Latest news with #realpolitik
South China Morning Post
a day ago
- Business
- South China Morning Post
Triangular diplomacy a tricky tightrope to walk for Asia-Pacific leaders
Middle and major powers are using trade, investment and technology as weapons of influence in pursuit of triangular diplomacy, a stratagem of Cold War realpolitik. However, the strengths of this approach – agility, ambiguity and tactical scope – hide the dangers of entanglements that escalate instability. A nation triangulates by balancing and manoeuvring between two other powers , building leverage, reducing dependency and becoming indispensable to multiple sides without fully committing to any. Triangular diplomacy is now a prominent approach for leaders negotiating a world where post-war institutions are in decline, autarkic capitalism is emerging, military budgets are soaring and multilateral commitments are being reassessed by US President Donald Trump. President Richard Nixon's emissary, Henry Kissinger , orchestrated this statecraft in the 1970s by using the Sino-Soviet rivalry to bolster America's power. He fostered closer ties with Beijing and Moscow individually as he kept both unsure of Washington's commitment to either.
South China Morning Post
3 days ago
- Business
- South China Morning Post
Why Germany's leader called China's over Ukraine – and why it matters
In an era when diplomacy often postures as virtue signalling and foreign policy has grown allergic to nuance, Germany's new Chancellor Friedrich Merz has executed a move of startling clarity and daring. He called President Xi Jinping , not to lecture him on human rights or wave the banner of Western liberalism but to propose a deal: help end the war in Ukraine. Merz's appeal, couched in the anodyne language of international cooperation, was anything but soft. He told Xi that Russia's war of aggression on Ukraine has a bearing on Germany's national security and urged Beijing to throw its weight behind joint US-European efforts for a ceasefire. According to the read-out, the call included appeals to common cause on climate, trade, and stability, while Xi lauded the partnership between the two nations and emphasised the need for 'sound and stable' ties in a time of global flux. After all, Chinese-German trade volume alone accounted for around €246 billion (US$278 billion) last year. This was not a routine call, but a statement of doctrine that signals a conscious pivot from values-based idealism to strategic realism. In short, it was a turn to realpolitik in its purest, Bismarckian sense. The contrast with the previous German government could not be more striking. Under Olaf Scholz and his Green Party foreign minister Annalena Baerbock, Berlin embraced a high-minded but ultimately sterile approach to China. Baerbock called Xi a 'dictator' , while human rights advocates pushed Scholz to link Beijing's conduct in Xinjiang and Hong Kong to the future of Sino-German ties. The message was that Germany would engage China, but only on Europe's moral terms. Merz has rejected that framework. The tone has changed and the priorities have shifted. No lectures, no preconditions – just interests.
Telegraph
08-05-2025
- Business
- Telegraph
The Putin-Xi summit is a meeting between the pawn and the player
As, to the sound of trumpets, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping marched purposefully to meet each other at the centre of the hall, each had much to rejoice over. Their carefully choreographed encounter is a chance for both to show how two global autocrats stand side by side against a third. As Xi commented with characteristic indirectness, the two are facing 'a new era' of 'unilateralism and the hegemonic practices of the powerful' – for which read Trump's second Presidency. The 'deepening trust' and 'strengthening co-operation' between the two partners underlines to the entire world the geostrategic nature of their shared intention: to contest, weaken and humiliate the US and usher in a new world order shaped by their shared brand of realpolitik. That is the impression they both choose to create. So what does this meeting of expediently-aligned dictators consist of, beneath its glossy public triumphalism? Firstly, Putin's air of authority owes much to Xi's connivance. Russia under Putin has squandered uncounted lives and treasure. Much of the expense has been covered by crucial energy sales to China. Putin has outsourced drone production to China and Iran. Russia depends far more on Beijing than China does on anything Russia has to offer. Xi's main purpose in aligning with Putin is to use him as a proxy combatant to divide and exhaust the West, creating geopolitical overload on the US and its allies. Distraction and divisions, particularly between the US and Europe, provide Xi with ideal conditions to pursue his zero-sum unilateral grand strategy for the 'Great Rejuvenation of the Chinese Nation'. There is certainly no equal place for Russia in Xi's revisionist dreams of global domination. He aims not only to annex Taiwan and assert control over the West Pacific, but also to regain the vast Siberian territories which China's last empire gave up to Moscow in the 19 th century. As principal customer for vast amounts of Eastern Siberian gas and oil, Xi is paying rent for what he hopes sooner or later to inherit. For years, in behaviour that would seem needy if it was not so obsessively insistent, Putin has tried to obtain Xi's agreement to buy gas from close to the Urals which he can no longer sell to Europe. Xi has so far declined, notwithstanding Putin's habit of announcing that a deal is about to be agreed just ahead of very public bilateral discussions. And yes, 'Power of Siberia 2' – as this pipeline is known – is once again on the Russian agenda. But Xi has long since made sure that he can do without such a long, vulnerable supply line. If he sees more gain than risk in agreeing this time, that will truly mark a step change. The US has quietly announced its top military priority to be constraining and deterring China's global ambitions. Taking the heat off Putin in Ukraine is intended to free up resources for this. This strategy looks distinctly shaky if Russia and China truly act as one. This Victory Day meeting is no memorial, but a future challenge.
