In a recent appearance, Vladimir Putin spoke directly and showed demonstrable self-confidence in declaring that not only is Russia’s economy withstanding the pressure of Western sanctions, but the US and its allies are also missing out on a significant change in the international arena in response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine. In the world there are new centers of power,” Putin said. “I’m talking about revolutionary changes in the entire international relationship – these are fundamental and decisive changes.”
In many ways, this announcement epitomizes the enormous global stakes at the heart of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine. He is well aware that he has lost quite a bit in the traditional relations between East and West following his brutal invasion of Ukraine. But he is betting that he will be able to make up for it by building a new network of diplomatic, economic and security ties, whose axis is not east-west but north-south.
His main ally in this is China, which has been investing energy in this north-south axis for many years, trading and investing in Asia, Latin America and Africa – countries that seem diplomatically unimportant. They may not be major diplomatic or economic players, but many of them are characterized by fast-growing markets and are geographically located on strategic trade routes. Also, some of them have essential mineral deposits for the development of clean energy technologies.
Redefining the balance of power in the world
When you look at all these efforts together, they can be defined as an attempt by Russia and China to redefine the balance of power in the world in ways that will work to their advantage – and to the detriment of the West – for years to come. Their success is far from guaranteed, but it could be one of the most significant long-term outcomes of the war in Ukraine.
Putin has several reasons to feel good about his plan for now. On the economic front, he manages to sell a lot of oil to India and is exploring the possibility of selling natural gas to Pakistan to compensate for the loss of markets in the West. On the diplomatic front, 35 countries – representing nearly 50% of the world’s population – abstained or voted against a UN resolution in March condemning the invasion of Ukraine, while 58 countries, including Mexico, Egypt, Singapore, Indonesia and Qatar, later abstained from voting on the question. Whether to remove Russia from the UN Human Rights Council.
On the centenary of the war in Ukraine, Putin received a visit from Macky Sall, president of Senegal and chairman of the African Union (AU). Sall came to ask Putin for Russian grain and fertilizer. Soon after, Putin warmly received the presidents of China, India, Brazil and South Africa at the summit virtual group of Bric countries. This group, which includes four of the 10 most populous countries in the world, has conspicuously avoided any condemnation of the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Just last week, when most people refused to meet Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at a meeting of diplomats in the group The 20 industrialized countries, his counterparts from Brazil, India and Argentina were ready to shake his hand and talk with him.
Biden, Obama, Pence and Trump. In China and Russia they are thought to represent outdated thinking of the Cold War era / Photo: Associated Press, Rob Carr
“I don’t think there is a change in positions, but I appreciate that the efforts to keep many countries uncommitted to any side are doing quite well,” said Robert Gates, former US defense secretary.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration and NATO allies focused more on how the West’s unified position stood against the Russian invasion of Ukraine. There is no doubt that this effort was successful: NATO received a blush; The European Union suddenly seems relevant again after inviting Ukraine to join it; The West’s resolute stand against Moscow from an economic point of view and the mobilization for military aid to Ukraine were extensive and strong. Similarly, US efforts to draw Japan, South Korea and Australia to oppose both Russia and China are bearing fruit.
Cold war thinking
The calculation of China and Russia is that the West’s focus on its cohesion represents old Cold War thinking that is no longer relevant today. Perhaps this is a far-fetched bet, but on the other hand, it is certainly possible to notice the changed reality. Among other things, the field is open to maneuvers by Russia and China due to a combination of indifference on the part of the US and a perception that it can no longer be trusted. To a certain extent, it can be said that the US abandoned entire areas of the planet when it focused its energies and budgets on the war on terrorism in the last two decades, and more recently, In the trade battles of the Trump administration against China.
From President Barack Obama, through Trump to Joe Biden, American foreign policy has undergone dramatic changes. The decisions to negotiate Iran’s nuclear program under one administration, the abandonment of the agreement in the next, followed by Biden’s chaotic withdrawal from Afghanistan helped to create doubts about the credibility of the US. Meanwhile, the American public and lawmakers show a tendency to come together and engage in domestic American issues.
Russia and China play on these doubts – and on the fact that many countries on the north-south axis have very different priorities than the West. Robert Zelick, former president of the World Bank and deputy secretary of the US State Department, calls the countries that did not join the resistance movement in Africa, the Middle East, Asia and Latin America to Russia as “abstainers”. According to him, they have a variety of reasons to explain this position.
“Their first goal is resistance to major threats, food and energy prices, major debts and interest rates, Corona and other diseases and the costs of transitioning from coal energy production, which these countries see as a legacy of the developed countries,” says Zelik. “They mainly want to avoid a new cold war, especially against China, and therefore value the economic ties with it.”
In the world economy that is at its most tense now following the war with Ukraine, countries in Africa and Asia are finding that their appetite for Russian energy is increasing, not decreasing. And amid a global food shortage, they urgently need the grain that Russia grows and also those that it actually steals from Ukraine.
There are other practical reasons why the “avoidants” want to stand aside. India is still very dependent on military supplies from Russia, which it sees as vital in its ongoing tensions with Pakistan and China. The US’s closest ally in the Middle East, Israel, has been conspicuously silent in condemning the invasion of Ukraine because it wants to continue cooperating with Russian troops stationed in neighboring Syria as Israel sends planes to attack convoys of Hezbollah and other extremists there.
“President Putin thought everything through”
Some of these countries are also willing to turn a deaf ear to Russia’s and China’s claim that American calls to adhere to a “law-based international order” are actually an American scam. As for the rulers of some of these countries, says Graham Ellison, a national security expert at Harvard, they are not particularly interested in siding with the world’s democracies, given that they themselves tend to rule in an authoritarian style as demonstrated by Putin and Xi Jinping.
In fact, Putin began assembling this international network long before the recent invasion of Ukraine, says Professor Angela Stent of Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and author of a book on Putin’s diplomatic strategies. According to her, after Russian forces took control of Crimea and entered eastern Ukraine in 2014, Putin increased his involvement in Syria, joined OPEC+, convened the first Russia-Africa summit in 2019 and launched a new gas pipeline to China. “Putin thought this through thoroughly,” Stent said.
The announcement from February that he and President Xi declared “friendship without borders” may have been intended to allow Russia to take advantage of the great work that China has done in building its power along the north-south axis. It is certainly possible to say that Russia is riding on China’s trail, Ellison said.
China has been operating in Africa for two decades
Beijing has been operating in Africa and Latin America for two decades straight, far out of the limelight. The main effort of the Chinese government is the Belt and Road Initiative launched in 2013. As part of the initiative, China is investing in trade infrastructure, which will link together 71 countries in Asia, Africa, Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Together, these countries represent more than a third of the world’s economic output and two-thirds of its population.
In addition, more than 10,000 Chinese-owned companies are currently operating in Africa, according to a study by the Institute for Foreign Policy Research. Between 2001 and 2018, China gave African countries loans worth about $126 billion and directly invested $41 billion. This increased investment increased geopolitical cooperation. The study by the Institute for Foreign Policy Studies found that “economic engagement with China results in greater political identification between China and African countries,” as measured by votes at the United Nations. China also built the first military base outside its borders in Djibouti, Africa.
Similarly, China’s trade with Latin America has grown greatly since 2000. Today it reaches 450 billion dollars a year and is expected to exceed the 700 billion mark by 2035. China is currently the largest trading partner of South America and the second largest trading partner in Latin America , after the US. China has also become a leading lender to Latin America and actually has a seat and voting rights in the Inter-American Development Bank and the Caribbean Development Bank.
Still, there is a limit to how much influence China and Russia can gain in this new axis. The US and its allies still have notable advantages from the past.
In many cases, countries that tend to welcome the courtships of Beijing and Moscow act out of immediate self-interest and not out of any special love for China or Russia. Both countries have demonstrated that they are much better at creating collaborations than at true friendships.
Some of the countries that receive the aid and investment from China resent the harsh conditions under which this financial aid comes, including the massive use of Chinese and non-local labor as well as conditions that give China ownership of land and resources in the event of insolvency. The study by the Institute for Foreign Policy Studies notes “concerns in Africa that China may exert increasing economic power to obtain concessions, which could be bad for the continent economically and politically.”
A history of tensions between Russia and China
African countries also bear a notable reluctance to bear the burden of the global food shortage caused by Russia’s failure to allow grain shipments from Ukraine to reach the rest of the world. And despite their decision to avoid Western efforts to isolate Putin, there are developing countries, themselves vulnerable to military incursions by foreign forces, who are uncomfortable with the brutal precedent Putin has set in Ukraine.
There is also a long history of tensions between Russia and China, which is expected to limit their ability to cooperate in the long term. Ellison points out that China has a much greater interest in maintaining long-term trade and economic ties with the economic powers in the West than with Russia. “For China, a pillar of its overall strategy is to become the largest and most vital trading partner for key products in the supply chains of all major economies,” he said.
What is the US doing to oppose the efforts of China and Russia along this north-south axis? “I think these are problems that can be fixed, but only in the long term and not in the short term,” said former US Secretary of Defense Gates.
According to him, since the end of the Cold War, the United States has allowed its “non-military instruments of power” to degenerate, and is now paying the price. The United States, Gates said, has not invested enough in economic aid to Africa and Latin America, and security relations and trade partnerships in the developing world .
He calls for the adoption of “creative ideas” about how the government and the private sector can cooperate in fostering investment in places in the world where China and Russia are focusing efforts. The good news, he added, is that there is currently a rare bipartisan spirit blowing in Congress for a joint venture in this field: “Xi and Putin have done something that no one else has been able to do. They have united Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill.”
“We need to differentiate between China and Russia”
Zelik suggests that the U.S. should do more to recognize the needs and frustrations of the “withheld,” and work with international institutions to address them. Washington can find ways to win their hearts through vaccine aid and other initiatives as well as a return to building better trade ties.
Beyond that, he encourages the US to find a way to convince China to differentiate itself from Russia, and to identify areas in which Washington and Beijing can have common interests. “We need to avoid the instinct to treat Russia and China like the merger that was in the 1950s,” he said. We need to differentiate between them and maybe one day even try again to promote a tripolar system.”
In recent weeks, the Biden administration and its allies have gone on a diplomatic offensive to counter some of the moves by Russia and China. The US hosted a Summit of the Americas where heads of state from Latin America met in Los Angeles, although the decision by the leaders of Mexico and three Central American countries not to attend demonstrates the challenges facing the US in this part of the world. The Group of Seven industrialized countries recently announced plans to invest hundreds of billions of dollars in infrastructure projects in developing countries, a clear attempt to oppose the corresponding efforts on the part of China. Biden also visited Saudi Arabia to persuade the kingdom’s leaders, who have been hesitant to criticize the invasion of Ukraine, to increase oil production to offset Western cuts in purchases of oil from Russia.
All these imply that we are at the beginning of a new diplomatic game, which is expected to continue even after the conflict in Ukraine ends. “Biden said Russia would be an internationally crippled country after the war,” Stent said. “Well, she won’t be a leper. You can see that already.”