Biden-Putin Talk Tuesday With Xi in the Wings (2021/12/06)
It was clear that the new phenomenon of
Russia-China entente would dwarf the significance of less important issues; and we could not be sure Biden would be appropriately informed.
Clearly, President Biden did not get the word – or maybe forgot. Here is the bizarre way Biden described, at his post-summit presser, his decades-behind-the-times approach to Putin on China:
"Without quoting him [Putin] – which I don’t think is appropriate – let me ask a rhetorical question: You got a multi-thousand-mile border with China. China is seeking to be the most powerful economy in the world and the largest and the most powerful military in the world."
At the airport, Biden’s co-travelers did their best to whisk him onto the plane, but failed to stop him from sharing more of his views on China – this time on China’s strategic "squeezing" of Russia:
"Let me choose my words. Russia is in a very, very difficult spot right now. They are being squeezed by China."
Is President Biden still out to lunch on this key issue? Have his rising-junior advisers sought out new textbooks, updated from the ones they may have read in the 70s and 80s, and learned that Russia and China have never been closer – that, indeed,
they have what amounts to a virtual military alliance?
In an email exchange over the weekend, I asked for any additional views Amb. Freeman might have, as Biden prepares for his virtual summit with Putin on Tuesday. With Chas’s permission I offer them below:
"… It is clear that the Sino-Russian entente is expanding under the pressure of US threats to both. Nothing will happen on either Taiwan or Ukraine without coordination between Beijing and Moscow. But our fantasy authoritarian plot to counter the US ideology of democracy is being made real by the “democracy summit.” This has sought to weaponize Taiwan ideologically against China and led to the that attempts to puncture our pretensions and oppose our messianism about democracy.
"My guess is that there will now be a much larger permanent Russian military presence on the Ukraine border but that, barring provocations by nutcases in Ukraine, there will be no invasion. Instead, Russia will settle for having achieved a firm basis for a strategic surprise, when and if that becomes necessary. Just so, China has probably made no decision about Taiwan but is preparing the battlespace for the moment it may have to do so. Both China and Russia are acting in parallel to develop military options they had not previously sought. … regarding Russia’s [Mach 9] Zircon missile: it is paralleled by China’s effort to develop a much more credible nuclear strike capability against the US"
"These moves are a
classic diplomatic use of a military threat to compel a negotiated reduction of tensions. Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov paralleled China’s to diplomat Wang Yi at Rome, when Lavrov later met Blinken in Stockholm. Wang Yi demanded that the US side commit to ‘a genuine one-China policy, not a fake one, that the US fulfill its commitments to China, and that the US truly implement the one-China policy, instead of saying one thing but doing another.’
About the author: Ray McGovern (born 1939), he works with Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. In the Sixties he served as an infantry/intelligence officer and then
became a CIA analyst for the next 27 years (from 1963 to 1990) includes serving as Chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and preparer/briefer of the President’s Daily Brief. He is co-founder and on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
Chas W. Freeman, Jr. (born 1943) is a former diplomat of the United States
for over 30 years, wrote briefings for Henry Kissinger's secret trips to China, and main interpreter for Richard Nixon in his trip to China in 1972.
His own blog -- collection of his writings, filter 'China'