March 11, 2022
The World That Putin Has Made
On Feb. 4, just weeks before he would invade Ukraine, Vladimir Putin went to the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Beijing. Sitting alone, the Russian president appeared to close his eyes as the Ukrainian team entered. By the end of the month, he would threaten the country’s independent existence.
The Olympics wasn’t the only item on Mr. Putin’s agenda in Beijing. He held a high-profile summit meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, in which the two pledged friendship and solidarity. To sum up their vision for what such a partnership could achieve, they issued an expansive joint manifesto.
By attacking Ukraine, Vladimir Putin may have brought about what he wanted least: a galvanized West, determined to act together to preserve a liberal world order
The world they sought, the statement said, would be ordered very differently than in the past, and China and Russia would cooperate with “no limits” to assume their rightful places in it. They would forge an “international relations of a new type,” multipolar and no longer dominated by the United States. There would be no further NATO enlargement, no color revolutions, no globe-spanning U.S. missile defense system, no American nuclear weapons deployed abroad. Actors “representing but the minority on the international scale”—that is, the U.S. and its allies—might continue to interfere in other states and “incite contradictions, differences and confrontation,” but Beijing and Moscow together would resist them.
Read the full article from The Wall Street Journal.
More from CNAS
-
Video
Indo-Pacific Security / Transatlantic Security
‘Trump Should Be Worried’ as China’s Leader Hosts Russian and North Korean CounterpartsThe gathering of Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin and Kim Jong Un shows a collective appeal to a new world order not dominated by the United States, according to Richard Fontaine, c...
By Richard Fontaine
-
Podcast
Transatlantic Security / Energy, Economics & Security
LISTEN: Why It’s So Hard to Go After Russia’s Oil RevenueEmily Kilcrease, senior fellow and director of the Energy, Economics, and Security Program at the Center for a New American Security, joins the show to talk about secondary ta...
By Emily Kilcrease
-
Russia's Lavrov: Security Talks without Moscow a "Path to Nowhere" | CNN
Video
Andrea Kendall-Taylor, senior fellow and program director at the Center for a New American Security, joins CNN to explain about the difficulties of negotiations are not territ...
By Andrea Kendall-Taylor
-
Our Experts Put the Kibosh on Hopes for Ukraine Peace Anytime Soon
Podcast
There has been a diplomatic flurry around Ukraine in recent days, yet the theme of progress has been hollow words and flip-flopping. Is the White House serious about peace, or...
By Andrea Kendall-Taylor
