March 22, 2022
In the News
 On March 21, the U.S. State Department issued <[link removed]> an atrocity determination for the Rohingya Muslims in Burma. Click here <[link removed]> to read Heritage Senior Policy Analyst Olivia Enos' Backgrounder on what more can be done to respond to the genocide and the coup.
How the U.S. and Its Allies Can Weaken the Russian-Chinese Relationship
After months of military buildup around Ukraine, Russia used military force to change the borders of a European country for the second time in eight years. During the early morning hours of February 24, 2022, Russia launched a missile attack against every major city in Ukraine except Lviv. These attacks were followed by a major Russian ground operation in the north, east, and south of Ukraine.
During the buildup to the crisis, one dangerous and recurring response from Western countries and American policymakers has been that the U.S. should sacrifice its security interest in Ukraine to align with Russia—so that Russia can either help, or at least not distract from, dealing with the threat from China. This is an approach that is doomed to fail and will do nothing to enhance the safety and security of the American people nor of their allies. 
There are four main reasons why Vladimir Putin’s Russia and the West could never team up to deal with China:


- Many of Russia’s and China’s strategic goals in Europe overlap.
- Since coming to power in 1999, Putin has demonstrated that he cannot be a trusted partner of the West. 
- For the foreseeable future, Russia will prioritize its resources and energy in Europe—not in Asia. 
- Russian and Chinese economic relations are too important for Moscow.


The way to lessen the threat of the partnership between Russia and China is to make them less valuable
to each other. Russia only has two assets that gives it real influence—military force and energy. NATO needs to strengthen its conventional and strategic deterrence: Every NATO nation must do its share, and the U.S. needs to ramp up its contribution to defending NATO’s eastern flank. The West needs to get serious about energy security. It needs affordable, reliable, and abundant energy without leaning on gas and oil from Russia. Without military and energy leverage, Russia is checkmated, and a less valuable partner for Beijing.
The U.S. should push back against China by standing with U.S. allies from Lithuania to Australia, confronting Chinese transgressions in the South and East China Seas and in the Taiwan Strait, tightening Chinese access to U.S.-developed technology, continuing to sanction China for its egregious human rights violations, and keeping China-based slave labor out of supply
chains.
Washington should also work with its close allies and partners in the region—Australia, India, and Japan—to improve defense cooperation, and Washington should
invest more in the U.S. military. Increasing the pressure on both Russia and China may initially push them together; in the long run, it will increase competition and tensions between them, driving them apart.
April 7,
2022 @ 10:00 am EDT - The CCP’s 20th Party Congress: What to Expect and the Implications for Washington <[link removed]>
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is gearing up for its most important political event of the decade. Sometime in the second half of 2022, China’s most senior leaders will assemble at Beijing’s Great Hall of the People for the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, in which General Secretary Xi Jinping is expected to stay in office for a precedent-breaking third term. Maneuvering ahead of the event will dominate political life in China throughout 2022, and the outcomes of the congress will determine the country’s trajectory for years to come. 
Join us <[link removed]> virtually for a timely discussion featuring Boston University Professor Joseph Fewsmith, Ph.D., Jamestown Foundation Senior Fellow Willy Wo-Lap Lam, Ph.D., and Heritage Visiting Fellow Michael Cunningham about what to expect at the Party Congress, how it will influence China’s political course, and what it will mean for policymakers in Washington and other
capitals as they grapple with the China challenge.

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