Last October, in an earlier post on the increasingly close ties between Russia’s President Vladimir Putin and China’s President Xi Jinping, I remarked on their similarities – and their coincident interests. (The link is below.) In the intervening months their alliance became still stronger. Right now Putin is in Beijing to reaffirm his alignment with Xi on a range of geopolitical issues – and their shared antagonism toward the West. A joint statement approved by both leaders declared that China-Russia relations had demonstrated “strength and stability” and were experiencing the “best period in their history.” Putin and Xi were, they agreed, “priority partners,” a claim supported by their having now met, in person, 43 times!
Both leaders recently survived, at least for now, adversity. In Putin’s case among his other challenges a miserable, humiliating start to his war against Ukraine. In Xi’s case among his other challenges a period of China’s declining economic growth and emigrating entrepreneurs. Further, both have recently become more oppressive domestically and more adventurous internationally. Both also realize, even more than before, that the other has something they want. In Putin’s case he wants, and badly needs, China as a trading partner. (China has become Russia’s most important trading partner, buying its commodities, and supplying it with goods including wartime technologies.) In Xi’s case he wants, and badly needs, Russian oil and gas. (Last year Russia surpassed Saudi Arabia as Russia’s biggest supplier of oil.) Finally, both Putin and Xi have come even more than before to recognize that whatever their differences, they pale in comparison with those they have with the West generally, and the United States specifically.
Nothing unsettles the two gorillas – they’re both 800 pounds because while Xi’s China is a much bigger and stronger, Putin’s Russia has a large arsenal of nuclear weapons – more than the thought that they might be dethroned, pushed from their perch. Given that both have either literally or effectively anointed themselves leaders for life, it’s of primary importance to them that they stand up to the West. That they establish themselves as an immutable, impregnable, bulwark against anything vaguely resembling messy, and threatening, democracy.
An article in the May/June issue of Foreign Affairs titled, “The Axis of Upheaval,” makes the argument that along with Russia and China, Iran and North Korea constitute “a collection of dissatisfied states converging on a shared purpose.”* This purpose is to challenge the dominance of the United States, which even now remains the epitome of democracy globally, and presides over the principles and institutions that continue to underpin the international system.
Presuming this axis of upheaval is real, the junior partners are Iran and North Korea; the senior ones are Russia and China. What this means is that Putin and Xi have an outsized impact not only on what happens in Russia and China but on what happens on the entire global stage: in Ukraine and Europe; in Israel, Gaza, and the Middle East; in Taiwan and the South China Sea; in South Korea, Venezuela, and Nigeria.
And … in the United States. At a time when America’s politics are so fraught, and its body politic is so fractious, make no mistake. It’s in the political, economic, and military interest of Putin and Xi further to roil our waters. Moreover, together these 800-lb gorillas present a far greater threat than either would alone.
The point of this piece is that they are not alone. By joining forces, Putin in alliance with Xi will bestow on whoever is American president foreign policy and domestic challenges greater than any the U.S. has experienced since the coldest days of the Cold War.
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*The authors are Andrea Kendall-Taylor and Richard Fontaine.