Asymmetrical

There is a meme going around social media showing Vladimir Putin on one knee kissing the hand of Xi Jinping. The photo is fake; but the idea it conveys is most accurate.

Much was made about the Chinese leader’s visit to Moscow this week. In the end, the high-profile summit accomplished nothing. Putin did not get the explicit endorsement of his military adventure and promises of material support he direly needs. Xi failed to convince anyone he was a messenger of peace with a plan for peace in Ukraine.

Putin’s invasion force in Ukraine is quickly losing steam. His army is running out of arms and ammunition. His troops are demoralized under poor leadership.

Strategically, he is severely isolated from the rest of the world. The ICC last week issued a warrant for his arrest for war crimes. Domestically, he relies on his apparatus for comprehensive repression to shore up his political position. But he cannot continue indefinitely poisoning his critics and lying to his citizens.

The longer Putin remains in power, the more his nation stagnates. The war in Ukraine demonstrated how seriously obsolete the Russian army has become. The flight of the best and brightest of Russian society shows a nation voting with its feet against the prolongation of a regime that relies on wholesale deception.

Putin presides over a decrepit regime that inspires no hope for his people. He tries to legitimize his autocracy by romanticizing an imperial Russian past that can never be resurrected. But for his nuclear-tipped missiles and the raw materials extracted from Russia’s vast land, his nation has become irrelevant to the progress of human civility.

The economic sanctions imposed on Russia for its gross violation of Ukrainian sovereignty will take a steady toll on the nation’s economy and society for decades to come. It will take generations for Europe to accept Russia as belonging to its civilization. Putin has no other option but to turn east, to regimes in North Korea, Iran and China that share his tyrannical proclivities.

Never mind North Korea which is determined to be a caricature of itself. While its people are stunted with starvation, the regime in Pyongyang is preoccupied with building crude missiles and imagining itself a nuclear power.

Never mind Iran. The fanatical regime there will soon be overthrown by its people. No amount of state brutality could stop the Iranian people from rejoining the 21st century.

China is Russia’s only viable recourse in the foreseeable future. Cut off from the main avenues of global trade, Russia has only China as a window for trade and new technologies.

It is an asymmetrical relationship, however. Beijing plays along with Putin’s delusions for access to Russia’s supply of oil and gas. With its revenues from raw materials, Russia imports consumer goods and technology from its neighbor. What has ensued is the “yuanization” of Russia’s economy.

Beijing, for its part, is sensitive to the drift of global opinion. Her economy relies, very much more than Russia, on trade with the rest of the world. The Chinese economy is sensitive to the strong currents of global finance and investments. The world’s second largest economy cannot do without access to the global market.

Xi Jinping will gladly dance with Putin – but only to an extent.

Russia cannot be a source of investments and technology to bring the Chinese economy to modernity. It is even too small a market for the consumer goods China exports in humongous quantity. The northern neighbor is, well, nothing much more than a reliable source of fossil fuel. Possibly also a backup source of nuclear arms to hold the rest of the world in awe.

Beijing is conscious of the global consensus against Putin’s military misadventure. Beijing has not endorsed Putin’s invasion, although they have not condemned it either. Xi is maintaining a thoroughly opportunist and unprincipled position regarding the atrocity in Ukraine.

Before his trip to Beijing, Xi offered to call up Ukrainian president Zelensky. The offer was appropriately snubbed by Kyiv.

Putin, like the tyrants of yore, rolled out all the imperial pomp and pageantry Moscow could afford to impress his guest. But the Chinese leader is too wily to be swayed by imperial flattery. He is fully aware that beneath all the regalia, Russia is well on its way to becoming a junior partner in their alliance. The latter has an exhausted economy and a bewildered people. It cannot possibly be the drummer that dictates their joint march.

Even the speeches delivered by both Putin and Xi sound worn out. They cannot possibly be offering humanity their model of entrenched autocracies as the civilization’s way forward.

Putin needs rescuing from his present predicament. Only Xi could rescue him. The Chinese leader offered his ally nothing more than platitudes. Beijing will not risk losing access to western markets by embracing Putin to warmly.

The tyrant of Moscow will be gone sooner or later. China’s interests goes beyond Putin.

Meanwhile, in Kyiv, Ukraine’s leaders are signaling a counteroffensive will happen soon – in Bakhmut, of all places. Around that small city, tens of thousands of Russian soldiers have died trying to take small amounts of territory. They are running out of tanks, cannon and munitions.

This is the time to finally wipe out the criminal Wagner mercenaries and push back Russia’s technologically inferior army. A counteroffensive will be made possible by the impressive inflows of modern arms from the west.