At a recent meeting in Beijing between Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, Xi made clear that China backs Russia in opposing NATO expansion. This rightfully has received media attention.

Both parties achieved closer security cooperation, expressed their displeasure at the AUKUS agreement, and announced a natural gas energy supply agreement. Notably, they also called for the formation of a new era of international relations and global sustainable development.

This indicates that a cost of supporting Ukraine is a closer relationship between Beijing and Moscow. Should that relationship develop into an entente or even an alliance, the rest would be a disaster for the West. The United States must prevent this. In order to understand how to do so, it is important to consider the motivation of China, Russia, and the United States.

China wants to use Russia as a junior partner in an entente or alliance. Russia secures China’s northern flank and occupies the strategic attention of the United States in Ukraine and with pressure against NATO states. China has greater freedom of action to increase pressure on Taiwan, Japan, or against India in this window. Russia also is a counter to the United States and U.S. allies’ influence in the Arctic, Iran, Syria, and elsewhere in the Middle East.

Yet in this summit, China stopped short of backing Russian expansion into Ukraine. Russia’s expansion is a violation of Kyiv’s sovereignty and so sets a dangerous precedent for the preservation of the Chinese regime’s territorial integrity regarding Tibet, Xinjiang, and international support for Taiwan.

Russia wants to use China to balance the United States and NATO’s power. So long as Putin leans to one side, that is, balances toward Xi, he can scare the West. At the same time, Putin is aware of Russia’s vulnerability to China. China is an emerging superpower with whom Russia shares a long border, and covetously eyes Russia’s natural resources and territory, as Russian power wanes. Russia does not have an adequate conventional deterrent and so must depend on its strategic and tactical weapons to deter China.

At the same time, the relative power imbalance between China and Russia only grows greater. Russia has a declining population and economy, with only energy to sell—although it can be an effective weapon as German and French appeals to Russia show. China has become the peer of the United States and is a threat to Washington as well as Moscow. Putin’s bandwagoning with Beijing is profoundly risky as Russia needs China far more than the reverse. China can clearly discount or dismiss Russia’s interests if it needs to do so with no adverse effects on China’s power or global position. Putin is feeding a crocodile, hoping that the crocodile’s fond memories of summits past will save him. The day may come when Xi executes a regime change in Russia as Putin is no longer useful to him.

For the United States, it needs to confront the center of gravity: China. Russia is a threat in the military realm, but it is only a great power threat. The Chinese regime is a peer enemy. The regime’s power challenges the United States every day in every aspect of global politics. China’s power is already formidable and continues to expand to the point where it might someday soon be ample to defeat the United States and its allies. Thus, Washington should perceive every act in international politics through the lens of whether it increases or decreases Beijing’s relative power. This should be an iron law for Washington.

Every act and every event in world politics, as well as in U.S. domestic politics, should be seen through the prism of benefiting or hurting China’s power. If it benefits China’s power, then it should be opposed. The Beijing summit aided China’s power and the United States does not want a Sino-Russian condominium. As communist China is the enemy of the United States in this triangular relationship, the only hope is to focus on Russia. Russia will never be an ally of the United States. At best, it will be “an ally of kind”—cooperating in areas of mutual interest while opposing the United States in all other matters. The Russians certainly understand power in global politics and the danger of China’s. If caught between the United States and China, they favor China now.

The United States needs to entertain how much worse a Sino-Russian alliance would be and how fundamental U.S. interests would be adversely impacted. The U.S. strategic arsenal and, thus, the credibility of the U.S.-extended deterrence is hard-pressed to cover either China or Russia, addressing both will require the expansion and accelerated modernization of the nuclear arsenal and of its conventional forces as well. The United States must have a strategy to prevent this relationship. Directly put, the United States does not have territorial designs on Russia. China does. NATO’s border with Russia is only a fraction of the over 2,400-mile border with China.

In the 1870s after France’s defeat in the Franco-Prussian war, German Chancellor Otto von Bismarck foraged the Three Emperors’ League (Dreikaisersbund), which was an ideological alliance of the emperors of Austria-Hungary, Germany, and Russia. Shared ideology could not keep the alliance together when the balance of power pulled them apart. Even if an alliance of dictators pulls Putin and Xi together, the balance of power compels their division. Hard power should trump ideology. Of course, that does not mean that is what Putin will do. But Russian strategists know that balancing with China against the West will only result in Moscow’s domination by Beijing. The hard truth for Putin is that ensuring Russian independence requires balancing against China.

(Source)

Have you received Salvation from Jesus the Messiah? Time is running out. Jesus will return very soon. The signs of His return are everywhere in this crazy world we are living in. Please read below so that you can be saved. Jesus is the only way to Heaven. The Words below are directly from the Bible, so you can trust them.

For I delivered to you first of all that which I also received: that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was buried, and that He rose again the third day according to the Scriptures. (1 Corinthians 15:3-4)

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through Me. (John 14:6)

For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved. (John 3:16-17)

If you confess with your mouth the Lord Jesus and believe in your heart that God has raised Him from the dead, you will be saved. For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation. For the Scripture says, “Whoever believes on Him will not be put to shame.” For there is no distinction between Jew and Greek, for the same Lord over all )is rich to all who call upon Him. For “whoever calls on the name of the Lord shall be saved.” (Romans 10:9-13)

“As the Father loved Me, I also have loved you; abide in My love. IF YOU KEEP MY COMMANDMENTS, you will abide in My love, just as I have kept My Father’s commandments and abide in His love. (John 15:9)

For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 8:38-39)

For those of us who persevere and do what Jesus says to do, we have this to look forward to in eternity: And God will wipe away every tear from their eyes; there shall be no more death, nor sorrow, nor crying. There shall be no more pain, for the former things have passed away.”

The Bible – New King James Version, NKJV