Dr. Leon Aron is a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. He was a governor of the Broadcasting Board of Governors and formerly taught at Georgetown University. His latest book is, “Riding the Tiger: Vladimir Putin's Russia and the Uses of War.”
Federal Newswire:
What happened in Russia that might explain Putin's thinking?
Dr. Leon Aron:
I devoted a long article that's been published recently in Commentary magazine precisely to this almost weird coincidence in the course that Xi Jinping and Putin chose for their countries around 2012. I think there are lots of variables, but I think one of them is this–as Lenin used to say, the key question is the question of power.
In both cases, Putin and Xi Jinping found themselves in a situation where what accounted for the regime's legitimacy and popularity in the past was increasingly not applicable to what was happening. Of course, in both cases, that was the economy.
Putin's popularity had been cemented by an immense, unprecedented growth of personal incomes, due to the growth of the economy at 7-9% a year from 2000 to 2008. There's no democratic legitimacy. Xi Jinping was not elected by the people. Putin knew very well how the elections had been organized, and so what do you do?
They attempted and succeeded in switching the basis of their regime's legitimacy. They begin to switch the basis of the legitimacy from economic growth and growth of incomes and economic progress to what I called “militarized patriotism.”
Neither country as far as I know in their entire histories had been so well positioned and so little threatened by the outside world. [They were] well integrated in the world economic system as both of them were in 2012, and all of a sudden, both are besieged fortresses.
Federal Newswire:
Did the revolutions that were taking place around 2012 in other parts of the world contribute to this pivot?
Dr. Leon Aron:
Very much so. Both Xi and Putin were very vocal, both in their fear of color revolutions and in their conviction that they were all orchestrated by the United States and the West. In fact, even before or maybe just as Xi came to power, in some of his earlier visits with U.S. officials, they were struck by how seriously fearful he was of the import of the color or rather export by the West of the color revolutions.
Of course, let's remember the Maidan revolution that eventually led to [Putin’s] horrific attack on Ukraine that immediately resulted in the annexation of Crimea and Donbas in 2014 was, in Putin's mind, a color revolution.
Federal Newswire:
There was a Cold War theory of trying to keep Moscow and Beijing from being on the same side. Is that possibility gone?
Dr. Leon Aron:
Let's remember, 55 years ago this past March, they fought a war. I remember being a kid growing up in Moscow when this was taken very seriously. It was very bloody. China still has maps, which in a way correctly point out Russia's imperial grabs of Chinese territory in the Far East.
Another very odd thing is that Xi Jinping…is a fervent Marxist. People forget this. But previous leaders except for Mao were playing a balance to Marx and Lenin and so on.
Xi’s different. He's a real believer. I'm finding a lot of interesting evidence of this. But what's interesting about this is that Putin essentially destroyed, hollowed out, and degraded the single largest party in post-communist Russia, which is the communists. Not only that, but the hundredth anniversary of the October Revolution and then the 150th anniversary of Lenin's birth were celebrated in China, but not in Russia.
I think this points to the kind of ideological leaps that Xi Jinping had to take in order to fraternize with Vladimir Putin.
Mao modeled the People's Republic of China on the Soviet Union. Of course, the October Revolution remained one of the most significant dates in Chinese history, as well.
So why this alliance? I think the key question is the question of power. I think Xi Jinping is willing to overlook all these anti-communist policies. Russia is essentially a right wing, proto-fascist state. The communists are not in jail because they don't need to be. They have been completely cowed.
The current Communist Party, even though it's still the largest in the so-called Russian parliament, the Duma, it's completely muted. It's no longer an effective force. Nevertheless, the alliance with this is profoundly anti-communist, right wing fascist regime by a Marxist state. I think the reason for this is because China sees in Russia a very useful tool to Xi Jinping's Marxist-based campaign or lifelong goal of taking on the U.S.-created and maintained Western, political, economic, and social world. If not destroying it, then certainly weakening it.
One of the parallels here is, of course, that these are precisely the hopes that Stalin had for Hitler when he allied himself with Hitler in 1939. There was no love lost between them. Remember, unlike Putin, Hitler actually did kill communists, including some of Stalin's personal German communist friends.
But Stalin believed, just like Lenin did in 1917, that this war is the war between so-called imperialist powers. Just as Lenin predicted, it would lead to the expansion of the socialist camp. Now in Stalin's case, perversely, it did so because of his conquest of Eastern Europe and Central Europe.
But what I hear from top level Americans traveling to Russia, there's very little respect [by CHina for Russia]. This is China's gas station.
To talk about the alliance, despite the sort of personal affection and respect that Xi has for Putin, it's ultimately a means to an end. I think this war in Ukraine is Putin and his proto-fascist state testing, not yet degrading, Western unity and the ability of the decadent doomed capitalists. I think that's the foundation of this so-called alliance.
Federal Newswire:
What parallels do you see between Putin's actions in Crimea and Ukraineto Xi’s actions with Taiwan?
Dr. Leon Aron:
What Ukraine is to Russia, so is Taiwan to China. What I mean by that, it's an existential threat. Both of them are small.
Well, Ukraine is not small.
Putin tried to show that Ukrainians are just Russians. He published a paper about six months before the invasion on fraternal unity, essentially implying that Ukrainians are essentially Russians who just lost their way.
In the case of [Taiwan], Xi Jinping [says] exactly the same [thing, that the Taiwanese are] ethnically the same people who are just democratic and Western-oriented. Certainly in the case of Taiwan, they are prosperous. In the case of Ukraine, they were on their way to prosperity. In both cases, this is a direct challenge to the legitimacy of Putin's regime and Xi Jinping's regime.
Putin went ahead and attacked, [but there are] all sorts of complications [for China attacking Taiwan]. It's 120 miles off the mainland. It's not as easy, and the risks are much higher. China is not really crossing that red line that President Biden established.
Federal Newswire:
What is China’s role in supporting Moscow against Ukraine, and would Moscow return the favor if Beijing moved against Taiwan?
Dr. Leon Aron:
It's an understatement. China is a lifeline. Russia is a patient on the gurney hooked to two hoses that carry oxygen support. The support is oil and gas money, and what that money buys, such as microchips, machine tools, and nitrocellulose, which incidentally is the key ingredient in both the propellant for missiles and key explosive devices in Russian artillery shells.
Most importantly most of the stuff comes either directly from China or via China. China is the major purchaser of Russian oil and gas, and China is a major supplier of technologies, elements, and materiel vitally needed for Russia to conduct this war.
We know why Russia needs China. Now, the other thing I think is less clear.
The Chinese are very tough bargainers and great realists. They're not enamored by Russia's economy. It's okay, but it's simply a Petro economy with some addition of missile and space technologies. I don't think Russia really has anything with which to materially affect a potential invasion of Taiwan in favor of China.
Remember, Russia has tried to build their Air Force and air force carriers. The so-called blue water, meaning Russian fleet is virtually non-existent. It’s also now being successfully decimated by Ukrainian drones in the Black Sea. So, that is out of the question.
Of course, as the final communique issued by Putin and Xi Jinping on the 20th of May, when Putin was there a week and a half ago, they both affirmed that Taiwan is Chinese territory. Putin signed with both hands for what he's already doing–that is selling millions of tons of oil and billions of cubic meters of gas.
There is a huge imbalance between what China does for Russia in the context of Russia's war and what Russia could do for China in the potential conduct of an aggression against Taiwan.
Federal Newswire:
What areas of convergence or divergence could be strategically significant?
Dr. Leon Aron:
Well, the biggest difference is very obvious. China has much more to lose from its confrontation with the West than Russia. China is integrated, and its national income, its GDP, is vitally, hugely dependent on its exports. Remember, China's economy is eight times Russia's.
As a result, Xi Jinping is proceeding with great care, unlike Putin. According to Russian sources, one of the goals that Putin wanted to achieve and did not achieve in his visit with Xi Jinping, despite all the pomp and circumstance and the farewell kiss, is that he wanted much more obvious military support.
He also wanted Chinese banks to be less mindful of potential sanctions. They are very much money-minded. As soon as the U.S. identifies a particular bank in China, it generally draws back from doing business with Russia. This is something that Putin wanted to reverse.
It’s the case of “we love you, but we love our money in dollars much more, and yes we will trade you in Yuans but there is an aspect of our economy which is so much more important to us. Sorry Vladimir, we will have to proceed slower.” Putin wanted the expansion of military cooperation and the so-called, joint military exercises.
If you look at what China contributes to them, it's not very impressive. It's dipping toes in the water. On both of those scores, Putin's failure, I think, is indicative of this major difference, between the economic situations and international situations that both countries find themselves in.
Xi Jinping looks at Putin's Russia and this war on Ukraine as a very useful tool for a larger dream of weakening the imperialist capitalist West. For Putin, even though he talks about multipolarity and all of this, his goals are much more limited.
His goals are much more tactical and so inept and urgent. As a result, I think you could say that, perhaps in the general direction, there's a great deal of coincidence, but the tactics are different because the country situations are different.
Federal Newswire:
Where should our audience go to follow your work and commentary?
Dr. Leon Aron:
All my work is posted on www.aei.org, which is an acronym for American Enterprise Institute. I'm fairly active on X, @AronRTTT.
