The Ukraine War and China
Below is another conversation with my colleague Dr. Yohanes Sulaiman. We continue our discussion of the ongoing Ukraine War. This time we focus on China’s connection to the war and the global implications of it.
Brad Nelson: One of the fascinating parts of the Ukraine War is China. It is a non-participant, lurking in the background, observing and taking notes, knowing that it has a partner in the war in Russia and that Taiwan, among others, is trying to figure out the applicability of the war to its situation. Just so all of our readers are on the same page, let's get the basics on the table. What's China's position on the war? And how has China responded to it?
Yohanes Sulaiman: China has a very weird position. On one hand, it says that it won't pick a side. In reality, though, based on its wolf warrior actions, it decisively sides with Russia and promotes Russia's justification of invading Ukraine. It is the case of wanting to have its cake and eat it too.
BN: Can it really have its cake and eat it too? Beijing argues that states should keep out of the affairs of others, and they certainly shouldn't wage offensive wars. It frames this argument in terms of what's best for peace and stability globally. But as we know, it has weaponized it against the U.S. in its wars of the past 20 years, and, of course, uses it to justify telling outsiders to butt out in its disputes with Tibet, Xinjiang, and Taiwan. By supporting Russia, at least tacitly, it's totally undermining its longstanding position that state sovereignty is vital and one of the primary animating features of its foreign policy. The fallout for China could be significant. At a minimum, I'd think China will be reminded repeatedly, by various states and global groups, about its contradictory and hypocritical stance in the Ukraine War. I also suspect China will likely have to deal with trust concerns and declining soft power going forward. And then there's the prospect of this negatively impacting U.S.-China relations, maybe not now but down the line.
YS: At this point, I think China can have its cake and eat it too. While its reputation has taken a nosedive in Europe and in the U.S., it is still an important state economically. I doubt both the EU and the U.S. are willing to cut ties with China. And based on how it acts to censure from abroad over its stance on other issues (like Tibet or Xinjiang), it will simply ignore any condemnation for its statements and actions on Ukraine. In fact, many people outside of the West, including Indonesians, think the U.S. and the EU are behaving hypocritically on Ukraine—the West doesn’t give a damn, let say, about Palestine or other . And that's what China keeps hammering through its so-called wolf warriors. Moreover, China sees itself as a rising military and economic power, so it can and will tell other states to suck up to it.
BN: You are probably right. But I can't help but think that American hypocrisy is old news, really. It's been said for decades. The new thing is that China has been caught as a hypocrite and it can't easily wiggle its way out of it.
Let’s shift to a new topic. Some pundits, analysts, and scholars have suggested that the Ukraine War has implications for world order. (For examples of this line of argument, see here, here, here, here, and here.) I'm curious to hear your thoughts on this subject. In particular, does the war impact America's and/or China's ability to preserve/create their preferred orders--either on a regional or global scale? Any hunches?
YS: In the short run, I don't see many implications for world order. In the medium turn, though, I think the war, and Russia’s failures in particular, will simply accelerate the emergence of a bipolar world order. China has been expanding its power and influence in the Pacific region. With the global economy going downhill and the West economically stagnant, trade with China seems to be the choice for many states. Of course, the biggest question mark is the resilience of China itself. Somehow, I cannot help to compare current China with Russia under Brezhnev. There are fundamental weaknesses in the Chinese economy, notably its reliance on state-owned enterprises, a very weak legal system, and an impending demographic collapse that could hurt China's ambitions in the long run.
BN: Your take on global polarity is a good one. Everyone has agreed that Russia is a declining power, though there's been some disagreement over whether it's a second tier great power or a great power of the first rank. Most American scholars, it seems, side with the former argument. I've been one of the exceptions to the conventional wisdom, believing that Russia's raw material power, its presence as a regional hegemon stretching from Eastern Europe into Central Asia, and its political and diplomatic influence make it the third great power in a tripolar world. I'm now reassessing that picture of world power in light of the war. Given Russia's apparent military struggles against weak Ukraine, the economic sanctions placed on it, and its pariah status, it makes little sense to rank Russia anywhere near the same level as the U.S. or China. The war has exposed Russia's limitations and weaknesses. And it's also awakened Europe, which has evened the scales a bit regionally. Yes, the world is fast sliding toward bipolarity.
At the same time, Russia's struggles and weakness hurts China. After all, the power and importance of China's main ally is quickly eroding. Can China count on a tag-team approach to undermining the status quo and building a new regional/global order, as it once did? Not now, and probably not anytime soon. China is basically left to itself to do the tough job of order building/construction, and that's in the face of significant resistance from the West and its allies. Beijing might find that in its interests to help Russia recover after the war in order to strengthen its partner. But there's no guarantee that will work or that it won't be a net cost endeavor.
BN: In the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, Tanisha Fazal discusses the possible impact of the war in Ukraine on the norm against territorial conquest, arguing the norm is facing a severe stress test and the world needs to stand up to Putin to enforce the norm. Do you think Russia's war weakens this norm? If so, might other states--or maybe even Russia itself--further challenge the norm? Might China be tempted to test the norm based on the war/the outcome of the war?
YS: By siding so openly with Russia, at least in the short- to medium-term, China has burned many bridges with Europe—not to mention its current diplomatic spats over Taiwan with Lithuania. Granted, China still maintains a lot of economic clout in Europe, but Europe seems to be relearning the idea of Munich, and we perhaps will see Europe pulling back on its economic dependence on China. And this dovetails with the norms against territorial conquest. Europe has for long been a continent that fully backs the need for international law and norms, and the war in Ukraine has only underscored the urgent importance of this in world politics. This only further solidifies the US-Europe relationship.
Perhaps we will see a Cold War redux, in which the China-Russia bloc expands its power and influence in third world countries, while the U.S. maintains its influence and friendship with Europe and its friends in the Middle East and East Asia.
BN: I figure there are two candidates most likely to further challenge the norm against conquest, and that's Russia and China, based on their revisionist, expansionist foreign policies. But Russia is bogged down in Ukraine, and even if Ukraine turns out to be a "win" for Russia, the fact that it has struggled so much in this war will restrain it from going further in Europe. And it certainly won't have the power or energy to tangle with any NATO country. China's case is harder to figure out. It's possible Beijing looks at Russia's costly, bloody war in Ukraine and thinks to itself that conquest in the 21st century doesn't pay and isn't worth it. On the other hand, I could also see Beijing believing that Russia's military struggles in Ukraine are Russian struggles and have nothing to do with or have no bearing on China. In other words, just because Russia made a series of costly blunders in Ukraine, that doesn't mean that China would do the same in any potential military conflict. After all, Xi and his lieutenants, by all accounts, are a pretty confident, perhaps arrogant, bunch, and it's possible that they think that, if war broke out, they'd do a better job in fighting it than Putin has. If that's the case, then, Beijing is proceeding as if the Ukraine War is mostly meaningless to how it goes about securing and advancing its national interests.
Now, given the West's strong backing of Ukraine and its efforts to fortify the defenses of neighboring NATO countries, I don't think the norm has been weakened as a result of this current version of the Ukraine War. At most, it's had no impact, for reasons I just described above, or it's induced some caution into Russian and Chinese leadership. If anything, the norm was weakened in 2014, when Putin initially carved up Ukraine, and the West is now trying to overcome its weakness and failures from back then. In fact, a creditable case could be made that America's and Europe's reluctance to backstop Ukraine in 2014 contributed to Putin's belief that he'd face little resistance when his forces went into Ukraine earlier this year.