Grandstand. The swing in a ” new era “, reaffirmed in the Sino-Russian joint declaration of February 4, enshrines a common desire to stem the democratic tide of the “West”, embodied by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), but also and above all by a proliferating democratic Europe. It is judged by Russian and Chinese leaders as the real existential threat to their regimes.
The bidding around a crisis fabricated on the borders of Ukraine is supposed to simulate an open conflict which alone could, initially, by its stupefying effect, freeze the present situation by way of new treaties. But Ukraine, and the alleged NATO threat, are only the catalysts and pretexts for entering this ” new era “ international relations; Europe and the European Union (EU) are its real target, global governance its ultimate goal.
It is, moreover, through a plea for a “true democracy” that indeed opens the attached statement: “We stand ready to work with all countries that wish to advance true democracy…” If NATO poses an immediate threat, it is because its membership mechanically seals the tipping of the candidate countries into Western and, in this case, European orbit.
A new Russian-Chinese order
In 2014, it was the Ukrainians’ dream of Europe that was at the root of the Russian military reaction in the Donbass and not the immediate prospect of its attachment to NATO. This process of democratic change, embodied by the United States and Europe, armed respectively with their NATO and EU enlargement processes, has long cemented the Russian-Chinese understanding and their counter-project. planetary.
This shared desire to revise the existing order has turned into an ideological and self-fulfilling convergence: the Joint Russian-Chinese Declaration on a Multipolar World and the Establishment of a New International Order was adopted in Moscow on April 23, 1997 , during the official visit of the President of the People’s Republic of China, Jiang Zemin, to the Russian Federation. The declaration was signed, on the Russian side, by Sergei Lavrov, the current foreign minister, then representing his country at the UN.
This joint declaration of 1997 followed a founding agreement for the reconstruction of confidence between the two countries: the Strategic Partnership of Equality, Mutual Trust and Reciprocal Coordination., signed on April 26, 1996, in Beijing. It has since become the framework for the gradual deepening of the bilateral relationship.
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