USA fears being cornered by the Chinese proposal
China's peace planWhile German media claim that the Chinese peace proposal for Ukraine is not taken seriously internationally, the truth is quite different.
24. March 2023
German media like to refer to the peace plan presented by China as an "alleged" peace plan and they have continuously claimed during the Chinese president's visit to Moscow that the plan is not to be taken seriously and "internationally controversial". This formulation is only partially true, because the fact that the plan is internationally controversial is mainly due to the fact that the West rejects it. However, this means that the West is quite alone internationally.
The Chinese peace plan is reasonable, because it also includes the history of the conflict, which must be resolved if there is to be a negotiated peace that ends the bloodshed. And as is well known, the West has played an important role in this history by ignoring Russia's security interests and arming Ukraine and advancing its accession to NATO. That was the main reason for the escalation of the war a year ago.
There are legally valid agreements between the West and Russia that state that no state may enforce its security interests at the expense of the security interests of another state. It is precisely this agreement that the West violated when it forced Ukraine's accession to NATO. China's peace plan provides, among other things, to establish this provision worldwide, which the US-led West does not like at all.
However, German media consumers do not know anything about it, because the German media conceal this and other details and backgrounds of the Chinese peace plan. But in the rest of the world, all this is known very well, which is why China's peace plan outside the West is not criticized, but is welcomed as quite reasonable.
This is also known in the USA, as Bloomberg has now reported. According to Bloomberg, the US government is very worried about the Chinese peace plan, because the rejection of the plan by the USA openly shows the rest of the world that the US is not interested in peace in Ukraine. I have translated the Bloomberg article so that German readers can get their own picture.
Start of the translation:
The USA fears that a war-tired world could accept China's peace offer for Ukraine
- The USA is on the sidelines of the action, while the Chinese-Russian "Brother's Festival" strengthens relations
- Some uncomfortable realities of Xi's visit to Putin in Moscow
Xi Jinping's meeting with Vladimir Putin in Moscow put the Biden administration in an unpleasant situation: she was on the sidelines when her two opponents discussed a peace proposal for Ukraine, which the USA considered unacceptable.
US officials have publicly expressed very skeptical about the Chinese idea and claimed that the demand for a ceasefire would reward Moscow's invasion by cementing its territorial gains. Secretly, however, the meetings and the proposal within the government have caused a feeling of discomfort, which in turn led to questions about the general attitude of the USA towards the two countries.
According to a government representative who does not want to be named because he talks about internal consultations, the USA fears being cornered by the Chinese proposal. Regardless of the reservations of the USA, if it rejects the proposal outright, China could give other nations that are tired of the war - and the economic damage it causes - the impression that Washington is not interested in peace.
If the US rejects the agreement, "China will probably increasingly spread the message that the US is against a ceasefire, that the US is against the end of the war," said Bonny Lin, Fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, who used to serve in the Pentagon. There will be many ways in which China will try to interpret the results of the meeting between China and Russia in such a way that the USA is presented in a negative light.
The debate on China's version of a peace plan is just one of the many unpleasant aspects of Xi's three-day visit to Moscow this week, at which the Chinese head of state was warmly welcomed by Putin. The two countries promised to deepen their partnership even further.
The Biden administration has tried to keep China on the sidelines since the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine, but the opposite seems to have happened. As Xi and Putin are getting closer and closer, China finds an open-minded audience for its broader diplomatic efforts around the globe.
At a Senate hearing on Wednesday, Senator Jeff Merkley asked Secretary of State Antony Blinken for a statement on what the Oregon Democrat described as a "three-day brother festival with Putin and Xi, who celebrate their authoritarian power." Blinken admitted that this was a continuation of the promise of the two nations shortly before the war to maintain a "partnership without borders".
"This is no surprise - both countries have completely different worldviews than we do," Blinken said. "They could find a common cause in opposing the worldview that we and so many other countries in the world are trying to defend and advance."
Blinken did not mention all the countries that refused to take sides despite the insistence of the USA.
China has disregarded the US sanctions because of the partnership of its companies with Russia, bought oil from the Iranian regime despite Western warnings and helped to bring about diplomatic détente between Saudi Arabia and Iran. Important global economic powers such as India and Brazil refuse to choose between China and the West because they do not want a new Cold War.
And a week ago, Honduras began to abandon its diplomatic relations with Taiwan in favor of economic relations with China.
The move was "a sign of my determination to fulfill the government plan and expand the borders in harmony with the nations of the world freely," President Xiomara Castro explained in a tweet.
Deteriorating bonds
All this is happening at a time when relations between the USA and China, which began to crumble with the trade war of former President Donald Trump, are further deteriorating. This was underlined by the excitement about the alleged Chinese spy balloon, which triggered a national outcry in the USA and angry accusations between Washington and Beijing.
This episode nullifies the attempt to stabilize relations at the end of last year through a personal summit between President Joe Biden and Xi in Indonesia. This led to a tense meeting between Foreign Minister Antony Blinken and the Chinese top diplomat Wang Yi in Munich, and Xi later warned against "comprehensive containment and oppression by Western countries under the leadership of the USA."
US officials argue that their sharp words have an effect on Beijing. They say that the public warnings from the US that China could provide deadly aid to Russia have prompted the Xi government to think twice about this idea. The USA continues to supply Ukraine with weapons - they announced new ammunition worth 325 million dollars this week - in coordination with European countries that are setting up new delivery schedules themselves.
The Biden administration has tried to get China to face the Ukraine crisis on the terms of the USA, but "Xi is now interfering on its terms," said Christopher K. Johnson, president of China Strategies Group, a political risk consulting firm. "And I think that this is likely to cause some confusion within the government."
Since Washington is constantly pursuing a hard line towards China, some analysts believe that China may have effectively given up an early improvement in relations with the US.
The less China sees the opportunity to work with the US, "the more likely it is to pursue these other paths and options," said Melanie Sisson, a foreign policy associate at the Brookings Institution. "And this will mean in many ways and in many places that they will try to shatter the US's relations with other countries."
End of translation