Putin will have nervously watched Trump and Xi show
He has seen Russia’s hand substantially weakened by the talks between China and the US in Beijing
Early headlines from the summit between Xi Jinping and Donald Trump in Beijing signal an openness towards stabilizing relations between China and the United States. In his initial remarks, Chinese President Xi noted that they “should be partners not rivals.”
But he warned President Trump that a crisis over Taiwan could lead to “clashes and even conflicts.” With Xi also indicating that there will be more opportunities for US companies to do business in China, the stage was set for a relatively successful summit.
Both sides can claim it as a success because it offers some concrete benefits in the form of a trade war avoided and at least the prospect of cooperation on global issues such as the Iran conflict. It also sets a generally more positive tone for relations between the two countries.
Such an outcome is particularly troubling for Russian President Vladimir Putin, who will see his relevance and leverage diminished by more stable and predictable US-China relations.
His aspirations to position Russia as a great power depend on Moscow either being strategically useful to Washington and Beijing, or gaining leverage with them by demonstrating a capacity to be disruptive.
Military parade
Yet, on both counts, Putin’s hand has been substantially weakened. His war against Ukraine is no longer a priority issue for the US, with the two main American interlocutors in peace talks, Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, focused on negotiations with Iran.
Putin’s latest phone call with Trump in April will have been disappointing for the Russian leader. His offer to take Iran’s highly enriched uranium was reportedly rebuffed by Trump, who told him to focus on “ending the war with Ukraine.”
And days later the Kremlin was forced to scale back its annual military parade in Moscow, due to concerns that it could be targeted by Ukrainian forces. On the Chinese side, things are even more troubling. The last face-to-face meeting between Xi and Putin took place last year.
They have only held one video conference since then. A Kremlin statement during the Trump-Xi summit that Putin will visit China soon smacks of desperation.
While he appears sidelined in the US-China relationship, he is not without cards of his own. Major global issues – including wars in Ukraine and Iran, energy security and the future of the international order – are still connected to Russia.
This provides Putin with a degree of leverage in his relations with Xi and Trump. But exercising it comes with risks, especially in areas where Chinese and American interests are more aligned with each other than with Russia. Take the case of the Iran war as an example.
Russia benefits most from this conflict. The disruption it is causing to global energy flows has pushed up oil and gas prices, keeping Moscow’s war economy afloat. It has also reduced the flow of American arms to Ukraine.
Regional allies
Unsurprisingly, therefore, Russia has expanded its support for Iran – from intelligence and cyber support to providing unjammable drones. While Russian support is unlikely to enable Iran to win the war, it will give the regime in Tehran more time to avoid defeat.
It would also increase the costs for the US, its regional allies and the global economy. Naturally, this would not play well with Trump, who is under mounting domestic pressure to wind down the operation against Iran.
Beijing has offered Tehran some support throughout the war, by helping it bypass Western sanctions on the export of its oil. But there are clear limits to how far China will go as its relationship with the US is far more important than the one with Iran.
This tilts the balance of preferences in Beijing towards an end of the conflict rather than towards its continuation. Yet, this does not mean that China and the US will now align against Russia. Relations between Moscow and Beijing are longstanding and deep.
They cross a range of issues. Their “no-limits partnership” may be increasingly asymmetric, but there is still a great deal of anti-American and anti-Western alignment between them. The US under Trump is also more ambivalent about Russia than previous administrations.
His transactional foreign policy – and his urge to make deals rather than pursue a consistent strategy – is something Putin will continue to try to leverage to his own advantage.
Ahead of the Trump-Xi summit, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov released a statement in which he said “the path to the implementation of a whole range of economic projects will be open” if the White House agrees to decouple trade from the war in Ukraine.
This indicates that Moscow is fully aware of this opportunity – as well as the challenge to offer the US something China cannot.
Great power
The Xi-Trump summit is a party to which Putin was not invited. The fact that the US and China seem to be heading towards a period of better-managed relations indicates that his efforts to make his presence felt have largely failed.
While this does not bode well for his aspirations to restore Russia to its Soviet-era status as a great power, it does not imply that he will give up.
Stefan Wolff is a Professor of International Security at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom.
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy of China Factor.