Like many post-Soviet states, upon becoming independent in 1991, Ukraine faced a serious challenge of nation-building. Ukraine is a multinational, multireligious and multilingual country with little historical experience of independent statehood. Its major ethno-linguistic groups include Ukrainians in the west and Russians in the east. Many speak both languages and their histories and cultural practices are deeply intertwined.

An atavistic nationalism that bases political authority on supposed ancient traditions of ethnic-Ukrainians alone is neither consistent with reality, nor capable of uniting the whole Ukrainian people. The challenge of post-Soviet nation-building was, therefore, to craft a civic nationalism, based around a shared commitment to democratic self-government.

Sadly, Ukrainian elites failed in this task. Indeed, as Yuliya Yurchenko documents in her compelling but depressing book, Ukraine and the Empire of Capital, they were too busy plundering the remnants of the Soviet economy, with officials and their criminal-business networks transforming themselves into powerful, predatory oligarchs while the rest of their society fell into penury.

From 1990 to 2000, Ukraine’s GDP fell from $81.4bn to just $31.2bn. Hyperinflation, peaking at 10,155% in 1993, destroyed people’s living standards, creating long-term unemployment, especially among the young. The oligarchs had little to offer citizens, relying increasingly on fraud, corruption and intimidation to stay in power.

In this context, reformers — who took power after the 2004 “orange revolution” — looked to EU and Nato membership as a way to transform their society. This attempt to move “from Brezhnev to Brussels” occurred widely in post-communist Eastern Europe. In Ukraine, reformers hoped that EU rules would discipline or destroy the oligarchs and root out corruption by imposing free-market reforms.

But this was a very dangerous strategy. As Yurchenko observes, the EU-Ukraine Deep and Comprehensive Free Trade Agreement (DCFTA) signed in 2008 would, if fully implemented, devastate small businesses and workers by exposing them to continental competition. Meanwhile, many oligarchs have found ways to exploit the opening of markets and limit measures that would damage their interests.

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Other oligarchs resisted liberalisation by rallying the people of eastern Ukraine into thinking that pro-Western elites were not heeding their interests. Donetsk, where many oligarchic businesses are based, has deeper economic, linguistic and cultural ties to Russia, and people there have often complained of being neglected and sneered at by the West, despite constituting a substantial share of Ukraine’s GDP and population.

The oligarchs began harnessing this resentment, fostering a growing east/west split in Ukrainian politics. The “East” — led by Viktor Yanukovych’s Party of the Regions — retook national power following the 2010 presidential election. Yanukovych’s subsequent persecution of his opponents drew the ire of Washington and Brussels, but this only reinforced his preference for stronger ties with the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), reflecting the economic needs of his eastern base.

This growing internationalisation of Ukraine’s domestic struggles was perilous, given the geopolitical context. Russia had stridently opposed Nato’s eastward expansion since the Nineties. Gorbachev had asked Washington to disband Nato in exchange for the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact, while Yeltsin had asked for a new, inclusive security architecture that incorporated Russia into Europe, only to be rebuffed. The latter later warned the West that a Cold War was giving way to a cold peace, with Nato expansion entailing “nothing but humiliation for Russia”.

When the West proceeded anyway, Yeltsin’s successor, Vladimir Putin, made it clear that Moscow saw Nato expansion as directed at Russia. In April 2008, a Nato summit welcomed Georgia and Ukraine’s aspiration to join the alliance. Putin invaded Georgia a few months later, rather than see it join this anti-Russian bloc. Many analysts, from the Cold Warrior George Kennan to the realist professor John Mearsheimer, predicted disaster if Nato continued to expand towards Russia’s borders.

The same, to a lesser extent, applied to EU expansion. Putin described the DCFTA as a “big threat” to Russia, as it would allow EU exports to enter tariff-free, via Ukraine, and “choke” the Russian economy. EU officials insisted their cooperation with Ukraine was merely technical, refusing to recognise the geopolitical implications.

The 2014 “Euromaidan” crisis saw the culmination of this toxic fracturing of the Ukrainian nation. In 2013, President Yanukovych rejected the DCFTA, opting for closer ties with the EEU. This prompted widespread protests, which were egged on by senior EU and American politicians, despite the growing involvement of far-Right nationalists. Eventually, amid escalating unrest and violence, Yanukovych fled to Russia. But while his opponents in western Ukraine celebrated, his eastern supporters perceived a “fascist” coup against their democratically-elected president. The Ukrainian state’s authority collapsed in the east, allowing opportunistic pro-Russian separatists to seize power in many areas, while Russia reacted by invading Crimea.

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Instead of moving to reassure their fellow citizens and build an inclusive national project, Ukraine’s pro-Western faction instead doubled down. Under the new president, the oligarch Petro Poroshenko, the Government purged eastern politicians and officials from the state, sending many fleeing into exile, and banned Yanukovych’s Party of the Regions, intensifying the crisis of representation in the east. It also launched military offensives against the separatists, triggering further Russian intervention, producing heavy casualties and a grinding stalemate.

Neither Poroshenko, nor his successor, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, have implemented the Minsk accords agreed with Russia in 2014-15, which proposed to settle the conflict by granting autonomy to Donetsk and Luhansk. Instead, the new government loudly sought full membership of Nato and the EU — measures that could only undermine Ukraine’s national sovereignty. Yet the EU has not — and will not — actually admit Ukraine, as it is still reeling from the divisions induced by the last round of enlargement into post-communist Eastern Europe and does not want to take responsibility for a war-torn country. But it was happy to pretend otherwise, flattering Ukrainian elites while pushing neoliberal reforms on them.

The Poroshenko government enacted the EU DCFTA, rapidly introducing structural reforms to comply with EU rules. Facing rising debt amid economic decline, the Ukrainian state became economically dependent on the EU and IMF. Foreigners were brought in to run three ministries and IMF advisors were embedded with the central bank, entailing further losses of sovereignty. Austerity, neoliberalism and further privatisation benefited well-positioned oligarchs but did nothing to alleviate mounting poverty.

Far from reaching out to Ukraine’s ethnic Russians, Kyiv has actively promoted a narrowly Ukrainian, anti-Russian form of nationalism, reflected in language policy, “de-communisation”, and the secession of the Ukrainian Orthodox church from its Russian “mother” church. As Yurchenko observes, instead of reconsolidating Ukraine, these measures only “further divided the broken nation”.

This failure of Ukrainian politicians to represent the whole nation has led both sides to turn to foreigners to bolster their domestic position. The pro-Russian faction appears backwards and corrupt, offering little to inspire and unite the country, and ultimately relies on Russian intervention to prevent Ukraine slipping from its grasp. But nor can the pro-Western faction command the consent of the whole nation. It was prepared to overthrow a democratically-elected president to get its own way, and has persistently sought to lock in its preferences against internal opposition by sacrificing Ukrainian national sovereignty to supranational organisations.

Russia’s role in this disaster is obvious. It is hardly surprising that Ukrainian nationalism has taken a sharply anti-Russian turn given the annexation of Crimea, Russian support for separatist fighters, and Putin’s open contempt for Ukrainian independence and sovereignty — let alone the recent invasion.

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But the West has also been reckless and irresponsible. Russia has made perfectly clear that it will not tolerate the expansion of the Western sphere of influence up to its borders. It wants at least a neutral buffer zone between itself and Nato, and ideally a friendly sphere of influence among its post-Soviet neighbours. We might wish this were not so, but it is a geopolitical fact. Russia’s willingness to use force to achieve its goals — at great reputational and economic cost — has been beyond doubt since 2008. To put this into perspective, we can imagine how the US might react if Canada sought to join a Russian-led military alliance — or merely recall Washington’s reaction when Cuba did so.

The West had two strategic options. Either it could acknowledge and accommodate Russian interests, or it could defy them, ushering Ukraine into Nato and deploying overwhelming military power to deter Russia from using force. Instead, it did neither. It allowed its Ukrainian allies falsely to believe that they could rely on the EU and Nato, yet did not nearly enough to deter Putin militarily. This has encouraged the Ukrainian government to prioritise integration with Russia’s enemies over rapprochement with its own citizens, while fanning Russian anxieties. Had Nato been clearer, Ukrainian elites might have come to their senses and pursued a less reckless course of action.

The only solution to this crisis, aside from war and devastation, is for Ukraine to become a neutral state, as Finland was during the Cold War. The sovereignty of the Ukrainian people — their capacity to work out their differences and collectively determine their life together in a peaceful and democratic manner — can only be enhanced if all sides renounce their external ties, and foreign powers cease meddling in Ukrainian politics.

To be truly sovereign, the Ukrainian state must be seen to represent the whole national population. The push towards Nato and EU membership — only intensified by Russia’s aggressive reaction — has fragmented the Ukrainian nation. It is hard to see how it can be reunited if this continues; bloody partition seems more likely.

Sovereignty does not imply total control over the state’s internal or external environment; it only entails self-rule, and this requires political realism. This was a source of some confusion in the Brexit debate. Many Thatcherite Eurosceptics foolishly believed that the UK could restore its sovereignty — its capacity to make laws and adopt policies inconsistent with EU rules — while retaining full access to the EU’s single market. The EU had no interest in agreeing such attractive terms; on the contrary, its interest lay in making Brexit as painful as possible.

Today, the Ukrainians clearly have no more “sovereign right” to join the EU or Nato than Brexit Britain had a “sovereign right” to full access to EU markets. Reflecting their own interests, these organisations will not admit Ukraine. This is the geopolitical reality that any truly sovereign Ukrainian government must reckon with.

Of course, Russia must withdraw from Ukraine. But the only way for the Ukrainian people to achieve national sovereignty is for all sides within Ukraine to cease internationalising their political conflict, and for foreign powers to cease their meddling. Neutrality offers the only context in which Ukraine can restore its territorial integrity and secure peace. It also provides the only context in which pro-Western forces will be forced to reckon with their pro-Russian counterparts, and find a more consensual way to exist.

To succeed, sanctions must not only impose economic costs — they must also change the political behaviour of target governments. Neither is at all straightforward.

As the past week has shown, designing sanctions that will harm Russia but not other European economies is fiendishly difficult. So far, only modest measures have been imposed: primarily asset freezes and exclusion from the Swift payments system for some banks; asset seizures and travel bans for some elites and oligarchs; and limits on Aeroflot flights. None of these will cripple Russia’s economy, despite fanciful claims by Western leaders.

The proposed sanctions on Russia’s central bank may cut much deeper. Exactly how far these will go is not yet clear. But freezing Russia’s overseas currency reserves will make it harder for the central bank to defend the value of the rouble, and to supply foreign exchange for commercial banks. This is unlikely to collapse the economy, as some advocates suggest, but it could have significant and far-reaching consequences, including runs on Russian banks and impediments to foreign trade.

However, it’s precisely the threat to trade that will probably lead Western governments to avoid a total freeze — limiting Russia’s access to foreign exchange, but not severing it entirely. The reason is simple: Russia is not a minor economy. Western countries, firms and banks do a lot of business with Russia. Wide-ranging sanctions will naturally have blowback. This is why tougher measures will be difficult, if not impossible, to impose.

The real “nuclear” option would be to embargo Russia’s energy exports, which comprise over half of Russia’s total exports. This would inflict serious damage. But, given that Europe relies on Russia for about a quarter of its oil and over a third of its gas, it would also spur massive inflation and induce economic recession in the West. Prices have already spiked due to the conflict, which will further harm households reeling from record-high energy prices. It’s telling, for example, that Germany has “de-certified” the Nordstream-2 pipeline, but not the pipelines through which it receives existing supplies.

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Likewise, Western governments appear unable to agree on completely blocking Russia from Swift, because this would create difficulties for Russian and Western banks alike. Without Swift, how would Germany pay for Russian gas? And, if it cannot pay, would the gas keep flowing? How would the many other Western businesses working in or dealing with Russia make payments? For the same reason, although some sectors of the Russian economy, such as chemicals and automobiles, rely on imported hi-tech Western components, so far, export restrictions remain limited, for fear of damaging Western firms.

Despite their belligerent rhetoric, Western leaders are wary of creating more problems for economies already struggling to recover from the deep recessions caused by their Covid-19 lockdowns. They are quietly carving out even non-critical economic sectors, such as luxury goods and diamond exports, from the sanction regime. It is hard to avoid the impression that, having blundered into confrontation with Russia, Western governments are now realising they have very limited options, and remain reluctant to put their money where their mouths are.

However, even if the West can find ways to inflict serious economic damage on Russia, that still does not mean sanctions will “work”. To be truly effective, they must also change the Russian government’s behaviour. And this is where the logic of sanctions often breaks down. It is remarkably rare for Western policymakers to explain — or even consider — exactly how “economic pain” is supposed to translate into “political gain”. And the prospects in this particular case do not look promising.

The fundamental problem is that sanctions are based on a dubious understanding of human behaviour. They are a quintessentially liberal instrument, resting on the assumption that every man has his price: if I impose economic costs on you, you will revise the cost-benefit analysis of your course of action, and change your behaviour accordingly.

In the real world, however, many regimes and their supporters are willing to endure colossal economic costs to pursue their political and security goals. Saddam Hussein’s Ba’ath Party regime preferred to see Iraq’s economy and society destroyed rather than relinquish power. Fidel Castro’s regime withstood a punishing US embargo for decades. Iran has suffered serious economic harm under Western sanctions without relinquishing its nuclear programme.

What are Putin’s goals in Ukraine? The Russian government has made it clear since the early Noughties that it cannot tolerate the eastward expansion of Nato, considering it a serious threat to Russian security. Its invasion of Georgia in 2008, and its attacks on Ukraine in 2014, long ago demonstrated the Kremlin’s determination to prevent neighbouring countries falling into the Western orbit, even at the cost of international isolation and punitive sanctions. One does not need to sympathise with Putin at all to recognise that Russia’s bank balance is not his primary consideration.

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If Putin will not put economic costs ahead of his security goals, how else might sanctions work? Classically, comprehensive embargoes seemed to be guided by a “naïve theory” of sanctions, whereby economic suffering is expected to compel the population to rise up against their wicked leaders. But this rarely, if ever, happens. If anything, economic immiseration tends to fragment and weaken the population, who become absorbed by the struggle to subsist and more reliant on government help — as seen in Iraq.

Targeted sanctions work on an equally naïve basis, assuming that political leaders and their business cronies are completely autonomous from the people, such that manipulating their personal wealth will convince them to change course. In truth, political leaders always represent some broader set of forces in their regime and wider society. Their policies reflect that underlying coalition. If they change course, they will have to answer to their supporters.

Vladimir Putin is a powerful and quasi-authoritarian leader, but he is not autonomous from Russian society. His rise reflects a broadly-based nationalist backlash against the consequences of neoliberal “shock therapy” practised on Russia by the International Monetary Fund after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Under the pro-Western President Yeltsin, the public wealth built up under communism was pillaged by oligarchs, while the Russian people suffered astonishing levels of deprivation. In the decade to 1998, GDP fell by 45%, mortality increased by 50%, government revenues had nearly halved, and crime had doubled.

Putin rose to power by promising to halt and reverse Russia’s national decline. In his first seven years in office, real wages doubled (albeit from a low base). Using soaring oil revenues, Putin stabilised the economy and paid off foreign debt, reasserting Russia’s sovereignty. He brought the oligarchs to heel, jailing or exiling anyone who would not recognise the state’s supremacy. And he restored stability and a measure of national pride to an exhausted and demoralised people. His regime, centred on a network of siloviki (security and military officials) and managers of state-owned enterprises, has proven politically robust and durable — a state within the state.

This is important not to praise or exonerate Putin, but to understand why his popularity has remained high, even under sanctions. Experimental research suggests that Russia’s economic decline since 2014 — mostly caused by declining oil prices, though compounded by sanctions — has cost Putin some support. But it has been more than compensated for by an upsurge in nationalist backing. Putin’s approval rating increased from 65% in January 2014 to 86% in April 2014, following the annexation of Crimea. It remained above 80% for the next two years before returning to the high 60s.

Today, a large majority of Russians blame the West for the crisis in Ukraine, while two-thirds have little or no concern about sanctions. Putin’s regime may have persecuted opposition figures, curbed dissent, and restricted electoral competition — but, despite such authoritarian measures, he retains widespread support. Western leaders could only dream of his approval ratings: support for Biden stands at 42%, for Macron, 40%, and, for Boris Johnson, just 25%.

Nor is there much sign of political fracture within the regime that sanctions could exploit. Putin’s ability to publicly humiliate his spy chief, who bodged his lines at the televised, stage-managed security council meeting prior to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, suggests he feels secure and confident. The overwhelming vote in the Duma of 400 to zero in favour of recognising the breakaway “republics” of Donetsk and Luhansk suggests either broad elite consensus or an unwillingness to openly defy the Kremlin. Exactly how the (modest) economic pain caused by sanctions is meant to generate political gain is therefore hard to discern.

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All too often, sanctions are a comforting but dangerous illusion: they are alluring because they seem to provide an effective option between war and words. When diplomacy seems to fail, and states are unwilling to risk war, something else is needed — and that something is sanctions. But just because something must be done does not mean that this “something” is going to work. Moreover, it is all too easy to forget that embargoes are a weapon of war, often devastating target populations and escalating conflicts, rather than peacefully resolving them. In response to the latest sanctions, Putin has put Russia’s nuclear forces on high alert. It seems unlikely that he would deploy them in response to banking sanctions. But this is a reminder of that the stakes are incredibly high.

Ultimately, even if sanctions do bite, we need to ask: what is the endgame? Sanctions are at best a means to an end, and surely the desired end is lasting peace in Eastern Europe. And one does not need to have any sympathy whatsoever with the Putin regime to believe that this can only be achieved by reckoning with core Russian interests.

Like it or not, powerful states have the capacity to inflict serious harm on weaker ones — just ask the Serbs, Libyans, Afghans, Iraqis and Syrians on the receiving end of the Nato powers’ tender mercies. If Russia is dissatisfied, it clearly has the power to upset the existing order by force. The only way to prevent this is to compromise with Russia’s concerns, or deploy overwhelming force to deter it from using its military power. The West has done neither, dismissing Putin’s demands to establish a neutral buffer zone between Russia and Nato, while failing to deter him from using force to achieve his objectives.

The only way out of this disaster is a negotiated settlement, which will require Nato to reckon with Russian interests, and preserve Ukrainian democracy and sovereignty within a framework of international neutrality. For the brutal reality is this: sanctions are unlikely to force Russia out of Ukraine, and the West is unwilling to be drawn directly into battle with a nuclear-armed state. Unless a diplomatic solution can be found, sanctions are likely to be merely part of a grinding proxy war along the lines of the brutal and horrific conflict in Syria.

The people of Ukraine have already suffered too much. Sanctions won’t save them — they may only make their misery worse.

Driving this increasingly confrontational approach is a view of China as a monolithic, authoritarian state embarked on a long-term strategy to overthrow US hegemony. Compared to Western states — riven by factional strife, paralysed by democratic deadlock, flailing about in the Middle East and seemingly unable to plan beyond next Tuesday — China certainly seems a fearsome challenger. Its plans cover everything from domestic Artificial Intelligence development to global infrastructure, while the top-down China Communist Party (CCP) regime ensures strict implementation and compliance. Some analysts have even suggested the existence of a 100-year strategy to displace the United States, implying an incredible capacity for long-term strategic planning.

The trouble is: this isn’t true. The Chinese party-state does not work like this. As I explain in a new book, Fractured China, the party-state is much more fragmented than many Westerners believe. Indeed, central policymaking is often loose and vague, with many competing interests shaping what actually happens on the ground.

Under Mao, the Chinese party-state was highly centralised, with top-down “command and control” systems that allowed central agencies to micromanage China’s economy and society. However, in Deng Xiaoping’s post-1978 “reform and opening up” era, these institutions were dismantled to facilitate the turn to capitalism.

Power and control over resources was extensively decentralised to provincial and local governments, as well as the emergent private sector. Privatisation and corporatisation turned former government ministries into free-wheeling, profit-seeking enterprises whose overseas activities are often beyond the ability of Chinese regulators to control. And as party cadres moved into business, and business tycoons joined the party, competing cadre-capitalist networks emerged across the party-state.

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Over the past decade, policymaking has been fragmented across a host of national and subnational agencies, often with competing interests and agendas. Some previously domestic agencies have acquired an international role, with even provincial governments having their own foreign and commercial offices.

Provincial governments have, for example, signed a number of trade and investment deals with governments in Asia and Africa. China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, then, is not in control of Chinese foreign policy, and often does not even know what other agencies are up to — until some crisis erupts, such as that in Ghana when the local government of Shangli county in Guangxi province deliberately “exported” tens of thousands of artisanal gold miners to offset local unemployment, sparking a populist anti-Chinese backlash and a government crackdown.

Of course, central leaders do still retain some powerful mechanisms for coordinating the fractured party-state. And these all have some effect on how the system works. But they do not add up to strategic, top-down control of every aspect of Chinese behaviour. Top leaders may convene “leading small groups”, committees bringing together different agencies in a given policy area, to try to cohere them around common purposes. But these purposes are often left vague to accommodate competing interests and agendas.

Equally vague are CCP elites’ speeches and slogans, which set an overall “tone” and direction for policy. Subordinates must orient themselves to these slogans to win policy support, funding and promotion. But they are so general that they usually require extensive interpretation to work out what they mean in practice.

Central agencies’ policies are likewise frequently loose “opinions” that local governments must adapt to local conditions. This all creates enormous scope for subordinates to interpret central “directives” in ways that actually advance their own sectional interests, rather than any geostrategic grand strategy. Indeed, the system actively encourages experimentation within loose guidelines — what former paramount leader Deng Xiaoping called “crossing the river by feeling for the stones”.

The most important cohering mechanisms are the CCP’s powers of appointment, appraisal and discipline, which leaders can use to encourage loyalty and punish wayward cadres. Xi Jinping is making particularly strong use of these powers — having, for example, prosecuted over two million cadres for corruption. That such purges seem necessary reflects the epochal transformations in China’s party-state, which, while spurring rapid economic growth, have also weakened central control, undermined the regime’s authority, and enabled massive local corruption.

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Such dynamics have, for instance, played out in the current strife over Xi’s drive for “common prosperity”. Everyone must orient themselves to this agenda, but no one — probably including Xi himself — really knows what it actually means, and everyone tries to wrap it around their own personal preferences. Hard-line leftists in China have interpreted “common prosperity” as unleashing a long overdue attack on the rich, terrorising many business tycoons, who have quickly donated billions to state-linked good causes. But others insist that “common prosperity is not egalitarianism,” and will not involve “robbing the rich to help the poor”, bashing the Left for “triggering ideological confusion and panic”.

Or take Xi’s call for a “toilet revolution” in 2015, in a speech lamenting the often-dreadful state of China’s public lavatories. Local governments seized on this vague utterance to justify splurging a staggering $3bn on toilet upgrades over the next 18 months, doubtless enriching many state-linked construction companies, before the horrified State Council reined them in.

Indeed, Chinese local governments are especially adept at exploiting their autonomy to further their own interests, leading to highly irrational outcomes, which are often misinterpreted as some kind of cunning strategy.

For example, Labour’s Stephen Kinnock, the shadow Asia minister, recently accused China of “deliberately overproducing steel” to dump on Western markets. In reality, overcapacity has been endemic across most basic Chinese industries since the 1990s — reaching 20 to 30% by the early 2010s — as local governments competed against one another to develop local industries and infrastructure through debt-fuelled over-investment. This is why China now has more airports per square kilometre than the US, and is awash with “ghost towns” and loss-making roads and railways, and why many local governments and state-owned enterprises (SOEs) are effectively bankrupt.

But it is China’s BRI that provides the best example of how these dynamics play out internationally. Western commentary tends to depict the BRI as Xi’s cunning grand strategy, designed to undermine US leadership and ensnare developing countries through “debt-trap diplomacy”. Detailed maps give the impression of a strategic blueprint being faithfully rolled out by officials and companies.

The reality is very different. “One belt, one road” emerged as a slogan in 2013 following two speeches by Xi, which largely just described what China was already doing: investing and building infrastructure in developing countries. But quickly, everyone piled in. Over the next two years, provincial governments and state-owned enterprises lobbied ferociously to get their pet projects incorporated into the BRI. Consequently, the project’s guidelines are remarkably vague and capacious, involving no clear objectives, no timeline, no dedicated resource commitments, and no real prioritisation. Practically every party-state activity has been squashed in.

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Even today, there is no official Chinese map of the BRI, and unofficial ones were banned in 2017. There is not even a clear definition of what constitutes a BRI country or project: different agencies use different metrics to suit themselves. BRI projects are not devised in Beijing, according to a strategic blueprint. They normally originate with foreign governments, seeking funds to accelerate infrastructure development, which may also be useful for securing electoral support or fuelling patronage networks through dodgy construction contracts. And they are often egged-on by Chinese SOEs — not because they want to advance China’s geostrategic interests, but because they want to win lucrative tied aid contracts. Consequently, projects are as likely to occur outside of the six broad “corridors” sketched in the BRI guidelines as inside them.

Indeed, oversight over the BRI is remarkably weak. Chinese policy banks and regulators have very little capacity to evaluate projects’ feasibility, and consequently approve many “white elephants”, such as the notorious Hambantota Port in Sri Lanka. Half of China’s overseas projects are loss-making. Regulators also have no real capacity to scrutinise projects’ implementation, relying instead on host countries to supervise them. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is barely involved in decision-making, and is typically only brought in when these problems spark major diplomatic incidents. China is still crossing the river while feeling for the stones, but it is stubbing its toes as it goes along.

And so responding to the behaviour of every Chinese entity as though it were intentionally planned and sanctioned by the top Chinese leadership is clearly misguided. The Chinese party-state is not monolithic — it is fractured, even when it comes to Xi Jinping’s signature foreign policy initiative.

Rather than confronting an imaginary strategic monolith, then, Western analysts and policymakers should develop a much more nuanced understanding of China and the internal struggles animating the party-state. In some policy areas, the interests involved do make cooperation difficult or even impossible. But elsewhere, there are forces and agencies that want to work constructively with foreign partners, creating scope for collaboration and mutual learning.

The UK’s decision to join and shape China’s Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), for example — rather than boycotting it, as Washington demanded — is a good case in point. The AIIB has adopted similar standards to existing multilateral development banks, while also trying to drive up the standards of China’s overseas projects.

A new Cold War will only isolate and immobilise these groups, empowering nationalist and paranoid factions who are convinced the West cannot tolerate China’s rise. Unless we tread carefully, and develop a more realistic understanding of China, we risk provoking a confrontation that we might not be able to win.