As G-7 Fractures In Canada, Putin Meets Xi In China

Friday, June 8, 2018
By Paul Martin

by Tyler Durden
ZeroHedge.com
Fri, 06/08/2018

While President Trump insults his erstwhile foreign partners in a colorful twitter tirade ahead of a G-7 (or rather, G-6+1) summit in Quebec, exposing the very real fragmentation of longtime western partnerships as the US cracks down on unfair foreign trade practices, a productive meeting between China’s “Emperor for Life” Xi Jinping and Russian President Vladimir Putin has been completely overshadowed, as Bloomberg points out.

The two leaders held their first meeting this year on Thursday ahead of the June 9 Shanghai Cooperation Organization meeting – an eight-member group led by China and Russia – which will be held in the port city of Qingdao.

But the west is ignoring the burgeoning partnership between the two countries – both permanent members of the UN Security Council – at its own peril. Because Putin and Xi are playing an ever-expanding role in resolving global disputes like, for example, the dispute between the US and North Korea. For example, both leaders support North Korea’s demands that any denuclearization agreement stipulate that the process happen in stages – something that the Pentagon initially opposed, though Trump has more recently said he’d be open to it.

“China and Russia have common interests in regards to the resolution of the Korean crisis,” said Alexey Muraviev, a Russia strategic and defense affairs specialist at Curtin University in Perth, Australia. “Their pragmatism is driven by the belief that it is better to have the regime that is in place rather than hope for another one.”

Indeed, the final shape of a North Korea denuclearization deal (assuming one is reached) will likely need the blessing of Beijing, if not both Beijing and Moscow, before it becomes a reality. Because ultimately both countries want to ensure that hostilities don’t break out on their borders with the North, and that US and NATO troops remain as far from their borders as possible. Already Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has assured his North Korean counterpart that any deal “must involve the lifting of sanctions” – pushing back against the US’s insistence that sanctions won’t be lifted until North Korea is nearing full denuclearization.

China and Russia have been pushing for a deal between the US and North Korea since early last year, when tensions between the two geopolitical adversaries were still high. And it’s worth noting that the deal that is taking shape already resembles a compromise plan that the two countries jointly proposed back then: That the North agrees to halt its nuclear program while the US and South Korea cease military exercises. Of course, the latter’s unwillingness to stop its threatening military drills almost scuttled the meeting last month.

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