Despite the heroic Ukrainian resistance, Ukraine’s fate for its independence was determined the moment the US announced it would not send its troops to Ukraine in any circumstances to prevent direct conflict with Russia.[i] With the reality of the great power politics where “the strong do what they can and weak suffer what they must,”[ii] we can reasonably assume that Russia’s superior military strength and its resolve to stop the NATO expansion will eventually coerce Ukraine into accommodating Russia’s security preference.[iii] Contrary to the certainty of Ukraine’s NATO bid, there is a lack of meaningful debate on the implications of the Russian invasion on international politics. A number of prominent scholars and policy makers have argued that the fall of Ukraine will lead to a new “iron curtain” which will speed up the realignment of the geo-political relations between the US, Europe, Russia, and China into an ideologically divided world with the background of the salient US-China geo-economic and technological competition.[iv] However, if we take a closer look, underneath this popular self-reinforcing belief, Russia’s invasion might have very limited effects on lowering the new “iron curtain” due to the stickiness of the existing complex interdependent global economic cooperation. Counter intuitively, the absence of the US leadership and its opportunistic behaviour in this crisis might create a new space for China as a rising power to play a larger role in maintaining the existing global economic cooperation.
With the symbolic economic sanctions and popular boycotts[v], the Western societies are crafting a self-reinforcing narrative with the help from its mainstream media that interprets the Russian invasion through an ideological lens—the authoritarian dictator is encroaching on the Ukrainian democracy and independence. The argument goes that Russia’s invasion not only pushed the previously indecisive Europe to join the US to contain Russia’s authoritarian expansion, it also facilitated a conducive environment for deeper strategic cooperation between China and Russia – two authoritarian powers in Eurasia that already possess great incentives to resist US pressures[vi] – to challenge a more unified democratic West. Putting aside the naiveté of understanding today’s international politics through an ideological lens, this line of self-centered arguments overlooks the positive-sum economic benefits of the existing interdependent global economic cooperation, the divergent interests of different actors within the same ideological camp as well as severely underestimating the associated costs to re-construct global economic cooperation based on “like-mindedness” or ideological preference.
First, there is no doubt that Russia’s invasion has significantly changed the EU’s calculation of its security as a geo-political actor. With a long history of being dominated by Russia, the Eastern European countries are fearful of their own territorial integrity and political independence as the Russian tanks roll into Ukraine. For the Western European countries, they are rightfully concerned about the economic uncertainty and the refugee problem because of the military conflict in Ukraine.[vii] Facing these security challenges, without a capable European security force, Europe has no other choice but to rely on US security protection under NATO. In other words, Russia’s invasion granted the US tremendous leverage over its European allies. In the realism-dominated international politics, this leverage means that Europe would need to bind itself more closely with the US foreign policy at the cost of its own economic benefits. Thus, the real question is whether the European countries can afford to prioritize ideological coherence in their foreign policy over economic benefits.
With the existing complex interdependent economic structure, the answer is likely to be negative for Europe due to its economy’s dependency on China’s export market and Russia’s energy. In essence, the economic sanctions are a mutually hurting stalemate where the party which has higher tolerance in enduring economic pain obtains the position of strength in bargaining. If we accept this rational logic, Europe is the most vulnerable among the four major geo-political players. For instance, China has become the largest trading partner with the major European economies like Germany[viii] while Russia provides more than one third of Europe’s energy supplies.[ix]Facing severe challenges in the post-Covid economic recovery, it is questionable that the European economy can afford to stay behind this new “iron curtain.” Although it is too soon for any concrete evidence on Europe’s policy change, the progress of the EU–China Comprehensive Agreement on Investment and the continuing energy imports from Russia can serve as the key indicators.
The second externality of Russia’s invasion is that it leads to a closer strategic partnership between Russia and China which was cited by many scholars as the evidence to justify the new “iron curtain” belief. It is true that the Western sanctions have pushed Russia towards China (for example, forming a strategic partnership based on their mutual interest in balancing against the US challenge). Notably , Russia and China issued a critical joint statement—the International Relations Entering a New Era and the Global Sustainable Development—during the Beijing Olympic.[x] This joint statement sends a strong signal of the Sino-Russia strategic partnership in challenging the US-led international order.
However, a strong China-Russia alliance appears to be problematic in view of China’s looking upon the Taiwan issue from the angle of its sovereignty claim. This divergence of national interest prevented China from neither recognizing Crimea in 2014 nor being supportive of the separatist movement in the Donbas region. In other words, this strategic partnership is largely transactional in nature to balance against the US hegemony instead of trying to export some shared authoritarian ideology abroad. Furthermore, China and Russia also have deep historical mutual distrust. Thus, despite the recent developments of the US-China de-coupling and China-Russia strategic partnership, China still shares a lot more common interests with the US than with Russia. For example, both the US and China have incentives (quite frankly need each other) to maintain the existing international economic cooperation as China needs it for its further development while the US needs it to maintain its global leadership (for example, ensuring the US dollar as reserve currency).
Contrary to the self-fulfilling belief that Russia’s invasion will lead to a new “iron curtain” that divides the world into two ideological camps, the Ukraine crisis is more likely to plant the seed for the further deterioration of the cross Atlantic alliance in the long term. America is likely to emerge as a major beneficiary of the Ukraine crisis, from increasing its geopolitical leverage in Europe to ensuring a strong dollar after the unprecedented quantitative easing, after it openly encouraged Ukraine to join NATO but also “giving a green light for Russia to invade.” However, these short-term gains are at the expense of its European allies’ security and economic well-being. In an increasingly multi-polar world, the current US strategies are not without long-term costs in its leadership.
This absence of leadership presents China with a unique opportunity as one of the benefactors of the existing international economic cooperation to construct an alternative paradigm in the Euro-Asia landmass that focuses more on the positive-sum economic cooperation than the zero-sum ideological struggles. This demand for global leadership is aligned with China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and economic diplomacy in general.[xi] If we learned anything from the Cold War, it would be a pragmatic partnership that emerged from the positive-sum economic interests, which will almost always be more powerful and resilient than the alliance that is based on the ideological coherence. However, this opportunity also entails many strategic challenges for China as a rising power within the existing international order. For one, China needs to balance between its long-term political and economic interests and short-term geo-political securities in the wake of the Russian invasion. These challenges not only require China to maintain its strategic patience (such as, controlling its domestic nationalism) over many hot-button issues like Taiwan but also demand its willingness to further invest to safeguard the stable international economic cooperation for its own benefits.
Chen Wang is an independent researcher based in the United States and a managing partner of Roger & Rebecca LLC, a business services company. He is an alumnus of UC Berkeley where he studied international relations and China’s foreign security and economic policies. Views are personal.
Notes
[i] “Biden Says He Won’t Send US Troops to Ukraine to Deter Russian Threat,” The Guardian (Guardian News and Media, December 8, 2021), https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/dec/08/russia-talks-of-rapid-ukraine-discussions-after-biden-putin-summit.
[ii] Thucydides, Martin Hammond, and P. J. Rhodes, The Peloponnesian War (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).
[iii] Samuel Charap and Scott Boston, “U.S. Military Aid to Ukraine: A Silver Bullet?,” RAND Corporation, January 21, 2022, https://www.rand.org/blog/2022/01/us-military-aid-to-ukraine-a-silver-bullet.html.
[iv]Yuhan Zhang and Cheng Chang, “Modeling the US-China Trade Conflict: A Utility Theory Approach”, Journal of Applied Mathematics and Computation 5(2), 2021,
[v] Jordan Mendoza, “From Soccer to Iphones to Cats, Here Are Some Sanctions, Bans and Boycotts Placed on Russia,” USA Today (Gannett Satellite Information Network, March 6, 2022), https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2022/02/28/sanctions-bans-boycotts-russia/9322671002/.
[vi] Stephanie Pezard, Ashley Rhoades, “What Provokes Putin’s Russia?”, Rand Corporation, January 2020, https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/perspectives/PE300/PE338/RAND_PE338.pdf
[vii] “Europe and the Refugee Crisis: A Challenge to Our Civilization,” United Nations (United Nations), accessed February 12, 2022, https://www.un.org/en/academic-impact/europe-and-refugee-crisis-challenge-our-civilization.
[viii] “China Remains Germany’s Top Trading Partner in 2020,” Xinhua, accessed February 12, 2022, http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/europe/2021-02/22/c_139759486.htm.
[ix] “How Will Europe Cope If Russia Cuts off Its Gas?,” The Economist (The Economist Newspaper), accessed February 12, 2022, https://www.economist.com/europe/2022/01/29/how-will-europe-cope-if-russia-cuts-off-its-gas.
[x] “Joint Statement of the Russian Federation and the People’s Republic of China on the International Relations Entering a New Era and the Global Sustainable Development,” President of Russia, February 4, 2022, http://en.kremlin.ru/supplement/5770.
[xi] Chen Wang, “Domestic Conditions Challenge China’s Economic Diplomacy,” East Asia Forum, January 27, 2022, https://www.eastasiaforum.org/2022/01/28/domestic-conditions-challenge-chinas-economic-diplomacy/.