New Cold Wars: China's Rise, Russia's Invasion, and America's Struggle to Defend the West

by David E. Sanger

When the new German chancellor, Olaf Scholz, was on his way to Beijing to meet Xi Jinping, one of his aides told me, a condition of the meeting was a public statement from the Chinese leader that there was no role for nuclear weapons in the Ukraine war. On November 4, with Scholz by his side, Xi “reaffirmed” that he was in favor of a negotiated settlement to the crisis. It was critical, state media wrote—quoting their leader—that everyone involved in the crisis “oppose the use of or the threat to use nuclear weapons, advocate that nuclear weapons cannot be used and that nuclear wars must not be fought.” To Biden’s mind, those statements made a difference. Once Putin’s most important protector said nuclear use had to be off the table, the Russian leader backed off, if grudgingly. At a meeting of Russia’s Human Rights Council at the Kremlin on December 7, he repeated his familiar line that Russia would use “all available means at our disposal” to defend itself. But then he went on, in a statement that seemed directed at Xi and others who thought he had pushed too far. “We have not gone crazy…. We are not going to brandish these weapons like a razor, running around the world.”