Asia’s New ‘Game of Thrones’
As U.S. power recedes, Russia and China compete for regional advantage.
North Atlantic Treaty Organization leaders are flocking to Washington, but their summit isn’t the most important thing going on this summer. Neither is the Democratic Party crisis over President Biden’s debate performance. Events in Asia, where Russian President Vladimir Putin, Chinese leader Xi Jinping and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi have all made high-profile trips, are driving world developments. The center of global politics has shifted to the Indo-Pacific. What happens in the Eurasian heartland matters more to world politics and American interests than anything in the Atlantic world.
That makes world politics harder for most Americans to read. Authoritarian states like China, Russia, Vietnam and North Korea conceal their domestic political struggles behind veils of secrecy and censorship. Democratic countries like India, Indonesia and Japan are so complex and so culturally different from the U.S., that even well-traveled and well-read Americans can struggle to follow developments there.
As we reprogram ourselves from Euro-obsessives to Indo-Pacific mavens, there’s a lot to be learned by studying Eurasian leaders. Because so much power is concentrated in them, their summits are often more consequential than Western diplomacy’s photo-op gabfests. The recent spate of Indo-Pacific summits has been no exception. Mr. Putin visited North Korea and Vietnam in June. Mr. Xi was in Central Asia last week, and, as NATO leaders gathered in Washington to celebrate the alliance’s 75th birthday, Mr. Modi was in Moscow for consultations with Mr. Putin.
Mr. Putin’s visit to East Asia and Mr. Xi’s travel to Central Asia point to emerging tensions in the China-Russia partnership that is reshaping the world. For Mr. Putin, his journey to the East was an international and a domestic success. Internationally, the agreement with North Korea assures a continuing flow of weapons and reportedly personnel for the war in Ukraine. Domestically, the sharpest criticism Mr. Putin faces from Russian nationalists is that his confrontation with the West transforms Russia into a client of China. By deliberately stepping on China’s toes in the Far East, Mr. Putin sent a message both to Beijing and to critics at home: Russia remains an independent great power and has no intention of becoming a Chinese vassal.
China wasn’t thrilled with Mr. Putin’s visits to its two neighbors. Beijing sees North Korea as a nuisance and wants to control it; Russia values North Korea’s potential as a regional disrupter and wants to enhance its independence from China. Beijing has territorial disputes with Vietnam in the South China Sea and wants Hanoi to accept Chinese hegemony. Russia sees a strong and independent Vietnam as a healthy check on Chinese power.
hina doesn’t take slights lightly. Mr. Xi’s visit to Central Asia was, in part, tit for tat. Mr. Putin’s goal of recreating the Russian Empire means reabsorbing the Central Asian republics into a Moscow-led federation. That isn’t China’s plan. Chinese investments in infrastructure are reorienting the region toward trade with Beijing, and a statement by Mr. Xi and Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev last week signaled another stage in the process. They will work jointly to increase the capacity of the Trans-Caspian International Transport Route, allowing goods from China to move westward on a route that sidelines Russia.
The Russo-Chinese alliance is a strategic nightmare for India, and Prime Minister Modi follows every twist and turn in the relationship with keen interest. He has no doubt had some interesting conversations during his time in Moscow.
Armchair American strategists shouldn’t get too excited here. These emerging tensions don’t mean that the Sino-Russian partnership is breaking up. But the glue that holds Russia, China and their fellow revisionists together is their common fear of American power and liberal ideology. As America turns inward and democracy retreats, that glue weakens, and we are getting a preview of the rivalries that would erupt among these allies and partners if American power were to disappear.
It has happened before. Early in the 1950s China and the Soviet Union were close partners. But in the 1960s when America was bogged down in Vietnam and torn by civil and political dissent at home, the two countries parted ways. By 1969 China and the Soviet Union were fighting tank battles along their disputed boundary, and Mao Zedong would ultimately embrace a partnership with Richard Nixon to balance Moscow.
Today’s Sino-Russian spats aren’t as serious as the 1960s Sino-Soviet rift. But nothing is eternal in world politics, and there are unexpected opportunities as well as grave dangers in the new world disorder taking shape. In our age of geopolitical competition, Americans need to study the “Game of Thrones” afoot across Asia. Like it or not, we are part of the game.
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Appeared in the July 9, 2024, print edition as 'Asia’s New ‘Game of Thrones’'.
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