In an op-ed at the Wall Street Journal Robert Kaplan lurches uncontrollably towards a point I’ve been making for some time:
Russia and China are in different situations. Russia is a rickety house that at some point may crumble. China is sturdier; nevertheless, it could slowly become a compressed pack of social dynamite with less of an outlet for its internal frustrations. It is theoretically possible for Mr. Xi, as president for life, to institute a program of dramatic economic reforms. But doing so would unleash the need and yearning for more personal freedoms, the kind that the regime is moving with its technological thought control to try to eliminate.
As Russia and China strengthen militarily, even as they maintain and intensify internal repression, they will continue to clash with the West in the near term. But as in the early days of the Cold War, policy makers have to look beyond the present to the difficulty our adversaries will have sustaining their systems over time. And if their systems come undone in the next decade or the one after, Eurasia—of which Russia and China are the geographic organizing principles—will face extreme instability. The U.S. must gird itself for this struggle, though with a certain degree of optimism. Democracy is the better long-distance runner.
but he fails to carry it over the finish line. Russia and China are not natural allies. We can force them into a temporary and tenuous marriage of convenience with unthinking aggression but they are actually natural enemies. We, on the other hand, are by nature total strangers to either or both of them. We care about very little that they do unless we force ourselves to but that’s what we’re doing. They are regional powers in the same region. Their interests will inevitably collide.
Kaplan is a delusional neocan and an extreme war monger. His wife incited and financed the coup d’etat that removed Ukraine’s only legitimate, democratically elected President. Russia would today be a member of the EU and NATO were it not for the machinations and treasons of neocons like Kaplan. Russia may not be a natural ally of China, but the shotgun marriage was imposed on them by the neocon cabal that controls our government.
I think that’s probably the case. It’s certainly more consistent with the deal that was struck with Russia to allow German reunification than the present narrative is.