Military-strategic misjudgments, complete underestimation of Western cohesion and then sanctions that lead to a collapse of the economy and will cause great damage to the country for years to come: any rationally accessible politician would take the consequences in such a situation and at least consider a course correction. Not so Vladimir Putin.
On the contrary: the Russian President is marching even faster, even more resolutely and even more aggressively in the direction he has taken – increasingly repressive domestically, now even with a media law that bears totalitarian traits. Increasingly brutal in foreign policy, so that he apparently does not shy away from bombing previously agreed refugee corridors.
What drives this man? Where does he stop? And above all: How could he be stopped? With the exception of North Korea, probably no country has ever been as isolated as Russia is at the moment. In fact, the thought that Putin could feel so cornered that he has nothing left to lose should scare and tremble.
In any case, the Russian president is no longer accessible to Western heads of government. There is also no longer a politburo like in the days of Khrushchev, Brezhnev or Andropov, which could contain the sole ruler of the Kremlin or, if necessary, replace him. And for the hope that the revolution-hardened Russian people could bring down Putin, there is no serious evidence.
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The only power likely to make a lasting difference in Moscow is and remains China. But Beijing is tackling, doesn’t even want to name the invasion and sees the main cause of the war in NATO’s eastward expansion. After all, China did not vote against condemning Russia’s war of aggression in the UN vote, but abstained – which is bad enough.
Xi Jinping has to make a decision
But how much longer can Beijing maintain this indecisive and self-deceptive stance? Does Xi Jinping really want to make himself an accomplice to a warlord who has completely miscalculated and who is increasingly ostracized not only in the West?
In the end, the almighty Xi will have to choose which side of history he wants to sit on. This absurd war is forcing everyone to take a stand – including Beijing.
More on China’s politics:
With the current support for Putin, documented again on Monday by China’s foreign minister, the country is becoming increasingly entangled in foreign policy contradictions. It wants to stick to its strategic partnership with Russia. Under no circumstances does it want to give up the most important maxim of its foreign policy: the unconditional sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries. And it wants to keep the collateral damage of the economic sanctions against Russia to the already weakened Chinese economy as low as possible.
That doesn’t add up. Yes, China also appears imperialist to the outside world by creating economic dependencies and exerting economic pressure. But military force as a legitimate continuation of politics by other means – which Putin intends to establish – is not China’s thing.
Above all, however, the new unity of the West and its comprehensive sanctions, for which there is no comparable case in modern economic history, also represent a new situation for Beijing.
Call for sanctions against China
There are already voices in Washington calling for sanctions against China because of its support for Moscow. Anyone who supports a country that is openly threatening to use nuclear weapons in Europe should ask themselves whether they still want or are allowed to be an economic partner.
China, whose economic power exceeds that of Russia tenfold, is intertwined with the western world like no other Asian country. China exports $1.1 trillion worth of goods to the US and EU alone, compared to nearly $67 billion to Russia. Only two percent of Chinese trade falls on the large neighbor to the north.
The shelves are empty – the sanctions against Russia hit the population hard. Voices are now being raised in Washington calling for sanctions against China.
(Photo: dpa)
And above all: The world’s second largest economy is experiencing its own vulnerability in the example of Russia, whose foreign exchange reserves have been frozen by the West. The People’s Republic can’t help but park its gigantic assets in the western capital market hemisphere. China will hardly want to invest its reserves in bitcoins.
So the stakes for China are far greater. The economic superpower sees itself as a system rival to the West – and wants (certainly rightly so) to exert a considerable amount of influence on the international order. Destroying this system willfully, as Putin is striving for, is not in China’s interest.
On the contrary, it is in China’s interest to emancipate itself from Russia, which in Beijing is still seen as the midwife of the People’s Republic almost 72 years ago. Because this is not just about the “normative project of the West”, it is also about a rule-based global economic order that China needs just as much as Europe or the USA. Incidentally, a military attack on Taiwan, which some political scientists consider possible, is likely to be reassessed by the Chinese in the light of Russia’s Ukraine disaster.
For the West, instead of pacing in and out of the Kremlin and letting the wires run hot, Western politicians should make their voices heard in Beijing.
More on this: How Putin could be convicted of war crimes