Axis of Convenience

Moscow, Beijing, and the New Geopolitics

Bobo Lo

• Publisher: Brookings Institution Press
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9780815753407
• eBook ISBN: 9780815701460
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: International Relations
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Few relationships have been as misunderstood as the ""strategic partnership"" between Russia and China. Official rhetoric portrays it as the very model of international cooperation: Moscow and Beijing claim that ties are closer and warmer than at any time in history. In reality, however, the picture is highly ambiguous. While both sides are committed to multifaceted engagement, cooperation is complicated by historical suspicions, cultural prejudices, geopolitical rivalries, and competing priorities. For Russia, China is at once the focus of a genuine convergence of interests and the greatest long-term threat to its national security. For China, Russia is a key supplier of energy and weapons, but is frequently dismissed as a self-important power whose rhetoric far outstrips its real influence. A xis of Convenience cuts through the mythmaking and examines the Sino-Russian partnership on its own merits. It steers between the overblown interpretation of an anti-Western (particularly, anti-American) alliance and the complacent assumption that past animosities and competing agendas must always divide the two nations. Their relationship reflects a new geopolitics, one that eschews formal alliances in favor of more flexible and opportunistic arrangements. Ultimately, it is an axis of convenience driven by cold-eyed perceptions of the national interest. In evaluating the current state and future prospects of the relationship, Bobo Lo assesses its impact on the evolving strategic environments in Central and East Asia. He also analyzes the global implications of rapprochement between Moscow and Beijing, focusing in particular on the geopolitics of energy and Russia-China-U.S. triangularism.

CHAPTER ONE

COOPERATION, AMBIGUITY, AND TENSION

“The pure and simple truth is rarely pure and never simple.”

—OSCAR WILDE, The Importance of Being Earnest, Act I

Few relationships have provoked such polarized views as the Sino-Russian “strategic partnership.” Moscow and Beijing portray it as the very model of international cooperation—pragmatic, enterprising, and innovative. In a world still marked by Cold War-era tensions, it embodies the promise of a new “global multipolar order,” not dominated by American “hegemonism” but centered in the “democratization of international relations.”¹ Such bullishness testifies to an extraordinary transformation. Less than forty years ago the two countries were seemingly implacable enemies on the verge of nuclear confrontation. Today they can rightly claim that ties are better than at any time in their history. Ancient antagonisms and suspicions appear to have given way to an unparalleled convergence across multiple policy agendas.

On the other hand, the rude health of the relationship has generated mounting concern in the West about its longer-term aims. Although Russian and Chinese leaders deny that their partnership is directed against third parties, many observers in Washington view it as an anti-American alliance in all but name. For such critics the convergence of Russian and Chinese positions on a range of international issues is not merely unhelpful, but represents a concerted challenge to the United States’ global leadership.

It is perhaps inevitable that such black-and-white views should flourish in an unstable international context, one characterized by growing geopolitical tensions and security uncertainties. The temptation to extol or demonize the Sino-Russian relationship is all the more powerful given that so little is understood about the motivations and forces shaping it. Despite its prominence it remains a subject on which there is far more heat than light.

Inconveniently for advocates and critics alike, the real picture is ambiguous, full of contradictions both implicit and explicit. Moscow and Beijing speak the language, and undertake many of the actions, of a multifaceted partnership. Yet practical cooperation is hamstrung by historical suspicions, cultural prejudices, geopolitical rivalry, and competing priorities. Despite satisfaction with the growth of “partnership relations,” there is lingering doubt about their sustainability.

Such uncertainty is rooted in history, but is fueled also by the emergence of an increasingly confident and assertive China. Beijing has worked hard to allay the fears of the international community by emphasizing concepts such as “peaceful rise,” “peaceful development,” and a “harmonious world.” It has adopted a restrained posture on Taiwan, engaged with the United States, and stepped up participation in multilateral organizations. But the sheer speed and scale of China's transformation from regional backwater into influential global actor have made it an object of concern for many countries, not least Russia.

This anxiety has been accentuated by the turnaround in the strategic fortunes of the two countries since the collapse of the Soviet Union. At the beginning of the 1990s the outlook for Yeltsin's democratic Russia appeared much more promising than that of a Chinese Communist regime shaken and isolated following the international outcry at the brutal suppression of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. Russia seemed destined to remain the “older brother” and China the “younger brother,” as in the “unbreakable” Sino-Soviet friendship under Joseph Stalin and Mao Zedong. But over the course of the 1990s the momentum within the relationship shifted inexorably in favor of Beijing, first to an “equal partnership,” and then to one in which China became seen as ascendant by many on both sides.

The changing dynamic reinforced a long-time mutual ambivalence. For Moscow, China has symbolized a “good” and “bad” East—on the one hand, one of the world's great civilizations; on the other, a barbarous presence that lapsed into decrepitude and medievalism for much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. For Beijing, Russia/the Soviet Union was at different times avaricious imperial power, patronizing mentor, and indispensable backer. At no stage in the two countries’ common history has there been a period of unalloyed good relations. As Russian leader Vladimir Putin has pointed out, even during the period of “unbreakable friendship” there was considerable ill-feeling beneath the veneer of Sino-Soviet solidarity.² While many Russians envy China its political stability and economic success, the notion of a “China threat” persists. Perceptions of China and the Chinese may be more nuanced and positive than in the past, but Sinophobia continues to exert a significant pull. On specific issues, such as the right of Chinese to live, work, and acquire property in Russia, public responses are strongly negative. And most Russians believe that China benefits far more from the relationship.³

By contrast, the Chinese have a relatively benign if faintly dismissive view of their largest neighbor. They value it as a supplier of advanced weaponry to the People's Liberation Army (PLA), as an important source of crude oil, and as a useful ally in balancing American power in Central Asia. Unlike many in the West, they do not regard a resurgent Russia as a serious threat to their national interests. They are somewhat bemused at Moscow's obsession with “great power-ness” (derzhavnost) and frustrated by its double-dealing on issues such as the East Siberian oil pipeline (see chapter 8), but they recognize the need for accommodation in order to concentrate on more important priorities elsewhere. Generally speaking the Chinese attitude toward Russia combines Middle Kingdom hauteur, pragmatism, and cynicism. Russophobia, although it exists, is less of an issue than indifference, as China's governing elite and society increasingly turn their attention to the West.

Axis of convenience

This asymmetry and ambivalence call into question the conventional wisdom that Russia and China enjoy a bona fide strategic partnership. Although the two countries have come a long way in recent years, they share neither a long-term vision of the world nor a common understanding of their respective places in it, a disjunction reflected in differing perceptions of the bilateral relationship.

This book argues that the dynamic between Russia and China is one of strategic convenience—an axis of convenience. It suits Moscow and Beijing to talk up the quality of ties, both for intrinsic reasons and as a significant factor in regional and global politics. But such interaction falls well short of strategic cooperation, which implies not only a common sense of purpose across the board, but also the political will and coordination to translate broad intent into meaningful action. The rationale of the Sino-Russian axis of convenience is often tactical and instrumental, and expediency and opportunism are more relevant considerations than an often illusory likemindedness. Tellingly, the Kremlin assigns greater resources to the countries of the former Soviet Union (FSU) and to relations with key EU member-states (such as Germany), while the Chinese leadership is much more focused on engagement with the United States, Japan, the ASEANs (Association of Southeast Asian Nations), Africa, and the European Union.

The secondary importance of the bilateral relationship reflects critical differences in the two countries’ center of gravity and strategic orientation. Russian foreign policy arises out of an indigenous imperial tradition, a European cultural-historical heritage, and an Americacentric geopolitical culture. The West continues to supply the principal external reference points, even if many of these are perceived negatively. At the same time the longevity of Russia's imperial tradition and recent memory of the Soviet superpower era have ensured that Moscow retains a globalist mindset, despite a much diminished capacity to project power and influence. Within this world-view China has traditionally occupied a peripheral place. Even at the height of Sino-Soviet friendship and later during the U.S.-Soviet-Chinese triangularism of the 1970s, its importance to the Kremlin was more auxiliary than independent, a source of leverage in a bipolar world rather than valued in itself.

China is still in the early stages of evolution from a regional to a global power and from a developing into a developed nation. It is no surprise, then, that its principal foreign policy priorities are essentially inward-looking: to create the most favorable external conditions for domestic modernization; and reunification with Taiwan. The same introspection characterizes its imperial mentality, which reflects the dynastic nature of Communist Party rule rather than empire-building ambitions or irredentist designs.⁴ The global extension of its foreign policy in recent years is motivated not by a desire to assert a great power presence on the world stage, but by concrete and fairly narrow goals, such as maximizing access to overseas markets, energy sources, and other raw materials necessary to sustain growth. Although China has shown signs of assuming greater international obligations and becoming a “responsible stakeholder,” its approach to global affairs remains utilitarian.⁵

Contrasting foreign policy agendas have not prevented Moscow and Beijing from coordinating positions in certain circumstances. Crucially, however, what binds them is a largely defensive agenda: stability and confidence-building along the common border; resisting the influence of “alien”Western values;⁶ emasculating UN action over Iran's nuclear program; and excluding or weakening an outside strategic presence in Central Asia. The axis of convenience is in many respects an “anti-relationship,” directed more at containing undesirable developments than creating new structures and mechanisms for cooperation.

Much of the impetus behind its development has come from a desire to restrain the “hegemonic” power of the United States. In the immediate post-Cold War era, the arrival of the “unipolar moment” encouraged the reassertion of American internationalism, missionary in its zeal and seemingly unchallengeable.⁷ This America was seen to threaten regional as well as ex-global powers and provided a natural locus for Sino-Russian convergence. After a brief period of introspection in the first year of George W. Bush's presidency, 9/11 reawakened Washington's foreign policy activism. The U.S.-led military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq have drawn Moscow and Beijing together in a common purpose—not in combating international terrorism, as Washington had hoped, but in countering the geopolitical presence of the hegemon in their “spheres of vital interests.”⁸ Even here, however, the two countries’ approaches are scarcely identical. At a time when Russia is taking every opportunity to contest America's global leadership, China has adopted a more restrained approach. The contrast between the escalation of Russia-U.S. tensions and the generally positive interdependency between the U.S. and Chinese economies is stark.

The new geopolitics

In challenging the assumption of a Sino-Russian “strategic partnership,” we should not underestimate its wider implications. Perceptions of the national interest can be short-term, but they have regional and global consequences nonetheless. Moscow and Beijing may be “dreaming different dreams,”⁹ but this has not stopped them from working together, often to considerable effect, in many areas: Iran, Central Asia, countering missile defense, North Korea.

Such cooperation, more opportunistic than strategic, is facilitated by an international environment where no single world order—unipolar, bipolar or multipolar—predominates, but in which a Hobbesian “anarchy” reigns.¹⁰ George W. Bush's presidency has seen a spectacular decline in the authority of the United States, with Washington's global leadership coming under attack from all sides. Yet it will be decades before rising powers such as China and India have the capacity—or will—to compete with it for preeminence. The much-vaunted “multipolar world order” remains more aspiration than reality, while an equitable, more “democratic” international system based on the primacy of the UN and other multilateral institutions is similarly elusive. There is an “international society” of sorts, in that certain rules of behavior continue to govern interstate relations,¹¹ but the Helsinki “big idea” of universal rights and norms¹² has become so eroded in recent years as to be meaningless as a frame of reference. In addition to the growing fractiousness of states and proliferation of value-systems, new non-state actors have emerged to undermine established institutions and norms.

A new geopolitics is challenging the Western-driven, positive-sum interdependency that has become discredited in many parts of the world. It is a hybrid phenomenon, reflecting the transitory nature of the contemporary international system. Traditional constructs of space and influence remain influential, but a revolution of means is taking place. This geopolitics is flexible in approach, employing both hard and soft power and making use of multilateral, bilateral, and unilateral mechanisms. And it is flourishing in circumstances where classical conceptions of the balance of power are interacting with new security and economic challenges—international terrorism, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD), the globalization of trade, energy security, climate change. The new geopolitics is not based on fixed and long-lasting “strategic partnerships,” let alone alliances, but on much more supple arrangements that are frequently opportunistic, non-committal, and volatile.¹³ Such arrangements are highly susceptible to changing international circumstances and evolving perceptions of the national interest.

That Sino-Russian relations are driven by interests and not ideology (as under Stalin and Mao) is both a strength and a weakness. On the one hand, it enables Moscow and Beijing to escape some of the baggage of the past, focusing instead on what unites rather than divides them. The disparateness and lack of clarity of the current geopolitical environment also enables their partnership to punch above its weight, in conditions where the illusion of power is often mistaken for genuine clout.

On the other hand the fluidity of the international context makes the relationship a hostage to fortune. While it can strengthen the axis of convenience in dealings with other actors, it feeds tensions and uncertainties within the relationship itself. With so little to be taken for granted, there is no inclination in Moscow and Beijing toward mutual reliance. The notion of a “normative convergence”between them has become popular recently,¹⁴ yet this supposed convergence is fragile and superficial and in no way approximates the shared values that exist within bodies such as the EU.

For all the public packaging, the Sino-Russian relationship is defined by tangible interests and the realities of power. And herein lies its greatest source of vulnerability. China's rise as the next global superpower threatens Russia, not with the military or demographic invasion many fear, but with progressive displacement to the periphery of international decisionmaking. Although it is fashionable to bracket Russia and China together as emerging powers, along with India and Brazil,¹⁵ the trajectory of their development foreshadows different fates.¹⁶ The aggregate bilateral balance of power—economic, political, technological, strategic—has already shifted in Beijing's favor, and the disparity will only become more marked with time. More than any other single factor, it is this growing inequality in an uncertain world that will inhibit the development of a genuinely close partnership.

The policy context

Some clarification on the nature of the policy process in this highly ambivalent relationship may be useful. Policymaking is opaque, even in the most transparent and accountable of Western democracies. It is much more so in states where a culture of confidentiality is pervasive, input is limited to the select few, and dissimulation is more often than not a virtue.¹⁷ We can rarely be sure who initiated or influenced particular decisions; a measure of clarity emerges only with time and, in a few lucky instances, with the publication of indiscreet memoirs.¹⁸

In this connection, it is vital to distinguish between those who drive policy and those who merely articulate it. The recent transfer of the Russian presidency from Vladimir Putin to Dmitry Medvedev illustrates the dangers of a literal approach to the study of policymaking. On the face of things, President Medvedev has become the new power in the land, with direct responsibility for running foreign policy. Yet it is Putin, albeit as prime minister and party leader, who remains the supreme arbiter of Russia's affairs at home and abroad. His personal domination of the body politic and control of elite networks outweigh the institutional assets of a nominally strong presidency.

This book makes liberal reference to “Russia” and “Moscow,” “China” and “Beijing,” more or less interchangeably. The reader should not interpret this as implying the existence of uniform views, but as shorthand for the dominant policy line at a given moment. The abstract concept of “the national interest” has little meaning, except at the most general level—“territorial integrity,” “national security,” “economic prosperity.” In practice, the national interest is a matter of interpretation and perspective. Different groups within the policy elite—big business, economic ministries, the security and intelligence community, the military—may (and do) view it in different ways. The issue is further complicated by the blurring of public and private interests, especially in Russia. Policy outcomes reflect the interplay of competing interests and agendas; in Russia and China, even more than in the West, they are the product of multiple compromises.

With this in mind, several scholars have adopted an interest-group approach, associating certain attitudes and policies with particular constituencies.¹⁹ But this, too, is not without its problems. Interests and allegiances cut across institutional lines.²⁰ The Russian military, for example, is sharply divided in its views of China. Some senior officers regard it as the greatest long-term threat to national security, others as an actor of limited military capabilities, while a third group adheres to the Kremlin line that China is a key strategic partner and customer for the Russian arms industry. Divining the inner workings of Chinese policy is more challenging still, since the extreme secrecy surrounding decisionmaking there makes it very difficult to identify distinct policy strands with any confidence. Mark Leonard has categorized Chinese thinking about international affairs in terms of “liberal internationalists,” “neo-comms,” and “pragmatists.”²¹ However, it is unclear how far these intellectual currents influence specific government policies. The most pl...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• 1 - Cooperation, Ambiguity and Tension
• 2 - The Burden of History
• 3 - Strategic Partnership—Image and Reality
• 4 - The “Yellow Peril”—Engagement in the Russian Far East
• 5 - “Peaceful Rise” and the Shifting Sino-Russian Balance
• 6 - Cooperation and Competition in Central Asia
• 7 - East Asia—Arena of the Great Powers
• 8 - The Geopolitics of Energy
• 9 - The Grand Chessboard Revisited—Russia, China, and the United States
• 10 - Conclusion—From “Strategic Partnership” to Strategic Tension 
• Notes
• Index
• Back Cover