Of his 11 official visits
to China as Russian president, Vladimir Putin’s nine-hour stop in
Beijing on Feb. 4 was the shortest, perhaps barely adequate to refuel
his huge Ilyushin Il-96-300PU Russian Air Force One.
From Russia, with love, and more…
This Blitzkrieg-style visit to Russia’s largest neighbor and the most
valuable “strategic partner,” however, meant not only Russia’s “love”
(support for the Beijing Winter Olympics) but was also loaded with
substance. Before attending the opening ceremony, Xi and Putin lunched
together, held talks, and inked 16 agreements in energy ($117.5 billion), trade (up to $250 billion in a few years), space, and digital sectors. The two sides also discussed “military-technical cooperation” to enhance their “special” relationship.
Perhaps the most significant outcome of Putin’s visit was the signing of the “Russia-China joint statement
on the International Relations Entering a New Era and the Global
Sustainable Development.” In it, the two spelled out a similar
worldview, bolstered by a non-alliance that will nonetheless allow for
very close coordination.
The world according to Moscow and Beijing
The last time the two leaders met in person was 25 months earlier, in Brazil, for the annual BRICS summit.
Since then, the world has changed so much—post-Trump, post-Afghanistan,
protracted pandemic—and yet so little: relations with Washington
continued to worsen, particularly in areas of their “core national
interests” (such as Ukraine and Taiwan). Despite differences in these
two interests, Moscow and Beijing now perceive Washington as unreliable
and even dishonest in living up to its diplomatic commitments: “no NATO
expansion to the east” as spelled out by James Baker in 1990 and the “one-China principle” that Beijing argues Washington has retreated from.
“No state can or should ensure its own security separately from the
security of the rest of the world and at the expense of the security of
other states,” says the statement. The Russian side reaffirmed its
support for Beijing’s “One-China principle” and its opposition to AUKUS,
which both Moscow and Beijing have argued is an anti-China alliance in
the Indo-Pacific. China reciprocated with its opposition to NATO
enlargement. There is no mention of Ukraine (a “strategic partner” of
China), but Beijing “is sympathetic to and supports” Russia’s proposal
“to create long-term legally binding security guarantees in Europe.” For
Moscow and Beijing, the UN-based world order, not the US-led NATO
alliance, should be key to world peace and prosperity.
At the onset of the Biden administration, Moscow and Beijing expected
something different, after a Trump administration that labeled them both
“strategic competitors.” Biden’s hardball approach of
alliance-building, democracy promotion, and enduring sanctions ended
their limited expectations for a moderate “reset” of relations with
Washington.
Even the chaotic Afghan exit last August produced some uncomfortable
outcomes for Beijing and Moscow: an unsettling Taliban-run Afghanistan
with ripple effects for Central Asia; more resources for Washington to
counter its major-power rivals; and a United States more determined to
avoid another loss similar to the fall of Kabul.
A league of their own
For those who believe that every interaction between Russia and China
aims at undermining the West, the new 5,400-word statement offers a full
plate. For those who try to regain a pivotal US posture within the
“strategic triangle” pioneered by President Nixon exactly 50 years ago,
however, there is little optimism: the document suggests much closer
ties between the two. Both alarmists and realpolitik practitioners,
however, miss some important dynamics between China and Russia—and
within them.
>From time to time, Moscow and Beijing declare that their strategic
partnership is not an alliance. Nor do they intend to build one. “The
new inter-state relations between Russia and China are superior to
political and military alliances of the Cold War era,” says the
statement. These public declarations to transcend traditional military
alliances need to be taken more seriously for at least two reasons.
First, China and Russia are among the few genuinely independent large
civilizational entities that value their independence and sovereignty
above anything else. Traditional military alliances with interlocking
mechanisms for security would deprive them of their freedom of action.
The West now seems to forget the rigid and binding alliances that
produced the fateful “Guns of August”
of 1914. Within a week of Franz Ferdinand’s assassination, major powers
in Europe declared war on each other largely because of their alliance
commitment (see Scott Sagan’s “1914 Revisited”).
More important is the shadow of their past. The Sino-Soviet alliance of
the 1950s, though brief, produced both friendship and friction. There is
no question that massive Soviet assistance laid the foundation for
China’s modernization, for which the Chinese are still grateful. It was
nonetheless an asymmetrical relationship with considerable Soviet
intrusion into China’s domestic affairs.
Over time, their shared political ideology of communism did not prevent
them from pursuing different priorities at home and abroad, leading to
both polemical and military confrontations in the 1960s and 1970s.
Ideology exaggerated the friendship during their “honeymoon” (1949-59)
and amplified disagreements during their 30-year “divorce” (1960-89). As
such, the first step of their rapprochement in the 1980s was to
de-ideologize their relationship. Since then, the two have transformed
this asymmetrical, highly ideological, and dangerously militarized
relationship into one of pragmatic coexistence. In a way, the current
Russia-China “strategic partnership” is a normal relationship after the
“best” and “worst” times.
The non-aligned nature of the current Sino-Russian relationship,
however, does not preclude close coordination. If anything, it allows
open-ended and flexible strategic interaction. “Friendship between the
two states has no limits” and “there are no ‘forbidden’ areas of
cooperation,” declares the joint statement. Ultimately, it is the vast
and stable strategic depth between the two large land powers, or the
so-called “back-to-back”
posture, that guarantees their national security. It is highly unlikely
that either Moscow or Beijing would trade this anchor of stability for
any tactical overture from Washington.
Back to the past?
A considerable portion of the joint statement is devoted to the
democracy issue, as a response to the US-sponsored “Democracy Summit” in
October 2021. For China and Russia, democracy should be chosen and
administered by local peoples, just as the West has done, and not
imposed from outside; the global system, too, should be democratized,
rather than subject to hegemony.
This parallel democratic mechanism at both domestic and international
levels, no matter how unrealistic in the eyes of the West, may reflect
the national trajectories of Russia and China.
Three decades after the Cold War, China and Russia have returned, to
different degrees, to their cultural/religious heritage of Confucianism
and Eastern Orthodoxy. Despite their vastly different national
experiences (China’s steady rise and Russia’s historical decline), they
have managed to maintain stable relations thanks to their historical
return to the Westphalianism of noninterference in each other’s domestic
affairs, the foundation of the modern world system of sovereign states
pioneered—and now largely discarded—by the West.
How Russia and China’s back-to-the-past approach will interface with
Washington’s alliance/democracy-promotion strategy remains to be seen.
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