Military Alliances in the Twenty-First Century. Alexander Lanoszka

Defense Strategy have identified both as strategic competitors that serve to undermine US and allied interests around the world (Mattis 2018: 2). More importantly, China and Russia have stepped up military cooperation by way of more regular consultations, personnel exchanges, joint military exercises, and inter-military trust-building (Korolev 2019: 247). All these indicators point to the potential formation of a treaty-based military alliance, but those countries may not yet have signed a mutual defense treaty. To date, the key bilateral agreement that frames their relationship is the 2001 Treaty of Good-Neighborliness and Friendly Cooperation (often called “the Big Treaty”), which largely emphasizes non-aggression and consultation. The absence of a proper defense pact may be because such an agreement would be liable to be activated as soon as it is signed. Russia is engaged in a war in eastern Ukraine and China might fear that a new alliance would precipitate its involvement in that conflict. Likewise, China has maritime disputes with neighbors in the East and South China Seas as well as land disputes with India. Russia might worry that a new treaty could quickly obligate it to take China’s side in those conflicts. Drafting a meaningful treaty that can work around these concerns would be difficult because too many caveats and conditions would undermine the alliance at its own inception. Other states could exploit those treaty features to stoke tensions between Beijing and Moscow. Not having a treaty sidesteps these thorny issues. However, there could be other reasons for not having a treaty. After all, states have in the past established formal military alliances when territorial disputes were in train. US alliances with South Korea and Japan come to mind, as does China’s and the Soviet Union’s alliances with North Korea. Perhaps, then, the leaders of these two countries have personal idiosyncrasies such that they do not believe in the worth of a treaty (see Han and Papa 2020; Silaev 2021). Perhaps they fear each other by dint of their large size, population mass, and nuclear arsenals. Perhaps it is just a matter of time.

The case of Taiwan and its current relationship with the United States is also illustrative. The island’s international status as a sovereign country has deteriorated in recent years as more and more countries have withdrawn diplomatic recognition. By 2020, only fifteen countries had retained diplomatic relations with Taipei. Although its geopolitical challenge is almost exclusively mainland China, Taipei has sometimes adopted a conciliatory approach, with the political party Kuomintang emphasizing economic links across the strait when in power in Taiwan’s democratic era. For its part, the United States has, until recently, favored a strategy of political and economic engagement with China. Washington may have supplied Taipei with military weapons, but, in order to minimize protest from Beijing, it restricted those arms transfers to include only those that serve defensive purposes – a policy established in 1979 in anticipation of the United States ending its formal alliance with Taiwan at the time. More recently, however, both Taiwan and the United States have worked more closely together in face of a perceived threat from China. Since Xi Jinping became Paramount Leader in China in 2012, concerns have grown among leaders in Taiwan – especially those from the Democratic Progressive Party – that China might act on unifying the island with the mainland using military force. China’s military build-up and steady abrogation of the “one country, two systems” policy in Hong Kong have only fueled these anxieties. Under the Trump administration, the United States adopted a confrontational posture toward China in light of the latter’s economic policies and military assertiveness in the East and South China Seas. Early indications suggest that the Biden administration will keep some pressure on China, too. An alliance with Taiwan was long unthinkable because the United States wished neither to antagonize China nor to rekindle a smoldering sovereignty dispute in the Taiwan Strait. Now, such inhibitions may be weakening amid greater wariness with China. Although this alliance would be asymmetric, it need not involve Taiwan making major concessions. A formal military alliance would instead reflect converging threat perceptions and help advance the United States’ interests in keeping China mostly hemmed in within the First Island Chain.

Still, an alliance may not yet happen, if ever at all, despite the overlapping threat perceptions. Perhaps leaders in the United States believe that the price of an alliance with Taiwan is too high. Needless to say, it would inflame tensions with China. More uncertain is what would happen if Washington and Taipei were to decide to reformalize ties: would war break out or would the confrontation with China escalate into a new phase of hostilities? Or perhaps, again, it could be just a matter of time before the two former allies start to salami-slice their way toward a rejuvenated alliance precisely to avoid giving China a clear pretext for aggression.