Biden Has a Date With Xi,
Putin’s ‘Main Squeeze’
By Ray McGovern
November 13, 2022:
Information Clearing House
-- "
Anti War
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When China’s President XI Jinping meets with
President Joe Biden Monday in Indonesia, he
better bring a whiteboard and some simple
handouts. For it is beyond the ability, or the
intention, of Biden’s elitist advisers to give
him an accurate picture of the extremely close
strategic relationship between China and Russia
– and between XI and Putin personally.
Can Secretary of State Antony Blinken and
national security adviser Jake Sullivan be so
dense? That cannot be ruled out. But perhaps it
is more likely that they (and the neocons behind
U.S. foreign policy) simply do not want to give
the president any reason to flinch in his
Captain Ahab pursuit of weakening Russia in
Ukraine "for as long as it takes."
Were they to warn Biden that he could face a
two-front war with peer adversaries (Russia
and China), he might opt for a more sensible
policy. Biden might even be brought to
understand that, for Putin, the conflict in
Ukraine poses the same kind of existential
threat that, say, President John Kennedy faced
60 years ago from
Soviet nuclear ballistic missiles in Cuba.
Likewise, Biden might be able to appreciate
that China and Russia are each fully aware that
if one of them goes down, the other is next in
the sights of the a US military desperate to get
back on the winning track after so many
misadventures over the last 77 years.
Has Biden been told that, contrary to all
expectations, China gave Putin a waiver on its
bedrock Westphalian policy on sovereignty and
noninterference, and that XI has made it clear
that China supports Russia’s "core interests" in
Europe, just as Russia supports China’s core
interests vis-à-vis Taiwan.
When the planned Biden-Xi meeting was
announced Wednesday, Biden was asked whether the
Chinese and the Russians are "putting together a
real alliance,"
Biden said:
I don’t think there’s a lot of respect
that China has for Russia or for Putin. I don’t
think they’re looking at it as a particular
alliance. Matter of fact, they’ve been sort of
keeping their distance a little bit.
Wrong: "Keeping their distance a little bit?"
The adolescent-type textual analysis adduced for
this media "insight" over recent weeks is
rubbish. As to the far more important question
as to whether Russia and China have a formal
defense alliance or something short of that,
well, this became largely moot on December 15,
2021 when President XI stated that “this
relationship even exceeds an alliance in its
closeness and effectiveness.”
Administration officials and the media have
obediently insisted that “the two countries do
not have a formal alliance”. This is technically
correct. It is also a distinction without much
real difference. Prudent strategic planners
would take this into account, and advise the
president accordingly – particularly as the
conflict in Ukraine escalates, as do tensions
along China’s Pacific frontier.
Putin’s Main Squeeze
With the obvious lack of prudent planners in
Washington, it will fall to XI and his
whiteboard to give Biden a tutorial during their
meeting in Bali. For, sadly, it appears
President Biden is still as misinformed about
the Sino-Russian relationship as he was on June
16, 2021 during his only in-person summit with
President Putin in Geneva. Embarking on the
plane,
Biden let it be known that the “Russians are
in a difficult spot being squeezed by China."
And here is the bizarre way Biden described,
at his post-summit presser, his
decades-behind-the-times approach to Putin on
China:
"Without quoting him [Putin] – which I
don’t think is appropriate – let me ask a
rhetorical question: You got a
multi-thousand-mile border with China. China is
seeking to be the most powerful economy in the
world and the largest and the most powerful
military in the world."
Putin Nonplussed
Speaking on Oct. 27 at the Valdai
International Discussion Club, Russian President
Vladimir Putin
questioned the sanity of those who would
“spoil relations with China at the same time
they are supplying billions-worth of weapons to
Ukraine in a fight against Russia.”
In answer to a question on “the growing
tensions between China and the United States
over Taiwan,”
Putin labeled visits by top US officials to
Taiwan a “provocation.” Putin added:
“Frankly, I do not know why they are doing
this. … Are they sane? It seems that this runs
completely counter to common sense and logic …
This is simply crazy.
“It may seem that there is a subtle,
profound plot behind this. But I think there is
nothing there, no subtle thought. It is just
nonsense and arrogance, nothing else. … Such
irrational actions are rooted in arrogance and a
sense of impunity.”
No, even if one can discern some degree of
cleverness in the Blinken/Sullivan/neocon gambit
of keeping Biden blissfully unaware of the
danger of two-front war – in order to grease the
skids for further escalation in Ukraine – no,
that does not strike me as "sane."
Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a
publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the
Saviour in inner-city Washington. His 27-year
career as a CIA analyst includes serving as
Chief of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch and
preparer/briefer of the President’s Daily Brief.
He is co-founder of Veteran Intelligence
Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).
Views expressed in this article are
solely those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.
in this article are
solely those of the author and do not necessarily
reflect the opinions of Information Clearing House.
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