The administration reportedly asked China to ask Russia to refrain from invading Ukraine.
The administration reportedly asked China to ask Russia to refrain from invading Ukraine.
F ormer national-security adviser Robert O’Brien said the Biden administration was “a little naïve” to share intelligence about Russian troop movements with the Chinese government ahead of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, considering that Beijing and Moscow are forging an increasingly close alliance. The top Trump adviser’s comments followed a New York Times report last week that the Biden administration described to Chinese officials U.S. intelligence about the Russian troop buildup on Ukraine’s border last fall.
O’Brien made the comments to a group of journalists yesterday before speaking to the Republican Study Committee’s weekly lunch meeting, at the invitation of Representative Jim Banks, the committee’s chairman. Banks credited O’Brien’s work in the Trump administration — including the transfer of Javelin missiles to Ukraine and increasing annual military aid to Ukraine and the Baltic states — with “giving Ukraine the chance that they have now to push back and fight back against Russia.”
“Diplomacy is good. Talking to our adversaries is good. I’ve always said that,” O’Brien said, responding to National Review’s question about the Times report.
However, O’Brien drew a contrast between the Biden administration’s approach and that of the administration in which he served, saying “we weren’t trying to reset relations” and were able to push back. The Trump administration exited the Open Skies Treaty and resisted Russian demands to renew the New START arms-control agreement, he said.
“But I think it’s a little naïve to think that somehow we’re going to convince the Chinese to go to their allies the Russians and say that the Americans know where your troops are, so you shouldn’t invade,” O’Brien said.
The Times report noted that the overtures to Chinese officials regarding Russia’s military activities followed a video meeting between President Biden and General Secretary Xi Jinping last November. According to summaries of the call released by both sides, the two leaders agreed to collaborate on a range of issues, such as climate change and global public health. According to the Times, senior U.S. officials viewed the Russian troop buildup on Ukraine’s border as the first crisis on which the two sides could potentially collaborate, though the issue was not raised during the video call.
Biden and his top aides have said repeatedly that they would simultaneously pursue competition and collaboration with China and, to some extent, Russia. In November, just weeks after the Biden–Xi call, climate envoy John Kerry, at the U.N. climate conference in Glasgow, unveiled with his Chinese counterpart a joint plan to reduce greenhouse-gas emissions. Washington and Beijing also eased some visa restrictions applying to American journalists in China and to employees of Chinese-state media outlets based in the U.S.
Russia had started to increase its troop presence on its border with Ukraine last spring, but some reports indicated that it had reduced that military buildup somewhat over the summer. But by November, the positioning of Russian forces on the border was impossible to ignore in Washington. Biden dispatched CIA director William Burns to Moscow to dissuade Vladimir Putin from launching an assault on Ukraine. Later that month, U.S. and Ukrainian officials said they expected Russia to launch an attack in late January or early February.
After the Biden–Xi call in mid-November, American officials first approached Chinese ambassador Qin Gang in Washington with the message that U.S. intelligence had found that Russian forces were surrounding Ukraine. The Americans warned that any future Russian invasion would be met with tough sanctions that could hamper Chinese business activities, according to the Times, which reported that a U.S. official said Qin was “skeptical and suspicious.”
The White House should have known it had slim odds of persuading the Chinese to ask Moscow to refrain from invading Ukraine, “especially when China . . . [was] sending fighter jets into the air-defense-identification zone of Taiwan,” O’Brien said. “So it was a little surprising.”
In October, a few weeks ahead of the Biden–Xi video call, China had sent a record-breaking number of jets — just under 200 — through Taiwan’s air-defense zone.
According to the Times, officials raised the matter with Qin — a hard-liner who once said the Biden administration should “please shut up” — three more times, even dispatching Deputy Secretary of State Wendy Sherman to speak with him. Secretary of State Antony Blinken also raised the issue with Chinese foreign minister Wang Yi in January and again the week before Putin invaded.
Since then, Chinese officials have struck an unapologetic tone in their criticism of Western and NATO policies that, in their view, necessitated the Russian invasion. Since the start of the Russian invasion, China has continued to send jets through Taiwan’s air-defense-identification zone.
O’Brien also said that Xi is “watching to see what the West is going to do to this naked aggression, and he’s calibrating how he’s going to react vis-à-vis Taiwan.” He added, “If he sees a stronger NATO, and if he sees Russia totally excluded from the global economy and unable to sell anything to Europe or the United States or Africa or South America, and if he sees resolve from the West, and if he sees an insurgency that’s bogging down Russian troops and, sadly, sending Russians home in caskets because they invaded their neighbor, Xi Jinping’s going to have second thoughts about trying to take Taiwan.”