Global Times Editorializes, It’s the U.S., Not China ‘Squeezing’ Russia

June 17, 2021 (EIRNS)—In a strongly-worded editorial today, China’s semi-official Global Times minced no words in denouncing Joe Biden’s assertion to reporters yesterday that Vladimir Putin feels “squeezed” by a China that Biden says is seeking world dominance while Russia struggles to remain “relevant.” Biden might have been embarrassed to make such remarks in front of Putin, because the Russian President would have immediately refuted them. But, Global Times warns, such a “baseless provocation” is a “humiliation of the Russian people, treating one of the most powerful countries in the world as an idiot.” Who is really squeezing Russia strategically? the editorial asks. It’s not China but the U.S. which has “caused waves of harm to Russia,” and Biden just wants to pass the blame to China. This, it affirms, is “serious political autism.”

One need only look at the brutal treatment of Russia by the U.S. and its Western allies after the fall of the Soviet Union to understand real strategic squeezing, Global Times charges.

NATO expanded eastward, to incorporate former Warsaw Pact states and then the three Baltic states. “Russia’s strategic space was almost dug up by NATO.... There has rarely been such a vicious unilateral pressure between major powers in history.” Some Westerners thought that Russia had been fully restrained through this treatment, but when the West wanted to cut off Ukraine, “the umbilical cord to Russia,” Moscow fought back. GT recounts the enormous harm done to Russia’s economy by the array of U.S./U.K./EU sanctions, weakening its economy and its currency, fostering capital flight, attacking its energy sector.

Yes, the editorial adds, there is a long border between Russia and China, but it is a peaceful one, where there is important bilateral trade—worth $100 billion, compared with $20 billion with the U.S. “Russia and China are strategic cooperative partners and their mutual trust has a solid political foundation.” Global Times lists all the areas of bilateral cooperation, in space, nuclear energy, high tech and trade; it is completely false to say China is squeezing Russia, therefore. It’s fine for the U.S. and Russia to meet face-to-face to manage their differences, but “the China-Russia comprehensive strategic partnership has gone through tests and become an irreplaceable common strategic resource of the two countries.” On the one hand, Putin recognized the constructiveness of the meeting with Biden, but on the other, he also said he had no illusions about relations with the U.S.: “There are no illusions and there cannot be any.”