The careful diplomatic stagecraft behind President Barack Obama’s recent European visit to celebrate the 70th anniversary of D-Day and to rally the Western alliance against Russia’s aggression in Ukraine was all but swept aside by strong new currents in geopolitics. While Obama talked tough in Poland to reassure NATO’s vulnerable eastern members, Russian President Vladimir Putin happily visited with his Western European friends who buy huge quantities of natural gas from him. French President Francois Hollande not only hosted Putin at a dinner, he refused to cancel a $1.6 billion sale of warships to Moscow.Meanwhile, as Putin and Hollande dined in comfort at the Elysee Palace, Russian special forces were supporting an offensive by pro-Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine that overran a key border control headquarters and threatened to open a land corridor between Russia and the recently annexed province of Crimea, home to Russia’s Black Sea Fleet.
The Chinese, sitting on Russia’s southern and eastern flanks, did not miss this split in the NATO alliance. Chinese President Xi Jinping and Putin agreed in Shanghai on a joint statement papering over any concerns that the PRC might have about Moscow’s intervention in Ukraine, and the two countries signed a massive $400 billion energy deal to seal what both sides hope is a budding counterweight alliance to the West.
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