The War in Ukraine Will Complicate U.S.-China Relations Even More
It has not even been three months since Russia invaded Ukraine, and it remains far from clear as to when and how this conflict will end. Nevertheless, a robust discussion is already underway over the potential impact of Moscow’s aggression on U.S. foreign policy toward China as well as on Washington’s broader strategic outlook.
In the short term, it seems likely that the war will undercut U.S. efforts to rebalance its focus to the Asia-Pacific and strategic competition with China—ironically, because Ukrainian forces have performed far better than expected. Given the vast imbalance between Russia’s conventional military capabilities and those of Ukraine, many observers reasonably assumed that Ukraine would surrender quickly in the event of a full-scale Russian invasion. Had it done so, and had Ukraine suffered few military and civilian casualties, it is unclear whether the U.S. would have gotten drawn in significantly, as it would not have had sufficient time to coordinate a response with key allies and partners; nor would it have had to contend with Russia’s escalating brutality in its conduct of the war.
The more resistance Ukrainian forces marshal, the more military support the West is likely to provide and the more wanton and indiscriminate destruction Russian forces are likely to unleash—a vicious cycle that diplomatic efforts have a diminishing chance of breaking. The longer this war of attrition continues, moreover, the greater the chance that NATO and Russian forces will come into direct conflict—whether through inadvertent escalation or deliberate choice. Given that Russian President Vladimir Putin has proven far more risk tolerant than many observers had expected, one cannot rule out the possibility of his raising the stakes, especially considering his growing anger over the Russian military’s underperformance.
In the medium and long term, the impact of Russia’s invasion on U.S. efforts to resume its foreign policy prioritization of China will depend at least in part on the resolution of the current crisis. At one extreme, a direct armed confrontation between NATO and Russia would pose perhaps the most serious challenge to Washington’s hoped-for reorientation since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. (Though the “pivot” to Asia is generally associated with the Obama administration, Nina Silove has explained that the George W. Bush administration came into office with the aim of “reorienting toward Asia.”) Such a scenario would also likely impose significant pressure on the Biden administration to reinstitute the two-war construct—referring to the ability to fight two major wars simultaneously as the baseline preparedness level for the U.S. military—as a matter of declared U.S. policy. While the Obama administration’s 2012 Defense Strategic Guidance did not explicitly abandon the two-war construct, the document formulated what appeared to be a slightly less ambitious objective, explaining that “our forces must be capable of deterring and defeating aggression by an opportunistic adversary in one region even when our forces are committed to a large-scale operation elsewhere.”
At the other extreme is a scenario in which Russia’s aggression could actually facilitate a U.S. rebalance. If, in their state of heightened vigilance, European countries undertake sweeping investments to provide for their own military defense and expand them over time, the U.S. may come to conclude that its NATO allies will be able to confront future Russian aggression with fewer forward-deployed U.S. troops and assets—especially given how substantially Moscow’s military power and deterrence capacity will have been diminished at the end of the war.
Regardless of when the war concludes and what the parameters of the settlement are, it is clear that Russia’s invasion constitutes an inflection point for U.S. foreign policy, with regard to China but also more broadly.
If the eventual effect of Russia’s invasion on the U.S. rebalance is difficult to assess, at least two consequences of its aggression are more readily discernible. First, the Sino-Russian entente will almost certainly deepen. Prior to Russia’s fateful decision to invade Ukraine on Feb. 24, U.S. observers had focused primarily on how Washington might loosen Moscow’s embrace of Beijing. Now, given the near-term impossibility of substantive diplomacy between the U.S. and Russia, they are instead considering how Washington might prevail upon Beijing to adopt a cooler stance toward Moscow.
Unfortunately, however, at least three factors will challenge such an effort. First, strategic distrust between the U.S. and China is growing. Second, while China is unlikely to provide military assistance to Russia or—at least overtly—violate Western sanctions, it shares many of the grievances that Moscow expresses regarding the conduct of U.S. foreign policy and the configuration of the postwar order. Third, Russia is the only major power with which China has an improving relationship; while cultivating that partnership would estrange Beijing further from the advanced industrial democracies it has alienated in recent years, moving away from Moscow would not restore a baseline of trust.
Still, even as the sudden rupture in U.S.-Russia relations will likely strengthen Sino-Russian ties, the relationship is now considerably more problematic for Beijing than it was in early February, when the two countries declared that their friendship had “no limits.” And the longer the war drags on, the more reputational damage Beijing will incur by virtue of association with Moscow. If we see any loosening of the relationship, it will be more likely to stem from Chinese recalibration than from U.S. pressure.
The second probable consequence of Russia’s invasion will be a further deterioration of U.S.-China relations. Washington is frustrated by Beijing’s refusal to try to curb Moscow’s brutality, while Beijing is concerned by the extent to which an even temporarily and loosely unified West can inflict severe economic pain on competitors. Because China is Russia’s principal partner, the breakdown of relations between the European Union and Russia will have a spillover effect on ties between Brussels and Beijing.
Even so, narratives that posit a coalition of democracies facing off against a Sino-Russian authoritarian condominium are overstated for at least four reasons. First, it is unclear that the U.S. and the EU will be able to sustain their present unity as the shock of the present crisis recedes and its externalities, including heightened energy disruptions and food insecurity, grow more pronounced. Second, the crisis does not redress the core misalignment between their strategic priorities: While the EU will now have to be on heightened guard against Russian aggression, Washington will seek to resume its focus on the Asia-Pacific as soon as it is feasible to do so. Third, as India’s response to the Russian invasion makes clear, while certain democracies might be willing to align themselves increasingly closely with the U.S. in contesting China, they might be more circumspect in contesting Russia—and vice versa. Fourth, the vast majority of the world’s countries, including most of its democracies, strenuously wish to avoid being drawn into a protracted great-power competition that assumes steadily more expansive proportions.
Regardless of when the war concludes and what the parameters of the settlement are, it is clear that Russia’s invasion constitutes an inflection point for U.S. foreign policy, with regard to China but also more broadly. Some observers argue that it should once and for all expose an Asia-Pacific-centric foreign policy as a chimera. They contend that U.S. attempts to rebalance away from the Middle East have enabled civil war and terrorist activity to flourish in that region, while parallel efforts to deprioritize Europe have enabled interstate war to traumatize the continent anew. They conclude that the U.S. should exert itself more forcefully to arrest the erosion of the present order.
Others argue that Russia’s invasion simply clarifies the illusion of U.S. omnipotence. They contend that the U.S. has contributed to its own relative decline through overextension in the Middle East and Europe. They conclude that the U.S. should concede its limits more frankly and apply its power more selectively to steady its strategic perch, focusing on executing a long overdue rebalance to Asia, the fulcrum of the global economy.
Whatever course the U.S. takes, though, Washington should not allow Moscow and Beijing to dictate its foreign policy. It should strive to formulate a foreign policy that endures no matter what actions its competitors take.
Ali Wyne is a senior analyst with Eurasia Group’s Global Macro practice. He is the author of the forthcoming book “America’s Great-Power Opportunity: Revitalizing U.S. Foreign Policy to Meet the Challenges of Strategic Competition” (Polity, 2022).