That's very interesting take although any Russian diplomat would disagree with. I am not sure whether siding with Russia on major global issues would by default mean being accountable for all of Russia's behavior. In the case of Ukraine Crisis, China has chosen not to overtly support Russia and adopted an oft-used rhetoric of political solution between the related (direct) parties.
There is a problem here. Actions speak louder than words. I agree with you that China did not make any bold statements about the Crimera issue or Ukraine problem in general, but counteracted against the US sanctions agains Russia which was implemented just because of the Ukraine problem. Hence China taken away the tool to "punish" Russia from USA's hands. Let me ask you something, if you were a US policy maker, would you go on punishing Russia in that conjecture? Or would you pick on the country that keeps Russia "alive" in your next problem with them?
China made it clear that, ignoring China when there is a problem with Russia, is like ignoring US when there is a problem with UK. How would you take US out of the equation if you have a problem with UK? The relation between Russia and China evolved into a similar fashion at the moment when China made US sanction against Russia ineffective.
The US in fact attempted a pact with Russia during the Reset period but for some reason it derailed. That could be due to private interests and in-fighting in Washington. As most of us know, Washington is a not a unitary colossus, but an amalgamation of private and group interests that keep fighting and trying to steer the country to their own benefit. They do it more elegantly due to sophisticated methods and instruments, but, still, this does not rule out the fact that the inner struggle has been rather fierce.
I certainly agree with that.
In my opinion, the winning side decided to estrange Russia and bring it on to China in the form of the Pivot. With Russia on the board or not, I believe China had already been decided as the new enemy. The mistake they made included taking Russia lightly. And China has proven to be an able international actor. None of the neo-liberal and neo-realist postulations by US political scientists have come about.
Well US needs enemies. Every year the military should provide "legitimate" reasons to get that 700 billion $ from US tax payers. There are so many defence contractors, and their lobby is one of the strongest in the US because they are working directly with the government. You know where this is going right? I sometimes even think that, some of the technologies that US claims that is "stolen" from their servers were actually "handed over" to certain parties. That wing of US government certainly wants and enemy in order to legitimize every spent penny on trillion dollar projects.( I never say this to undermine the hardwork of thousands of Chinese engineers on defence projects. Don't get me wrong, China is working miracles in military and in economy/technology. )
But they are not the only actors in US politics. As you've said in the paragraph above US is an amalgamation of private and group interests. There are so many groups in US which sustains great interests by doing business with China. That's why I say the US-China relations might be sustained smoothly.
I believe both Middle East and Russia will loom larger in the US foreign policy, and even largely so if a Republican gets the White House. On the Eastern front, on the other, escalation and war effort against DPRK has been stalled by China. The TPP is all over the place. The effort to stop China's island development program has failed and become the new normal. Today, nobody is talking about it except some MA students who want to get published online. China declared an ADIZ and rendered the DiaoyuDai a disputed island (thanks to Japanese recklessness, I should add).
Sorry but you're wrong on this one. Let's go back to 90's. Everyone in Washington was talking about the ME. Of course there was the occasional "China Rising" publicity but the main topic was the ME. In 2000's Russia started to grasp some public attention. But starting from 2010's it became a standart question in US public that "What will we do with China?". I mean, there are primaries right now and every presidential candidate was asked about how would they deal with China if they were elected. I don't recall such a phenomenon in 90's.
However, as you've stated and I partially agreed with you that, policy planners might even planning for this in 90's after the collapse of the USSR or even before. But still China saving the Russians story grasped a lot of attention and it was clearly what was wanted for so long by "some" guys in Washington. All of the actions above that you enlisted are the very bold actions that China avoided in the past. Do you think is it a coincidence that just after Xi's rise to power in 2012 the disputed Diayou islands were nationalized by Japan? They were private property and both sides (China and Japan) were simply checking that status quo.
China is rising up, I don't have daoubt about that. With that power China makes bold actions. That's also great. However just to be sure that those bold actions are made in the situations that were not staged in an office in Washington. China can very well be an actor of a social engineering policy in US. As you know such things evolve into mass hysteria pretty quick in US public opinion. Even a desert nation which has not even a national identity (Iraq) was shown as the next big "enemy" to US public. Afterwards here comes the people from Lockheed Martin justifies the "barely" working F-35 project, and bills a trillion dollars to US tax payers.
But the trade relations with the US has been just as good. And geopolitical struggle has always been on the agenda. The Taiwan Straits Crisis took place in 1996. They bombed our embassy in Belgrade. The spy-plane accident in the 2000s. So, there has always been a struggle while China made business connections with all over the world. The balancing is in fact stronger these days as the US declines as the representative of the West. Now the UK and Germany can jump onto the AIIB wagon despite the US explicitly says the otherwise. And I cannot think of a better "East-West integration" program than the One-Belt, One-Road program, which has been announced in 2013. I agree that China will have to take more assertive posture but I do not see China being pushed to choose between East or West. China is just too big to choose. It embraces all
Yeah there is an economic balance between East and West. But I was talking about political balance. Conjecture after the Sino-Soviet split and today are not the same. And the paradigm shift is visible. China's policy is aligning more and more with the East as China makes those bold moves.
US-EU problems are not because, EU wants to be politically close to China. Because unlike US, EU rejects to struggle with the East. EU rejects the struggle because their economy are not addicted to war/weapon economy as the case of the US. They clearly see China as the "Eastern Pole" especially after saving Russia, but they don't want to struggle like US. They say the world is enough for every people/ideolohy/policy except for the ones that wants to destroy others. Since China is a market economy, they just want to partner up and make business with you guys. That's why UK, Germany and some other European countries joined AIIB.
That I would strongly disagree with. Especially if influencing US politics means hiring some lobby agency (probably, Jewish?) in Washington (I guess Turkey has done that) and try to influence decision making in the Congress.
Buying US politics is for Armenian diaspora, Israeli lobbyists, Arab oil sheikhs, or Turkish government who wants to fight Nancy Pelossi in Congress. That's just un-great powerish.
I didn't mean that. I just meant an organized Chinese diaspora in US, fostered by Chinese multinational companies which operates in US like Huawei. Chinese diaspora can build it's own lobby, they wouldn't need to hire jewish lobby.
A great power like China would not resort to such tactics. For once, when it comes to China, the US is not that almighty. If China does not like something it vetoes (if it is on the UNSC) like it did two times with respect to Syria, or simply says 'no,' like it did with island development in SCS or ADIZ in ECS.
A great power like China utilizes every possible resource in it's hand to face with it's adversary in a position that only favors itself. Disrupt the US public opinion and US is not functional. Tell people that there is no reason to fight with China and people would be protesting their own governments to stop. It happened in Vietnam. Why need war, if you can take over peacefully? You should read Sun Tzu.
China, in this sense, does not jump on any bandwagon, be it Russian or US. The relationship with Russia is one of the equals. We are not obliged to do anything just for the sake of being a partner (this is unlike NATO which obliges the UK to fight alongside the US in the Middle East even when the general public does not want so). The SCO is not a NATO. China's foreign policy is not formulated in the conventional hard alliance or hub-and-spokes way.
Relationship with Russia are not among equals. China has the upper hand. Because China has the future.