Leaders spoke for nearly two hours, but Biden did not make any direct requests to Xi to persuade Putin to end the attack
Julian Borger The Guardian
Joe Biden spoke for nearly two hours with Xi Jinping as the US sought to dissuade China from backing Russia’s war on Ukraine.
A White House account of the call on Friday said that the US president “described the implications and consequences if China provides material support to Russia as it conducts brutal attacks against Ukrainian cities and civilians”.
A senior administration official said there would be consequences “not just for China’s relationship with the United States, but for the wider world”, but would not give more details on whether Biden had gone into specifics on possible sanctions, other than to point out what had happened to Russia as an example.
“The president really laid out in a lot of detail the unified response from not only governments around the world, but also the private sector to Russia’s brutal aggression in Ukraine,” the official said. “The president made clear that there would likely be consequences for those who would step in to support Russia at this time.”
Biden did not make any direct requests to Xi to persuade Putin to end the attack.
“The president really wasn’t making specific requests of China. He was laying out his assessment of the situation … and the implications of certain actions,” the official said. “Our view is that China will make its own decisions.”
The Chinese account of the conversation in the state news agency, Xinhua, said it was “candid and in-depth” but gave little detail about Ukraine. The report said that Xi expressed the wish that the war was not happening, but gave no sign of what the Chinese leader’s intentions were towards support for Moscow.
Xi said the situation in Ukraine had developed to such a point “that China does not want to see” according to the report, which stuck to Beijing’s policy of avoiding the words “war” or “invasion”.
Beijing’s readout of the call did not suggest any Chinese role in ending the war. It quoted Xi as referring to a favorite adage, “Let he who tied the bell on the tiger’s neck take it off”, a seeming reference to China’s position that the US and NATO are ultimately to blame for Vladimir Putin’s actions.
Beijing blames the war on NATO’s refusal to rule out future Ukrainian membership of the alliance, and western supplies of weapons to the country. Xi also expressed concern about the impact on Taiwan, which he has vowed to restore to rule from Beijing.
Xi claimed “some people in the United States are sending the wrong signals to the ‘Taiwan independence’ forces, which is very dangerous”.
“If the Taiwan issue is not handled properly, it will have a subversive impact on the relationship between the two countries,” Xi added. The US “One China” policy acknowledges that Taiwan is part of China, but Washington does not recognize Beijing has sovereignty over the island.
Fox News Article
Robert Maginnis is a retired U.S. Army officer and an experienced military analyst with on-the-ground experience inside Russia and Ukraine and the author of a number of books that address the Russia and China threat, including “Give Me Liberty, Not Marxism” (2021).
The war in Ukraine is another indicator of our new cold war, which pits the U.S. and its allies against what he labels the alliance of evil, Russia and China, which will create levels of anxiety not experienced since the end of the old Cold War.
This new cold war is different from the old war which was mostly about ideology, communism versus democracy, pitting the U.S. and the former Soviet Union in a death struggle. Today’s conflict is between opposing world views, liberty versus authoritarianism.
The old Cold War rose from the ashes of World War II. Recall that President Franklin Roosevelt aligned us with Soviet Russia only because Adolf Hitler attacked Russia, which temporarily put aside our concerns about the communist regime. However, tensions quickly rose after the war when Russia seized much of Eastern Europe and detonated a nuclear bomb.
Cold War paranoia of a Soviet invasion and nuclear annihilation impacted our lives at school and work with mandated duck-and-cover drills, evacuations, and the sound of air raid sirens.
Families built backyard fallout shelters, communities designated air raid facilities and the government proliferated educational films on how to survive a nuclear blast. There were warnings about communists in government which fed suspicions even about our neighbors’ sympathies.
Tension increased as the nuclear arms race reached a pinnacle in 1962 when Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev sent nuclear-tipped missiles to Cuba. President John F. Kennedy responded by blockading Russian ships heading to Cuba. That confrontation was the closest the Cold War came to escalating to a full-scale Armageddon.
Fortunately, the U.S. and Russia never directly fought each other. However, the period was marked by proxy wars in Korea, Vietnam, Angola, Cambodia and Congo.
In 1981, President Ronald Reagan came to office just in time to demonstrate unflinching fortitude and clarity of aim to lead the West to end the Cold War, by addressing the fight on many fronts. Most importantly Reagan knew that any appeasement to Moscow was as good as aiding a ruthless enemy.
Today, a new conflict is threatening the world thanks to the alignment of the People’s Republic of China and the Russian Federation. Last month, China’s President Xi Jinping and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin met in Beijing, where they released a joint communiqué, which former U.S. Senator Joe Lieberman (I-Conn.) labeled “… a declaration of ideological and geopolitical war against the US….”
There are at least 6 indicators of that new cold war, which Mr. McGinnis addresses in his 2018 book, “Alliance of Evil.”
Diplomatic indicator
Relations between the U.S. and both Russia and China are in the toilet. For example, on Feb. 26, 2022, Dmitry Medvedev, a former Russian president, said Moscow may react to Western sanctions imposed for the Ukraine invasion by severing all diplomatic ties.
World order indicator
Many Western leaders indicate that China and Russia are seeking to “replace the existing international rules” with their own. European Union chief Ursula von der Leyen accused Moscow of a “blatant attempt” to revamp global order.
She said that Russia and China want to “replace the existing international rules – they prefer the rule of the strongest to the rule of law, intimidation instead of self-determination.”
Economic indicator
Both Russia and China are persistent violators of economic and trade agreements. China seeks ascendancy as the world’s dominant producer of industrial goods and is doing that by violating many World Trade Organization rules, cornering global markets on key commodities, conducting financial warfare using mercantilist behaviors and manipulating its currency.
President Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative, that touches many countries, is a “debt trap,” according to British MI6 chief, Richard Moore. It leaves behind half-built bridges, overbudget railways and mountains of debt, Moore said.
Defense budget indicator
Both Russia and China spend more of their gross domestic product on defense than the global average, and much of their security investment is hidden, which makes comparisons with the U.S. meaningless.
Chinese defense spending has dramatically increased by more than 250% over the past decade, according to Janes Military Information Group.
Large, sophisticated military indicator
Thanks to heavy investment, both Russia and China are building large and sophisticated militaries to contest the US on an equal basis. The Pentagon’s 2021 report on China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) indicates it fields the largest force in the world and seeks “complete PLA modernization by 2035.”
Further, as evidence of its global ambitions, the “Chinese military is developing capabilities to conduct joint long-range precision strikes across domains, increasingly sophisticated space, counterspace, and cyber capabilities, and accelerating the large-scale expansion of its nuclear forces.”
Nuclear forces indicator
Although Russia has a giant nuclear arsenal (6,800 warheads) and threatens to abandon the New START treaty which limits each country, China is creating a serious new threat.
The Chinese military is modernizing and rapidly expanding its nuclear forces – land, sea and air delivery platforms. It has also increased its capacity to produce plutonium-239, necessary to build nuclear weapons. Further, the 2021 Pentagon report indicates the regime is expected to accelerate weapons production to at least 1,000 warheads by 2030.
Let there be no doubt, the China-Russia authoritarian alliance is very real, and threatens our world. Both Xi and Putin intend to dominate our future no matter the cost, and Ukraine and perhaps a coming attack on Taiwan are just the beginning.
Author Gordon G. Chang , Fox News interview:
Author Gordon G. Chang, who recently spoke at the Conservative Political Action Committee Conference in Florida, warned that President Biden’s lack of significant action against Russia will help China’s efforts to “marginalize the United States” as Beijing is closely monitoring the administration’s ineffective response to the invasion of Ukraine.
“China wants to destabilize the world. It certainly wants to marginalize the United States and Russia is doing Beijing’s bidding,”
“That’s why Beijing has announced all of these no-limits partnerships, and we’ve heard all of these commodities deals recently such as $117.5 billion of new oil and gas arrangements that was announced February 4,” he continued. “Just a couple of days ago they cut a deal for 100 million metric tons of coal to China.
Basically, Beijing is financing Russian expansionism because it’s good for China because it makes sure that the United States is preoccupied in Europe.”
Last week, Sergey Mochalnikov, the head of the Russian Energy Ministry, announced a pact that will add to an already lucrative deal Russia signed with India in Nov. 2021 to supply 40 million tons of coal. Russian news outlet TASS, which is owned by the government, reported on the deal.
Chang also warned that China “likes to see the United States humbled” and the current administration is making things easy for them.
“Biden is not defending Ukraine and Europe the way he should be,” Chang said. “Beijing is watching very closely what the United States does.”
In addition to all of this, Chinese President Xi Jinping has sent a message to North Korean leader Kim Jong Un emphasizing cooperation between the two countries, according to state media in North Korea.
Xi said that China was ready to work with North Korea to realize the two sides’ “common understanding” and promote friendly and supportive relations under “a new situation,” state media outlet KCNA reported Saturday.
The report didn’t provide details on the “new situation,” according to Reuters, which first reported on Xi’s message but I think we all know what he was referring to.
Xi’s remarks came in response to Kim’s message of congratulations following the close of the Winter Olympics in Beijing, state media reported.
The messages of support between the two countries also came a day after Xi offered his “support” for Russian President Vladimir Putin as Russian forces bombarded Ukraine in a full-scale invasion.
According to a readout of a call held between the two allies, Xi expressed the importance of rejecting a “Cold War mentality” and said he takes “seriously and respect[s] the reasonable security concerns of all countries.”
China has remained tight-lipped in condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, merely repeating talking points and claiming it respects “all countries’ sovereignty and territorial integrity.”
Chang noted that there was an onslaught or propaganda coming from Beijing last summer following Biden’s botched withdraw from Afghanistan.
“How the United States couldn’t win wars anymore, how when China invaded Taiwan that the island would fall within hours and the U.S. military would not come to help,” he said. “So, clearly they’re watching U.S. responses to Ukraine.”
Xi Jinping has suggested the nation would take control of Taiwan in the near future.
“This does create an opportunity for Xi Jinping, who otherwise might have been deterred by the United States. Now, he sees the United States not using its power, so therefore, there is this opening that Xi Jinping is starting to perceive,” Chang said.
Meanwhile, there have been reports that Biden recently shared intelligence with China, which quickly shared it with Russia.
“I can’t understand why the Biden administration thought that China would keep U.S. intelligence from Russia. They just announced their no-limits partnership,” Chang said.
“This is something where we believe China should calculate its interests in one way and therefore, we believe Beijing, in fact, does. But, no, it’s clear that Beijing believes that its interests are with Russia, not with the United States, so this is a failure of the Biden administration to understand Beijing’s foreign policy.”
Chang said Moscow and Beijing have a “solid, stable” relationship, at least for the time being.
“They’re closer than allies,” he said. “It is something that is directed against the United States…. At this moment, China and Russia are working very closely together to destabilize the world and to move against the United States.”
While Chang is concerned about Russia’s relationship with China, he suspects that the United States will prevail – but only if Biden steps up to the plate.
“The problem is that the Biden administration is not willing to use U.S. power to protect not only the international system but also to protect the United States.”
The Washington Examiner
Bear in mind, it was Biden who stated, “China is not our enemy. We want to see China rise.” During his campaign for the presidency.
For the many people who have lost their jobs, financial stability, or even their loved one’s lives at the hands of China’s malpractice, Joe Biden’s uninformed and ignorant rhetoric should rightly cause them to shudder.
After all, the Democratic president Biden has time and time again gone out of his way to downplay China’s role in causing global hardships, in the end proving he was incorrect.
But the larger issue is how many times he is wrong on foreign policy. Take it from former Obama Defense Secretary Bob Gates: Biden “has been wrong on nearly every major foreign policy and national security issue over the past four decades.”
So, with the stakes at their highest levels in decades, we find ourselves being led by a federal government that is not only weak and indecisive, but under the leadership of a man with a long history of being wrong on foreign policy.