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CHAPTER 1

The New Terrain

“In my opinion, the competition between China and the U.S. in the 21st century should be a race, that is, a contest to see whose development results are better, whose comprehensive national power can rise faster, and to finally decide who can become the champion country to lead world progress.”

—GENERAL LIU YAZHOU, CHINA¹

“What preserved peace, even in Cold War conditions, was a balance of forces.”

—VLADIMIR PUTIN²

“After my election, I have more flexibility.”

—PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA³

Xi Jinping’s visit to Moscow in March 2013 was dramatic, but the event was a long time coming. It was foreshadowed, in fact, more than a decade earlier, in 2001—the historic year that saw the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington and the launch of America’s War on Terror. Those attacks fundamentally transformed American foreign policy and American relations with both countries and the rest of the world. But while America geared up to fight a shadowy, multinational enemy, Russia and China were playing a much older, more traditional game: the time-honored practice of two strong nations identifying common interests and formalizing an alliance.

In June 2001, in Shanghai, the two countries created a kind of alternative NATO: the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Evolving out of a predecessor organization, the Shanghai Five, and originally something of a vague concord between Russia and China, the SCO has developed more recently into a comprehensive effort to strengthen economic, military, and cultural ties and to provide mutual security. Vladimir Putin has called the SCO “a reborn version of the Warsaw Pact.”⁴ Unlike the old Warsaw Pact, however, which excluded China, the SCO is a joint Russian-Chinese alliance that includes the four “stan” countries that have tilted against democracy: Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan. Putin has made clear in recent years that he now sees the SCO as an explicit response to Western attempts to expand NATO—an effort that he views as a betrayal after his cooperation with the West, especially after 9/11.

Working together in the SCO, Russia and China have forged strong relationships with enemies of the U.S., such as Iran (which has observer status), and with those that have contentious relationships with the U.S., such as Pakistan (which has applied for full membership). The SCO has also allowed observer status to India, Afghanistan, and Mongolia; Turkey became a “dialogue partner” in 2013.⁵ For Iran, in particular, SCO membership would guarantee stability in its relationships with Russia and China and further its interests in Central Asia.⁶ Because of the SCO, the United States has a difficult time building consensus on nuclear nonproliferation, drug trafficking, trade rules, and a host of other issues.

That difficulty would probably grow if the SCO’s membership became much larger—a likely possibility. Its member states already cover an area of more than 30 million square kilometers, with a combined population of 1.46 billion. If India were to join, the organization would contain the two most populous countries. “The leaders of the states sitting at this negotiation table are representatives of half of humanity,” said the host of the SCO’s 2005 SCO summit. That was a bit of an overstatement at the time, but the words may soon reflect reality.

Only a month after the SCO’s founding, Russia and China signed the Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation, the most significant agreement between the two powers since the historic 1950 compact signed by Stalin and Mao. The 2001 pact was a 20-year strategic treaty in which both parties formalized their shared positions on sovereignty issues and their opposition to “uni-polarity,” code for American influence abroad. The treaty made sense to both powers for many reasons. First and foremost, it increased their leverage internationally in relation to United States power, which was at a historic high. Both countries saw American unilateralism as a threat to their interests and traditional spheres of influence.

The treaty also served individual needs on both sides. The Russians’ greatest need was for capital investment, and the Chinese had capital to burn. The Russians, meanwhile, had massive energy reserves and a willing and needy buyer in the Chinese. The Chinese were also eager to buy Russian military technology. All in all, for the Russian economy, the treaty was vital. For the Chinese, modernizing their armed forces and securing stable energy supplies were two of the most pressing national issues. The treaty helped fulfill both needs.

Few observers at the time, however, understood the significance of the alliance between the two longtime foes. “If China and Russia decide to get into bed with each other,” Ralph A. Cossa had written in the New York Times a few years earlier, “the appropriate response is to wish both of them pleasant dreams, since each will surely feel compelled to sleep with one eye open.”⁷ Such skepticism about a Chinese-Russian partnership made sense at the time. After all, with so much adversarial history between them, how close could the two nations get?

Yet, with the benefit of hindsight, it now seems clear that the seeds were planted during those years for the culminating moment of 2013, when Xi visited Moscow to so much political pomp and ceremony. By the time they met in Moscow, Xi and Putin were seeking more than just expressions of friendship. They were pursuing a substantive agenda of cooperation and partnership, signing at least 35 agreements covering a range of issues—economics, travel and tourism, agriculture, banking, science and technology, military technology, and geopolitical cooperation. These agreements represent only the latest illustration of a Russian-Chinese collaboration that has been deepening for years—most of it in opposition to U.S. interests. Let’s take a look at the key areas.

FACILITATING ROGUE REGIMES AND FORGING A “LEAGUE OF AUTOCRACIES”

Vladimir Putin was riding high in February 2014, as Russia hosted the Winter Olympics in Sochi. It was the first time Russia had ever hosted a Winter Games, and Putin was determined to revel in every minute of it. And so he hosted a lavish reception in the Atrium ballroom of the Rus Sanatorium, a structure that dates to the Stalin era. Yet, as the Wall Street Journal put it drily, “Mr. Putin’s guest list ha[d] some big gaps.” While most prominent Western leaders stayed away, Putin entertained President Xi along with then-President Viktor Yanukovych of Ukraine, President Aleksander Lukashenko of Belarus—and North Korea’s second-highest-ranking official, even though Pyongyang was sending no delegation of athletes to Sochi.⁸ If, as the old saying has it, we know someone by his friends, Putin’s Olympic reception provided a fresh reminder.

“It takes time for societies and policymakers to understand that a major shift in global affairs is afoot. But what we see clearly, in recent months, is the emergence of a new constellation of powers,” wrote William C. Martel in The Diplomat. The new grouping includes China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Syria, and Venezuela. On the surface, these nations are surely distinct; in some cases, indeed, they have conflicting interests. But for the most part, they are united in that their economic and geostrategic goals are inimical to U.S. interests. “There are two common fears that animate the policies of these authoritarian governments,” Martel noted. “One is their apparent fear of democracy, freedom, and liberty, which each of these societies work aggressively to curtail. Second, these authoritarian regimes fear the power and influence of the United States and the West.”⁹ Thus, they are eager to work together when possible, or at minimum stay out of one another’s way. As Russian Foreign Minister Dmitri Lavrov said of China: “We appreciate Beijing’s measured and impartial stance on the Ukrainian crisis, as well as China’s manifest understanding of all its manifold aspects, including the historic ones.”¹⁰

Russia and China are both directly and indirectly supporting and facilitating the efforts of U.S. adversaries around the world—especially the Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs. Russia provides technical assistance and nuclear know-how to Tehran and has sold advanced weapons to defend Iran’s nuclear sites from air strikes. Russia is Iran’s biggest provider of foreign weapons, supplying $3.442 billion in total arms sales since 1991.¹¹ The Russians have also assisted Iran in constructing its Bushehr I nuclear reactor, which critics say is abetting Iran’s pursuit of a nuclear bomb. The Russians have used their position on the UN Security Council to argue against a military strike on Iran or the imposition of harsh sanctions.¹² That stance seemed to soften in 2012, when both Russia and China voted in favor of UN sanctions against Iran. On the surface, it looked as if they had finally come around to seeing things the West’s way. In reality, the action was almost certainly motivated by a common desire on the part of Russia and China to keep Iran from ever aligning with the United States. Permanent enmity between the U.S. and Iran, in their thinking, is the best way to keep the Americans out of Central Asia.

Under the terms of an “interim” six-month agreement reached in Geneva in November 2013, Iran pledged to freeze and even curb some nuclear activities in exchange for an easing of economic sanctions. The Obama administration trumpeted the accords as a major step forward, and they are—for Iran. As John Bolton, a former UN ambassador, wrote, the deal accomplished three major Iranian goals: First, it “bought time to continue all aspects of its nuclear-weapons program the agreement does not cover.” These include centrifuge manufacture, weaponization research, and the ballistic-missile program—hardly trivial areas. Second, Iran “gained legitimacy” by being welcomed back into the international community. And third, Tehran has escaped, perhaps forever, the crippling impact of U.S. economic sanctions; the more time passes, the more difficult it will be to reimpose them.¹³ The lessening of U.S. sanctions will wind up boosting the Iranian economy by at least $7 billion, and perhaps much more. In short, the agreement is woefully, dangerously inadequate. It fails to rein in the Iranians’ ability to enrich uranium; nor does it force them to get rid of their centrifuges or even to slow their heavy-water reactor. For all practical purposes, the Iranian program carries on.

Time will tell whether opponents of the agreement in Washington can mend the damage done. A bipartisan majority in Congress wants tighter sanctions against Iran now, but President Obama opposes them. Polls show that the American public has deep reservations about the deal and overwhelmingly mistrusts the Iranian government as partners in any agreement.¹⁴ If something positive is to be salvaged from these dealings, the U.S. will have to rediscover its negotiating power. Certainly it cannot count on the Russians to halt their support of Iran’s nuclear program, despite Moscow’s role in the negotiations as a member of the P5+1.¹⁵

China does business with Iran as well and singlehandedly props up a North Korean regime that seems to be ever more volatile and dangerous. The Chinese have refused to discourage Pyongyang from building up its stockpile of nuclear warheads or from developing even more sophisticated and deadly nuclear weapons that could hit Alaska or the U.S. West Coast.

While China positions itself as a supporter of sanctions against North Korea, it does nothing to help enforce them. At heart, China doesn’t want the North Korean problem resolved. An intimidating, unpredictable North Korea keeps South Korea in check and the Americans off balance in the Far East, while terrifying such staunch American allies as Japan and the Philippines. This is all to the good, from the Chinese perspective. More recently, it is true, the North Koreans got too provocative even for China’s tastes, and the Chinese have been working behind the scenes to rein them in. But they do this to protect their strategic interests, not out of solidarity with the West.

China’s facilitation is also essential to perhaps the most disturbing alliance of all: the long-running Iran–North Korea “axis of proliferation,” as Claudia Rosett calls it in Forbes. In this weapons trade, North Korea for the most part is the seller and Iran the buyer, though the two rogue nations also work together on developing missile technology.¹⁶

All of these efforts are part of a broader Russian-Chinese goal: to build a counter-Western alliance of antidemocratic nations, what might be called a League of Autocracies—quite the opposite of the “League of Democracies” John McCain has called for.¹⁷ These autocratic nations include not only North Korea and Iran but also Syria, Venezuela, Sudan, and Myanmar (Burma), among others. Both Russia and China sell arms to state sponsors of terrorism and have strengthened the hand of such terrorist groups as Hamas, Hezbollah, and even al-Qaeda affiliates in hopes of weakening the United States and thwarting its strategic goals.

In one of the deadliest places in the world—Syria—the Russians and the Chinese are, again, strongly aligned with each other and against the U.S. and Western powers. The Russians have a base in Syria and came under fire from the international community in 2013 for supplying weapons to the Bashar al-Assad government as it continued to suppress a rebellion, although Russia’s representatives defended their actions by claiming the U.S. was supporting the rebels. It’s becoming increasingly clear that the Russians will do just about anything to discredit the American view. To this end, in an op-ed in the New York Times after Assad used chemical weapons against his own people, Putin pleaded for “caution” from the U.S. as he argued for delaying a military strike. He wrote: “From the outset, Russia has advocated peaceful dialogue enabling Syrians to develop a compromise plan for their own future. We are not protecting the Syrian government, but international law.”¹⁸ He went on to argue that it is dangerous for Americans to see themselves as exceptional.

Putin’s presentation of Russia as an honest broker was starkly at odds with the facts. Indeed, during the March 2013 chemical-weapons attack in Aleppo, when the Americans called for a UN investigation into the claims of both the government and the rebels, the Russians supported only the claims of the Assad government.¹⁹ Further, the Russian envoy to the UN openly mocked U.S. concerns by reminding the Americans of their erroneous claims about chemical weapons in Iraq a decade earlier.

Both Russia and China have vetoed proposed UN Security Council resolutions that sought to put pressure on Assad (and more recently, they helped block a Security Council resolution affirming the sovereignty and national borders of Ukraine). Russia has supplied $928 million in weapons to Syria since 1991.²⁰ China, for its part has repeatedly said that it opposes forceful foreign intervention in Syria and has called for a political solution.²¹ Both Axis nations have generally been wary of what they perceive as American attempts at regime change.

Meanwhile, the Obama administration, still in “reset” mode, shows little sign that it understands the challenge the Axis poses or has any intention of addressing it. The U.S. is withdrawing from the Middle East and retreating from commitments it made to allies there and in Western and Eastern Europe. Our disengagement from the world couldn’t come at a worse time.

CYBER WARFARE

In the area of cyber warfare, America has done somewhat better. Here, at least, American officials show some recognition of the enormity of the challenge facing us. In fall 2012, former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta warned that the U.S. could someday face a “cyber Pearl Harbor.” Panetta also said, “It’s no secret that Russia and China have advanced cyber capabilities.” That was an understatement.

In fact, Russia and China are the world’s leading practitioners of cyber warfare. They work overtime to sabotage and subvert military, economic, and infrastructure assets of nations they view as adversaries—and to loot their systems of military intelligence, diplomatic information, and corporate trade secrets. The Russians have brought down the technology infrastructure of Georgia and Estonia; Chinese hackers affiliated with the Army of the People’s Republic have infamously been identified as the culprits in massive attacks on U.S. banking, security, infrastructure, and even military systems.

In his January 2012 unclassified Worldwide Threat Assessment before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, Director of National Intelligence James Clapper named Russia and China as the state actors most active in stealing secrets from the United States and attacking us through cyberspace.²² If Panetta’s dreaded cyber Pearl Harbor materializes, one or both of the Axis nations will almost certainly be behind it.

In a political sense, a cyber Pearl Harbor has already happened. The leaking of national-security secrets in June 2013 by Edward Snowden, and the refuge he was given, first by the Chinese and then by the Russians, ought to remind skeptics of the potential costs and dangers we face in this area. Though both nations were careful to profess that they didn’t support Snowden’s actions, their protection of him should make clear, too, that Moscow and Beijing would take any chance available to undermine American power and international influence. And they don’t need to rely solely on their own efforts to do this.

In late September 2013, the U.S. announced that Iran had successfully hacked into unclassified Navy computers running email services and internal intranets. It showed a new sophistication from Iranian hackers, suggesting they now have the capability to break into U.S. military systems. They had previously focused their attacks on U.S. banks and other private networks, and the U.S. didn’t consider Iran a major cyber player. How did the Iranians ramp up their capabilities so quickly?

“They’re getting help from the Russians,” said cyber-security specialist and former State Department official James Lewis in a Wall Street Journal story that cited “current and former officials” who believe that the Iranians have developed “a growing partnership with Russian cybercriminals.”²³

MILITARY AND NUCLEAR BUILDUPS

“What preserved peace, even in Cold War conditions,” Vladimir Putin has said, “was a balance of forces.”²⁴

On the fundamental measure of national security—military readiness—the Axis nations are building up while the U.S. is slashing its defense budget through the imposed sequestration and other automatic cuts. While the U.S. pursues wholesale reductions, the Axis pursues wholesale augmentations; while we allow our equipment, materials, and technologies to degrade, they pursue constant upgrades. Perhaps most worryingly, while the American president advocates so-called nuclear zero—a world without nuclear weapons—the Russians and Chinese bolster their atomic arsenals.

While all signs point to a strengthening Russian-Chinese relationship and more formalized cooperation and coordination, the United States is pulling back from its commitments and leaving allies from Japan in the Far East to Poland in Eastern Europe worried and vulnerable. As we have seen in Ukraine, the Russians have already taken advantage of this vulnerability. In the Far East, it may only be a matter of time before the Chinese attempt to do the same. While the Russians and Chinese make demands, the United States makes concessions. And while the Russians and Chinese pursue what they dubiously call “a new, more just world order,” the United States backs away from world leadership, hiding behind the illusion of “leading from behind.” It all adds up to a calamitous American message: The U.S. simply has no coherent national defense strategy.

Obama’s broader disarmament agenda, both in offensive and defensive capabilities, is at odds with treaty commitments he made to our allies. His anti-nuclear ambitions are music to the ears of the Axis, but they leave the U.S. increasingly vulnerable. As former Senator John Kyl puts it: “The U.S. is now stuck with numbers and technology capable of dealing only with low-level threats.”²⁵

On the other side, things couldn’t be more different. Putin gave Xi an honor he has allowed no other foreign leader: a visit to Russia’s strategic-defense command headquarters and “war room.” He even let Chinese media film the visit, as Xi observed giant computer screens of military intelligence.²⁶

One key aspect of the Sino-Russian strategic partnership, military exchange, involves Russian arms sales to China and high-technology sharing. China’s weapons purchases from Russia over the past 20 years account for $29 billion of its $34 billion in arms imports.²⁷ For the Russians, this ongoing exchange has two major objectives: bolstering the former Soviet defense-industrial complex following the USSR’s collapse, and arming a country that shares the goal of weakening U.S. control in the region.

The Chinese, meanwhile, have grown their military power exponentially over the last two decades, projecting force across Asia to the borders of India, with new naval ports imposed on client countries. Some Western estimates put Chinese military spending second only to the Americans’, at $200 billion annually,²⁸ having grown from $20 billion 10 years ago.²⁹ The Chinese have even begun threatening stalwart Western allies in the Pacific and East Asia—warning Australia, for example, that it would be “caught in the crossfire” if the nation went ahead with plans to offer a base for U.S. Marines.³⁰ The Chinese have bullied the Philippines over the Spratly Islands, and they are engaged in a tense provocation with Japan over the disputed Senkaku Islands (called the Diaoyu Islands by China)—an ongoing battle which has made starkly clear America’s declining power in the region. By the late 2020s—a little more than a decade from now—Chinese ships should outnumber American ships in the Pacific.³¹

In July 2013, an armada of Chinese and Russian warships sailed through the Sea of Japan in joint naval exercises that included live firing. Beijing called it the largest joint exercise the Chinese military had ever undertaken with another country. The Chinese fleet commander said the goal was to strengthen “strategic trust” with Russia—and that seems to be how it was received. “This shows unprecedented good relations between China and Russia,” said Professor Wang Ning, a Russian Studies specialist at the Shanghai International Studies University. “It shows that the two countries will support each other on the global stage.”³²

All of this plays neatly into what has come to be called the China Dream: a goal shared by both top military leaders and Communist Party officials to surpass the U.S. as the world’s preeminent military superpower by 2049, the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist revolution. Xi calls it simply “the dream of a strong nation,” but the dream is inseparable from military prowess.

“To achieve the great revival of the Chinese nation, we must ensure there is unison between a prosperous country and strong military,” Xi has said.³³ He has spared no resource to focus the military on “combat readiness” and “fighting and winning wars.” No one need spell out whom the war would be fought against. There is only one candidate: the United States, China’s only Pacific and East Asian rival.

“In my opinion,” writes General Liu Yazhou, “the competition between China and the U.S. in the 21st century should be a race, that is, a contest to see whose development results are better, whose comprehensive national power can rise faster, and to finally decide who can become the champion country to lead world progress.”³⁴

Meanwhile, Russia is using its petro-wealth to rebuild its conventional military while also modernizing—and greatly expanding—its nuclear arsenal. Already, Russia’s nuclear weapons outnumber America’s. The 2008 Georgian war made clear, or should have made clear, that the Russians intend to reclaim the entirety of their old Soviet sphere of influence. The West’s failure to lift a hand to help a democratic ally in that struggle emboldened Russian confidence.

“TELL VLADIMIR”: THE U.S. ABDICATION ON MISSILE DEFENSE

On the surface, it was a customary scene: a pool of journalists waiting for the start of a news conference with President Obama and Russia’s then-president, Dmitri Medvedev, in March 2012. But sitting close together beforehand, the two leaders shared an impromptu exchange inadvertently caught by a “hot” microphone.

“It’s important for him to give me space,” Obama told Medvedev, referring to Vladimir Putin, who had just won election to succeed Medvedev as Russia’s next president. “This is my last election. After my election I have more flexibility.”

“I understand. I will transmit this information to Vladimir,” Medvedev said.

Then, as the two men sat back in their chairs, barely audible over the videotape, Obama could be heard saying, sotto voce: “Tell Vladimir.”

Obama and Medvedev were trying to iron out a long-running dispute between the two countries on American plans to deploy a missile-defense system in Eastern Europe—a system that the U.S. conceived mainly as protection against Iranian nuclear ambitions. The United States insisted that the missile-defense shield was intended to counter Iranian nuclear ambitions; Russia claimed that the real target of American missile-defense plans was Moscow. What mostly spooked the Russians about the American plan was the missile shield’s final phase, then in development, which would allow the U.S. to use interceptors to shoot down long-range ICBMs, a core part of Russia’s nuclear arsenal. Those U.S. plans angered Putin, who saw them as an encroachment on his sphere of influence and a betrayal of his cooperation with the West after 9/11—much as he had seen a betrayal in the American plans to expand NATO. He made clear that he would resist the American missile-defense effort at any cost.

“When we talk about the missile-defense system, our American partners keep telling us, ‘This is not directed against you,’” Putin said. “But what happens if Mr. Romney, who believes us to be America’s No. 1 foe, is elected as president of the United States? In that case, the missile-defense system will definitely be directed against Russia as it is technologically configured exactly for this purpose.”³⁵ General Nikolai Makarov, who was then Russia’s chief of the general staff, said of the missile-defense standoff: “A decision to use destructive force preemptively will be taken if the situation worsens.”³⁶

Happily for the Russians, the situation didn’t worsen: In March 2013, just before the Xi-Putin summit meeting, President Obama blindsided them, and American allies, with a unilateral retreat on missile defense. The U.S. announced that it would deploy 14 new missile interceptors on the West Coast or in Alaska, in response to the increasingly bellicose words and deeds of North Korea—but that the U.S. would pay for this redeployment by canceling the last phase of the planned missile shield in Poland and Romania. That last phase, which involved interceptors, had concerned Putin most. Thus the United States, in the absence of any concessions from Russia, had scuttled the most vital aspects of its missile-defense plan for Eastern Europe. (Some GOP senators are urging the administration to reconsider the policy and restart the Bush-era plan for the missile shield, especially in light of the Kremlin’s aggression against Ukraine.³⁷)

The announcement illustrated how strategically off-balance the U.S. remains under President Obama. The missile-defense shield had been geared to protect the region against prospective Iranian nukes, which Iran pursues with Russian assistance. There is no sign that the Iranian danger has lessened; on the contrary, it has grown. Thus, the shield is more needed than ever, but with North Korea acting up, the U.S. merely pulled resources from one dangerous area and shifted them to another. This is not leadership; this is lurching from crisis to crisis.

It’s hard to overstate the magnitude of Obama’s capitulation—one, it’s important to note, that came as a surprise to the Russians, who had no inkling that the U.S. was about to back down. The move telegraphed, yet again, that America lacks a clear strategy and sense of what it is trying to accomplish in the world. Meanwhile, Russia and China show every sign of having clear plans.

Xi and Putin have moved closer together on missile defense, as they have in so many other areas; their expression of unity on the issue may have been the single most important document they signed at their March 2013 summit. The two leaders pledged to work together while voicing common concerns about the deployment of missile-defense systems around the world. They were talking about the U.S., although they didn’t say so.

On the surface, the Russian-Chinese statement of concern about missile defense could have sounded like a note of weakness, a futile complaint against American power. It may have been, too, but for Obama’s big announcement a week earlier, making clear just how “flexible” he intended to be. This American and Western “flexibility”—really, an abdication of responsibility—will only make America’s eventual task harder, should we ever wake from our neo-isolationist slumber.

ECONOMIC COOPERATION

Among the agreements signed during Xi’s March 2013 visit was a deal to proceed with the Power of Siberia natural-gas pipeline, which would provide energy-hungry China with Russian natural gas beginning in 2017. As part of the agreement, the Chinese gave up to $30 billion in loans to Rosneft, Russia’s state-owned oil company, in exchange for a massive boost to their supplies of Russian oil. Both sides benefit: Russia obtains the capital needed to finish an acquisition of the British-Russian oil firm TNK-BP, while China secures the fuel source to power its workhouse economy.

More broadly, both Russia and China play leading roles in the efforts of the BRIC nations (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) to create an independent international financial structure—efforts that include starting a development bank and pooling their foreign reserves to protect against currency crises.³⁸ Independently, China has expanded its economic reach across not just Asia, where it projects its economic might through investment and trade, but also deep into Africa and Latin America. Russia uses its growing oil and energy industry to increase its state power and international political leverage, especially in Central Asia and Europe. Russia’s economic ties with nations operating against U.S. interests—especially Syria, but also Venezuela, Iran, and North Korea—are broadening.

NATIONAL SOVEREIGNTY AND “NON-INTERFERENCE”

The Moscow meeting also included several expressions of agreement on a less specific, but hugely significant principle: what both nations speak of as non-interference in the internal affairs of other nations. Xi urged China and Russia to “resolutely support each other in efforts to protect national sovereignty, security, and development interests.” At the Moscow State Institute of International Relations, he said, “We must respect the right of each country in the world to independently choose its path of development and oppose interference in the internal affairs of other countries.”³⁹ Those were friendly words to the ears of Vladimir Putin, who has long opposed what he considers internal interference—code language for U.S. involvement in Central Asia and the Middle East. (He shows no such compunction, of course, when it comes to his own interventions.) Now, the Chinese find the concept of national sovereignty amenable as well, given their concerns about American support for Japan in the South China Sea and other strategic concerns in the Far East. It was all part of a broader expression of “strategic partnership” that included support for each other’s territorial claims and goals. In a press conference with Xi, Putin even referred to Japan and Germany as “the defeated powers” from World War II.⁴⁰

A WAKE-UP CALL

In spring 2013, the world braced for a potentially catastrophic war on the Korean Peninsula. North Korea’s mysterious young leader, Kim Jong Un, was systematically cutting ties with the South, making threatening statements, and preparing a new missile launch. While periodic provocations from North Korea have become almost commonplace over the last two decades, the crisis unfolding in March and April 2013 seemed more severe, and it highlighted how destructive the leadership gap in Washington is becoming for our national security. While the Obama administration seemed to take the Pyongyang crisis seriously, it appears to lack an understanding of the bigger picture—the role China plays here and elsewhere, and the broader challenge all these crises present to U.S. interests.

There are exceptions to the general lack of understanding. “Chinese behavior has been very disappointing,” said Senator John McCain. “Whether it be on cyber security, whether it be on confrontation on the South China Sea, or whether it be their failure to rein in what could be a catastrophic situation.” Warning that accidental war could break out on the Korean peninsula, McCain blamed China as an enabler of the North Korean regime and its nuclear program. “China does hold the key to this problem,” McCain said. “China could cut off their economy if they want to.”⁴¹ (From time to time, China does put the hammer down on its troublesome ally, as in May 2013, when Beijing announced that its biggest foreign-exchange bank, the Bank of China, would stop doing business with North Korea’s Foreign Trade Bank, which the U.S. has accused of facilitating transactions linked to weapons of mass destruction.⁴²)

McCain’s frank talk is refreshing, but the Arizona senator is one of the few engaging in it. Far too few lawmakers on either side of the aisle are willing to put themselves on the line about the fundamental foreign-policy challenges facing the United States, though we desperately need American political leadership here—it makes a difference. During the height of the Chinese currency manipulation, for instance, Senator Sherrod Brown’s persistent criticism had a real impact; China has much modulated its practices in this regard. Likewise, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s defense of U.S. firms overseas—where, as she put it, they felt that the “deck was stacked against them”—has helped open markets for American companies.⁴³

Leadership means not only speaking up, but also taking real action—and yes, taking action involves risk. But it also holds the promise of finding solutions. We don’t have the luxury of talking around these problems. America’s oft described “intervention fatigue” should not, and cannot, result in responsibility fatigue: the responsibility for our safety and prosperity and our obligation to the free world, which looks to us for leadership.

Millions look to us as custodians of their defense against aggression and intimidation. They also look to America to uphold the principles we share: democracy, human rights, transparent government, and the rule of law. In short, if we believe in protecting our principles and privileges as American citizens, we must start thinking and acting to address these challenges. If we also wish to maintain our role as champion of such principles around the world, we must conduct ourselves accordingly. That is what we had to do during the Cold War. In this new era, we must make ourselves literate in our new, uncomfortable burdens.

Americans must begin by acknowledging the realities. It took us too long to grasp the threat from militant Islam. When we finally did, we ignored the far more powerful adversaries waiting in the wings who were marshaling their strength and pretending to offer support while studying our weaknesses and exploiting our exhaustion. Russia and China emerged immeasurably stronger from America’s War on Terror. America, on the other hand, emerged deep in debt and uncertain of its calling.

America’s misadventures in Iraq and Afghanistan have created the impression of American weakness. Our Axis rivals drew predictable conclusions. They saw that the interventions resulted in years-long chaos and in vast, untenable expenditures. They witnessed the spectacle of the lone superpower bogged down by insurgents. And they recognized a chance to reassert themselves. In his book about the rise of China, The Contest for Supremacy, Princeton professor Aaron L. Friedberg describes the opportunity China saw in American duress: “In the words of a People’s Liberation Army–sponsored journal . . . ‘Simply put, the United States has begun to enter a period of relative decline.’ While the United States wallowed, other potential power centers would continue to grow and ‘of course, China first of all.’”⁴⁴ The official Chinese Communist Party newspaper even gloated in a 2009 article: “U.S. strength is declining at a speed so fantastic that it is far beyond anticipation.”⁴⁵

Why do we find ourselves so unprepared at this moment in history?

There is plenty of blame to go around in the post-Soviet history of American foreign policy. Both Republicans and Democrats in Washington have helped forge our current predicament. The West missed many chances to disarm the Russian Bear in the post–Cold War era and to force Russian concessions on other issues. The potential for chaos, as first the Soviet Empire collapsed and then Russia itself began to fray, was perhaps too daunting. Bill Clinton seldom criticized Moscow throughout the 1990s, at the time of Russia’s greatest post-Soviet weakness, to avoid exacerbating instability. George W. Bush was taken in by Putin’s charisma, infamously proclaiming that he had looked the Russian leader in the eyes and gotten “a sense of his soul.”⁴⁶ Bush allowed himself to be lulled into a false security that Putin shared his democratic goals. But at least Bush understood that Putin had strategic objectives, even if he misjudged what they were. President Obama doesn’t seem to appreciate that Russian activities are part of broader geopolitical goals. He dismisses Putin’s tough-guy “shtick” and says that he acts like the “bored kid in the back of the classroom.”⁴⁷ This is a terribly foolish, cynical way to talk and think.

Likewise, we abstained from any confrontation with China after the Tiananmen Square massacres. U.S. companies had too much invested in China’s stability. We told ourselves for years that economic prosperity in China would, sooner or later, lead to greater democratization.

A decade later, after 9/11, as we focused all our attention and national will on Islamist terrorists, Moscow rebuilt its challenge—aided by President George W. Bush’s overstretch into Iraq and Afghanistan and by our vital need to view Putin as an ally. Meanwhile, political negligence and economic dependence left us mostly passive in the face of mounting Chinese power. Finally, as President Obama struggles to nurse the U.S. economy back to health, he has shown almost no inclination to confront Russia or China. For two decades, it has been a sorry litany of missed chances, poor choices, and hubristic acts of weakness. As a result, we face a challenge more formidable than any since the height of Soviet Communism—certainly one that is more formidable, over the long term, than that presented by al-Qaeda. There is no scenario in which militant Islam can dominate the globe.

The Axis partners are capable of just that and have deployed their resources precisely to that end—even as they recognize the complexity of the world they live in and the limitations on their own efforts. Both Russia and China, of course, maintain relationships with the United States that are often cooperative in certain areas. Moscow and Washington have made substantial progress in trade and investment relations, which will be aided further by Russia’s joining the World Trade Organization. China and the United States are also economic partners; the Chinese have also taken part in joint military exercises with the United States to increase familiarity and lessen chances of conflict or misunderstanding in common international waters. Unlike the non-state actors of the Islamic world, Moscow and Beijing are in the business of survival. Martyrdom does not interest them. They don’t go about provoking manifestly stronger adversaries—and they recognize, for the time being, the United States’ clear, if dwindling, military edge. But they will exploit weakness whenever it serves their interests—politically, economically, militarily, and also by proxy, where their willingness to make mischief often has the bloodiest consequences.

Indeed, in some ways, it is the Axis’s behavior in the most dangerous, unstable regions of the world today—North Korea, Syria, Iran, and Latin America—that demonstrates the most about Russia and China’s intentions and long-range strategies. Let’s examine the Russian and Chinese facilitation of rogue regimes, which shows how their actions further a well-conceived strategy while American vacillation and inconsistency show our lack of anything like a big-picture plan.