BOOK REVIEW Ungainly friendship Axis of Convenience by Bobo Lo
Reviewed by Sreeram Chaulia
Creative commentators have coined neologisms like "Chimerica" and "Chindia" for
key bilateral relationships in world politics. But few envisage a "Chirussia",
even though Sino-Russian ties today are at their highest level in history.
Limitations to their "strategic partnership" emerge every now and then, most
recently during the Russia-Georgia war over South Ossetia. But anti-Western
commonalities to the Sino-Russian tango are equally evident from their
exuberant language of "multipolarity".
What has been missing in studies of the partnership is a credible intellectual
framework to assess its strengths and weaknesses. Former Australian diplomat
Bobo Lo fills the lacuna with a new
book arguing that the Sino-Russian friendship has contradictions which cannot
be papered over.
The present world system is in transition, with a declining United States but
no single state replacement in sight. Lo posits a "new geopolitics" where
short-term opportunistic and tactical alignments are the norm of diplomacy.
With fast morphing domestic and international circumstances rendering
"permanent national interests" transient, the author avers that China and
Russia cannot afford to enter into a committed marriage.
The book's opening chapter surveys the burden of history on contemporary
Sino-Russian relations. Although both countries' leaderships harp on
present-day and future opportunities for partnership, the ghosts of the past
have not been exorcised. The Mongol occupation of Russian city-states (AD
1223-1480) solidified the notions of "yellow peril" and "the East as an abiding
source of threat in the Russian mind". (p 18) Russian popular attitudes to this
day picture China as alien and menacing.
The "unequal treaties" imposed by Russia's Tsars on Qing China in the mid-19th
century fostered a lasting Russian assumption of superiority and corollary
Chinese humiliation from loss of territory. In the 1920s and 1930s, Joseph
Stalin's support for president Chiang Kai-shek caused friction between the
Bolsheviks and the Chinese Communist Party. Post-1949 relations between "older
brother" Moscow and "younger brother" Beijing were cagey, especially due to the
former's fathering of an independent Mongolian state.
When disputes over the undemarcated border led to a mini-war in 1969, Moscow
contemplated using nuclear weapons should Beijing launch a "mass attack" using
sheer force of numbers. The Sino-Soviet split reinforced mutual stereotypes and
kept relations frosty and suspicious. Rapprochement came only in the late
1990s, when Russian president Boris Yeltsin moved his country's foreign policy
away from a "Western-centric" approach. Convergence between Russian and Chinese
positions improved before the new millennium, thanks to American double
standards and "humanitarian interventions".
Yet, tensions lingered over settlement of the border dispute and growing
Russian animosity to Chinese migration into Russia's Far East. In Yeltsin's
later years, Moscow envisaged partnership with China as leverage against
Washington, but Beijing viewed it in practical terms as insurance for Russian
weapon exports and for frontier security. This owed to Moscow and Beijing's
"diverging perceptions of their respective roles in the post-Cold War order".
(p 37)
Since the ascent of Chinese President Hu Jintao and Russia's former president,
now Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, Sino-Russian relations are more substantial
than ever before, even expanding to military-to-military cooperation. But once
again, Moscow's approach to the partnership differs from Beijing's. For Russia,
it is an "anti-relationship" to counterbalance the US's hegemony. Putin
understands that Russia needs "other powers if it is to exert a serious
influence in international affairs". (p 43) By befriending China, he aims to
avoid strategic confrontation on two fronts (the West and East), reflecting
Russian wariness of a potentially aggressive China.
Hu, on the other hand, sees no need to balance American power and is not
interested in allowing the nation's partnership with Russia to ruin China's
closeness to the US. Fearing repercussions to its domestic economic
modernization, Beijing wants to avoid being seen as anti-Western. Lo clarifies
that, for China, the partnership with Russia is of "secondary importance,
lagging well behind more substantial ties with the US, the European Union and
the countries of the Asia-Pacific". (p 47)
Though both Russia and China boast an "identity of views", Beijing was
unpleasantly jolted when Putin initially endorsed a US troop presence in
Central Asia after September 11, 2001, blithely accepted the US's abrogation of
the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, and concluded a Strategic Offensive
Reductions Treaty with Washington in 2002. In all these moves, China was kept
out of the loop by Russia. The Kremlin's "Western-centrism" has from time to
time rattled China.
Despite formal settlement of the territorial dispute under the watchful gazes
of Hu and Putin, the demographic imbalance between a depopulated Russian Far
East and the heavily populated northeastern provinces of China has stoked
Russian nervousness and xenophobia. In cities like Vladivostok and Khabarovsk,
writes Lo, "anti-Chinese sentiment is rarely far from the surface". (p 219) It
is furthered by cross-border trade tilted heavily in favor of Chinese
interests, arousing fears of Russia being reduced to a raw materials appendage
of China's manufacturing colossus. Russians also worry that Chinese
nationalists could resurrect Mao Zedong's demands that the Russian Far East be
returned to China.
The Sino-Russian relationship is unequal, argues Lo, due to the gradual shift
in the bilateral balance of power in China's favor. Russia's aggregate military
strength still exceeds that of China, so much so that the former does not
hesitate to sell hi-tech weaponry to the latter. But in the economic sphere,
China is the dominant partner as a knowledge-based and "post-modern" industrial
juggernaut, while Russia remains a petro-state. The bilateral terms of trade
are so asymmetrical that it looks as though "a modernizing China is exploiting
a backward Russia for its energy and timber". (p 85)
China's entry as a major player in Central Asia after the American invasion of
Afghanistan in 2001 has perturbed Moscow. In response, the Kremlin has played
on Central Asian apprehensions about Chinese economic domination. In 2005, it
attempted unsuccessfully to scupper the sale of PetroKazakhstan to the China
National Petroleum Corporation. For years, Moscow has been trying to get India
to become a full member of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) to stave
off Chinese domination of regional structures. But Russia realizes that
ejecting the US military from Central Asia is a grander objective for which a
tactical alliance with China is exigent.
While Russia has tried to showcase the SCO as an alliance to oppose American
hegemony in Central Asia, China's first priority is that the organization helps
secure its far western Xinjiang province, instead of countering the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization. China's calls to steer the SCO towards regional
economic integration through a free-trade zone have not been music to Russian
ears, as it portends Central Asia's dependency on China. One reason for
Moscow's flotation of a separate Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO)
is to reassure itself that it has a regional forum from which China is absent.
In East Asia, Russia does not desire to witness one hegemony (the US) being
replaced by another (China). Lo reasons that an overly powerful China in the
Asia-Pacific could "undermine Russian attempts to play a more active part in
the region's affairs". (p 119) Beijing, on its part, does not intend to assist
the re-entry of Russia as another great power into this contested area. Lack of
progress on the Russo-Japanese dispute over the southern Kuril Islands benefits
China, as it compels Moscow to be "China-dependent" in East Asia. Pending a
Russo-Japanese thaw, Beijing is confident that Moscow will remain a "bit
player" unable to undermine China's leading position in the region.
The Sino-Russian energy relationship enjoys complementarities, but it, too, has
not evaded inclement weather. China's bargaining ploys to obtain Russian oil
and gas at discounted rates mean Europe remains a far more attractive market
for Moscow. Flip-flops on the East Siberian-Pacific Ocean oil pipeline are
symptomatic of the uncertain energy links between China and Russia. The
pipeline agreement unraveled in 2003 when Japan offered Russia a more lucrative
deal to construct a pipeline that bypasses China altogether. But the
Russo-Japanese arrangement collapsed in 2006 due to their territorial dispute,
turning the tide back in Beijing's favor. The unpredictability of Russian
decision-making has led Beijing to restrict its demand for Russian oil to
"non-dependent levels". (p 147) Putin's blueprint of "Asianizing" Russian
energy markets have therefore floundered.
The later chapters of Lo's book focus on Russia-China-US "triangularism" in
global geopolitical contests. Since 1996, Moscow has employed the "China card"
to try to persuade Washington to be more responsive to Russian interests.
Russian resurgence under Putin severely deteriorated relations with the US and
generated a "new cold war". But China is not disposed to globally challenge
American influence, despite professing a preference for "multipolarity". Unlike
Russian leaders, Chinese elites have no anti-American "genetic make-up", (p
167) and are happy engaging with both Russia and the US on their own merits. If
China intends in any way to undermine American power, says Lo, it "will be an
evolutionary and uncoordinated process" rather than in alliance with Russia. (p
169)
Sino-Russian relations are currently at their peak, but they signify only a
limited partnership due to a variance in strategic orientation of the two
countries. The partnership is at its apogee right now because of the long-term
presence of the US military in Central Asia. But the future holds many unknowns
for the bear and the dragon. Much will ride on the direction of Sino-American
relations. Lo prophesies that a "Sino-American condominium" would cut Russia
down to "little more than a secondary regional power". (p 186)
While direct enmity between Moscow and Beijing is improbable, even in the long
term, Lo predicts "strategic tension" in coming decades. If China keeps growing
as a global power and if the bilateral relationship grows more asymmetrical,
Russian frustrations will multiply. The prudent management of this tension will
have a crucial bearing on the coming world order revolving around Asia.
"Chirussia" may be a non-starter, but Lo's erudite analysis leaves readers
better off about the subtexts of this complex friendship.
Axis of Convenience: Moscow, Beijing and the New Geopolitics by Bobo Lo.
London, 2008, Chatham House. ISBN: 978-0-8157-5340-7. Price: US$ 32.95, 277
pages.
Sreeram Chaulia is a researcher on international affairs at the Maxwell
School of Citizenship and Public Affairs in Syracuse, New York.
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The book's opening chapter surveys the burden of history on contemporary
Sino-Russian relations. Although both countries' leaderships harp on
present-day and future opportunities for partnership, the ghosts of the past
have not been exorcised. The Mongol occupation of Russian city-states (AD
1223-1480) solidified the notions of "yellow peril" and "the East as an abiding
source of threat in the Russian mind". (p 18) Russian popular attitudes to this
day picture China as alien and menacing.
