A potential Ukraine-Russia peace proposal brokered by China would undermine the reputation of the United States, according to Gregory Copley, president of the International Strategic Studies Association.
On March 20, Chinese leader Xi Jinping arrived in Moscow for a three-day state visit to Russia, with Xi and Russian President Vladimir Putin expected to discuss China’s proposal for resolving the conflict in Ukraine.
Copley believes that if Xi can translate the meeting into some kind of success, such as a prolonged ceasefire or the start of a new negotiating regime, “then he will have gained enormous prestige, and the United States will have lost it.”
Copley said Xi was in that prestigious position because “both of the leaders—President Zelenskyy in Ukraine and President Putin in Moscow—have agreed that the PRC peace proposals had merit and were worth discussing.”
According to Copley, Zelenskyy might somehow agree to the Chinese deal, as it would enable him to survive within the Ukrainian polity.
Face-Saving Compromise
Copley said the deal is likely to involve some kind of face-saving compromises by both combatant presidents, while creating a larger trading environment postwar for Beijing and the Eurasian trading bloc.“It may be that Russia will allow postwar Ukraine to trade through the Sea of Azov forts in Donbass, such as Mariupol,” he said.
“Maybe it'll be some kind of joint governance mechanisms which will be in place, which recognize the sovereignty of Eastern and Western Ukraine, or those parts which have now been absorbed into Russia. But there will have to be something which enables both sides to save face and improve their economic position,” he added.
Statesmanship
In his opinion, the true intention of Beijing is to keep the United States engaged in Ukraine.“They are not unhappy that the United States is being driven by the White House and State Department into escalating the conflict in Ukraine,” he said.
Meanwhile, Copley said the Pentagon is advocating exactly the reverse of that policy: a tamped down Ukraine and focusing on the main threat, which is China.
Copley believes that the US and its allies will attempt, at all costs, to undermine the Chinese peace deal and to insist that Ukraine keep fighting the war, which he said would lead to some “dangerous levels of escalation.”
With Poland increasing their supplies of lethal weapons into Ukraine and the United States committing so much funding, equipment, and, to a degree, manpower, into Ukraine, he said that the war there is on the verge of no longer being a mere Western proxy war against Russia.
“It’s being seen as a direct war against Russia. And if that breaks through some magical line, it could become a declared real war between Russia and the NATO states. And that would be really, really dangerous for all concerned,” he said.
“The reality is that we are going to see a need for greater statesmanship in the West, instead of this jingoistic policy of attempting to deflate Beijing’s successes by Western rhetoric building up the conflict. We need a lot more skilled approaches to see the West outflank Beijing, in the Middle East and Africa and in Europe, for that matter,” Copley said.
