Fifty years ago, President Richard Nixon traveled to China as a way to weaken the Soviet Union and keep the two countries from getting too close.
Now America is grappling with a new Cold War in which Russia and China have developed an increasingly strong partnership, which has alarmed the Biden administration.
The US sees itself as competing with both countries in different ways.
Washington is backing Ukraine with massive dollars and weapons in the face of a destructive Russian invasion. But the foreign policy elite of Washington is perhaps even more concerned about the rise of China as a global power that can counter the US. War between the US and China is not inevitable, but tensions between the countries are so high that Moscow’s friendship with Beijing has become a new challenge for Washington.
But just how tightly bound are Russia and China?
Analysts told me that both China and Russia see themselves in an existential conflict with the United States. It’s led to a partnership with military, diplomatic, and economic dimensions. And because Russia and China are both closed and autocratic, we don’t know the full extent or how deep it extends beyond the friendship of the two leaders, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin, who have rendezvoused 40 times in the past decade.
Patricia Kim, a researcher at the Brookings Institution, has closely tracked the partnership between the two countries. “The fact that China is engaging comprehensively with Russia is what’s notable. And this has come at a big diplomatic cost for Beijing for its global image,” she told me. “It just shows how much that China values Russia as a strategic partner.”
Is it a “no limits” partnership? Is Russia the “junior partner” to China? Their relationship, explained.
Three weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine, Putin traveled to Beijing for the Olympics. He and Xi released a joint statement publicizing a “no limits” friendship, which showed how close the two countries had…
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