While America’s President Joe Biden was in Tel Aviv doing his level best to tamp down the crisis in the Middle East, China’s President Xi Jinping and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin were playing kissy face in Beijing. Xi took the occasion to emphasize his “deep friendship” with his Russian counterpart. Putin meantime basked in the glow of his “old” and “dear” friend, Xi.
The juxtaposition of these two scenes is symbolic – and it is substantive. Though Russia and China have interests in the Middle East, and though even China has recently dabbled in Middle East diplomacy (it brokered a detente between Iran and Saudi Arabia), during the current crisis Xi and Putin both have steered clear. Let Biden risk his reputation and dirty his hands in the blood and guts of the fighting between Israel and Hamas – no reason, so far, for the two tyrants to do the same.
The divide between the sides could not be sharper or starker if it were choreographed. On the one side, the leaders of the two nations most obviously associated with authoritarianism if not totalitarianism. On the other side, the leader of the state most historically representative of liberal democracy.
Of course, if it were just these three players striding on the global stage it would be one thing. But it is not. Since Putin’s war on Ukraine, other countries around the world have been more pressed to take sides, precisely because the axis between China and Russia has been growing tighter and their interests more clearly aligned. All this when the American system of government has been looking decidedly ragged. It’s no fault of Biden’s that for weeks the House has lacked a speaker. Nor is it any fault of Biden’s that for years a corrupt crook has controlled the Republican Party. Still, it’s the president who leads our democracy – now weakened if not threatened by dysfunction.
The fact that Xi is the undisputed leader of China and Putin of Russia has implications abroad and at home. Abroad their appetite for risk has increased over the years not decreased. Just this week Chinese vessels confronted or even blocked Philippine boats in the disputed waters of the South China Sea. And just this week the foreign minister of Russia shook hands with the president of Iran – while Russian forces claimed successful artillery and air strikes near the Ukrainian city of Bakhmut. Old China hand Matt Pottinger cautions that “even with a weak economy, Xi is feeling emboldened.” Meantime, the president of Finland, Sauli Niinisto, warns about the dangers of Russian escalation in Europe. “The risk,” he recently went so far as to remark, “that nuclear weapons could be used is tremendous.”
The situation at home – at home in China and in Russia – mirrors that abroad. Both Xi and Putin now rule with an iron fist. Dissent is met with swift, brutal punishment. Virtually complete compliance with the state and, in China with the Chinese Communist Party, is demanded and accorded. The few exceptions prove the rule – most famously Alexsei Navalny, for many years the most prominent and painful thorn in Putin’s side. The levels and durations of Navalny’s imprisonments and punishments continue constantly to escalate – to the point where his lawyers themselves are in danger of being incarcerated. Navalny will nearly certainly die alone and away, sealed off from other souls he might contaminate with his dissidence.
For those of us fond of freedom it’s not a pretty picture. But here we are. In a world in which the good guys are hamstringing themselves while the bad guys are taking advantage.