On Not Resolving Conflicts
Trump to Beijing
The world has high expectations of the Trump visit to Beijing for a resolution to the Gulf crisis. These are unlikely to be met:
(1) There is very little time for fruitful in-depth discussions - a mere two days, and Trump is primarily accompanied by a gaggle of US corporate billionaires as though the only thing that really interests Trump, and them, is business deals.
(2) Of course, doing business is one way to negotiate politics but, when we are talking about Iran, we are talking about a waterway that is of vital economic interest to China, and about a Chinese-Iranian alliance within the BRICS that greatly constrains the options available to China even assuming, and I don’t, that China is remotely likely to “sell out” Iran for the sake of Trump.
(3) As many analysts agree, Trump does not hold a very good hand in these negotiations. He needs too many things from China (still relatively unfazed by the crisis - it is 85% energy self-sufficient, still have large oil reserves and can buy as much as it needs from Russia) and is yet limited in the concessions that he can make if he wants to retain his allies in Congress ahead of the mid-terms. He cannot force China to bring pressure to bear on Iran, and Iran is clearly in no mood to be pressured against its own best interests by China.
(4) Trump keeps threatening kinetic action against Iran, and this seems still to be a likelihood even amidst growing US public, Congressional and expert skepticism - as we have seen in my most recent posts - about the war with Iran. For insufficient options that do not make Trump look like an idiot, Trump (and/or Israel) may be tempted in the kinetic direction - one can pray that this will not be nuclear. Nuclear options are limited given the overwhelming international outcry that any resort to nuclear weapons will cause, the scale of environmental damage they occasion, and ramifications that will negatively impact neighboring states. Non-nuclear kinetic options will trigger military, political and economic blowback of great magnitude such that the continued viability of the Trump regime will be in question.
QI Goes to China
For the Quincy Institute (QI), Anatol Lieven reports (Lieven) on a QI staff visit to China last month. Their Chinese hosts (these are not satisfactorily identified) were at pains to indicate that China will continue to act with prudence and caution vis-a-vis the U.S. they regard as increasingly unpredictable and dangerous. Lieven believes they are right, and that the Iran war has elicited from US security hawks what I would call a fabricated myth of the “Chinese threat” (recall the “Russian threat” to Europe and the “Iranian threat” to Israel) that are intended, says Lieven, to justify the writers’ own hopes for unconstrained U.S. global primacy.
Lieven, on the basis of the evidence of this QI visit to China, downplays the idea that Iran is an “ally” of China. This may be true militarily, although I believe that China is a limited military ally of Iran in the sense that it provides Iran with intelligence of military value, is very easily poised to provide much harder assistance, and perhaps has already done so.
QI’s Chinese interlocutors assured them that China has absolutely no intention of becoming militarily involved in this conflict, or of waging a proxy war against the US in Iran. They say that China has been cautious even about economic help to Iran. They note that the war was launched on the basis of incorrect Israeli intelligence of a likely Iranian collapse. Lieven thinks China could, had it wished, ameliorated the economic war launched by Bessant back in December and then followed up by Mossad provocateurs in January, by offering to support the Iranian rial with a Chinese loan. I doubt that Iran even asked China for such a loan and know of no evidence that it did.
China has strongly condemned the attack on Iran, has sought a comprehensive ceasefiure, and has rejected U.S. pressure to join in sanctions (although these still threaten China’s supply chain). China is determined to go on buying Iranian and Russian oil.
Beijing has also been relatively cautious in its diplomatic strategy. Or, in another way of putting this, China is really, really pulling its punches. One interlocutor offered: “I do hope your colleagues realize that if we were really to help Russia, Moscow would win that war in three months.” He added however that China has no intention of doing so.
QI’s hosts explained that it is in China’s interest to “adjust the present international system to give China more influence, not to overturn a system that has brought China immense economic benefits.” Beijing would not want to disrupt international trade flows. Also the Chinese elite consider it best just to leave the Middle East alone, given its deeply intractable and complex nature.
“Beijing wants if possible to maintain good relations with all the energy-producing Gulf states, not to put all its eggs in Iran’s endangered energy basket.”
A third explanation is less convincing namely, that the Chinese government knows that intervention on the side of Iran would create an intensely dangerous response from the Trump administration. This perspective, even if it seems to be coming from China, is dangerously timid and underestimates China’s strength - as I discussed in my post yesterday. One supposedly feared Trump reaction would be for the US to strengthen or even recognize Taiwanese independence. QI’s hosts say this would lead to war, a war that they dont want.
I say that there is no way in which China is going to survive if it backs away from such US threats, nor do I believe that it will. China has sufficient military advantage, so much so that no sane US regime is going to take the risk of actually inviting a war. In the meantime, all that China really needs to do is wait until the US has shot itself in the foot too many times.
Russia-Ukraine
There has been considerable debate as to whether Putin has actually predicted an early end to the current conflict. I am not going to amplify that debate, other than to acknowledge the speed with which Russia resumed massive missile and drone attacks on Ukraine following the weekend Victory Day ceasefire.
The scandal of preparations by Ukraine’s anti-corruption agencies to charge Zelenskiy’s former chief administrator Andrii Yermak is widely thought not simply to be indirectly threatening Zelenskiy but is also seen to be a way for the US, through whatever influence it still has over NABU (once rumored to be essentially run from the US embassy), to exert US pressure on Zelenskiy to end the war by taking Ukrainian troops out of all of the Donbass.
Why? To help out Trump in the face of mid-term elections.
As a strategy this is unlikely to work because, as the Kiev Independent notes today, there is today no mention of US security guarantees for such a concession and, up until now, Zelenskiy has consistently said that Ukraine cannot follow the path of withdrawal without US security guarantees that would involve NATO troops on the ground in Ukraine. The US is no longer pushing for these because it knows that this would be totally unacceptable to Russia.
Some kind of deal, but we dont know exactly what, had been reached between the US and Russia at Anchorage last August. Russia seemed really enthusiastic about Anchorage at the time, but Trump never followed up on it, quite possibly because it did involve Ukrainian withdrawal from the Donbass and because Ukraine (which was not a direct party to the talks) could not accept this without security guarantees that the US felt unable to deliver. Russia has been extremely cool about all subsequent efforts to renew meaningful talks.
Maybe this is the significance of the disclosures this week from Zelenskiy’s former press secretary, Iuliia Mendel, in an interview with Tucker Carlson. Mendel confirmed what most critics have long known, that Zelenskiy back in April 2022 was entirely comfortable with the idea of giving up the Donbass - that is, until the UK’s Boris Johnson, on behalf of the Western alliance, told him that the Western powers would not support the agreement with Russia that Zelenskiy was then ready to sign and that the West would provide him with all the means he needed in order to go to war with Russia.
Mendel described Zelenskyy as a “dictator” who has lost the support of his people and is prolonging the war for political survival. She alleged that Zelenskiy is “emotionally uncontrollable,” often hysterical, and treats people as disposable. Further, she claimed that ending the war is “political suicide” for Zelenskyy, and that he has created an “inhuman” situation where critics and those who cross him are sent to the front lines as punishment. (I would add that if allegations of corruption are indeed confirmed it may become apparent that for the Zelenskiy cabal, the war primarily has been their route to riches through the diversion of Western largesse). Following the interview, as one would expect, the Ukrainian Presidential Office dismissed Mendel’s claims, stating that she has “long been out of touch with reality” and that her statements are manipulative, echoing Russian propaganda, and have nothing to do with reality.