OPINION: Is the US Trying to Save Russia From China?

The Russian bear is mortally wounded, thanks to the bravery, resilience, and professionalism of the Ukrainian Armed Forces. Up to 1 million troops from Russia and North Korea have been killed, injured, or captured. Thousands of Russian tanks, artillery pieces, air defense systems, armored personnel carriers, and infantry fighting vehicles have been destroyed.

Sanctions are working. Military spending now accounts for 40 per cent of Russia’s budget. Inflation is at 10 per cent. The Russian Central Bank’s key interest rate is at 21 per cent. Moscow can’t use public funds to manufacture weapon systems then have those weapon systems destroyed on the battlefield and call it “economic growth.”

Though Washington has planned and prepared for this moment since at least 1945, Europe, Turkey, and China have dreamed about it for centuries. Now, it seems as if America is trying to clean up the mess the Russian war criminals created. Yes, to save Russia from Ukraine, but perhaps also from China.

Think back to the 19th century. While the Russian Empire was expanding eastward through Central Asia to the Pacific Ocean at a historic pace, the Qing Dynasty was losing territory to foreign powers under what are known today as the “unequal treaties.” The most famous of these concessions came from the Opium Wars, fought between Great Britain and China, which ceded Hong Kong to London.

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Two treaties from this era are key to understanding the history of Russia-China relations. First, the 1858 Treaty of Aigun, which ceded territory north of the Amur River to the Russian Empire. Second, the 1860 Treaty of Beijing. Negotiated under the threat of setting the city ablaze, this ceded the territory between the Ussuri River and the Pacific Ocean to Russia.

A century later, in 1969, Sino-Soviet tensions boiled over into direct military confrontation along that same Ussuri River. Today, this area constitutes part of Russia’s Far Eastern Federal District. It accounts for roughly 40 percent of Russian territory, and borders the Arctic Ocean, the Pacific Ocean, Mongolia, China, Japan, and the United States.

Despite being bigger than the European Union and nearly twice the size of India, this resource-rich region barely has a population of 8 million people. In contrast, China’s provinces which border this area, Heilongjiang and Inner Mongolia, count at least 30 and 24 million people each.

Yes, Beijing and Moscow signed a series of agreements to demarcate their borders since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. But honor among thieves is scarce. After all, the so-called Axis of Autocracies is a series of short-term partnerships of convenience – not a military alliance like NATO or a civilizational project like the European Union.

Yes, China wants Russia to be weak enough to depend on it. But it also wants Moscow to be strong enough to keep fighting against Kyiv and the West. Among other things, this ensures that while Moscow remains bogged down in Ukraine, the nearly 4,300-kilometer-long Russo-Chinese border remains undefended by Russia.

Beijing has already begun referring to cities in this region, including the Pacific port of Vladivostok, by their pre-Russian names. Has Moscow convinced Washington that China might occupy, or annex, parts of Russia’s Far Eastern Federal District? Who knows. But a territorial change of this magnitude would make Moscow’s annexation of Ukrainian Crimea, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia, and Kherson Oblasts look tiny in comparison.

This could explain Washington’s ridiculous talk of joint Russo-American ventures in the Arctic, but also its concern regarding China’s activities on the other side of the Bering Strait. From abandoning Europe to turning Canada into the 51st state to annexing Greenland from Denmark, why else would America burn all the bridges it spent the last 80 years building to appease the Russian dictator?

True or not, this would constitute yet another one of the unintended consequences of Russia’s illegal and idiotic invasion of Ukraine. Moscow, which has murdered, kidnapped, raped, and tortured thousands of people by invading and occupying Moldova, Georgia, and Ukraine, might be hypocritically worried about the territorial integrity of its sparsely populated Far Eastern Federal District.

This international crisis was authored, from A to Z, by the war criminals in the Kremlin. Washington spent trillions of dollars over eight decades to fight these crooks. First, when they were KGB bureaucrats for the Soviet Union. Then, as the leaders of the Russian Empire’s third iteration. It’s astonishing that America is trying to save them from suffering consequences for the mess they created.

The views expressed in this opinion article are the author’s and not necessarily those of Kyiv Post.