The United States exited the Second World War both rich and secure. The U.S. homeland was essentially untouched, and Americans remained almost invulnerable afterwards. No war was likely to come to our shores.
Unfortunately, the peace offered little wealth and security to everyone else. So Americans joined other nations’ wars, patrolling the globe during the Cold War, which sometimes turned scorching hot. Taking on this burden imposed a measure of humility even in Washington.
Despite persistent demands for intervention, U.S. presidents painfully learned their limits. For Harry Truman and Dwight Eisenhower there was an unsatisfactory stalemate in Korea. Eisenhower and Lyndon Johnson refused to battle the Soviet Union to liberate Hungary and Czechoslovakia, respectively. Johnson also left the USS Pueblo’s 82 surviving crewmembers in North Korean captivity for nearly a year.
There was an even more painful surrender of Indochina by Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. Rather than deploy additional service members to South Vietnam or drop nuclear weapons on North Vietnam, they ultimately left friendly Vietnamese atop the U.S. embassy forlornly waiting for rescue. After making a desultory effort to free America’s captive embassy staff in Tehran, Jimmy Carter gave up. In 1981 Ronald Reagan did not oppose the Soviet-inspired crackdown in Poland; he later abandoned Lebanon’s civil war after a bombing killed 241 Marines.
Democrats and Republicans, liberals and conservatives, and hawks and doves all realized that there were limits to American power. Then came the collapse of the Soviet Union, the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, and the humiliation of communists worldwide. Washington perceived an entirely new world, reflected by George H.W. Bush during the first Gulf War when he announced, “What we say goes.”
In that conflict it did. But only in that conflict. Clinton’s intervention in the Balkans halted the fighting, but failed to remake those lands in America’s image. Somalia and Haiti also proved impervious to his attempted social engineering. Constant bombing of Iraq did not bring quiescence or peace. The catastrophic presidency of George W. Bush followed, with lies masquerading as facts and fantasy replacing analysis. Thousands of Americans and hundreds of thousands of Iraqis died needlessly throughout the Mideast and South Asia. Barack Obama fueled civil wars in Libya and Syria in the name of democracy. Although Donald Trump denounced feckless allies for shirking their defense responsibilities, he left U.S. personnel everywhere.
Joe Biden, perhaps America’s most experienced but least prepared chief executive on foreign policy, apparently believed that he was “running the world” even as failures accumulated. Saudi Arabia’s Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman continued to oppress his people while humiliating the president, rejecting administration pleas to increase oil production. Russia’s Vladimir Putin invaded Ukraine after Biden rejected negotiation, haplessly relying on his force of personality and threats of sanctions to deter Moscow. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ruthlessly played Biden, using American-provided weapons to slaughter Gazan residents and clear territory for settlement by his extremist supporters.
Now his administration is demanding that the People’s Republic of China break up the ongoing bromance between Putin and North Korea’s Kim Jong-un. In advance of the election that ostentatiously dismissed Biden’s presidency and formalized his status as a lame duck, Secretary of State Antony Blinken announced, “I think they know well the concerns that we have and the expectations that, both in word and deed, they’ll use the influence that they have to work to curb these activities. So we’ll see if they take action.”
This is Washington’s policy? The Biden crew has “expectations” that China will act as directed, “to curb” actions by both Russia and North Korea. And the administration—with less than three months left in office, led by an increasingly decrepit president repudiated by the American public while pushing a passel of failed policies—will be waiting for Beijing’s compliance.
Such arrogance is endemic to Washington. More than three years ago, Leon Panetta, chief of staff under Clinton and defense secretary and CIA chief under Obama, dismissed fears of war with the PRC: “I think frankly if China understands that we’re serious about [Taiwan], China’s not going to do that.” All Washington solons need do is speak a few cross words while flicking their little fingers and members of China’s leadership are expected to scurry back into seclusion in their luxurious quarters in Zhongnanhai, awaiting Washington’s next grandiose pronouncement.
The PRC especially is not likely to take well this explanation of America’s “expectations.” China represents an ancient and proud civilization, once dominant in Asia and possessed of the world’s largest economy. Alas, this historical chapter ended badly. Chinese the world over are well aware of the so-called Century of Humiliation, during which European powers, along with the U.S. and Japan, occupied and plundered the decrepit empire. Of course, the Chinese Communist Party uses this saga to its political advantage. However, most Chinese remain proud of their extraordinary heritage and critical of Western imperialism. Their nationalism comes naturally and is offended by foreign governments spouting sanctimonious diktats.
Today, Beijing is especially tired of lectures from Washington. Unsurprisingly, the PRC views current U.S. policy as hostile: promoting military containment up to its border in East Asia, imposing economic sanctions to hinder China’s access to high-tech products and services, waging a trade war to protect inefficient American manufacturers, and insisting that Beijing abandon its security objectives and commitments because Washington says so. One can defend all of these policies from a U.S. standpoint, but no American would respond with a warm smile if another nation took a similar approach toward the U.S.
Last week I spoke with a senior Chinese diplomat about the new Russia–North Korea axis. He observed with some asperity that Washington was in no position to seek the PRC’s assistance in that regard. He politely cited the state of China–U.S. relations. I suspect that his preferred response to Blinken would have been a redux of tennis legend John McEnroe’s infamous Wimbledon shout: “You cannot be serious!”
Moscow and Pyongyang have generated significant headlines with the arrival of several thousand North Koreans in Russia. Nevertheless, even if actively involved in combat, their numbers are not great enough to change the war’s balance of power. Far more significant so far has been the North’s provision of artillery shells and missiles.
In any case, China is not to blame for Vladimir Putin’s sudden embrace of Kim Jong-un. To the contrary, there is plenty of evidence that Beijing is unhappy with the move. Until recently the DPRK was primarily a Chinese, not a Russian, client. However, Moscow has relieved the North from its long and chilly reliance on the PRC. Pyongyang was never a dutiful and grateful partner and now is free to ignore Xi Jinping’s opinions.
Nor is Xi likely pleased with the controversy created by North Korea’s increasingly close relationship with Russia. The possible consequences are many. U.S.–South Korea–Japan ties may be strengthened, today’s limited relationship between NATO and America’s Asian allies may be expanded, and/or European and South Korean relations with China may suffer. All this with Beijing being blamed, however unfairly, for Russian cooperation with the North.
But there really is little that the PRC can do about Pyongyang. The latter was never very compliant, even when almost totally reliant on China. Kim knows that Xi does not want a failed nuclear state on his border, with the potential for mass refugee flows, civil war, and loose nukes, and is prepared to play a high-stakes game of geopolitical chicken with his nominal ally. Moreover, the DPRK can now turn to Russia if Xi applies unwelcome pressure on North Korea.
In practice, then, Beijing’s only option would be to press Moscow to back off. However, that is no more likely. With Washington seemingly irrevocably hostile, the PRC’s highest priority is to ensure that Russia does not lose in Ukraine. China does not want to be alone, facing a network of trans-Pacific and Atlantic alliances. Nor does it want to be known for selling out its friends to aid its avowed adversaries. One of which the U.S. obviously has become.
Indeed, it is Washington, with the aid of its European allies, that has pushed Russia into the arms of both China and North Korea. Mao Zedong was unhappy with “destalinization,” which implicitly criticized his cult of personality. Moscow and Beijing fought a bitter border war in the 1960s. China and Russia have conflicting interests in Central Asia, while Beijing has muttered menacingly about the continuing unfairness of territorial concessions made to Czarist Russia by Imperial China. However, mutual antagonism toward the U.S. today outweighs the past and has brought Moscow and Beijing together.
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Similar is the case of Russia’s relationship with Pyongyang, which cratered after the former recognized South Korea in 1992. Although bilateral ties later improved, North Korea remained only of secondary interest to Moscow. Russia joined the PRC in supporting sanctions against the DPRK. Amid all the summitry in 2018 and 2019, Kim met Putin only once, for a day, in 2019 in Vladivostok. It is unlikely that Moscow has changed its basic opinion of its problematic neighbor. Rather, the West’s proxy war-plus—imposing wide-ranging economic sanctions and providing weapons to Ukraine responsible for the deaths of thousands, and probably tens of thousands, of Russian personnel—led to predictable retaliation. The Putin government has bolstered the North, and other American adversaries, creating problems for Washington elsewhere.
Unwilling to admit the destructive consequences of their policy, many U.S. policymakers dismiss these results as ephemeral, with Russia’s newly invigorated relationships likely to wane when natural contradictions, disagreements, and disputes come to the fore. However, Moscow’s new malign partnerships are likely to last so long as the West is underwriting war against Russia. Moreover, some impacts could be permanent, such as any support for Pyongyang’s missile and nuclear programs. Then the architects of present policy would be left to repent at leisure as the DPRK attained the ability to incinerate American cities.
Unfortunately, there is little that Washington can do today to enlist China to break the Russia–North Korea entente. Imperiously dictating America’s “expectations” certainly won’t work. What America says no longer goes. U.S. policymakers must adapt to a world in which its skills at persuasion will be as if not more important than its tools of coercion.
