Where, oh where is Chinese support for Russia’s Special Military Operation in Ukraine?
At the very outset of the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, I was sparring with one of my good friends in the States over the importance of Chinese President Xi’s support to Vladimir Putin for the pending military action when they met in Beijing during the Winter Olympics.
My good friend believed that Xi’s ‘go ahead’ made the whole venture possible.
I was skeptical that it was a decisive influence. Putin is a Realist in international affairs. And the school of Realism teaches that nations have interests, they do not have friends. I found it incredible that Putin would put the fate of his nation at risk on a wink and a nod from the big Chinese neighbor to the East. I saw the decisive factors in Putin’s decision to go to war as being within straightforward opportunity and threats analysis of Russia standing alone.
Surely nothing was more important in his thinking than the window of opportunity presented by Russia’s present technological advantage over the USA and over the rest of the world in latest generation strategic and tactical weapons, in particular the hypersonic missile Kinzhal and other unstoppable missiles being deployed on land, in the air and at sea. Putin said openly that this was the first time in its history that Russia was one generation ahead of the rest of the world in armaments, not running behind and trying to catch up. Owning such weapons gave assurance that the USA would have to be restrained in its military response to Russia’s intervention in Ukraine.
Then there was the threats side of the equation. Ukraine was getting stronger by the day, was being armed and being prepared with offensive weapons systems from NATO which were making it a de facto if not de jure member of the alliance. These were strong arguments in favor of solving the Ukrainian problem once and for all right now.
That these background thoughts led to a military strike precisely in the last week of February 2022 can be explained by indications suggesting that the Ukrainian army was preparing a massive attack on Donbas. From the spring of 2022 this threat had led Russia to assemble a similar scale force of men at arms at the border with Ukraine to give a clear signal to Kiev and Washington that Moscow would not tolerate the slaughter of the Russian speaking population of Donbas. A further contributing factor in this complex web of causality was also the peremptory US and NATO refusal in December 2021-January 2022 to enter into negotiations with Russia over a review and revision of the overall security architecture in Europe, meaning a roll-back of NATO to its pre-1997 borders.
Having in the foregoing set out all the reasons why what the Chinese leader may have said to Putin in February 2022 was not uniquely important, I now am ready to acknowledge that Xi’s words may have had more weight than I ascribed to them. The question is what kind of assurances could Xi have given to Putin? What kind of scenarios of joint action could they have discussed?
To be sure, China’s assistance to Russia since the onset of the SMO has been very modest. There are no indications that China has supplied any military hardware to Russia. Perhaps they have shipped some dual use microchips, but that is not clear. What we can see is that they substantially raised their purchases of Russian oil. But they have taken the big discounts that Russia was obliged to give to any and all buyers following imposition of Western sanctions on its hydrocarbons. So it is an open question of who was doing whom favors in that domain.
There is reason to believe that the real test of China’s readiness to help Russia in what is now effectively a war with the whole of NATO will come in the next two weeks or so.
In a rather alarmist article issued on 21 May, John Helmer, a Russia expert and blogger living in Moscow for decades, tells us that the Air Defender 23 exercises that begin on 12 June may be used by Washington and its NATO allies to cover and protect what will be called raids by Ukrainian piloted F16s into the Donbas and perhaps further into the Russian Federation itself. This daring and perhaps very violent “exercise” would be a provocation inviting Russian counter attack on the bases in Germany and elsewhere in NATO member states from which the attacking aircraft took off. And there you have it, the casus belli for WWIII.
Where do the Chinese fit into this scenario? For that we have to consider what took place in the South China Sea last week during the annual Shangri-la Dialogue defense summit in Singapore. The United States issued loud complaints over “irresponsible” maneuvers by Chinese naval vessels that nearly collided with a U.S. Navy vessel. The Chinese responded with an angry denunciation of the ‘naval hegemony’ that the U.S. pretends to exercise in what China considers its own seas.
Let us remember that it was the Chinese who initiated this clash. I find it entirely thinkable that if the United States tries to use the Air Defender events to cover an attack on Russia there will be some attention getting action by the Chinese in their zone of activity. Will they sink a ship or two?
The point is that U.S. aggression does not rest on adequate appreciation of its adversaries and of their possible understandings on mutual defense. Remember, the Chinese – Russian relationship is “stronger than an alliance.”
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2023