From
George Castro
International Analyst
It is evident that China’s international status has undergone a turning point in the last two months, and after mediating the confrontation between the two most important countries in the Middle East – Iran and Saudi Arabia – now prepares to reach a negotiated settlement in the Ukrainian war through President Xi Jinping’s trip to Russia.
In this way, it aspires to end a conflict that has lasted for more than a year, in which Ukraine, as part of a coalition led by the United States and NATO, and Russia are facing each other; AND? it has unleashed three global crises: energy, food and inflation.
That is why the Ukrainian war has become the center and axis of world politicsand the age mark depends on its resolution.
In military terms, the war has reached a state of strategic stalemate, Russia has taken a defensive position concentrated on the defense of southern and eastern Ukraine, where he withdrew all his forces into Ukrainian territory.
This ensures it the war has acquired a protracted characterlong-term, which ensures that there is no possible military solution to this conflict.
An element of particular strategic importance must be added, namely that the USA have changed the nature of their participation in the war, and are no longer reduced to assisting Ukraine in its resistance to the Russian invasion, but their objective – in terms of Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin – is drastically decrease the military potential of Moscowand therefore irreversibly change its status as a great power, preventing it from repeating the adventure of February 24, 2022.
means that The United States has no interest in reaching a negotiated solution of the conflict, because it essentially aspires to defeat Russia.
That is why the protracted nature of the war is actually a requirement and a condition of effective American strategy.
This places – it is necessary to underline this observation – in a path of direct confrontation, impossible to hide with subterfuge and euphemisms, between the two superpowersin a clash without mediation between Xi Jinping’s eagerness for mediation and Biden’s systematic refusal to reach a political agreement.
This confrontation is resolved not in terms of war, which is impossible in the age of nuclear deterrence, but according to the balance of power between the superpowers at the present time, both regionally and globally; and there, on this decisive aspect, the strengthening of the People’s Republic is undeniable, above all after its successful mediation against Saudi Arabia and Iran, in the face of the virtual exclusion that the United States has experienced from the most strategic region of the world, which is the Middle Orient.
China is the country that exercises the greatest influence on the Russian government, and in particular on Vladimir Putin; and Xi Jinping also communicated with President Zelensky of Ukraine; and the question with the Ukrainian leader is how and in what way he recovers a minimum of strategic autonomy, overcoming the total dependence on the US that he currently experiences.
As a last option, realities always prevail at the strategic levelit is the relationship that exists between power and force, and this is true more than ever in the relationship between the two superpowers.
China has just resolved a seven-year conflict, with spillovers across the region, between the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Middle East’s main Shiite country, and the Saudi Kingdom, expression of an extreme version of the Sunni conception of Islam. ; and he did it the trust that both protagonists have given himin an extraordinary exercise of prestige and reliability.
These are the weapons with which Xi Jinping is now trying to resolve the Ukrainian crisis; And it is likely that the Chinese leader’s trump card is that, despite the anti-Chinese fury that dominates the American power system (which includes the Executive and Congress, Democrats and Republicans, the media and public opinion), there is in the United States the final understanding that the People’s Republic is not his enemy, and it does not aspire to replace it as the hegemonic center of the world system.
On the contrary, the objective of the People’s Republic is to regain its historical status of “Middle Empire” in the 21st century, a title with which it has been recognized in the East during its 5,000-year history.
In short, between China and the United States there is competition, contradiction and even conflict, but not lethal antagonism.
Perhaps this is the beginning of “oriental wisdom” helping to end the Ukrainian war and its consequences, the three world crises; and at the same time make room for a new global system, without any kind of hegemonismtypical of a world absolutely unified by the technical revolution, and therefore based on cooperation and not on antagonism.
The notions of optimism and pessimism are foreign to Chinese culture. Only commitment to time and the favorable significance of historical events.
Source: Clarin
