Before the Rome meeting, there had been a fluid debate within the administration over whether to use the crisis in Ukraine to try to drive a wedge between China and Russia, who together declared shortly before the invasion that there were “no forbidden areas” in their friendship.
China’s role in spreading the Russian disinformation on Ukrainian biolabs, plus unspecified intelligence that Beijing is weighing Moscow’s request for arms, has helped tilt the internal administration debate toward the position of officials at Sullivan’s National Security Council, who have favored a more hawkish approach toward Beijing.
Officials at the State Department had previously seen more opportunity to split Beijing and Moscow over the war, arguing that Beijing’s equivocal statements on the crisis pointed to discomfort at Moscow’s actions. Sullivan publicly speculated in a CNN interview on Sunday that Putin “lied” to China’s leaders and they may not have understood the full extent of his plans in Ukraine.
