The Russia-China Axis. Douglas E. Schoen

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       The New Terrain

       “In my opinion, the competition between China and the U.S. in the 21st century should be a race, that is, a contest to see whose development results are better, whose comprehensive national power can rise faster, and to finally decide who can become the champion country to lead world progress.”

      —GENERAL LIU YAZHOU, CHINA¹

       “What preserved peace, even in Cold War conditions, was a balance of forces.”

      —VLADIMIR PUTIN²

       “After my election, I have more flexibility.”

      —PRESIDENT BARACK OBAMA³

      Xi Jinping’s visit to Moscow in March 2013 was dramatic, but the event was a long time coming. It was foreshadowed, in fact, more than a decade earlier, in 2001—the historic year that saw the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington and the launch of America’s War on Terror. Those attacks fundamentally transformed American foreign policy and American relations with both countries and the rest of the world. But while America geared up to fight a shadowy, multinational enemy, Russia and China were playing a much older, more traditional game: the time-honored practice of two strong nations identifying common interests and formalizing an alliance.

      In June 2001, in Shanghai, the two countries created a kind of alternative NATO: the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Evolving out of a predecessor organization, the Shanghai Five, and originally something of a vague concord between Russia and China, the SCO has developed more recently into a comprehensive effort to strengthen economic, military, and cultural ties and to provide mutual security. Vladimir Putin has called the SCO “a reborn version of the Warsaw Pact.”⁴ Unlike the old Warsaw Pact, however, which excluded China, the SCO is a joint Russian-Chinese alliance that includes the four “stan” countries that have tilted against democracy: Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan. Putin has made clear in recent years that he now sees the SCO as an explicit response to Western attempts to expand NATO—an effort that he views as a betrayal after his cooperation with the West, especially after 9/11.

      Working together in the SCO, Russia and China have forged strong relationships with enemies of the U.S., such as Iran (which has observer status), and with those that have contentious relationships with the U.S., such as Pakistan (which has applied for full membership). The SCO has also allowed observer status to India, Afghanistan, and Mongolia; Turkey became a “dialogue partner” in 2013.⁵ For Iran, in particular, SCO membership would guarantee stability in its relationships with Russia and China and further its interests in Central Asia.⁶ Because of the SCO, the United States has a difficult time building consensus on nuclear nonproliferation, drug trafficking, trade rules, and a host of other issues.

      That difficulty would probably grow if the SCO’s membership became much larger—a likely possibility. Its member states already cover an area of more than 30 million square kilometers, with a combined population of 1.46 billion. If India were to join, the organization would contain the two most populous countries. “The leaders of the states sitting at this negotiation table are representatives of half of humanity,” said the host of the SCO’s 2005 SCO summit. That was a bit of an overstatement at the time, but the words may soon reflect reality.

      Only a month after the SCO’s founding, Russia and China signed the Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation, the most significant agreement between the two powers since the historic 1950 compact signed by Stalin and Mao. The 2001 pact was a 20-year strategic treaty in which both parties formalized their shared positions on sovereignty issues and their opposition to “uni-polarity,” code for American influence abroad. The treaty made sense to both powers for many reasons. First and foremost, it increased their leverage internationally in relation to United States power, which was at a historic high. Both countries saw American unilateralism as a threat to their interests and traditional spheres of influence.

      The treaty also served individual needs on both sides. The Russians’ greatest need was for capital investment, and the Chinese had capital to burn. The Russians, meanwhile, had massive energy reserves and a willing and needy buyer in the Chinese. The Chinese were also eager to buy Russian military technology. All in all, for the Russian economy, the treaty was vital. For the Chinese, modernizing their armed forces and securing stable energy supplies were two of the most pressing national issues. The treaty helped fulfill both needs.

      Few observers at the time, however, understood the significance of the alliance between the two longtime foes. “If China and Russia decide to get into bed with each other,” Ralph A. Cossa had written in the New York Times a few years earlier, “the appropriate response is to wish both of them pleasant dreams, since each will surely feel compelled to sleep with one eye open.”⁷ Such skepticism about a Chinese-Russian partnership made sense at the time. After all, with so much adversarial history between them, how close could the two nations get?

      Yet, with the benefit of hindsight, it now seems clear that the seeds were planted during those years for the culminating moment of 2013, when Xi visited Moscow to so much political pomp and ceremony. By the time they met in Moscow, Xi and Putin were seeking more than just expressions of friendship. They were pursuing a substantive agenda of cooperation and partnership, signing at least 35 agreements covering a range of issues—economics, travel and tourism, agriculture, banking, science and technology, military technology, and geopolitical cooperation. These agreements represent only the latest illustration of a Russian-Chinese collaboration that has been deepening for years—most of it in opposition to U.S. interests. Let’s take a look at the key areas.

      FACILITATING ROGUE REGIMES AND FORGING A “LEAGUE OF AUTOCRACIES”

      Vladimir Putin was riding high in February 2014, as Russia hosted the Winter Olympics in Sochi. It was the first time Russia had ever hosted a Winter Games, and Putin was determined to revel in every minute of it. And so he hosted a lavish reception in the Atrium ballroom of the Rus Sanatorium, a structure that dates to the Stalin era. Yet, as the Wall Street Journal put it drily, “Mr. Putin’s guest list ha[d] some big gaps.” While most prominent Western leaders stayed away, Putin entertained President Xi along with then-President Viktor Yanukovych of Ukraine, President Aleksander Lukashenko of Belarus—and North Korea’s second-highest-ranking official, even though Pyongyang was sending no delegation of athletes to Sochi.⁸ If, as the old saying has it, we know someone by his friends, Putin’s Olympic reception provided a fresh reminder.

      “It takes time for societies and policymakers to understand that a major shift in global affairs is afoot. But what we see clearly, in recent months, is the emergence of a new constellation of powers,” wrote William C. Martel in The Diplomat. The new grouping includes China, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Syria, and Venezuela. On the surface, these nations are surely distinct; in some cases, indeed, they have conflicting interests. But for the most part, they are united in that their economic and geostrategic goals are inimical to U.S. interests. “There are two common fears that animate the policies of these authoritarian governments,” Martel noted. “One is their apparent fear of democracy, freedom, and liberty, which each of these societies work aggressively to curtail. Second, these authoritarian regimes fear the power and influence of the United States and the West.”⁹ Thus, they are eager to work together when possible, or at minimum stay out of one another’s way. As Russian Foreign Minister Dmitri Lavrov said of China: “We appreciate Beijing’s measured and impartial stance on the Ukrainian crisis, as well as China’s manifest understanding of all its manifold aspects, including the historic ones.”¹⁰

      Russia and China are both directly and indirectly supporting and facilitating the efforts of U.S. adversaries around the world—especially the Iranian and North Korean nuclear programs. Russia provides technical assistance and nuclear know-how to Tehran and has sold advanced weapons to defend Iran’s nuclear sites from air strikes. Russia is Iran’s biggest provider of foreign weapons, supplying $3.442 billion in total arms sales since 1991.¹¹ The