Russia and China are jointly conducting naval drill exercises in the Pacific Ocean. Two Russian corvettes will be joining China’s drills in the South China Sea, where Beijing has been threatening the Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam.
The scope of the drills have decreased since the beginning of the Ukraine War, which has consumed all of Moscow’s military efforts. Russia has already signed a military cooperation treaty with North Korea this year, securing its Pacific coast against potential American threats. Newsweek says:
The Kremlin sent two warships groups to link up with China in Asian waters this week, a muscle flex aimed at NATO leaders meeting in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday to drum up Western support for Ukraine against Russia’s invasion.
The Steregushchiy-class corvettes Rezkiy and Gromkiy left Russia’s Far East port of Vladivostok to carry out “assigned tasks in the Asia-Pacific region,” the country’s state news agency Tass said on Monday, citing the Russian Pacific Fleet.
This symbolic show of force in the Pacific is more of a diplomatic gesture towards growing ties with China. By participating in these drills, Russia is tacitly supporting China’s maritime claims, further undermining America’s world order. The Moscow Times continues:
China and Russia have drawn closer in recent years and tout their friendship as having “no limits,” and both share hostile relations with NATO.
NATO leaders said in a declaration on Wednesday that China had “become a decisive enabler” of Moscow’s invasion of Ukraine, prompting Beijing to warn NATO against “provoking confrontation.”
America’s chronic diplomatic inflexibility since the End of the Cold War seems to have repaired the Sino-Russian rift of that period. America’s diplomatic corps will have to do a better job if it hopes to prevent India from falling in this same alliance.
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