America’s Bleak View of Russia-China Relations

Author(s): Robert Sutter

Source: Asia Policy , JANUARY 2018, Vol. 13, No. 1 (JANUARY 2018), pp. 39-46
Published by: National Bureau of Asian Research (NBR)

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2307/26403229

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 roundtable • the strategic implications of russia-china relations

America’s Bleak View of Russia-China Relations

Robert Sutter

T he partnership between Russia and China has matured and broadened

since the Cold War, and it has strengthened significantly in the last
decade. The dispositions of President Vladimir Putin and President Xi
Jinping support forecasts of closer relations over the next five years and
probably beyond. The momentum is based on (1) common objectives,
(2) perceived Russian and Chinese vulnerabilities in the face of U.S. and
Western pressures, and (3) perceived opportunities for the two powers to
expand their influence at the expense of U.S. and allied leaders, who are
seen as cautious, distracted, and in decline.
One hundred leading U.S. specialists on Russia and China participating
in the NBR project “Strategic Implications of Russia-China Relations” are in
broad agreement on the causes of the challenges that Russia and China pose
to the United States.1 They agree that Sino-Russian relations increasingly
undermine U.S. interests and that past views of the relationship as an “axis
of convenience” with little significance for the United States no longer
hold. While some see a de facto alliance, others discern a more contingent
relationship. All favor broadly strengthening U.S. economic, diplomatic, and
military might to change the prevailing international balance of power in
ways that improve the U.S. position in the face of opposition by Russia and
China. In terms of tactics, the specialists vary in the mix of incentives and
disincentives—so-called carrots and sticks—that they suggest employing to
deal with this challenge. Notably, some seek advantage in improving U.S.

robert sutter is Professor of Practice of International Affairs at George Washington University
and the principal investigator of the project “Strategic Implications of Russia-China Relations” at the
National Bureau of Asian Research. He can be reached at <[email protected]>.

1 Now entering its second year, the project has involved 30 commissioned papers, formal
presentations at three workshops, and one public panel discussion by leading specialists in the
United States, Russia, China, Japan, South Korea, and Europe. Additionally, 20 in-depth private
interviews and consultations with 40 specialists inside and outside the U.S. government were
conducted by the principal investigator, some project participants, and staff from the National
Bureau of Asian Research (NBR). The specialists participating in the workshops from Japan,
South Korea, and Europe generally agreed with the negative findings for U.S. interests and the
need for strengthening the United States. Russian and Chinese specialists disagreed. The project’s
publications thus far include Michael S. Chase, Evan S. Medeiros, J. Stapleton Roy, Eugene Rumer,
Robert Sutter, and Richard Weitz, “Russia-China Relations: Assessing Common Ground and
Strategic Fault Lines,” NBR, Special Report, no. 66, July 2017 u http://www.nbr.org/publications/
issue.aspx?id=349; and Shoichi Itoh, Ken Jimbo, Michito Tsuruoka, and Michael Yahuda, “Japan
and the Sino-Russian Entente,” NBR, Special Report, no. 64 u http://www.nbr.org/publications/
issue.aspx?id=34.

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 asia policy

relations with Russia to counter the much more powerful China, while
others see major disadvantages in overtures to Moscow.
This essay begins with an examination of the causes and drivers of
the closer Russia-China relations that have emerged in the last decade. It
then analyzes the roadblocks, or “brakes,” that will slow the developing
relationship, in particular identifying how the two countries diverge on
many of their most important foreign relationships. The next section studies
the strategic consequences of tighter Sino-Russian cooperation for U.S.
interests. The final section identifies policy options and provides an outlook
for 2018.

The Causes and Drivers of the Sino-Russian Relationship

Counterbalancing U.S. global influence and revising the international
order. Russian and Chinese interests converge most prominently on their
mutual desire to serve as a counterweight to perceived U.S. preponderant
influence. China sees Russia as a useful counterbalance to constrain and
weaken U.S. power, and Russia values Sino-Russian cooperation for the
same reason. Both seek greater dominance in their respective regions, and
the United States stands in the way.
Countering perceived U.S. promotion of democracy. The governments
in Moscow and Beijing feel vulnerable and sometimes threatened in the
face of U.S. promotion of human rights and democracy, motivating closer
cooperation in response. Both states in theory support a doctrine of
noninterference in the internal affairs of other states.
Opposing U.S. military advances in areas important to Russia and
China. Both countries perceive the United States as encroaching on areas
of strategic interest. Targets here include opposition to U.S. missile defense
systems, U.S. military reconnaissance along the Russian and Chinese
borders, and U.S. long-range strike capabilities.
Opposing U.S. policies on space and cyberspace security. China and
Russia work together to influence rules and norms for outer space and
cyberspace to their advantage at the United States’ expense.
Sharing a strongly engrained common identity and strategic culture.
Moscow and Beijing (and Presidents Putin and Xi) share a negative view of
the intentions of the United States and its allies that reinforces cooperation
against perceived outside threats. This view colors how both leaders perceive
global affairs and the international order.

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 roundtable • the strategic implications of russia-china relations

Selling and developing advanced weapons and military technology,

and cooperating on other defense activities. Sino-Russian national security
collaboration includes arms sales, defense dialogues, and joint exercises.
These influence third countries and seek to change the balance of power to
the disadvantage of the United States.
Linking trade and investment. Russia has mitigated Western sanctions
with Chinese purchases of Russian oil and gas, while China also supplies
capital. China has likewise looked to Russia to diversify and secure its
energy supplies.

The Brakes on Closer Sino-Russian Relations

Economic asymmetry and longer-term military and political implications.
Russia increasingly plays the role of a dependent junior partner. Moscow
accommodates China’s economic dominance and greater overall influence
in key areas along Russia’s periphery in Mongolia and Central Asia. These
trends jeopardize Russian influence and belie Russia’s continued strong
drive for status as an international great power.
Asymmetrical tools of power for advancing national interests. Russia
has a limited tool kit for exerting international influence. Though the
country possesses nuclear weapons, military power, and the means for
cyber operations, covert operations, and intelligence in nearby areas, these
tools are juxtaposed with large economic and demographic weaknesses
and the absence of compelling soft power. China features the full range of
international security, economic, and diplomatic tools, which are growing
rapidly. Unlike Russia, China has an enormous stake in and is much more
integrated with the world economy. It favors global stability that supports
development. Beijing seeks a gradual erosion of the U.S.-led international
order while continuing to benefit greatly from various aspects of that order.
Limits on arms sales and defense cooperation. As China’s military
modernization has taken shape, Russia has less to offer the country as a
source of advanced military hardware. Moscow also restricts sales of some
advanced weapons that Beijing might use to threaten Russia.
History, distrust, and divergence regarding the Russia-China-U.S.
triangle. Both Moscow and Beijing are familiar with and influenced
by the history of duplicity and distrust that characterized their often
confrontational relationship in the past and their respective dealings with
the United States aimed against one another.

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 asia policy

Divergence on foreign relations. Russia and China diverge in their policy

approaches to many important countries in the region. China supports
Russia in its periodic dramatic shows of force to advance its interests
at U.S. expense, but it also seeks a stable working relationship with the
United States. Beijing does not want to be seen as an adversarial revisionist
power and formally eschews an alliance with Moscow. Possible moves by
the Trump administration to ease tension with Putin’s government could
prompt Chinese concerns about whether Putin might shift Russian policy
closer to the United States, negatively affecting Chinese interests.
In Japan, Prime Minister Shinzo Abe continues his strong efforts to
improve relations with Russia. This raises the possibility that Moscow may
be persuaded to improve relations with Tokyo, countering China’s hard
line against Japan. Elsewhere in East Asia, North Korea, Taiwan, and the
South China Sea are more important for China than for Russia. Russia’s
involvement in North Korea may complicate China’s policy. On the other
hand, Russian demonstrations of support for Chinese interests regarding
the South China Sea and Taiwan through rhetoric and military exercises
mirror Chinese posturing in support of Russian actions in Syria. Such
posturing, however, underlines the two countries’ continued ambivalence
about supporting each other with binding commitments. Russia also has
close relations with India and Vietnam, including the large-scale provision
of military equipment to help secure them against China’s rise.
In Central Asia, both sides have failed to effectively coordinate their
economic strategies. China has much more to offer the region and has
gained political influence through its Belt and Road Initiative. A looming
question, and a potential source of tension, is whether China’s growing
economic role will inevitably lead to a more significant security role, and if
so, how Russia will respond. Farther west and southwest in Europe and the
Middle East, China’s ever-growing interest in the economic penetration
of Europe and the Middle East requires stability that is challenged by
Russian assertiveness, potentially heightening frictions between the two
sides going forward.

The Strategic Consequences of Sino-Russian Cooperation

The drivers of Russia-China cooperation are accelerating the bilateral
relationship beyond the capacity of the brakes at the United States’ expense.
The influence of U.S. policy on key areas of cooperation—notably sales of
advanced weapons, energy-related trade and investment, and cooperation

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 roundtable • the strategic implications of russia-china relations

in the United Nations and elsewhere against various Western initiatives—is

low. Preoccupied with troubles at home and abroad, U.S. and allied leaders
are creating a balance of international power that favors further advances
and challenges from a rising China and resurgent Russia, both of which are
averse to the U.S.-backed international order.
Today, Russia and China pose increasingly serious challenges
to the U.S.-supported order in their respective priority spheres of
concern—Russia in Europe and the Middle East, and China in Asia along
the country’s rim. Russia’s challenges involve not only military maneuvers
and incursions but also cyber and political warfare that has threatened
to undermine elections in the United States and Europe, European unity,
and NATO solidarity. China’s cyberattacks, by contrast, have focused
more on massive theft of information and intellectual property aimed at
accelerating Chinese economic competitiveness and thereby dominating
world markets in key advanced technologies at the expense of leading U.S.
and other international companies.
The two countries thus work separately and together to complicate
and curb U.S. power and influence in the political, economic, and security
domains. In terms of global diplomacy, Beijing and Moscow support one
another in their respective challenges to the United States and its allies and
partners around the world. These joint efforts involve political, security, and
economic measures both in multilateral forums and in bilateral relations
with U.S. adversaries such as North Korea, Iran, and Syria, in addition to
other steps to challenge regional and global norms and institutions backed
by the United States.
As indicated above, the U.S. position in the triangular relationship
among the United States, Russia, and China has deteriorated. Russia’s
tension with the West and ever-deepening dependence on China, alongside
active U.S. constructive engagement with China, have given Beijing the
advantageous top “hinge” position in the triangle that Washington used
to occupy.

U.S. Policy Options

Up to this point, it has been hard to find instances when Russia took
substantial risks in support of China’s challenges to the United States that
did not involve overlapping Russian interests, and vice versa. Nevertheless,
as the Russian-Chinese relationship has become closer, U.S. government
and other specialists are carefully examining the behavior of both sides for

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 asia policy

signs of closer collaboration that could bring negative implications for the
United States.
No quick fixes. The absence of easy options to remedy the increasingly
adverse situation reinforces the bleak American view of Sino-Russian
relations. The circumstances today are very different from those that
enabled Richard Nixon’s Cold War breakthrough in playing the China card
against the Soviet Union in a period of intense Sino-Soviet confrontation. In
the contemporary relationship between the two countries, any U.S. overture
to accommodate either state in seeking leverage over the other risks being
interpreted as another sign of U.S. weakness.
Major recommendations in the NBR project call for wide-ranging
measures to strengthen U.S. economic, military, and diplomatic power and
influence. This strengthening would enable a more favorable balance of
power supporting the U.S.-backed international order that is now challenged
by Russian and Chinese actions. Building national power at home and
abroad requires greater domestic cohesion and less partisan discord and
government gridlock. Strategies employed need to be realistic and effectively
implemented. It is worth emphasizing that these are long-term policy choices
requiring prolonged whole-of-government approaches that are difficult to
carry out amid high-profile distractions. These recommendations are in
line with those of earlier authoritative studies by policy-oriented research
organizations dealing with Russia and China.2 However, unlike those
studies, the NBR project sees the United States not as a constant among
variables—that is, not as an actor that is necessarily assumed as able and
willing to employ the demanding recommendations offered by the project.
Rather, U.S. policy and behavior are viewed as major uncertain variables
that have impacts on the Russia-China relationship.
Playing the long game. Whereas the Russian and Chinese specialists in
the NBR project tend to support U.S. accommodation of Russian and Chinese

2 Major studies include Julianne Smith, “A Transatlantic Strategy for Russia,” Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace, Task Force White Paper, August 29, 2016; Angela Stent, “Russia, China and
the West after Crimea,” Transatlantic Academy, 2015–16 series, no. 8, 2016; Kathleen Hicks and Lisa
Sawyer Samp, Recalibrating U.S. Strategy toward Russia: A New Time for Choosing (Washington, D.C.:
Center for Strategic and International Studies, 2017); Eugene Rumer, Henry Sokolsky, and Andrew
S. Weiss, “Guiding Principles of a Sustainable U.S. Policy toward Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia:
Key Judgments from a Joint Task Force,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Policy
Outlook, February 9, 2017; Julianne Smith and Adam Twardowski, “The Future of U.S.-Russian
Relations,” Center for New American Security, January 11, 2017; Robert D. Blackwill and Ashley J.
Tellis, Revising U.S. Grand Strategy toward China (New York: Council on Foreign Relations, 2015);
Orville Schell and Susan L. Shirk, chairs, “U.S. Policy toward China: Recommendations for a New
Administration,” Asia Society and University of California–San Diego, Task Force Report, February
2017; and Bobo Lo, A Wary Embrace: What the China-Russia Relationship Means for the World
(Sydney: Penguin, 2017).

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 roundtable • the strategic implications of russia-china relations

ambitions, the American specialists argue that any such accommodation

should be backed by a strengthening of the United States and should avoid
undermining the resolve of either Washington or its allies and partners.
The American specialists agree that the influence of U.S. policy on key
areas of Russia-China cooperation, notably weapon sales, energy-related
trade and investment, and cooperation in the United Nations and elsewhere
against various Western initiatives, remains low. More promising targets
for increasing U.S. influence involve exploiting differences between China
and Russia. Such differences include China’s rise in power at a time when
Russia remains hobbled by demographic and economic weaknesses and
Russia’s alienation from the U.S.-led international order at a time when
China continues to rely on it. Meanwhile, Russian and Chinese ambitions
for dominance in their respective regions make regional governments that
are negatively affected more inclined to work closely with the United States
in seeking strategic counterweight.
Outlook for 2018. Given the uncertainty regarding U.S. policy toward
Russia and China, the NBR project offers alternative policy choices rather
than specific recommendations to U.S. government decision-makers.
It shows the pros and cons of long- and short-term U.S. policy choices to
enable policymakers with different views on Russia and China to choose an
appropriate path forward.3 Longer-term choices range from accommodating
Russia and/or China to supporting U.S. international primacy; in between
these extremes are choices that mix U.S. strengthening and accommodation.
Shorter-term policy choices involve the United States, without significant
strengthening, seeking to gain an advantage by tilting for or against Russia,
China, or both. The path that Washington decides to follow will likely be
the most important determinant of the impact of Russia-China relations on
the United States over the next year. 

3 It should be noted that the U.S. administration’s December 2017 National Security Strategy also
sees grave dangers from Russia and China and argues for U.S. strengthening in response. This
signals the government’s intention to pursue a more clearly defined direction in dealing with
Russia and China. See White House, National Security Strategy of the United States of America
(Washington, D.C., 2017).

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