When we fail to recognise our dependency on this axis of totalitarianism, we compromise our ability to act.
What we are seeing is the emergence of a new axis of totalitarian states, strengthened by the West’s dependency on their resources and on false assumptions about their supposed paths to democracy. For too long it was conveniently said that once these nations engaged with the free market, it was only a matter of time before they would become democracies. This arrogant complacency has left us struggling to counter the aggression of Russia and China.
In planning to invade Ukraine, Putin is capitalising on the West’s failure to pick up on warning signs. In 2008, for instance, when Russia occupied Georgia, we protested but did next to nothing. The same can be said for our response in 2014, when Russia invaded and subsequently annexed the Crimean Peninsula. There were protestations and some sanctions but ultimately, Russia knew Europe wanted their gas, and they were right.
Even as the Russian government supported “separatists” in eastern Ukraine, Germany and France put pressure on Kiev to accept the “Minsk 2” peace deal. This one-sided agreement forced Ukraine to accept terms that damaged its own sovereignty. As in 1938, instead of standing up for the right of independent countries to choose democracy, Western governments flagrantly signed them away for short-term gain.
Which brings us to Nato’s current problem. In trying to front up to Putin with a single response, it is burdened once again by the dependency on Russian gas in Germany and other European countries. It shows that Russia has effectively split the Nato alliance – with Germany deserving a particular share of the blame. As Putin attempts to reintroduce the Stalinist “sphere of interest” policy, Nato finds itself weakened.
In China’s case, as they opened up their markets to the West, our businesses rushed to take advantage of the much lower costs of production, such that just about everything we use in our daily lives in the West – from mobile phones to plastic kitchen utensils, from car batteries to car parts – are made in China. Even after President Xi’s assumption of power in 2012, the UK government sought to deepen Britain's ties with the Chinese economy, despite growing concerns that communist rule was being tightened and any freedoms extinguished.
Until a fairly recent U-turn, it was even proposed that Huawei, a Chinese telecoms company, should be allowed to run Britain’s 5G network. This was despite it being clear that they have been linked to Chinese government surveillance programmes.
It doesn’t stop there. Our Universities are enormously reliant on Chinese money, with Chinese postgraduate students even ending up on classified defence work before going back to China. Moreover, China is integrated in our nuclear industry, with some of our wind turbines, as well as much of the polysilicon in our solar arrays, made there – with little guarantee that they weren't produced using Uyghur slave labour.
This is despite the fact that China has annexed the South China seas, broken a treaty on Hong Kong, killed Indian soldiers on the border, used slave labour in Tibet and Xinjiang, threatens war on Taiwan, and practises genocide on the Uyghur people. Still, Europe is reluctant to do more than weakly protest. When China imposed sanctions on Lithuania, essentially bullying them for recognising Taiwan as an independent state, very few governments even commented on it.
When we fail to recognise our dependency on countries like Russia and China, we compromise our ability to act, and other states such as Iran and Belarus become emboldened, believing the West is weak.
Who is to say they are wrong? Nothing better sums up the West's predicament than the ancient Chinese proverb that “you cannot reason with a tiger when your head is in its mouth”. As China backs Russia’s demand that Ukraine should not be allowed to join Nato, surely it is time for the West to re-evaluate the precarious position we are in.
