America Doesn’t Want to Let the War in Ukraine Distract It From Its Goal: Fighting the Rise of China
Russia is not America's great adversary in the future.
While some were beginning to have doubts, the American administration tried to put an order on a scale of priorities upset by the Russian invasion of Ukraine, decided by Putin on February 24, 2022. This was done in two steps. First, a speech by the Secretary of State of the United States. Then, a speech by President Joe Biden.
Almost a year ago in Geneva, Joe Biden had hoped to establish a “stable and predictable” relationship with his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. He has since had to mourn this hope. For all that, Joe Biden does not intend to let the master of the Kremlin divert the United States from its main strategic objective for the years to come: the containment, tempered by occasional cooperation and a demanding dialogue, of the rise of China.
Published in the New York Times on May 31, 2022, Joe Biden's op-ed “What America Will and Will Not Do in Ukraine” aimed to dispel the confusion created by a sometimes rough communication. His communication maintained doubts about the objectives that Washington has set for itself in the first large-scale conflict conducted on European soil between two sovereign states.
Everyone can see that it is too early for diplomacy between Ukraine and Russia. This war will last for many months, even years. Everything must therefore be done to ensure that the time of the war is as unstable and unpredictable as possible. Joe Biden has thus tried to set limits to a confrontation that he wishes to limit to this region.
For Joe Biden, the massive military aid granted to the aggressors is above all part of a framework that is strictly Ukrainian, as shown by the commitment requested from Kyiv concerning the use of the weapons provided. It will be up to the Ukrainian authorities to define what they can hope for when the time comes, given their exemplary fighting spirit and the situation on the front.
The stabilization of the conflict may suggest a historical precedent that is not very encouraging, namely the Korean example. This conflict has been frozen on the peninsula for almost seven decades without the armistice concluded in July 1953 ever being followed by a peace treaty in due form.
If America's interests depend more than ever on a stable Europe, it is because the country presided over by Joe Biden is more than ever threatened by a revisionist power of a completely different scale than Vladimir Putin's Russia. Putin's Russia does not scare America. Xi Jinping's China does not.
Secretary of State Antony Blinken dedicated his speech to China on May 26, 2022, at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., not without noting that the Russian president, is seeking to weaken an international order that is generally aligned with Washington's interests (which also includes many of its European Union and North Atlantic Treaty Organization allies), has instead strengthened it.
Anthony Blinken's speech may have surprised some. He gave the impression of demoting Moscow to the rank of regional nuisance:
“China is the only country that has both the intention to reshape the international order and increasingly the means to do so economically, diplomatically, militarily and technologically.”
This is reminiscent of a speech by Barack Obama, who mocked the power of Putin's Russia in the early 2010s. The Secretary of State did not fail to add that China had been until now, according to Washington, the great beneficiary of the balances put in place by the United States, which Beijing contests, while now trying to twist them to its advantage.
It is true that the ambitious diplomatic tour of the Chinese Foreign Minister, Wang Yi, in the South Pacific, which has just ended, testified to Beijing's renewed ambitions. Certainly, the results were more than mixed, given the refusal of ten island nations to subscribe to a regional pact granting China a place of choice delivered in a turnkey fashion, like the infrastructure projects that serve as levers of influence for Beijing around the world.
China wants to take over the Indo-Pacific
Beijing's attempt, however, is not fooling anyone. China has become more and more assertive in an area where America and its regional allies have not been used to competition until now. After the security pact already concluded in April 2022 between Beijing and the Solomon Islands, Wang Yi added during his trip bilateral agreements with Samoa and Papua New Guinea.
On the Chinese issue, America seeks above all to rally the European countries to its vision of things by relying on the remarkable unity to which the Russian invasion of Ukraine gave rise. So said Wendy Sherman on June 2, 2022, in an exchange with the European press. Anthony Blinken's principal deputy dwelt at length on the friction between the European states and China, illustrated in particular by the tensions with Lithuania that sanctioned the opening of a Baltic delegation in Taiwan, before insisting on the “limitless” partnership concluded before the attack on Ukraine between Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping.
The thousands of miles that separate Europe from China do not protect it from aggressive aims similar to those underway in the Indo-Pacific, insisted Wendy Sherman. The support of the Europeans is all the more strategic as the United States measures the limits of its influence every day. Already silent on Ukraine, Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and his Brazilian counterpart, Jair Bolsonaro, have decided to sulk at the Summit of the Americas, organized in early June 2022 in Los Angeles by the Democratic president.
After having tried in vain to obtain the support of the most influential Gulf countries, the United Arab Emirates and Saudi Arabia, in the early days of the Russian aggression in Ukraine, Joe Biden has changed his tone about the kingdom. He could go there and meet his strong man, the crown prince, Mohammed Bin Salman, who was once promised pariah status for having ordered the assassination and dismemberment of the Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi. In these times of need, Washington counts its allies.
This confirms that everything will be done to combat China's seemingly unstoppable rise to the rank of the world's first leading superpower.
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