Return to Winter: Russia, China, and the New Cold War Against America (4 page)

Traditionally, when a great issue has come to the fore demanding American action, American presidents have spoken to the world in clear and unequivocal language—saying, in effect, “We will handle this.” Obama, by contrast, says, “We will look into this and get back to you”—and then he does neither. For years, he has fostered the growing sense that America wishes to disentangle itself from leadership in the world. He seems unwilling or unable to recognize that when America steps away from leadership, the world becomes more dangerous.

We remain convinced that strengthening, renewing, and promoting democratic institutions worldwide is a fundamental mission of the United States. This means championing U.S. and Western values whenever and wherever we can—through means such as the Voice of America—and providing far more robust assistance to democratic groups around the world while imposing tough penalties and sanctions on antidemocratic forces. Despite recent setbacks, the democratic ideal remains strong around the world, and the United States makes a profound mistake when it fails to promote democratic institutions globally to its utmost capacity. This diffidence is not only wrongheaded; it also carries ominous implications for our influence and authority around the world. It may be that democratic institutions are being tested in ways we never expected them to be. But it is the institutions and the politicians that are failing, not the democratic ideal or democratic values. If anything, those values become more essential in the face of autocracy, authoritarianism, and repression—as made clear by the courage and resolve of freedom-seeking people in Istanbul, Kiev, and Moscow, and around the Middle East. Exasperated with the Obama administration’s failures, some are tempted to look to 2016 for a change in the American approach. And yet, a crisis-ridden world will not cooperate with our desire to sit out until better leadership arrives. Two more years in the current climate is too long to wait. Somehow, the United States must regain a clear sense of foreign-policy mission. In
our view, this mission means reassuming American preeminence—in our defense capabilities, in our stewardship of Western alliances, and in our articulation of democratic values. The longer we delay in righting our course, the more difficult the task will be.

These truths are gaining acceptance across the American political spectrum. In May 2014, former Defense Secretary Robert Gates gave a commencement address at Georgetown. Gates said that the United States remains the country that the world looks to for advancement of the cause of freedom, liberty, and democracy. Yet, at a time of growing threats around the globe, we have degraded our defense capabilities severely. As Gates reminded his listeners, “soft” power means little without hard power to back it up.
The Economist
, always a fair and nuanced critic of the president, has made a similar point: “Credibility is about reassurance as well as the use of force. Credibility is also easily lost and hard to rebuild.” Arguing that Obama has been an “inattentive friend” to American allies, the magazine also invoked his Syrian retreat to underline that he had “broken the cardinal rule of superpower deterrence: You must keep your word.”
⁸⁰

Obama has often defended his approach by pointing to the growing isolationist sentiments of the American electorate. Polls do show such leanings, as they have for years, but the case for engagement remains compelling—and needs only a president who can make the public argument for it. Indeed, in an NBC/Wall Street Journal poll in which respondents voiced isolationist sentiments, 55 percent nonetheless agreed that it was important for the U.S. to project an “image of strength.”
⁸¹
In our view, this suggests that isolationist sentiment is only skin-deep. We believe that, recent discouragements aside, most Americans still identify with assertion over accommodation—and with standing up for our principles, our values, and our broader interests.

This should not be confused with advocacy of endless war or of an overly intrusive United States. Rather, what we must do is offer credible
deterrence again. As this book went to press, the Justice Department announced the indictment of five officers of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army for violations of cyber security. The charges are almost certainly symbolic—Beijing isn’t going to extradite these gentlemen to Washington for a trial—and more important, they are incomplete. We made no mention of going after government officials or Chinese businesses that enable and facilitate these hackers. However, at least the charges suggest accountability, recognition, and acknowledgment; all are essential if America is to grasp what it faces and begin fighting back.

In this book, we have outlined a bold and multifaceted set of initiatives the U.S. should implement if we are to begin restoring our place in the world as the bulwark of freedom, liberty, and democracy. Yet no matter how many good ideas are offered, strong leadership remains essential. The Obama administration has been hesitant, halting, and hamstrung.

This simply must change. Unless the United States rebuilds a robust defense, clearly asserts its interests and values, assures its allies, and offers unapologetic leadership, we will fail. And our failure will carry with it a huge price: the collapse of the post–World War II international architecture. To avoid such a scenario, the United States—still the world’s only “indispensable nation”—must reassume its rightful role as the world’s only superpower.

Superpowers, as Robert Kagan wrote recently, “Don’t get to retire.”
⁸²

Time is short, but it is not too late—yet.

Preface to the Paperback Edition

Authors’ note: We are writing this updated preface to the new edition of
The Russia-China Axis,
now titled “Return to Winter: Russia, China, and the New Cold War Against America,” in early summer 2015—at a time when events around the world only strengthen our convictions about the arguments we make in this book. What follows is a brief overview of what has occurred since the book’s first edition appeared last year
.

One year ago, when we published
The Russia-China Axis
, we felt strongly that we had written a book compelling in its analysis, accurate in its appraisal, and prescient in its warning that the United States was at mounting risk from a new, anti-Western alliance between Moscow and Beijing. We believed that the new Russia-China partnership, across every international front, spelled enormous risk for the United States and the Western democracies, and we tried to sound the alarm that the West, especially America, has shown no strategy and no will to take it on. In our view, the United States and its allies are at greater risk than at any time since the end of the Cold War.

A year later, at the risk of sounding immodest, we can only say: We were right.

Across every front, Russia and China continue on the march. The Russians changed the borders of Europe for the first time since World War II, with their illegal annexation of Crimea, and they are poised
to destabilize and possibly even annex substantial additional parts of Eastern Ukraine. The Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, as well as large parts of the Arctic, appear to be next on Putin’s hit list. Moscow is increasing its defense budget exponentially and upgrading its nuclear arsenal, and sending the message regularly to Washington and the European capitals that it is ready to confront us. Even as the Obama administration has tried to celebrate its ill-considered nuclear agreement with Iran, for example, Russian president Vladimir Putin has sold Tehran a missile-defense system that will fortify the Iranians against retaliatory attacks should they violate the agreement’s terms—an inevitability, to those who see the regime’s intentions clearly. Even more alarming has been Russia’s escalating military involvement in Syria, where it has deployed troops and heavy weapons to provide support for Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

Meanwhile, the Chinese are pursuing outright expansionism in the East China Sea and the South China Sea, where they are flouting international law and making brazen claims that, if conceded, would put one of the world’s primary shipping lanes almost entirely under Chinese direction. Beijing is also engaging in a massive military buildup—especially of its naval forces—and is aggressively upgrading its nuclear posture. And Beijing continues to tolerate a nuclear North Korea, arguably putting the world at risk.

Russia and China are adept practitioners of the dark arts of cyber warfare. Both countries have been implicated in recent years in major attacks against American targets. And both Beijing and Moscow have moved boldly—and with distressing effectiveness—to make common cause, politically and economically, with American adversaries around the world, from the Middle East to Latin America.

More quietly yet equally if not more troubling, Russia and China have pursued systematic economic expansionism internationally—including in the West, and including in America’s backyard. Chinese
and Russian state-owned firms, their subsidiaries, and shell companies operating under different names have headquarters or offices in hundreds of locations around the world, constituting what a consultant to Western defense organizations calls “the fifth theater”—economic and financial. Meanwhile, at the state level, China and Russia are busy forging economic deals around the world, whether in Africa, where the Chinese have become the continent’s largest trading partner and are leading massive infrastructure investment, or in Latin America (Monroe Doctrine be damned), where the Chinese have become the continent’s top export market and leading creditor. And the Russians have busily pursued economic and trade deals, including significant sales of military hardware to U.S. adversaries.

The Russians and Chinese are tightening their economic relationship with each other, too. In 2014, they signed a $400 billion natural-gas pipeline deal that Putin called “an epochal event” in relations between the two countries. This year, the state-owned China Railway Group announced that it would partner with Russia in constructing a high-speed rail connection between Moscow and Kazan, one of Russia’s largest cities.

No wonder Putin exulted that Russian-Chinese relations have reached a level “unprecedented in history.”
¹

What unites all of these efforts is a common goal: to thwart the United States and the Western alliance at every turn, providing a counterweight in the form of a more autocratic, anti-Western system of political arrangements and individual rights. We wrote
The Russia-China Axis
to offer readers a glimpse at how this all worked and to raise the alarm about how ill-prepared the United States seems to be to confront it. Since the first edition appeared last year, the assertiveness and sometimes outright provocation of the two partners has continued—individually, or in tandem with each other or with rogue actors—and the consequences for the United States and its allies grow graver by the day.

Yet the challenge that Russia and China present still seems largely unrecognized by our political leaders, to say nothing of the public at large. We must confront it if America is going to maintain its preeminent position in the world. That task is made incalculably more difficult by a dynamic that we have observed, and lamented, for years: Chinese and Russian aggression, assertiveness, and strategic clarity, on the one hand; and American retrenchment, lack of commitment, and strategic ineptitude, on the other. We see it across the board—whether in our wholly inadequate and uncommitted effort to fight ISIS, our refusal to engage in tough diplomacy with Iran on the nuclear deal, or in our passive and ineffective global diplomacy, with our own allies and also as regards the shrewd and determined moves that Putin and Xi Jinping are making around the world.

The bottom line is this: Russia and China know what they want, are determined and organized in how they are pursuing it, and are meeting, by and large, with substantial success in their goals. None of this can be said about the American response, let alone about any proactive American vision for leadership in the 21st century. Until this changes, it’s hard to feel optimistic. Our adversaries would be formidable on their own; working together, they cast a long shadow over the American future.

A DEEPENING, STRENGTHENING ALLIANCE

On May 17, 2015, originating from Novorissiysk on the Black Sea, the Russian and Chinese navies began weeklong joint naval exercises: Sea Cooperation 2015, as the Russian Defense Ministry billed it. Ten ships from the two countries participated, anchored by the
Moskva
, Russia’s Crimea-based guided-missile cruiser, which served as headquarters for the drills. The goal of the exercises was to “strengthen mutual understanding between the navies . . . regarding boosting stability,
countering new challenges and threats at sea,” said Russian deputy navy commander Aleksandr Fedotenkov. “The joint drills are not aimed against third parties and are not connected with the political situation in that region,” the Russian Defense Ministry said.

Despite those disclaimers, no observer, watching the navy ships pass in tandem, could miss the message: that the Russia-China alliance, once viewed as unthinkable, continues to deepen, with profound consequences for the world. The exercises take place as Russia continues to stare down the United States and its Western allies about Moscow’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its continued destabilization of Ukraine, and as China is confronting the United States and its Asian allies in the Pacific, where Beijing’s aggressive moves against neighboring countries seem to be challenges to regional security. What better time than now, then, and what better place than the Mediterranean—on NATO’s southern perimeter—for Russian president Vladimir Putin and Chinese president Xi Jinping to advertise the strength of their growing partnership?

Sea Cooperation 2015 took place a week after Russia’s annual Victory Day ceremonies commemorating its triumph in World War II over Germany. This year marked the 70th anniversary of that historic moment, so the celebrations were grander than usual. Russian soldiers marched in period garb, and 2,000 surviving Red Army veterans of what Russians call the Great Patriotic War were bused in to Moscow for the ceremonies. But because of Putin’s aggression in Ukraine and violation of international law in annexing Crimea, no head of state from the Western democracies agreed to attend.

That was okay with Putin, though—because he had Xi sitting by his side.

The Chinese president was the most high-profile world leader in Moscow, where he joined Putin on the reviewing stand and watched not only Russian troops but a Chinese honor guard, too—which marched
past the two leaders singing “Katyusha,” a Russian war ballad. Along with the troops and pageantry, Putin wheeled out an impressive new tank, the Armata, considered by some to be the Russian army’s new “secret weapon,” and a new ICBM launcher. In his Victory Day speech, Putin made sure to get a dig in at the West and at the United States in particular.

“In past decades, we have seen attempts to create a unipolar world,” Putin said, referring to what he sees as American attempts to control the affairs of other countries.

If the joint naval exercise wasn’t the largest of its kind, and the Victory Day parade mostly pageantry and symbolism, the two events nonetheless underscore the Russian-Chinese partnership, which is far more substantive, in all major categories—military cooperation, economic and trade agreements, cyber-security issues, dealings with rogue nations, and mutual support in international venues such as the United Nations. This cooperation would be concerning enough on its own to American interests and those of our allies, but independently, Russia and China are also engaged in what amount to stare-downs with the United States in critical spots in the world.

FLASHPOINTS

Russia’s aggression in Ukraine could be poised to reach a crucial stage. Troubling signs suggest that we could soon see a major Russian incursion. The Ukrainian government in Kiev has already lost more than two dozen towns to the Russian-backed separatists since early 2015. Ukraine president Petro Poroshenko has warned that 50,000 Russian troops remain massed on the Ukraine border—despite Moscow’s repeated attempts to deny aggressive intent—while some 40,000 separatists or Russian loyalists are operating inside the country. Those numbers taken together represent an increase of 50 percent from the same time in 2014.

The separatist militants have repeatedly violated the Minsk II cease-fire agreement, provoking armed confrontations and shooting at Ukrainian positions.
²
The Kiev-based government in Ukraine now claims that Russia violates the cease-fire 50 to 80 times a day. Moscow’s proxies in Ukraine have shelled Avdiyivka in eastern Ukraine, a town still held by the Kiev government, and also fired on Ukrainian forces near the port of Mariupol. Moscow’s allies have brought in heavy weaponry, including tanks—again in direct violation of Minsk. Russian special forces have infiltrated Ukraine, and the Russians have maintained surface-to-air missile systems in areas prohibited by the agreement.
³
And a report from a Virginia-based cyber-security firm indicates that Russia has been waging a cyber war against Ukraine all along.
⁴

In the words of a senior Western diplomat: “The familiar pattern is recurring. Russia makes high-level assurances that it wants peace, and meanwhile stokes the violence on the ground with fighters and arms.”
⁵

All the signs point to a Russian escalation. The proof will come in Moscow’s deeds, not its denials. But it’s worth remembering that Russian actions in Ukraine have already crossed a Rubicon before now—several Rubicons. The annexation of Crimea itself was thought unthinkable—until Putin went in and did it. Then, in summer 2014, while Moscow was supplying the separatist rebels in Donetsk and Luhansk with tanks, rocket launchers, and advanced air-defense systems, one of those air-defense systems shot down Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, killing 298 civilians.
⁶
Forensic evidence implicates Russian regular forces, as opposed to separatist rebels, for the incident, according to an independent report from a German research organization.
⁷
The episode aroused memories of Moscow’s downing of Korean Air 007 in 1983, which took place during some of the frostiest days of the Cold War.

Recent years seem to have liberated Putin to be more frank and unapologetic about his aims. He has publicly acknowledged that he
ordered the annexation of Crimea weeks before that region’s referendum on independence,
⁸
and he admitted that he was willing to put Russian nuclear forces on alert during the Crimea crisis.
⁹
Putin might also feel emboldened because his back-against-the-wall stance against the West has bolstered his political popularity at home, where his approval ratings remain very high. Western sanctions on Russia for its behavior in Ukraine show little sign of working, even after multiple rounds, the most recent following the downing of Flight 17.

Respected, sober political analysts, such as Graham Allison and Dimitri K. Simes, writing in the
National Interest
, warn that a U.S. response to Russian aggression in Ukraine could potentially lead to war. (Conflicting accounts even suggest that Putin has threatened to use nukes if the United States intervenes in any substantial way.) A Russian–American war seems inconceivable to many, but Allison and Simes caution that “when judging something to be ‘inconceivable,’ we should always remind ourselves that this is a statement not about what is possible in the world, but about what we can imagine.” How many of us imagined that one day Putin would dare to send two Russian nuclear bombers into American airspace over Alaska? That’s what he did in May 2015.