Thread by Alexander Gabuev 陳寒士

twitter.com
1 Recommender
1 Mention
Recommend
Post
Save
Complete
Collect
Thread
THREAD
Is Russia becoming a giant Iran of Eurasia? A few thoughts from my conversation with @gideonrachman about 🇷🇺 future and its relationship with China for The Rachman Review podcast @FT www.ft.com/content/9fe8d00f-ca21-43bc-bf7a-bf765c493044
2/ China has nothing to gain from sacrificing its relationship with Russia and joining Western pressure on Moscow to stop the war: it would not mean less pressure on China or eased sanctions from the West, so there is simply no incentive for Beijing to throw Putin under the bus.
3/ China’s increased purchase of Russian commodities at steep discounts provides a lifeline for the Kremlin. It's done not because of any desire to help Russia, but because it makes practical sense to China. Other players outside the Western coalition like India act the same way.
4/ Russia, meanwhile, is now more than ever on a trajectory to become an increasingly junior partner in the relationship with China. This was always a risk, but now Russia simply doesn’t have any other options, having burned its bridges with the West. This gives Beijing leverage.
5/ For example, as Russia tries to gradually cut off gas supplies to the EU in order to pay back for the European sanctions and Western help to Ukraine, some of 🇷🇺 gas once shipped to the EU will go to China instead, and a new pipeline is likely to be built for that in 3-5 years.
6/ China will likely get this gas with reduced take-or-pay levels since Russia has no other options. That will add to China’s leverage over other gas suppliers pushing for discounts (Qatar, the U.S.) or threatening to stop buying their gas if they displease Beijing (Australia).
7/ Moscow will be increasingly willing to do what Beijing asks, meaning more advanced weapon designs will come China’s way, and more support on issues like 9-dash line etc. This dynamics in 🇨🇳🇷🇺 relations is worrying for the West, and 🇺🇸 doesn't have good tools to address it.
8/ Outside of the two strongest poles (🇺🇸 & 🇨🇳), the diverse global south countries may be torn or try to straddle both poles for a time. India, since its major challenge going forward is China, will likely drift closer to the West, making BRICS, SCO less relevant for Delhi.
9/ That will put Delhi’s special relationship with Moscow in jeopardy, since in a few years’ time, if 🇨🇳 puts pressure on 🇷🇺 to stop selling weapons to 🇮🇳, Russia will be forced to do so. The Indian military is certainly already thinking about this too, and the West will help.
10/ Russia is transitioning from the country it has been before 2/24 to a giant Iran of Eurasia: cut off from the West, with an autarkic economy, poorer people, and technologically backward compared to global leaders or Russia's own potential had it chosen a different path.
11/ However, there is nothing at this point to suggest that such a system can't be durable. The transition to an iranianized version of Russia will be bumpy, but right now there is no sufficient bottom-up pressure from the population or cracks in the elite to cause change.
12/ And for some reason, discussing cracks in the Russian elite with @gideonrachman, I misspoke and named @Aleksei_Kudrin as someone who left his post in the Russian power vertical instead of @achubays 🤦‍♂️. My apologies🙏
13/ The drama for Russia is that the iranianized version of it will be far less prosperous, secure and free than a country Russia could have been without this terrible war - even with corruption, authoritarianism and many other downsides of putinism present before 2/24.
14/ The tragic irony is that the two decades under Putin presented Russia with unique opportunities. Most have been missed, but the last 20 years were still one of the happiest periods in Russian history, when the country was relatively free and wealthy. Now all that is gone.
15/ Becoming a giant Iran of Eurasia doesn't mean that Russia is going away as a powerful player. It will still have capacity to build modern weapons (Iran and DPRK do despite decades of sanctions), will keep its nukes & cyber assets, and foreign policy will be more militarized.
16/ The iranianized Russia, increasingly dependent on China, willing to cripple Ukraine and create trouble for the hostile West is here to stay for quite some time. This will be a daunting challenge for the Western policymakers for years and maybe even decades to come.
Mentions
See All