[Skybird]

FOCUS writes:


China and India are playing a dangerous game: neither wants to leave Russia to the other as a partner. But at the same time, neither of them can afford to fall out with their Western trading partners. Russia, on the other hand, has been threatening to become a vassal of China since the start of the Ukraine war. A tricky situation.

China and India are rivals. Both states are the size of a continent, with China three times the size of India, each have a population of about 1.4 billion, maintain large armies and are nuclear-armed. Both states are major economic powers, with China seven times the size of India, whose economic power is equal to that of France. They compete for dominance in Southeast Asia and engage in territorial disputes in the Himalayas.

China is currently far ahead in the competition for global political influence, but sees India as a rival for regional hegemony. India is therefore by no means unjustified in seeing itself encircled by the projects on China's New Silk Road. India fears, again for good reasons, that China would like to severely limit its foreign policy and economic room for maneuver in order to keep a rival in Asia small.

It is all the more astonishing that the Global Times, the mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, has not tired for weeks of praising Indian independence to the skies. According to the Chinese, this independence is expressed in the fact that India does not allow itself to be pushed into an anti-Russia coalition by the United States, unlike the "European vassal states. The independence of India's foreign policy is expressed in not condemning Russia's war of aggression, buying cheap Russian oil and not supporting Western sanctions.

This, in turn, is surprising because India - in order to protect itself from China and balance China's rise in the region in terms of power politics - has joined forces with the U.S., Australia and Japan in the Quad alliance. The Quad's anti-China intent cannot be overlooked.

This may have led the U.S. to believe that India supports Western policy toward Russia. However, because India has heavily equipped its military with Russian weapons, since it was allied with the Soviet Union in the East-West conflict, and is dependent on spare parts, and because it does not want to drive Russia completely into China's arms, since it values cheap energy after all, this expectation has not worked out.

Thus, it adds to the complexity of international relations that rivals China and India are both in closer proximity to Russia and continue to maintain relations. China, in order not to lose Russia as the most important partner in a global policy directed against the United States. India, so as not to lose Russia entirely as an ally to China.

Yet both states have the same problem with Russia: The more isolated Russia is politically and the more its economy suffers from the sanctions, and the more wicked Russia's international image becomes and the more Russia lags behind technology-driven progress processes in the future, the more the country becomes a burden.

This is because relations with the U.S., Europe, Asian countries and many others in Latin America and Africa are many times more important than those with Russia. This is already a difficult balancing act, and both states are anxious just to avoid falling into the gravitational field of Western sanctions. Neither China nor India will risk secondary sanctions.

Nor will they face them at the state level at present. The U.S., which imposes secondary sanctions on those states that undermine or counteract original sanctions, has no interest in entering into a conflict with India or China at this time.

Washington is well aware of the limits of its own ability to act and the limitations on the ability of its allies to act. In the societies of these states, however, this may turn out differently in the further course of the war in Ukraine.

For with regard to Russia, it was a lesson that will have been registered in China in particular that state sanctions are one thing, socio-economic disengagement is another. They are interrelated, but the socio-media forces have developed their own dynamics.

The exodus of Western companies from Russia, the removal of Russian products from markets and bars, has very quickly developed a momentum that no state regulation alone could have brought about in that time.

This is why China is so keen not to be seen as the ultimate ally of a country that purposefully murders civilians, lays waste to cities and obviously commits war crimes and, in Mariupol, alleged genocide. Away from the international legal process, the assessment of such events in the public opinion of the Western world has a high, albeit volatile, sensitivity for this.

What if a dynamic trend begins to boycott products from states that support a regime that commits war crimes (public opinion usually omits this, presumably). This danger is certainly being considered for Chinese trade, as well as for the issue of future investment, which, unlike the phase of geopolitical negligence, will have to take far greater account of political conditions in the future.

China and India illustrate that not only can the enemy of my enemy be my friend, but also the friend of my enemy - so as not to become the enemy. The question is whether this variance will hold true in the future bipolar world order. For it is certain that the international order will know only two dominant states: the USA and China.

Europe will have less autonomous room for maneuver than before in view of the threat posed by Russia for some time to come. Russia's threat of nuclear weapons will echo in European memory for even longer. Russia, in turn, has lost an independent position in world politics and almost all autonomous room for maneuver as a result of the war.

With his aggression against Ukraine, President Putin has realized the Chinese interest in transforming Russia into a tributary state of China. In the future, he may be able to copy Stalin internally by producing an enormously repressive state, but not externally. In sixty years, the balance has turned 180 degrees. China is a superpower, Russia a follower.

Russia's neo-imperialist ambitions, which were aimed at leading it into an independent role as a world power, are shattering in the Sinocentric zone of influence, where everything revolves around China.

The country that wanted to establish its own sphere of influence with the war against Ukraine is now placed in the sphere of influence of a stronger power. There is only one way out of this constellation for Russia, the very long road to the West. Germany has taken this path after two devastating wars and singular crimes.
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Prof. Dr. Thomas Jäger has held the Chair of International Politics and Foreign Policy at the University of Cologne since 1999. His research focuses on international relations as well as American and German foreign policy.

Translated with www.DeepL.com/Translator (free version)