China and Russia - Openly Snub America (#29)

The flight of Edward Snowden from the United States to Hong Kong, after disclosing top secret information on the NSA (National Security Agency) surveillance activities, was intriguing enough as it was building up to be a modern day international spy story, with the lone ‘agent’ on the run from a super power. But after his escape from Hong Kong to Russia with the presumed cooperation of the Chinese and Russian authorities, in spite of America’s strong demand of immediate extradition from Hong Kong, the story is taking on a much more serious turn.

The American administration is understandably shocked and outraged at the open snub by #China and #Russia to its international standing, in what is arguably a very sensitive internal intelligence matter. The fact that this snub took place literally days and weeks after the Presidents of China and Russia had spent personal time with the American President, working towards international and bilateral co-operation, and issuing joint statements stressing the success of these meetings, makes this put-down all the more mystifying and disturbing. 

One could not have imagined China and Russia jeopardizing and damaging their long term political and economic relations with the U.S. for one ‘rogue’ American citizen, no matter what his ‘noble’ or real intentions were in disclosing the classified information. But that’s exactly what they did. The question then is, why they would so blatantly choose to antagonize and insult the United States, especially as we mentioned, after having just actively cultivated good relations so recently, especially in China’s case. 

In last weeks’ posting we had wondered whether Russia had got China’s proxy support in preventing the West’s active involvement in the Syrian conflict, and by their combined heft, out-muscled and pushed back the plans of the Western leaders indefinitely. By this recent action, allowing Edward Snowden’s escape from Hong Kong to Russia, it would seem that we may be right in suspecting such an understanding. Russia and China certainly must have a predetermined agreement of co-operation against the United States and the generally united Western countries that most of us would not have guessed. Apart from their known recently announced economic co-operation agreements, it is now clear that their understanding runs a lot deeper than that and extends to political and perhaps military co-operation too.