designed to warn against the growing warfare of Japan, a vital US ally in the Indo-Pacific. The Americans, in turn, are taking advantage of the end of the occupation of Afghanistan to direct resources to the region.
China, in turn, is inserted in Cold War 2.0, launched by the US to contain its assertiveness under Xi. A central point of tension is Taiwan, the autonomous island it considers its own.
On Wednesday, the Foreign Ministry told the US to stop cooperating economically with Taipei as it “gives signals to the independence activists” — and the Chinese leader himself made it clear in his otherwise moderate with Joe Biden last week that this is the red line on the interface.
Before, Xi himself had proposed to the ASEAN countries, the Asia-Pacific community of nations, the creation of a nuclear-weapons-free zone in the region’s seas. A rhetorical move, it aims to put pressure on Australia, which has joined a military pact with the US and the UK and could end allied submarines armed with atomic bombs in its ports.
For all the alarmism that a Moscow-Beijing alliance can bring to the West, historically there are limits to this happening. An experienced Russian diplomat recalls that “we [russos] we don’t understand them”, and there are factors of mutual distrust.
During the Cold War, Soviets and Chinese almost went to total war, and the American rapprochement with Beijing in the 1970s involves the attraction of one Communist giant against another. Putin invested heavily in infrastructure in the Russian Far East, fearing the otherwise inevitable influence of the Chinese economic and geographic weight in the south of the region.
Furthermore, on the two times in its modern history that it entered into a military alliance, with the French and Germans, Russia ended up being invaded.
On the other hand, as analyst Alex Lo recalled in an article in Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post, the aggressive actions of Joe Biden’s government “have thrown Russians and Chinese into the same bed, and now it’s too late.” “Americans are very unpredictable today”, agreed, in another text, the exponent of American geopolitics George Friedman.
For his part, Wei praised the Kremlin’s actions in Europe. They, he said, “successfully contained the pressure and threats” of the US at the head of NATO (Western Military Club).
He did not say, but was referring to the concentration of forces in areas relatively close to the Ukrainian borders, the most sensitive point of the current crisis, which includes the impasse with refugees attracted by the Russian ally Belarus to destabilize the Polish border and the German postponement of the operation of Russian megapipeline Nord Stream 2.
As of November, perhaps 100,000 men have been in the region, fueling US invasion alerts. Ukraine has been in a fierce dispute with Moscow since 2014, when the overthrow of the pro-Putin government in Kiev led Putin to annex Crimea and encourage Russian separatists in the east of the country.
In the latter case, the goat remains in the room, and this is the second concentration of Russian troops this year. The Kremlin denies its intention to invade, and it is quite likely that it does not want this, so much so that the forces deployed seem insufficient.
Around 100 of the Armed Forces’ 168 tactical battalions are involved, groups with a maximum of 900 to 1,000 men ready for immediate action, supported by armor, missiles and air power. Ukraine has 2.5 times more troops and is being reinforced, albeit not to the Russian level, by the US.
This support, even though his request to join NATO comes up against the fact that he is experiencing a territorial conflict, not to mention Putin’s opposition, has generated more criticism in Moscow. Choigu even drew the nuclear card on Wednesday.
“The tense political and military situation and the growing NATO activity along our borders require the further development of our Armed Forces. We have to increase combat capability while maintaining the readiness of nuclear forces,” he said.
According to him, “in the last month there were 30 incursions [ocidentais] against Russian borders, which is 2.5 times more than in the corresponding period last year.” The reverse is true, with Moscow patrols being intercepted almost daily by NATO fighter jets.
Meanwhile, Ukraine has sent 8,500 soldiers to train on its border with Belarus, fearing the aftermath of the refugee crisis for its territory. The European Union applied sanctions to the dictatorship of Aleksandr Lukachenko, already under pressure from the repression against the local opposition, for having facilitated the arrival of illegal migrants at the borders of its member countries.
On the other hand, the Russians also made this fourth surprise exercises in the Black Sea, far from Ukrainian waters, where there were joint maneuvers led by the US this week. The region has already seen Russians warning a British destroyer with gunfire this year.
Attacks were trained with fighter planes and three ships against targets in the water — a not-so-subtle message, all the more so because the Americans delivered two patrol boats to Kiev on Tuesday (23).
Rounding out the table, the US State Department said on Tuesday that it would continue to monitor companies linked to Nord Stream 2 and apply sanctions. For the US, the pipeline is a “Putin’s geopolitical project”, as it will increase its bargaining capacity in the supply of the product to the European market, which is already 40% of Russians.
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