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Brothers in arms
again
By Elizabeth Wishnick
For the first time, China and Russia are
holding joint military exercises, from August
18-25, on the Jiaodong peninsula in China's
Shandong province and in the Yellow Sea, involving
10,000 troops and an array of modern military
technology.
Should their neighbors in the
Asia-Pacific be alarmed? Yes and no. On the one
hand, the Peace Mission 2005 exercises attest to a
potential challenge by China and Russia to a
US-dominated security order in Asia. Yet the
exercises also reveal differences in Sino-Russian
political goals that will limit future strategic
cooperation.
Ripples from Andijan
Peace Mission 2005, organized within the
framework of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization
(SCO), reflects growing concern in Moscow and
Beijing about the destabilizing political
consequences of US military involvement near their
borders. Russian and Chinese leaders view the Bush
administration's support for the "colored
revolutions" in Georgia, Ukraine and Kyrgyzstan as
evidence of a US commitment to regime change in
the region and see a double standard in
counter-terrorism policy in its condemnation of
Uzbekistan's repression of demonstrators in
Andijan in May.
At the July summit in
Kazakhstan, SCO representatives called on
Washington to specify a deadline for its use of
basing facilities in Central Asia. The US role in
the evacuation of Uzbek refugees from Andijan,
against a background of mounting US criticism of
the Uzbek government's human-rights abuses,
ultimately led President Islam Karimov to end US
basing privileges just weeks later. Defense
Secretary Donald Rumsfeld then traveled to the
region to ensure that the US will retain access to
its other base in Kyrgyzstan and overflight rights
in Tajikistan, which support US and North Atlantic
Treaty Organization (NATO) operations in
Afghanistan.
This is not to say that the
SCO is likely to turn into a Eurasian NATO. China
has been the driving force beyond the grouping,
while Russia has been more cautious, casting a
wary eye on China's efforts to expand its economic
clout in what Moscow has long viewed as its sphere
of influence. The Vladimir Putin government has
been quite clear in rejecting any role for the SCO
in collective security, preferring to keep this
function within the Commonwealth of Independent
States (CIS). Russia established its own base in
Kyrgyzstan in October 2003, which now houses a
small CIS rapid deployment force, and set up
another in Tajikistan in October 2004.
Location, location
Peace Mission
2005 follows on previous SCO counter-terrorism
exercises in Kyrgyzstan in 2002 and in Kazakhstan
and China in 2003, but is distinctive in its
composition and unexpected location. Peace Mission
2005 posits a hypothetical ethnic conflict
breaking out in a third country, which appeals to
its neighbors and the United Nations for help.
Given China's opposition to participating in most
international interventions, this scenario is
puzzling enough, but the details of the exercises
raise further questions.
Originally,
Russia proposed holding the exercise in Xinjiang,
due to its proximity to the Russian air base in
Kyrgyzstan. Instead, China suggested Zhejiang
province, across from Taiwan. When the Russian
side rejected that location as too provocative,
the two countries agreed to hold the exercise in
Shandong province.
Russia is contributing
a small number of forces, just 1,800 of the 10,000
total, but involving a substantial naval
contingent from the Russian Pacific Fleet,
including a large BDK-11 assault ship, the
anti-submarine warfare vessel Marshal
Shaposhnikov, the destroyer Burny, and diesel
submarines. The naval squadron will join with
Chinese forces to simulate a major amphibious
landing on a beachhead in the Jiaodong peninsula.
Russian bombers (Tu-95S Bear strategic bombers and
Tu-22M3 Backfire long-range bombers) will also
operate near Qingdao, including air cover by
SU-27SM fighters armed with AS-15 3,000-kilometer
cruise missiles against naval targets.
A
brief look at a map of Central Asia indicates that
most SCO countries at risk for ethnic conflict
(Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan) are
land-locked. Why then the display of Sino-Russian
naval power in an SCO exercise?
Strategic differences
While
Peace Mission 2005 may be a joint exercise, China
and Russia are pursuing different goals, and there
is little chance of future coordinated military
interventions in third countries. Russia sees an
opportunity to train its pilots, test its
equipment, and, most importantly, showcase its
technology for China's purchase. For China, the
exercise provides an important training function,
but is also designed to demonstrate its naval
power to Taiwan and other neighbors.
With
the development of the Sino-Russian strategic
partnership in the 1990s, Russian officials have
consistently expressed their support for a
one-China policy. Nevertheless, leaders in Moscow
have been equally consistent in their refusal to
become involved in any Chinese military
confrontation over Taiwan, as their rejection of a
location in southern China for the exercises
indicates.
Peace Mission 2005 also enables
China to send Japan a message regarding Beijing's
capability to defend its interests in offshore
territorial disputes, but Moscow has quite a
different set of concerns there. The Russian
government has been successful in recent months in
creating a bidding war between China and Japan
over first access to Siberian oil. With President
Vladimir Putin scheduled to visit Tokyo in
November to discuss the territorial issue as well
as energy cooperation, Russia may be seeking to
prove that it has another option in the form of
the Sino-Russian partnership should talks with
Japan not go well.
Finally, Russia has its
own long-term concerns about the strategic
implications of a rising China. As a lead-up to
Peace Mission 2005, in late July the Far East
military district in Russia held the Vostok-2005
exercise near the Chinese border, involving 5,000
troops and 14,000 personnel from the Interior
Ministry, the Federal Security Service and the
Emergencies Ministry, to prepare for threats from
separatist and terrorist groups. While the Russian
Federation faces many separatist threats, this is
not true of the Far East district. In this part of
Russia, security concerns revolve around defense
of extended peripheries and demographic
imbalances, especially vis-a-vis neighbor and
strategic partner China.
A broader
Asian security agenda
Since September it
has become harder to compartmentalize Asian
security. Today events in Andijan, Uzbekistan have
ripple effects in the Yellow Sea, as the current
Sino-Russian military exercises attest. Even as
they disagree on some aspects of Asian security,
China and Russia are increasingly united in their
opposition to a US-dominated security order. For
the US and its allies, this means it is all the
more important to devise a broader, more inclusive
framework for regional security that would take
into account the growing linkages between Eurasia
and East Asia and look beyond military
counter-terrorism strategies to address root
causes of instability.
Elizabeth
Wishnick is an assistant professor of
political science at Montclair State University
and a research associate at Columbia University's
Weatherhead East Asian Institute. She can be
reached at ew124@columbia.edu
(Used by
permission of Pacific Forum CSIS) |
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