Ali Wyne writes:

Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has shattered Europe’s post-Cold War hopes that the continent would avoid a large-scale armed confrontation, renewed global anxiety over the spectre of a great-power war that could escalate to the nuclear level, and evoked distressing comparisons to the march of militaristic authoritarians during the 1930s. Although the US worked assiduously to prevent a worst-case scenario, declassifying intelligence assessments of Russia’s intentions and threatening crippling economic sanctions, Moscow nonetheless proceeded.

Russia’s fateful decision highlights the limits of US influence. But it also reveals Russia to be a self-saboteur, contrary to a prevalent narrative that holds Moscow to be stealthily outmanoeuvring Washington on the global stage. Its invasion has cemented transatlantic alignment; imbued NATO with newfound momentum; accelerated the EU’s efforts to reduce the bloc’s dependence on Russian energy; prompted a fundamental recalibration of German foreign policy; restricted Russia’s access to global capital and technological inputs; and made Moscow further beholden to Beijing. Whatever the outcome of Russia’s unfolding war of attrition with Ukraine, the former’s military capabilities and deterrence capacity will have been considerably degraded. And Moscow has also given a shot in the arm to centrist European parties, which can now recast their aspirations for continental integration as a safeguard against unprovoked aggression.

Moscow’s strategic outlook is a far cry from a little over a decade ago, when President Vladimir Putin expressed his hope that Russia would serve as a thriving economic intermediary between Western Europe and the Asia-Pacific.

And what of China, Russia’s essential partner and the US’s chief competitor? It poses a far more systemic challenge on account of its economic size and innovative capacity, which enable it to strengthen its footprint even in countries that have growing apprehensions over its conduct and intentions, and the cross-Strait correlation of forces continues to grow in Beijing’s favour. However, it too is emerging as a self-limiting competitor – if less blunderingly than Russia – largely on account of the counterproductive diplomacy it has pursued since the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. Its relationships with Australia, India and Japan have deteriorated over the course of the past two years, enabling the Quad to transition from a lacklustre abstraction into a robust grouping. While South Korea does not belong to that set, it is likely to adopt a more assertive posture towards China and develop a more amicable relationship with Japan after the recent election of Yoon Seok-youl. The EU, meanwhile, is reassessing its disposition towards China, as seen with the bloc’s decisions to pause the ratification of the Comprehensive Agreement on Investment and to bring a trade case against China to the World Trade Organization. Having announced three weeks before Russia invaded Ukraine that the Sino-Russian friendship ‘has no limits’, China is eliciting further distrust in advanced industrial democracies as Russia continues to lay siege to a sovereign neighbour.

Beijing will find it difficult to achieve regional dominance, let alone global pre-eminence, if it cannot restore a baseline of trust with the countries that still wield the balance of military power and economic heft. [Continue reading…]