Return to Winter: Russia, China, and the New Cold War Against America (5 page)

Allison and Simes, longtime observers of Russia, say that they are “more concerned about the drift of events than at any point since the end of the Cold War.”
¹⁰
In a sign of what may come next, the Prosecutor General’s Office of Russia has begun a so-called investigation into “the legality of the independence” of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—the Baltic States that were the first to break from the Soviet Union.
¹¹

Meanwhile, Putin’s budding ally in Beijing is also moving aggressively, if more quietly, to expand Chinese influence and put pressure on American allies in Asia. The most visible, consequential, and troubling area of Chinese activity is in the South China Sea, where a newly assertive Beijing is staking claims to disputed island archipelagoes
while building—and fortifying—artificial islands. In effect, China is laying claim to sovereignty over the South China Sea, a direct threat to the law of the seas, as well as to the United States and its Asian allies—whether Japan, the Philippines, Malaysia, South Korea, or Vietnam, the latter not technically an American ally but a country with a long history of difficulty with China. These countries dispute China’s claims and assert counterclaims of their own, but none have the strength and force to pursue their aims as does Beijing. Only America can thwart Chinese designs.

One key flashpoint is the Spratly Islands, home to rich fisheries as well as oil and gas deposits. The territory is disputed: China, Vietnam, Malaysia, and the Philippines all make claim to it, and they occupy pieces of the island.
¹²
In April 2015, satellite images revealed that China is “building a concrete runway” on the Spratlys that would “be capable of handling military aircraft,” including fighter jets and surveillance aircraft.
¹³
This was only the latest evidence of Chinese militarization there: Satellite photos in February showed that China had actually constructed an 800,000-square-foot island on top of Hughes Reef in the Spratlys. China has stationed helipads and anti-aircraft towers on both islands.
¹⁴
It’s all part of its broader strategy to build serviceable land areas in the archipelago to serve Chinese military and territorial pursuits.

What’s at stake here has global ramifications, not only for international security but also for the global economy. If Beijing got its way, its new claims of territory in the South China Sea would convert about 80 percent of the South China Sea and its islands from international waters to Chinese possessions.
¹⁵
The South China Sea is home to some of the world’s busiest shipping lanes, through which passes a substantial portion of the world’s commerce. If China converted these waters to its jurisdiction, America and its Asian allies would be forced to heed Chinese dictates.

Tempers have been flaring—between Beijing and its Asian neighbors, especially in the Philippines, and also between Beijing and Washington. In May 2015, the Obama administration sent a surveillance plane over Fiery Cross Reef, a portion of the Spratlys where one of the Chinese airstrips is being constructed. The surveillance prompted a tense face-off with Chinese naval forces, which ordered the American plane to leave the airspace, and Beijing filed a formal diplomatic complaint.

The words heated up when China released a policy paper detailing its new military strategy, which made clear that its future plans centered around a vast expansion of its naval forces. The document accused China’s neighbors of provocations in the South China Sea, and it also warned America, though not by name. “Some external countries are . . . busy meddling in South China Sea affairs,” it said. “It is thus a long-standing task for China to safeguard its maritime rights and interests.”
¹⁶

Around the same time, a provocative editorial in
Global Times
, a Chinese tabloid, hinted at a showdown with the United States. The editorial argued that conflict between the two great powers was inevitable if the United States didn’t stop interfering in China’s affairs in the South Pacific. “We do not want a military conflict with the United States, but if it were to come, we have to accept it,” the editorial said.
¹⁷

Up to now, Beijing’s aggression has been enabled by a muddled and diffident American response. Though President Obama touted his “Asian pivot” as a key plank in his foreign policy, he has put no muscle behind it. Obama’s speeches stress the importance of Asia, but he has sent no substantial increase of naval forces into the region to bolster our beleaguered allies there, all straining to hold their own against Chinese pressure. Navy data show that the U.S. will deploy an average of only 58 ships to the Western Pacific, and that the number will increase barely 10 percent by 2020.
¹⁸

Obama’s inattention has been interpreted as weakness, and it worries American allies, including Japan and the Philippines—who, perhaps in part because of it, have taken some provocative actions of their own, making the standoff with China more volatile and increasing the risks of escalation or a dangerous incident.

As we go to press, there are some hopeful signs that the United States is awakening to the Chinese challenge. Obama seems to have decided to confront the Chinese more directly—at least by way of demonstrating that Washington has no intention of ceding the South China Sea to Beijing. In May, the Pentagon began exploring options for enforcing freedom of the seas in the South Pacific; these include patrolling American ships within 12 nautical miles of those islands and sending American warplanes over the artificial islands that China is building. The goal would be to send a more concrete warning to Beijing than we have delivered before. But even these steps pose risks. What does the U.S. do if the warning isn’t heeded? Already, China has announced that its determination to say the course in the Spratlys is as “firm as a rock.”
¹⁹
If the U.S. doesn’t follow through, it will once again leave its allies feeling vulnerable, and we will have lost face again in an international dispute, as Obama did in 2013, when he backed down from his heralded “red line” warning in Syria.

Clearly, the Obama administration recognizes that its passive approach in the South China Sea has failed and that something must change. It seems likely, though, that American aims are relatively modest: to dial down Chinese aggression. The airstrip and many of China’s man-made islands are near completion; the Chinese won’t abandon them. The U.S. and its allies are probably going to have to live with that, but through concerted effort, they should work to get Beijing to relinquish its wildly ambitious talk of colonizing the South China Sea and converting international sea lanes into Chinese territorial waters. In short, American options here are limited, which is why
we need leadership and strategic vision more than ever. Dangerous as it could prove to be, the situation in the South China Sea holds more potential for constructive resolution than the crisis in Ukraine: American and Chinese interests are more intertwined than America’s and Russia’s, and in Xi, Washington faces a leader as formidable as Putin but less driven by motives of honor and revenge. American statesmanship has an opening here. All we need is statesmen.

ENABLING AND FACILITATING ROGUE REGIMES

On a separate front, Russia and China’s facilitation of leading rogue actors has sown discord and instability around the world.

In April 2015, the Obama administration announced a preliminary agreement with the Islamic Republic of Iran to limit Iran’s nuclear program, allowing Iran to keep its nuclear facilities open under strict limits. But those limits would be in place for only the first decade of the accord, and even under these, the only assurance that the Americans could provide was that Tehran could not “race for a nuclear weapon in less than a year.” In short, the agreement all but guaranteed that Iran would soon have a nuclear capability. The agreement was reached through the administration’s willful disregard of stubborn facts about the Tehran regime’s behavior and intentions.

Nuclear experts warn that the deal will be impossible to verify, given Iran’s history of noncompliance with similar agreements.
²⁰
Ray Takeyh, an Iran expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, notes that Iran will enjoy “a sizeable enrichment capacity, and none of its facilities will be shuttered as was once contemplated.” And Takeyh points out that the 10-year “sunset clause” is the real key to understanding the agreement. After 10 years, he says, “all essential restriction on Iran’s enrichment infrastructure” will expire, thereby allowing Iran to develop highly advanced nuclear capabilities.
²¹
“What is often missed,”
he adds, “is that Iran’s ingenious strategy is to advance its program incrementally and not provocatively.”

Skeptics of the deal could hardly be encouraged by the increase in provocative behavior from Iran since the deal was announced. In April, Iranian Revolutionary Guard ships fired warning shots and then intercepted and seized a Marshall Islands vessel in the Persian Gulf, only days after Iranian patrol ships surrounded an American vessel.
²²
The United States directed a destroyer toward the area, along with patrol aircraft.
²³
And the Obama administration’s reassurances to Israel about its continued security were belied when Ayatollah Khamenei, discussing the Iran deal shortly after its completion during a speech in Tehran, warned: “I’d say [to Israel] that they will not see [the end] of these 25 years.”
²⁴

Iran’s aggression in the Gulf mirrors that of China’s activities in the South China Sea. In fact, China has enabled much of Iran’s naval activities, in addition to providing other military assistance: “Over the years, China has supplied Iran with anti-ship cruise missiles, surface-to-air missiles, combat aircraft, fast-attack patrol vessels, and technology to produce ballistic missiles and chemical weapons,” writes Tzvi Kahn, a Senior Policy Analyst for the Foreign Policy Initiative.
²⁵
Iran’s naval commander visited China to discuss broader military cooperation shortly before the incidents in the Gulf.
²⁶

Preparing for both Iranian and Chinese naval threats is straining the U.S. Navy’s current force structure.
²⁷

At the same time, Russia, long a partner of Tehran’s, has just announced the sale of an $800 million, S-300 missile-defense system to Iran. Coming just as Iran began formalizing the nuclear deal with the United States, the missile-defense sale is illustrative. It suggests that Iran is emboldened by the arrangements it has made with Washington, while also preparing itself, defensively, for any consequences of breaching the agreement—especially since the Americans insist that the “military
option” remains “on the table” should Iran violate the terms. Putin just made it easier for Iran to do so.

“That deal represents a lot of money to Russia and a system Iran wants,” said Russian expert Tom Nichols, a professor at the Naval War College. “From their perspective, why bother waiting? What price would be paid if they do it? This is what happens when other countries in the world feel they can act as if the United States doesn’t exist.” The missile-defense deal, he continued, was “yet another moment where Russia and Iran underscore the reality that they can do whatever they like, unconstrained by a disengaged United States.”
²⁸

The S-300 sale reflects a deepening alliance between Moscow and Tehran that has developed over certain shared goals, all of which revolve, in some form or another, around checking American influence in the Middle East and around the world. Thus, Moscow has worked assiduously to help Tehran get closer to where it can reach its “breakout” nuclear capacity—after which point, a whole new reality will take shape. That explains why Tehran has dragged out the talks so long; time is its ally, and the Russians are helping them build more nuclear facilities. In 2014, Moscow announced agreement to help Iran build two more nuclear reactors in Bushehr. Moscow and Tehran have also found common cause in Syria, where they support the Assad regime, and they have played an indispensable role in its survival. Both countries are working together to blunt international sanctions against them—Iran because of its nuclear program, Russia for its annexation of Crimea and violation of Ukrainian sovereignty. The two countries have reached an agreement for Russia to market $20 billion of Iranian crude oil on the world market, weakening the U.S. effort to shut down Tehran’s oil revenues.

According to Amir Taheri, the Russians have a phrase,
fortochka Obama
: the “Obama window of opportunity.” It refers to the sense
among many internationally that there will never be a better time than now to make advances and claims, while the United States is saddled with such dilatory leadership. As Taheri summarizes: “By the time the ‘fortochka Obama’ is closed, Moscow and Tehran hope to have consolidated a firewall spanning a vast territory from the Baltics to the Persian Gulf, shielding them against what Putin and Iranian ‘Supreme Guide’ Ali Khamenei designate as ‘American schemes.’”
²⁹

The “fortochka Obama” has been left wide open in Syria, where 2,000 Russian troops have been deployed
³⁰
along with tanks and dozens of aircraft
³¹
to prop up Assad’s government and supplement his military. Russia has also begun to lay the groundwork for even wider involvement, building an additional weapons depot and military facility north of the city of Latakia, Assad’s stronghold.
³²
Putin claims he is backing Assad only to defeat ISIS, because the West has done little to stem the rise of the would-be caliphate. But the facts tell a different story: Putin is playing both sides of the Syria crisis, while America sits on the sidelines. The FSB, Russia’s security service and replacement for the KGB, has established a “green corridor” to allow would-be Russian jihadists, especially from Chechnya, to reach Syria and join up with ISIS.
³³
While Putin backs Assad overtly and ISIS covertly, America has spent $500 million to train a grand total of “four or five” rebels, according to Senate testimony from General Lloyd Austin.
³⁴
In Syria, Putin saw the window of opportunity and climbed through.