China parrots Russian propaganda on the Ukraine war, sharply criticizes Washington, and may tacitly back Moscow’s invasion, but Beijing is also poised to exploit the situation to elevate its own power in the region, a top security aide in the Trump administration said Wednesday.
The Chinese are “looking at dominance, they’re not looking at it as a partnership with Russia,” retired Army Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, who served as former Vice President Mike Pence’s national security adviser, said at a Wednesday event looking at how Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is already reshaping the world order.
At “The Washington Brief,” a monthly virtual forum hosted by The Washington Times Foundation, Lt. Gen. Kellogg predicted China will take advantage of Russian economic strain under Western sanctions — bailing Moscow out, but at a cost.
“[China] is the nation that uses debt diplomacy better than any other,” Lt. Gen. Kellogg said, adding that any move to help Russia will be “conditions-based,” with the conditions being “whatever [Chinese President Xi Jinping] wants.”
Robert Joseph, a former undersecretary of state for arms control and international security, and Joseph DeTrani, a former CIA official and longtime diplomatic adviser on U.S. policy in Asia, generally seconded Lt. Gen. Kellogg’s assessment at the event. Both, however, cautioned that China-Russia dynamics are complex, with Moscow and Beijing distrustful of each other despite sharing a desire to undermine U.S. power on the world stage.
“This is a relationship of expediency,” said Mr. Joseph. “There’s certainly no lost love between the two, certainly a great number of suspicions between the two, certainly a Chinese desire to basically make Russia a vassal state through the economic interrelationships.”
“But I think they are united … in their opposition to the United States,” he said. The U.S. approach, he added, should be to exploit the tensions, but “I don’t think we’ve done a very good job to date of doing that.”
Mr. DeTrani called the current Russia-China alignment “a marriage of convenience” that “speaks to both countries viewing the U.S. as an adversary.”
The extent to which the autocracy of Communist Party-rule in Beijing and the despotism of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s Moscow will truly coalesce behind a mission to defeat liberal democracy, free speech and rule of law around the globe is a subject of growing debate. Most agree China intends to wait until the Russian economy is fully broken before helping Moscow, the better to dominate the post-war alliance.
Reuters reported Wednesday that China’s state oil refiners are honoring existing Russian oil contracts, but have so far avoided new ones despite steep discounts, effectively observing Western sanctions imposed after the Feb. 24 invasion.
Chinese officials “look at everything strategically and they look at everything long-term,” Lt. Gen. Kellogg said on Tuesday. “We looked at the Chinese in the Trump administration as the primary threat, as the adversary that we are going to have to address well into the future, both economically and militarily and diplomatically.”
On a separate front, Lt. Gen. Kellogg said Mr. Biden has U.S. influence over the events in Ukraine by engaging in extreme rhetoric, saying Mr. Biden made a “huge mistake’’ in labeling Mr. Putin a war criminal.
“You can’t walk those comments back,” he said, suggesting Mr. Putin is likely so outraged that “now there’s no chance of the United States, I believe, being a good intermediary” in any future peace talks.
He contended that former President Donald Trump had more careful in comments on foreign adversaries. “He said you have to watch your language as a leader,” Lt. Gen. Kellogg said. “For most people, they wouldn’t believe he would think like that, but he did.”
Lt. Gen. Kellogg said that Washington badly miscalculated how angry and resentful Mr. Putin was at the break-up of the Soviet Union, a development followed in 1991 by Ukraine’s declaring independence. Washington underestimated “how bad [the Russians] feel about [NATO] expansion,” he said, adding that the U.S. should be wary of such miscalculations going forward.
“I think that should be on President Biden’s mind when he makes his comments,” Lt. Gen. Kellogg said.
• Guy Taylor can be reached at gtaylor@washingtontimes.com.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.