The November presidential election will decide for America one of the main geopolitical questions: Who is its main adversary and whose influence should be fought first — Russia or China? For Beijing, the stake in this game is much higher than for Moscow. Beijing is seriously invested in seeing Joe Biden move to the White House, promising to inflict terrible punishment on the Kremlin.
Answering a journalist’s direct question as to which of the countries poses the bigger threat to the United States, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo blurted out without hesitation: the Chinese Communist Party. Whether it was a tribute to political correctness or classical American anti-communism, the essence is the same. According to Pompeo, the Chinese government poses both a military and economic threat to America. And, most importantly, “it has infiltrated the United States in ways that Russia has not,” though Trump will be able to overcome the threat.
A day earlier, another member of Trump’s team, Attorney General William Barr, answered a more nuanced question equally unequivocally: Who more actively interferes in American elections — Moscow or Beijing? He substantiated his choice in favor of Beijing with intelligence data.
It’s important to understand that Barr is not only Trump’s ally, but also a civil servant, and therefore must express himself carefully. Otherwise, he probably would have specified that Beijing is interfering in American democracy in favor of Democratic candidate Biden.
However, his boss, President Trump, continues to stress this point. Trump has already alluded to this several times and even directly accused Biden of having corrupt ties to the Chinese elite.
As for Biden himself, he sees the main enemy of the United States elsewhere on the world map. The former vice president issued a special statement on the fate of Alexei Navalny, accusing Trump of hushing up the crime, saying “his silence is complicity.” Should he be elected, Biden intends to ensure the safety of Americans and “hold the Putin regime accountable for its crimes.”
In turn, the media loyal to the Democrats began to spin a kind of conspiracy theory. Allegedly, Russia has once again been intervening in the U.S. election, but in a very original way. The Russians are ostensibly spreading slander about Biden’s health or, in other words, spooking Americans about Biden’s insane senility. Interestingly enough, journalists also referred to intelligence materials.
Against this background, Biden’s fellow Democrat and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer called for new sanctions against Russian private and state-owned companies in response to Russia “seeking to interfere in the 2020 U.S. election.”
In summary, it turns out that from the point of view of Trump’s team, the United States’ main adversary is China, and from the point of view of Biden’s team, it is Russia. Accordingly, Russia is interfering in the election to try to reelect Trump, and China is interfering so that Biden can take over in the White House.
No one denies the very idea of election interference any longer in the United States. This ambiguous and unasserted threat is a kind of bipartisan compromise.
Of course, there is a lot of preelection struggling and far too much propaganda in all of these accusations. But this propaganda clearly reflects the interests of each of the opposing groups and is based on an objective reality.
Alas, the interests of two strategic partners, Moscow and Beijing, have radically diverged with respect to the election of the next U.S. president. To describe the situation in sports terms, we and the Chinese are passionately rooting for opposing teams, and the Chinese are rooting more fiercely than we are.
The newspaper Vzglyad has already reported that the Trump administration is anti-China in nature. Both the president and his aides present China as a formidable threat to America’s economic and political dominance. Admittedly, they are most likely right.
Their position is aggressive and unyielding, also because the key group of Trump voters are blue-collar workers; that is, American workers living through stiff deindustrialization and the transfer of production from the United States to China. As a result, one of the main points of Trump’s platform is to return factories to the United States, something he has devoted much effort to in order to make it happen.
The same cannot be said of Biden. When Barack Obama unexpectedly overtook Hillary Clinton, the favorite of the Democratic Party elite in the 2008 primaries, this same elite strongly advised him to choose Biden as his running mate. Biden was responsible for foreign policy in the Senate for decades and an experienced international player, and in this capacity was supposed to balance Obama, who had little previous experience in foreign affairs.
As a result, it was Biden who was responsible for the Obama administration’s direction on China, something for which he became well known. Asia experts claim that he made many friends and partners among the Chinese leadership, where he was treated very favorably, while in contrast, his boss was disliked and allegedly not taken seriously.
For China, Trump’s reelection means the resumption of trade wars and new demands for tariffs from Washington. The United States will continue to put a spoke in the wheels of Chinese economic engines such as Huawei, and fast-growing brands such as TikTok, will consistently close doors to Chinese scientists, students and businessmen, and will further invest in separatist movements within China, be they in Hong Kong or Uiguristan.
The aggregate cost of these issues can amount to tens of billions, and perhaps trillions, of dollars in lost profits for China, in addition to directly affecting national security. But Biden’s election would put out the flames with respect to some of these serious conflicts, and and possibly end the trade war completely.
For Russia, the comparable risks are not so obvious, but they still exist. It cannot be said that Trump’s presidency is totally good for Russia. Even though Trump has sought a common language with Moscow, none of the hopes pinned to Trump have come true. On the contrary, the relationship between the Russian Federation and the United States hits a new low every month.
However, Biden’s rise to power (more precisely, the rise of those who will lead the country on his behalf) means that the Democrats’ vendetta against Moscow will no longer be just a trait that describes the party, but one that describes the country. These people promise to “make Russia answer for itself,” “bring Russia to justice,” and “make them pay,”* and this is one of the rare cases in which we should trust them.
The Democrats have convinced themselves that Moscow is behind their shameful and painful defeat in the 2016 election, and they intend to get their revenge, explaining to voters that they are fighting the most dangerous threat to America as a whole. And the most delicate question in this context — the Ukrainian one — remains, in every sense of the word, personal for many Democrats, and for Biden himself. Their financial interests and dirty secrets are kept in Kyiv.
Sanctions, provocations, the witch hunt — all this will inevitably pick up speed, and God knows what it may lead to in the end.
To put it simply, we really need to prevent Biden from becoming president. But the Chinese also “really need” just the opposite, so we cannot count on understanding from our Eastern strategic partner.
Incidentally, this situation indirectly calls for us to acquit Moscow and Beijing of attempting to disrupt American democracy. Any attempt to play along with one or another team in confronting would jeopardize those very “strategic relationships.”
We may look, but we may not touch.
*Editor’s note: Although these quoted remarks are accurately translated, they could not be independently verified.
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