From January 10 to 13, Russia held a series of negotiations with the United States, NATO and the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) on issues such as Russia-US strategic stability and NATO's eastward expansion, but no substantive progress was made in the dialogue. On the much-watched Ukraine issue, Russia and the West are even more deadlocked. Why did the three negotiations reach an impasse? In the face of NATO's eastward expansion, why did Russia fall into the situation where there is no way to retreat? The Observer Network interviewed Jin Canrong, a professor at the School of International Relations of Chinese Min University, on related issues.
【Interview/Observer Network Li Leng】
Observer Network: The three negotiations between Russia and the West ended, but it can be said that the negotiations have reached an impasse, and some commentators have ridiculed them as "talking about loneliness". What points do you think are actually worth paying attention to in these three negotiations?
Jin Canrong: Russia's recent interaction with the West has been interesting. On the one hand, the risk of military confrontation between Russia and Ukraine has increased, and the West has frequently hyped up Russia's deployment of 175,000 troops on the Russian-Ukrainian border, all of which are heavily equipped; at the same time, the United States has begun to intervene in Russia's internal politics, such as the US Senate submitted a new draft sanctions against Russia, including sanctions against Putin personally.
But on the other hand, the two sides are negotiating in a high-profile manner. Russia took the initiative to propose an agreement on Russian security and security, and listed more requirements in the agreement, and it is interesting that the West did not refuse to negotiate with Russia, and talked three times in a row, of course, there was no result.
On January 10, US Deputy Secretary of State Sherman held talks with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Ryabkov, Photo Source: The Paper
As I understand it, the current U.S.-Russia relationship is complex and is mainly due to two reasons.
My hunch is that the Biden administration genuinely wants to ease relations with Russia in order to concentrate on dealing with China in the Indo-Pacific. Therefore, he did not explicitly reject the security guarantee agreement proposed by Russia, saying that it could be considered and negotiated. However, his idea is constrained by multiple forces inside and outside.
As far as external forces are concerned, the Ukrainian government now has a low domestic support rate, so it wants to use the Ukrainian issue to play the anti-Russian card to raise public opinion; and eastern European countries, that is, the "new Europe" spoken of by the Americans, are now very afraid of Russia and are also causing trouble - the presidents of Poland, Ukraine and Lithuania recently held a summit, claiming to "jointly resist Russia".
The situation in the United States is also complicated, and there are two groups of people influencing Biden's decision-making. The deep state hopes to divert the anger of the American population from the domestic ruling class by using Russia's tensions with the West; if the conflict escalates further, they may be able to profit as they did in the War in Afghanistan. In addition, there are still a number of "cold fighters" in the United States who have not completely withdrawn from the stage of history - they were still relatively young at the end of the Cold War, and now they are sixty or seventy years old, their health is OK, and they still have political influence. This group of people has always regarded Russia as the first enemy, and has always wanted to control Europe and create a confrontation between the West and Russia.
And Russia's recent series of tough moves, according to my understanding, there are three reasons. The direct reason is that since the end of the Cold War, several waves of NATO's eastward expansion have forced Russia to retreat; Ukraine's accession to NATO is absolutely unacceptable to Russia. Trapped beasts are fighting, forced into corners, and naturally there will be a reaction.
Indirectly, Putin sees that the West is not very united. The pandemic has led to a sluggish economy in Western countries, and their soaring demand for energy, especially natural gas, has also given Putin some tactical play.
In addition, Putin also sees a strategic shift in the United States. Putin knows that if the United States wants to better deal with China in the Indo-Pacific region, it must win Russia over at the strategic level, so he took the initiative to talk with the West and made a lot of high demands on Russia's security guarantees. Even if the negotiations don't serve their purpose, he can derive a moral advantage from it — by clarifying the fact that the West has been condescending to bully Russia for 30 years since the end of the Cold War, which will both help Russia to unite at home and help Russia gain a little sympathy at the international level.
Observer Network: Putin's recent series of actions are really interesting, and even seem contradictory. First, the "security agreement" was proposed to the United States and NATO, but then in a speech to senior military officers, he pointed out that the West was not a reliable partner, and even if it received written assurances, this assurance was not reliable; however, even if there was no trust, these difficult negotiations were arranged. Are these all just for moral superiority?
Jin Canrong: Gaining moral superiority should be the first purpose, and there is also the possibility of further dividing the West, including the ruling team of the United States - I have given you a chance to reconcile, and if you can't catch it, you can't blame me for the problems in the future.
Observer Network: You just mentioned that "it is conducive to Russia's internal unity", what are the different voices within Russia at the moment about the tough confrontation with the West?
Jin Canrong: Because I am not an expert on Russian issues, I do not know much about the situation in Russia. Judging from media reports alone, Russia is not monolithic. Oligarchs, some intellectuals and some young people who are closely related to Western interests are more pro-Western, hoping that Russia will ease relations with the West; while most Russians have strong nationalist sentiments and support Putin's current policy, believing that Putin's demands on the West are very reasonable, and if the West refuses to accept them, it is a particularly unreasonable performance.
Observer Network: You just mentioned that Russia has "no retreat", and some readers, especially the younger generation, will be curious, Russia is a big country in international politics, and Putin, who has been in power for many years, is also a hard-line leader, why will he be forced into a dilemma of no retreat step by step on the eastward expansion of NATO? Can you review the relevant journey?
Jin Canrong: It can be said that NATO's eastward expansion laid the foundation for Gorbachev. Gorbachev was a complete nerd, dogmatic and trusting of the West, so he did not put forward the conditions he should have from the Soviet standpoint and persevered to the end at the time of the reunification of East and West Germany.
After the fall of the Berlin Wall, Germany was anxious for reunification, and if the Soviet Union could seize the opportunity to put forward conditions and demand that Germany maintain independence between NATO and the Warsaw Pact after reunification, Germany would most likely agree. As a result, the upper echelons of the Soviet Union at that time collectively fell to the West, and they did not even have the consciousness to defend their own basic rights and interests. East Germany went from being a member of the Warsaw Pact to a member of NATO, setting a very bad precedent for this, and NATO began to gradually encroach on it.
Gorbachev shook hands with then-U.S. President Ronald Reagan
After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the ouster of Gorbachev, Yeltsin came to power. Generally speaking, Yeltsin also had expectations and illusions for the West in the early days, so he did not have enough sense of prevention and countermeasures against the early actions of the West; it was not until NATO bombed Yugoslavia and incorporated the three Baltic countries into NATO that Yeltsin woke up, but even if he woke up, Russia's internal strength was very weak at that time, so the West did not care about his later opposition.
By the time Putin came to power, "NATO's eastward expansion" had become the established policy of the West. In 2004, NATO undertook its largest expansion since its inception. However, at that time, Putin had just come to power for a few years, his position was unstable, and he also had certain illusions about the West in the early days, and Russia's national strength was relatively weak at that time, so his early reaction to NATO's eastward expansion was not strong enough, mainly forbearance.
The turning point should be 2008 when the West wanted to include Georgia in NATO. Georgia's geographical strategy can be described as Russia's "soft belly", which obviously touches Russia's bottom line, Putin's understanding and attitude towards the West began to change; just as oil prices began to rise from 2001 to the peak around 2008, so Russia's national strength in 2008 also recovered a lot compared with before; in addition, there is another basic reason, that is, Putin has always paid attention to the military, by 2008, the military reform has been effective, Russia's military strength has risen. Under the influence of these three factors, Putin announced Russia's invasion of South Ossetia and Abkhazia after attending the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games in Beijing.
After defending Georgia, Putin did not actually want to tear his face with the West, until the color revolution in Ukraine in 2014, which overthrew the pro-Russian president At the time, Yanukovych, putin firmly opposed and countered.
Observer Network: Before the negotiations officially began, there was unrest in Kazakhstan. Because the timing is so precise, there are many views that link this matter to the Ukrainian issue and the Russian-Western confrontation. Do you think kazakhstan's volatility is just a coincidence, or is there a big country behind the guidance?
Jin Canrong: The crisis in Kazakhstan should be mainly due to internal contradictions. The first is the problem of dualistic power structures. Nazarbayev handed over the presidency of Kazakhstan to Tokayev in 2019, but he continues to serve as chairman of the State Security Council and still holds great power in his hands; in addition, Nazarbayev has many cronies, such as his son-in-law, who are dissatisfied with him transferring some of his power to outsiders and trying to fight for power.
Then there is the tribal conflict. Kazakhstan has three large, medium, and small jades, of which the small jade has long been suppressed by the other two, so it has accumulated a lot of dissatisfaction. There is also the problem of the divide between the rich and the poor.
The start of the disturbance was in the coastal city of Aktau, southwest of Kazakhstan, which belongs to Xiaoyuzi territory and is also an oil city, and the monthly wages of oil workers have only risen to 158,000 tenge (about 364 US dollars) after years of struggle and protest, which is far lower than the average monthly wage of Kazakh workers (256,500 tenge, or 603 US dollars).
As a worker in Kazakhstan's backbone industry, this monthly income is too bad; it is even more unspeakable if we consider that Nazarbayev's second daughter and second son-in-law are the richest people in the country, and their property is said to be close to half of Kazakhstan's GDP. Coupled with the impact of the epidemic, many small and medium-sized enterprises have stopped production, and some people in some places cannot survive. These are internal issues.
Everyone has also noticed that this riot must have involved external forces, including terrorists who beheaded law enforcement personnel, and there are also color revolutionary groups represented by NGOs; now, it seems that the more prominent external intervention is Russia, and the action of the CSOS into Kazakhstan is too fast.
Objectively speaking, the riots in Kazakhstan have had a certain impact on Russia's competition with the West in Ukraine, but this effect is indirect. Because Central Asia is also Russia's "soft belly" and has been part of Russia in history, it is a place of contention for Russia. The West is interested in this region, but it also knows that it is difficult to play a leading role in this place, so it has not regarded it as a strategic priority, mainly to make trouble, and this time the trouble is not successful, and it will be troubled later.
In other words, I don't think the focus of U.S.-Russian competition will change because of the unrest in Kazakhstan, and the focus remains on Ukraine.
Observer Network: So how do you think the US-Russia negotiations will affect the Sino-US-Russian triangular relationship?
Jin Canrong: Major country diplomacy has its own independent will, and it is difficult for the outside world to have an impact on it, so the negotiations between the two major powers of the United States and Russia will not change because of the attitude of the third party. With regard to the US-Russia negotiations, China would do well to wait and see what happens and go with the flow; if it finds that the risk of military conflict between the two sides has intensified, it will call on Russia-US relations not to move toward conflict, just as "the five security councils issued a joint statement affirming that nuclear war cannot be won or fought.", which is in the common interest of everyone.
Observer Network: On January 10, Diplomacy magazine published an article titled "Russia Thinks America Is Bluffing", the second half of the article is a bit interesting, revealing that considering that China is Russia's largest trading partner, if Washington wants to threaten Russia with economic sanctions, it needs to make Chinese companies strictly comply with these sanctions requirements, such as not being able to trade with sanctioned Russian companies. Only then would the Kremlin be able to seriously consider the severity of the sanctions that the United States has been clamoring about. If the United States really does this, how can China strike a balance in the middle?
Jin Canrong: Based on the importance of China-Russia relations, China will not act in accordance with the requirements of the United States, of course, China will pay some price for this, but China-Russia relations will also be closer. The question is, can the United States take this step? I guess it's quite difficult. Even if Russia is cut off from the SWIFT international payment system, some Chinese companies will still insist on dealing with Russia; if the United States kicks China out of the SWIFT system, the financial strength of the United States is at risk of being weakened, because China and Russia are likely to take the lead in pulling some countries to rebuild an alternative payment system.
If the United States confronts the two major powers at the same time, China and Russia, it will be in an extremely disadvantageous position strategically. So Biden is now trying to win over Russia, but as he said at the beginning, the strategy is at an impasse due to multiple forces.
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