Greetings from the desk of the Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research.

The largest delegation from outside Russia at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum in early June came from China. The Chinese team was led by the country’s President, Xi Jinping. In this 23^rd Forum, Mandarin joined Russian and English as one of the languages on signs and in conversations. Xi and Russia’s President Vladimir Putin seemed comfortable with each other, the bonhomie between the two states clear. During the Forum, the two countries hosted a gala concert to celebrate the seventieth anniversary for the re-establishment of diplomatic ties between China and Russia. Putin said that the links between the two countries have reached an ‘unprecedented level’, with deals struck for trade and military alignment.

Why have Russia and China cemented this new arrangement?

First, they have been brought together by the long-term push by the United States and its allies to prod at the sovereignty of both China and Russia – whether through the expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) towards Russia’s borders or by the US’ aggressive naval strategy from Japan to Taiwan. This prodding has led to a harsh sanctions regime against Russia, which has found itself isolated from European markets. This has led Russia to seek closer economic ties with China.

Second, the United States has attempted to get China to surrender its economic advantages to US firms, which has led to the ongoing trade war (see our Dossier no. 7, August 2018, on The Imperialism of Finance Capital and ‘Trade Wars’). China has long sought an escape from its close links to the US market. One of these passages out of the US market has been the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and the String of Pearls initiative that runs across Eurasia and the Indian Ocean. The BRI has relied upon the Central Asian states, where Russia continues to have a strong influence, and on West Asia, where the Russian intervention in Syria showed Russia’s willingness to act—serendipitously—on behalf of Chinese interests.

Fear of US action and the need for a Eurasian regional economic strategy is what brings these two major states together.

The timing could not have been better. China had bet its new economic policy from 1978 on the markets of the West, with China becoming the workshop of the world. The ‘reform era’ delivered millions of educated Chinese workers to the globalised economy. Investment of capital and technology flooded into China, from where goods swept the world – but mainly the West. When the general financial crisis took place in 2007-08, China shivered. Its reliance upon the Western markets left it greatly vulnerable. Seeking to break from this reliance on Western markets, China experimented with transfer payment schemes within the country in order to increase domestic demand and began to develop new markets along the monumental Belt and Road Initiative that spans Eurasia, but also has reach into Africa and South America. Russian participation in this initiative is essential, since Russia continues to have close links with Central Asian states and since Russia is the key partner for China in Iran, Syria and Turkey. For a look at the current sanctions regime against Iran and how it has impact Chinese and Russian relations in the region, stay tuned for our upcoming eighteenth dossier in August, Iran Will Not Forget.

The signal of seriousness can be found in the 2008 solution by China and Russia of their decades-long border dispute. That 4,200-kilometre border is now completely delimited. Regular military exercises began, which culminated in Vostok in 2018, where a third of Russia’s army trained alongside Chinese troops. Alongside the military training and strategic alignment has come arms deals, including upgrades from the Russian side to China’s People’s Liberation Army and now Chinese ships and artificial intelligence to Russia.

In 2012, the US National Intelligence Council’s report noted that ‘by 2030, no country – whether the US, China, or any other large country – will be a hegemonic power’. What the US intelligence officials forecast is the ‘diffusion of power’ amongst states, with democracy as the vector for this transfusion. But the US has not wanted to accept this new reality. Its policy makers remain trapped by the 1992 Defence Planning Guidance (authored by Dick Cheney), which noted that the US ‘must now refocus on precluding the emergence of any potential future global competitor’.

Threats and war are instruments to preclude – as Cheney wrote in 1992 – ‘any potential future global competitor’. This is the essence of imperialism. That is why this category is so significant if we want to have an accurate understanding of the situation in the world. The new tactics of imperialism, as we show in Dossier no. 17, Venezuela and Hybrid Wars in Latin America, includes the concept of the hybrid war. Imperialism today is not limited to brute force, but rather employs a range of strategies that seek to impose ‘full spectrum dominance’ over all of society, undermining not only the nation’s sovereignty to make economic and military decisions for its own benefit, but also infiltrating the ‘minds, hearts, and bodies’ of its people; the very way that people understand themselves and the world around them. The rot of war, as I write in this column, is not irrational but is precisely the last refuge of imperialism.

The informal BRICS meeting at the side lines of the Osaka G20 summit produced a declaration that retains the main thrust of earlier BRICS deliberations (multilateralism, the need for new institutions, more inter-state democracy), but it introduced few of the key themes of our current moment – such as the harsh unilateral sanctions that the United States has imposed on a number of countries –  from Iran to Venezuela – and the US’ threats of war. The BRICS summit will take place in Brasilia (Brazil) in November. It is unlikely to advance its agenda.

Warmly, Vijay.