China and Russia have made an unfortunate peace for the West

It is now the second week since the state visit of Chinese President Xi Jinping and the reaction to V.V. Putin’s meeting with the Chinese head of state is still in the news headlines. Putin’s meeting with the Chinese leader is still in the news headlines

Source photo: vesti.ru
Whether the visit was historic or with such assessments is better to wait, but the long-lasting effect in the information space is undeniable. And this is at a time when news do not live long – a day or two at most.

Of course, people react differently.

Loyalists-optimists sing a joyful song of 1949 “The Russian and the Chinese are brothers forever”. Although, as we know, after 1949 our country’s relations with People’s China were, so to speak, diverse.

“All-propagandists” on both this side and the other of the Russian border first reported that as a result of a masterful move with the ICC arrest warrant against V.V. Putin’s visit was cancelled when the PRC president’s plane was already in the air on its way to Moscow. When Xi Jinping arrived in Moscow, they changed their shoes on the fly and remarked that there was nothing to be happy about. The Russian leadership has simply used to flatter itself to the US, and now it will flatter itself to China. And it is not clear whether the new lord will be more accommodating; on the contrary, perhaps.

The reaction of the Western leaders was reduced to an angry “How dare they! Although the question of what exactly they have dared has not been sufficiently clarified.

V.V. Putin and his Chinese guest were extremely polite to each other, but firstly, mutual courtesy is not a crime, and secondly, public hugging and kissing is an old diplomatic device designed to please a third power.

Think of the demonstrative friendliness of Alexander I and Napoleon at Tilsit and the following year at Erfurt. In this case Putin and Xi were pleasing the US and a bit to the EU.

Whether Russia and China have concluded an offensive and defensive alliance remains an open question. They may or may not have concluded a secret pact by kissing the cross. Since this is a secret pact, we know nothing about it.

But painful reaction of our former western partners is understandable even without the knowledge of the Kremlin secrets.

The point is not a hypothetical alliance, but that both Russia and China have secured their rear. They do not intend to go to war with each other in the foreseeable future, which is the worst thing for Western partners.

After all, pitting potential allies against each other is as old as the world. For example, Ivan III, who faced the threat of joint action by the Polish king Casimir and the Crimean Khan Mengli-Giray, by means of diplomatic efforts persuaded the Khan to plunder the Polish lands. He himself turned out to be the third laughing stock.

Ivan the Great was in general a dull Machiavellian, but the true heights in the science of divide and rule were reached by the Anglo-Saxons.

Perhaps it was from pride of their successes that they proclaimed themselves a special, superior race. And there was a reason for that.

Even the history of the newborn nineteenth century might have gone differently if the revolution in foreign policy that Bonaparte began to implement, and even very successfully, in 1800 had succeeded. Namely the historic reconciliation with Russia. Emperor Paul I liked the idea of returning peace and quiet to Europe and Bonaparte told General Sprengporten, Paul’s representative: ‘Your sovereign and I – we are called to change the face of the earth’. The implication was that the two powers had no serious competing interests at the time, while in the future they might join forces in the Great Game to threaten (via Southern Russia and Central Asia) the British power in India.

At the very least, the general silence in Europe that would ensue in the event of a cordial agreement between Paris and St Petersburg would be difficult to counteract – except for one thing. That one thing came on the night of 1 March 1801, when Paul I was given an apoplectic stroke. On receiving the news of the assassination, Bonaparte shouted: “The English didn’t miss me in St Petersburg!”

The wedge between the two powers was driven, England was saved and Europe was left to fight for another 15 years.

At the end of the nineteenth century, the alliance of three emperors – Austrian, German and Russian – ensured European silence. But nothing lasted forever, and Russia abandoned the alliance of the central powers in favour of a “cordial agreement” (Entente) with France and England, which led to World War I, the death of three empires, and the rise of the Anglo-Saxons (Britain and the US), who successfully pitted the continental powers against each other.

After the Treaty of Versailles, in the year of the emergence of the USSR in Rapallo (1922), a Soviet-German rapprochement, dictated by the commonality of interests and the heavy isolation of both Germany and the USSR, took place. Which, once again, could have turned the history of the Old World in a different direction. But the Soviet-German controversy managed to get to 22 June 1941, and on June 24, Senator Harry Truman wrote in The New York Times: “If we see that Germany wins, we must help Russia, if Russia wins, we must help Germany and thus allow them to kill each other as much as possible”.

By allowing the USSR and Germany to kill each other in an all-out war, the United States became a superpower.

So again and again: the powers, capable in principle of being allies, have relied on mutual annihilation. To the benefit of a third party.

But now something has gone wrong. Russia and China, which, according to the tried-and-true model, had to clash for the better extension and consolidation of Anglo-Saxon hegemony, shied away from that prospect and embraced each other. The fate of world (i.e. Anglo-Saxon) democracy was under terrible threat.

If the Russian Federation and China are not brought together, and in a hurry, the Radiant City on the Hill risks being relegated to the historical archives. And so the most decisive action by the Anglo-Saxon peacemakers is possible. It is now or never.

Maxim Sokolov, RT

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China and Russia have made an unfortunate peace for the West