During a visit to Moscow, Xi Jinping demonstrated China’s and Russia’s willingness to counter US international influence and expressed concerns about NATO expansion.
SAUL LOEB v AFP
If in the military field the conflict between Russia It is Ukraine reached an impasse, the same cannot be said of diplomatic disputes that became global rather than regional. Recent events, such as the visit of Xi Jinping, President of China, to Russia, the request for his arrest Wladimir Putin by the International Criminal Court (ICC), the shipment of heavier weapons to Ukraine by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), and the downing of a US drone by Russian warplanes prove that the confrontation in Eastern Europe is “the tip of the iceberg of something much more important and bigger that is happening right now. Some will call it Cold War 2.0, others a conflict between China and the United States,” warns political scientist Leandro Consentino. “We are thinking of a much broader conflict, pitting western liberal democracy against more authoritarian countries in the east,” he adds. Although it may seem like something new based on the stake won, this is a confrontation of roughly half a millennium. “China sees democracy as chaos and Russia has always been a nuisance to the West. We have the continuity of a power game that has lasted since the end of the Middle Ages when consolidated nationstates emerged in Europe. This is the continuity of what we have been pursuing for the past 500 years,” explains Professor Vinícius Vieira of FAAP and Fundação Getúlio Vargas. “Whoever thought that this game was going to end and that we would have stability and consensus about American leadership and hegemony and that it would be useful to us, the fact is that there are alternative models like China and Russia that are legitimizing themselves themselves and have built spheres of influence,” he adds.
This week, during Xi Jinping’s visit to Moscow, the Chinese demonstrated unity between countries in the face of Western powers. The two nations stand ready to counter the international influence of the United States and express concern about NATO’s expansion and its rapprochement with the countries of the AsiaPacific region. They accuse the alliance of “undermining regional peace and stability” and agree to deepen an alliance that has intensified since the Russian offensive began in Ukraine. United in their desire to counter Washington’s global dominance, China and Russia have put Cold War disagreements behind them and intensified cooperation in recent years. In Moscow, Xi said that relations between the two nations are “entering a new era,” and Putin celebrated “the limitless possibilities and prospects” of cooperation. Beijing and Moscow often act together in the United Nations Security Council and use their veto power as permanent members to thwart initiatives by Western countries. Although Vieira believes that a military escalation of the conflict would occur with direct NATO involvement, what we are witnessing today is “a EuroAtlantic order of the United States, the European Union and the United Kingdom and Eurasia with China says Vieira and Russia in the middle. The West is fighting the Russians via Ukraine.” The expert also says that this confrontation is viewed with good eyes by Beijing because “it helps create this perception of Western decline, which means Chinese rise”.
Russian President Vladimir Putin meets Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Moscow │Sergei KARPUKHIN / SPUTNIK / AFP
On the eve of the yearlong conflict between Russia and Ukraine, China presented a peace proposal that Putin said could serve as a basis for a solution. Since the invasion, the Chinese have tried to adopt a neutral position in the war, but Washington sees their proposals as a “delaying tactic” to help Moscow and buy more time. As much as Putin has shown interest in the proposal, which appreciates the Russians, the US would not accept the imposition of this plan. “When the project was released, we saw NATO reject it because they don’t want China as a mediator. The US and NATO do not want the Chinese to become players and they do not want to put them in the foreground,” explains Paulo Velasco, Doctor of Political Science at IESPUERJ, recalling that Beijing has recently gained space in the contribution on resuming diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia and Iran after a sevenyear hiatus. The professor also says that this division of the world into blocs around the United States and China makes the world more dangerous, and that the PutinXi Jinping alliance “contains and challenges US hegemony in the global arena and in international politics . creating a climate of greater contrasts between these countries and pointing to a more dangerous world”.
Vieira adds that we are witnessing ongoing global change and “although it is not clear, this means a greater distribution of power from the West to other parts of the world. China and Russia in particular are relevant from a military point of view, and this leads to unprecedented consequences in the last 200 years”, a time when the Chinese and Indians were the largest economies. “Political power is still in the hands of the West, but we have a dispersion of economic power,” explains the FAAP professor, who also says the only way to “conquer” one’s hegemony is through the war of hegemonic transition is when the two powers in question enter into a conventional confrontation. “Although I believe him [o conflito entre EUA e China] it’s not going to happen because of the diversity of interests, that doesn’t stop it, not least because interests were left out in WWI.” When it comes to a confrontation between North Americans and Chinese, ESPM professor Renata Álvares says that the world will witness the first great world war, since it indicates that the other two that took place took place more strongly in Europe.