Russia, China and their search for great power identity
Russia, China and their Search for Great Power
Identity
WRITTEN BY ANISA HERITAGE
21 March 2022
Some international relations scholars, notably neorealists like John Mearsheimer, attribute Russia’s invasion of Ukraine to the threat of NATO’s eastern expansion. However, the narrow focus on tangible costs and benefits ignores Putin’s disregard of international reputation and credibility. Instead, Putin’s construction of a Russian national identity with a Russian-Ukrainian union at its core motivated the 2014 annexation of Crimea and the 2022 invasion of Ukraine. At the heart of Putin’s decision-making is his belief that the source of Russia’s great power identity is control over Eurasia; uniting Russia, Belarus, Ukraine; and the Russian diaspora in the near abroad.
Ukraine has become a battleground for securing Russia’s identity and destroying a Ukrainian one. In Putin’s own words, Ukrainian sovereignty and identity cannot exist outside its greater Russian identity: “Ukraine is not just a neighbouring country for us. It is an inalienable part of our own history, cultural and spiritual space”. Attempts by the Ukrainian government to make a “pro-Western civilisational choice” directly counter Putin’s plans to restore Russia’s nationhood, which, by necessity must include Ukraine. Thus, Ukraine’s increasing identification as European (through its democratisation and liberalisation practices and overtures to join the EU) cannot, in Putin’s eyes, exist alongside its Russian identity. Restoring the connection through invasion was his only choice. This search for a great power identity unites Russia and China and sheds light on Beijing’s refusal to condemn Moscow’s actions in reclaiming “lost” territory.
A consequence of Putin’s actions against Ukraine is the strengthening of Taiwanese identity and the intensification of their already strong desire to be separate from mainland China.
While China officially seeks a peaceful resolution of the crisis in Ukraine, it also views the war through the prism of national identity. China holds that Taiwan (and Tibet and Xinjiang) are similarly “inalienable” parts of China. This explains China’s sympathy towards Russia over the use of force, although the invasion complicates Chinese interests in Ukraine as a Belt and Road Initiative partner, and contradicts China’s foreign policy principles of non-interference and respect for territorial integrity. Since the commencement of Russian hostilities, although the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs has not directly approved Russia’s actions, it has not condemned the action outright. Instead, it has focused on criticising NATO and the US for “pouring oil on the flames of the conflict”.
The mutually-reinforcing echo chamber
The intent behind the Sino-Russian joint statement in February was to reaffirm mutual recognition of each other’s status as “world powers with rich cultural and historical heritage”. It also underpins what is developing into a steady Sino-Russian relationship. State identity formation is relational — identities are formed, sustained, reinforced and also delegitimised through relationships with other states. Hence, the joint statement publicly reaffirms shared understandings of world views and respect for each other’s ideas of nationhood and reinforces their views on what their global standing should be.
Their relationship is thus predicated on more than a mutual rejection of what they perceive to be American hostility to authoritarian regimes. There is the mutual reinforcement of ideas about their senses of nationhood — as civilisational entities. As strong leaders, Putin and Xi will lead their respective peoples back to centre stage in international affairs — to attain their rightful place in a multipolar world. Likewise, they share similar perceptions of Western efforts to contain their rise while ignoring their physical security concerns. The outdated “Cold War mentality” perpetuated by the ‘Western alliance’ threatens the ability to attain their rightful positions in the international order and denies them recognition of their respective regional spheres of influence.
For both, nationhood-building relies on ideas of victimhood and vulnerabilities to Western expansion and on the revival of both nations as great powers. Similarly, national humiliation has intensified feelings of exclusion and increased their demands for greater status and respect on the international stage. They mutually reinforce a narrative of the West reneging on agreed post-war settlements after 1945, which has stoked their resentment of Western attempts to contain their greatness and is used as the pretext for their expansionist claims.
There are two aspects to Putin’s historical narrative. First, he evokes the collapse of the Russian Empire in 1917 and of the Soviet Union between 1989 and 1991 for its humiliation at the hands of Western powers. According to his historiography, Ukraine never existed as a state until it was nominally “created” by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union after the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. By that reasoning, its independence from the Soviet Union in December 1991 was an error facilitated by the chaos of the Soviet Union’s collapse. Second, Putin frequently alludes to an unsubstantiated commitment from both Bush administrations not to expand NATO membership eastward into the former Warsaw Pact countries or to key integral parts of the former Soviet Union (namely Georgia and Ukraine). Moscow’s demand for legal guarantees of NATO’s non-expansion eastwards draw on the agreement made by the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States at the 1945 Yalta Conference. This post-war settlement agreed to respect the Soviet Union’s right to “friendly” governments in Poland, the Baltics, and Central and Eastern Europe.
For China, the trauma relates to the 19th century Opium Wars and the carving up of China by Western powers, along with Qing China’s enforced surrender of Taiwan to Japan at the end of the First Sino-Japanese War in 1895. Since 2013, China has revived claims on disputed territories in the South and East China Seas, derived from the 1943 Cairo Conference — the only wartime conference that outlined a post-war leadership role for the Republic of China (under Chiang Kai-Shek, the leader of the Chinese Nationalists) in the post-war order in Asia. The post-war settlement established by the Treaty of San Francisco (1951) did not incorporate all aspects of the Cairo Declaration. Moreover, communist mainland China was excluded from the negotiations. In American minds, the victory of the Chinese Communist Party over the Chinese Nationalists in the Chinese civil war and the outbreak of the Korean War in June 1950 overturned Allied intentions at Cairo. Taiwan was instead given enhanced US protection. Most Chinese view Taiwan as Chinese territory and a “core” national interest, with no recognition of a distinct Taiwanese identity. Unification with Taiwan is central to Xi’s national rejuvenation narrative.
At the Chinese Communist Party’s centennial celebration in 2021, Xi reiterated that “resolving the Taiwan question and realising China’s complete reunification is a historic mission”. A mutual need to secure great-power identity forces both Russia and China to embrace irredentist policies towards their “lost” territories. Here, narratives play a crucial role in manifesting, affirming and reinforcing ideas of nationhood. With strictly controlled state media outlets, these ideas are internalised and disseminated via official stories, with alternatives or dissent quickly shut down. Externally, Russia and China actively conduct disinformation campaigns that seek to destabilise Western societies whilst reinforcing the message at home of the double standards of Western values and the deep dysfunction at the heart of western societies. Western media outlets are said to promote anti-Chinese sentiments and Western governments have supported and encouraged right-wing nationalist politics and installed a puppet regime in Ukraine.
Russia and China increasingly collaborate on feeding similar disinformation and propaganda to their citizens behind strong state control of the internet, and coordinate disinformation campaigns against the West. Chinese social media outlets regurgitate Russian propaganda on Ukraine, which reinforces their own narratives about Western expansionist practices. Brookings analysis notes that as Russian troops entered Donetsk and Luhansk on February 22nd, a leaked Chinese propaganda directive instructed media not to report information “disadvantageous to Russia or sympathetic to the West.”
The challenge of de-escalating identity-based conflict
Finding an end to the current crisis in Ukraine is made more difficult because Putin has framed the conflict in terms of defending Russian nationhood and its great-power identity. It is unlikely that Putin will accept any concessions that do not address his ideas of Russian nationhood and victimhood. Nor will Putin’s attempts to delegitimise or destroy Ukrainian identity succeed. His actions have further solidified Ukrainian ideas of nationhood as distinct from Russia, which paradoxically further undermines Putin’s conception of a shared Ukrainian-Russian nationhood.
Taiwan is closely observing the development of the war in Europe. A consequence of Putin’s actions against Ukraine is the strengthening of Taiwanese identity and the intensification of their already strong desire to be separate from mainland China. Both Putin and Xi Jinping go to great lengths to rebuild their modern version of “empire” in order to validate their great-power identity. Like Putin, Xi also portrays his leadership as inseparable from the restoration of China’s rightful global standing and the reclamation of its “lost” territories, notably Taiwan. This identity struggle will not end in Ukraine.
DISCLAIMER: All views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily represent that of the 9DASHLINE.com platform.
Author biography
Dr Anisa Heritage is a senior lecturer in the Defence and International Affairs Department, Faculty for the Study of Leadership, Security and Warfare at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, U.K. She is a Research Fellow of the Global Europe Centre, University of Kent, U.K. The views and opinions expressed in this article are strictly those of the author, from open sources, and do not represent the views or policies of the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, the UK Ministry of Defence or the UK government. Image credit: Wikimedia.