The Russian elites must redefine their goals. Because President Putin’s decisions have currently led the country into an international shield and thus into a self-inflicted dependence on China.
The purpose of Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine was to put Russia on the path to becoming a world power. The goal has been the goal of Russia’s elite since the Soviet Union fell apart, but post-Soviet states have resisted.
Russia could not achieve this goal without violence. Now it is striving to become a world power with military force. To this end, after the cold takeover of Belarus, Ukraine is currently being occupied and connected to Russia, a quasi triple Russian reunification.
Subsequently, the pressure on the Eastern European states and the USA should be increased to hollow out the NATO membership by all foreign troops to leave Eastern Europe. That would have allowed Russia’s military and energy-related lead to become dominant.
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This also applies to the rest of Europe, because Germany and Italy were (and are) dependent on Russian energy supplies and unable to act militarily. France toyed with the idea of a strategic partnership with Russia anyway.
Had public opinion in Europe been tipped by incentives and costs, turning away from the US and toward Russia, or had American policies voluntarily copied Europe, Russia would have become the dominant state in Europe and could count on sympathetic governments in all leave European countries. They would be illiberal states, like “Orbán everywhere”. That was the plan when Russia launched the attack on Ukraine.
It turned out differently because the attack on Kyiv failed, the USA organized a uniform response to sanctions, which EU states found together in the seriousness of the situation. They gave Ukraine strong support and the Russian forces fell far short of the fighting power they were given credit for.
Therefore, the analyzes immediately focused on the question of how uninformed and overestimated the Russian decision-making elite was to start the war in the first place.
Even if the misconceptions about the situation in Ukraine and its international support were due to the fact that the decision-makers indulged in overconfidence with insufficient information, this can no longer apply to the assessment of the situation since then. Russian forces have suffered heavy casualties.
They are estimated at about 40,000 dead and more than twice as many wounded, so together about 120,000. Russia has suffered symbolic defeats from Kyiv to Crimea and the Black Sea, and the country has been hit with effective sanctions.
For the foreseeable future, it will not be able to achieve its political goals – to let Russia rise to become a world power by dominating Europe. In this situation, the Russian elites would have to redefine their goals. Because President Putin’s decisions have currently led the country into an international shield and thus into a self-inflicted dependence on China.
Prof. Dr. Thomas Jäger has held the Chair for International Politics and Foreign Policy at the University of Cologne since 1999. His research focuses on international relations and American and German foreign policy.
Russia’s relations with the West will remain limited by sanctions as long as this president or a like-minded person rules. Imports have already fallen drastically and will continue to fall because new areas are being included in the sanctions regime and companies are refraining from new investments.
Imports from other countries (including China) fell in parallel with imports from the West because companies fear secondary sanctions. Exports are currently more of a problem for most European countries because energy supplies have been reduced and products have become more expensive.
But they will be discontinued in the medium term, as a result of which Russia will lose an important market. Russian companies can already only deliver to other regions with a 30 percent discount. Military deterrence, which did not exist in Eastern Europe before the war, will be built up intensively over the next few years. Russia’s image, its soft power, will be negative for years to come.
The part of the German elite that sympathizes with Russia’s elite will not be able to regain its influence so quickly, the last representatives will leave the top political positions without being able to set new impulses to Russia’s advantage. Russia’s attempt to assert itself as the imperial power of Europe and from this position to develop more intensive relations with states on other continents has failed.
In this situation, Russia will have to concentrate on China for a while because it cannot cope with the alternative, a new imperialist outreach into Central Asia. The country is too weak militarily and economically for this and fears China’s support for the former Central Asian states of the Soviet Union. So China stays.
This connection is now being described in some places as the axis of the autocracies, as the connection between the energy-hungry world power China and the Russian market, where Chinese products can be sold without competition. And it is true that China will benefit from Europe’s and the US’ refusal to continue buying Russian energy sources.
Because China can determine the price, as it already does when a discount of $35 on a barrel of oil is demanded and granted. China’s government will also determine the price of gas, where Russia is geographically tied (and if the west is gone, only the east remains). What Russia gets and what doesn’t, likewise.
In short: China will dominate relations with Russia and Russia will no longer be more than a tributary state of China. It has no other options. In view of Russia’s military action that can be observed in Ukraine, China will – unlike in the past – not have any great expectations of military support in the future.
Russia’s failures have once again drastically demonstrated the lead of American military equipment. So much so that China felt compelled to unabashedly display its own capabilities in a major military exercise that staged a simulation of Taiwan’s occupation.
That was a message to the USA and its allies in the Indo-Pacific, but also to Moscow, because the relationship between the two states is currently being redefined – in Beijing.
It cannot be ruled out that China’s nationalists, who are currently putting President Xi under pressure because he is too soft on foreign policy and too unsuccessful in economic policy, will again be able to raise the “unequal treaties” as the subject of political demands.
Although Russia’s security is also guaranteed in the east, because the nuclear deterrent ensures that the borders are guaranteed, but in the course of an international position that is primarily focused on China, there may be approaches to bilateral negotiations on territory in the east of Russia, because a large number of levers in is of Chinese hand.
Therefore, it could now be in China’s interests for the war in Ukraine to be prolonged. After the initial shock at Russia’s inability to seize Ukraine in one fell swoop, there may now be a realization that it can be beneficial if Russian forces in Ukraine allow themselves to be crushed and decimated. This leaves Russia’s eastern border increasingly vulnerable.
On the other hand, China has no interest in ongoing sanctions, which Chinese companies are also heeding. The nationalism of the Chinese president is at odds with the economic interests of Chinese society.
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At least that’s what China has in common with Russia, because in Russia, too, the president’s imperialism is at odds with the economic interests of society. The way India behaves towards Russia and China in the future will also be important for Russia.
The more distanced India’s relationship with Russia is, the more the asymmetric relationship between China and Russia will limit Moscow’s international room for manoeuvre. The US has already aligned its policy accordingly.
What started as a claim to build up Russia as the dominant power in Europe to become the third world power is likely to end in extensive dependence on China. Russia could not trade on an equal footing with the US after 1991, now it cannot do so on an equal footing with China. The country has fallen into the trap of dependency due to ambition and misjudgements.
Because Russia no longer has any alternatives. The country has blocked this through Putin’s catastrophic mistakes. If the Kremlin thinks strategically again and a way out of Putin’s wrong decision, which has serious consequences for Russia’s international position, is sought, an expansion of the options for action would have to be considered. However, they are only in the west.
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Russia’s encroachment on the Balkans, the Middle East and North Africa is part of its European policy and can only be properly analyzed in this context. But this playing over the edges remains tactical in Russia’s relations with the EU. It is designed to push, not cooperate.
If Russia wants to remain independent and influential, its only choice is to join Europe – albeit on the basis of European integration, which is the hallmark of an internally post-imperialist Europe (which did not only apply to Russia).
That may seem illusory today, and it is possible that Russia will never go down this path. But then it will be neither independent nor influential because it already lacks its own economic and technological basis for this. And the distance to the USA, EU and China will increase rapidly, economically and technologically.
It is more likely that Russia’s decision-making elite has meanwhile absorbed its own propaganda in such a way that a clear view of the strategic situation is blurred. A static, ideology-driven view of the world, one-sided information and unshakable hubris on the part of a political elite have led Russia into a strategically deadlocked position in which it cannot realize its ambitions.
