It’s not just Antarctica that’s thawing. After a long cold spell, relations between Americans and Chinese are reawakening, and that’s good for everyone. Things are even better for the Middle East these days.
“Pride once had a city” (Montreal); Today there is “instability in one corner of the world” and it is once again the Middle East. The orgy of violence was not limited to the Gaza Strip and its surroundings.
Hezbollah has resumed rocket attacks on northern Israel. American troops and facilities in Iraq and Syria have been the target of attacks by Iranian-backed militias.
The Americans are doing their part: Yesterday the Pentagon sent two F-16s to destroy arms and ammunition depots in Syria linked to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. The United States would rather strike hard now than see the region flare up and become embroiled in a larger conflict.
CHINESE AND AMERICANS, USED PARTNERS
The Chinese arrive in portrait. They don’t come out of nowhere: The surprise rapprochement between Iran and Saudi Arabia last March took place under the auspices of China, a sign of Beijing’s growing influence in the region.
A Chinese involvement viewed all the more suspiciously in Washington since American-Chinese relations had just been undermined by a spy balloon that had made a complete crossing of the continent before American jets shot it down off the coast of South Carolina.
Reconciliation efforts progressed slowly until Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi arrived in Washington on Thursday. In recent years he has been the most important figure in the Chinese hierarchy to visit the American capital.
His schedule is full, but Wang Yi has essentially come to set the stage for a tête-à-tête between Xi Jinping and Joe Biden next month in San Francisco at the Organization for Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation’s APEC summit . If everything goes as planned, it will be one of the biggest diplomatic moments of the year.
USE THE OPPORTUNITY TO QUIET THE GAME
China has not adopted the position favored by the USA in the current crisis. Beijing did not directly condemn Hamas, but instead condemned “the violence and attacks against civilians in this war” and even added that Israel’s actions “exceeded the scope of self-defense.”
A position that the White House rejects, but which still finds favor. Joe Biden fundamentally fears that the conflict is going beyond its scope, that Iran will intervene indirectly through Hezbollah in Lebanon or directly by firing rockets at Israel, which would force military intervention by the USA.
We can say with certainty that when Wang Yi walked through the Roosevelt Room, he was asked to use China’s influence on Iran to defuse this crisis as much as possible. Beijing needs a stable geopolitical environment to attract foreign investors; Washington doesn’t want to get into a spiral of war. A collaboration between superpowers that would please everyone.
