Russian Sinologist: China Is Not NATO, But Neither Is It A Strategic Ally To Russia

While interviewing Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov in Moscow on December 6, 2024, media personality Tucker Carlson, an influential ally of President-elect Donald Trump, touched on the sanctions against Russia.

Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov sits for an interview with Tucker Carlson. Russian Foreign Ministry Press Service

Summing up his point of view on the matter, the former said, “They would never kill us, so they are making us stronger”. For his part, Tucker Carlson added to this the following: “And driving Russia east. And so the vision that I think [the] same policymakers in Washington had 20 years ago is why not to bring Russia into a Western bloc, sort of as a balance against the rising east. But it doesn’t seem like that. Do you think that’s still possible?”. Sergey Lavrov replied that he didn’t think so. This was followed by lengthy explanations of why he didn’t think so. Commenting on all of that, Tucker Carlson said that it sounded ‘like you’re saying the Russian-Chinese alliance is permanent’.

Then the conversation went as follows: “Sergey Lavrov: Well, we are neighbors. And of course, geography is very important.

Tucker Carlson: But you’re also neighbors with Western Europe. And you’re part of it, in effect.

Sergey Lavrov: Through Ukraine Western Europe wants to come to our borders”.

China Is Not NATO, But Neither Is It A Strategic Ally To Russia

But to be forthright, China does pretty much the same thing in what Solzhenitsyn once called “the underbelly of Russia” — Central Asia. China’s economic expansion is particularly noticeable in Kazakhstan.

As Ukrainian political analyst and former advisor to Ukraine’s internal affairs minister, Anton Gerashenko, said, “China is pushing Russia out of Kazakhstan’s uranium sector — Russia is gradually losing its influence in Central Asia”. According to him, “with Russia being weakened, Kazakhstan is choosing China — and the shift looks irreversible”.

The situation in Ukraine, despite the ongoing war, seems to remain static in terms of competition between Russia and the West. At the same time, nobody would argue that China is now rapidly driving Russia out of Central Asia in economic terms. It means that the situation in Central Asia, and especially in Kazakhstan, is dramatically changing in favor of China and to the detriment of Russia. Of course, China is not NATO, but neither is it a strategic ally to Russia.

So, by embarking on the Ukrainian war, Russia has suffered itself to be unprepared so far as regards her particular and immediate contest with China over the Central Asian region.

Here is what Andrey Devyatov, a former Soviet military intelligence (GRU) officer and one of the leading Russian experts on China, says in this regard: “Russia has been caught in an ambush by the Chinese stratagems. Here is what this is all about. The Kremlin is [still] officially saying: “We have been duped with the Minsk agreements”. [And who can say with assurance that] the same would not go with the relations with China?! For somewhere in there, there is an ambush. The thing is that Chinese policy is a never-ending path of tricks. It consists of stratagems. And stratagems are a collection of military tricks… [The point is that] there is no talk about an alliance regarding relations between Russia and China. China keeps emphasizing that there is no alliance commitment between China and Russia. Moreover, the Chinese did not include our country in their project of “a community of common destiny for mankind”. Who did they include in it? These are the countries of Central Asia, the countries of Southeast Asia, and even Brazil. And they did not include Russia in that project. Why is this overlooked by [Russian] political analysts and sinologists? The Chinese don’t take the Kremlin with them there. We are good neighbors [and no more]… And what did Trump say? He said: my goal is to break the Chinese-Russian strategic interaction. And how will he do this? He will be doing this just the way businessmen do business, that is, through the policy of deals”.

With such a turn of events, one thing Moscow needs is having bargaining chips all over its ‘near abroad’, which it sees as one operational theater. In particular, it’s about Belarus, Ukraine, and Central Asia, including Kazakhstan.

Source: Eurasia Review