US Media Wonders Why China 'So Ambiguous About Syria'

While Russia and the US are trying to settle on a common approach to the ongoing war in Syria, the US media is wondering why the world's 'third key actor in the new global strategic triangle', China, is demonstrating 'apparent indifference' in its response to the conflict.

“What is perhaps more troubling than the obvious clash between the US and Russian leaders — underscored by the entanglement of both sides’ military forces in Syria — is the apparent indifference and ambiguity of the response from China, the third vital great power in the new global strategic triangle,” reads an article in The National Interest magazine.

Having analyzed the addresses of all the three leaders at the UN General Assembly, the magazine concluded that “while China assures the world that it will play by the rules, and does not seek any sphere of influence or territorial aggrandizement, it is busily expanding its own economic footprint globally and apparently developing geopolitical ambitions to match.”

The author then wondered how the three powers would further configure their relations amid the existing global challenges.

The article suggests there are three basic paths:

“The US, China and Russia could find some degree of mutual accommodation in their shared interests in preserving free global trade, travel, and cooperation against global threats such as terrorism, climate change, and pandemic disease.”

“Alternatively, the barriers of distrust could remain so high among all three that each pursues its national interests and purported values in isolation from the others, deepening the current global disorder and likely exacerbating a host of regional and global crises.”

“Finally, the 'New Cold War' Cassandras could turn out to be right.”

The magazine is sure that “the defining geopolitical rivalry of the 21st century will inevitably engage not only Washington and Moscow, but Beijing as well.”

However it tends to recognize “some combination of global disorder and new dividing lines” between the three as the most probable scenario, based on the “three leaders’ disjointed UN discourse.”

It predicts that these will persist, “at least until mounting challenges and crises force these juggernauts to seek a more cooperative path,” it concludes.