China and Russia

The New Rapprochement

Alexander Lukin

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781509521746
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Globalisation
• Index: Politics & International Relations

With many predicting the end of US hegemony, Russia and China's growing cooperation in a number of key strategic areas looks set to have a major impact on global power dynamics. But what lies behind this Sino-Russian rapprochement? Is it simply the result of deteriorated Russo–US and Sino–US relations or does it date back to a more fundamental alignment of interests after the Cold War? In this book Alexander Lukin answers these questions, offering a deeply informed and nuanced assessment of Russia and China's ever-closer ties. Tracing the evolution of this partnership from the 1990s to the present day, he shows how economic and geopolitical interests drove the two countries together in spite of political and cultural differences. Key areas of cooperation and possible conflict are explored, from bilateral trade and investment to immigration and security. Ultimately, Lukin argues that China and Russia's strategic partnership is part of a growing system of cooperation in the non-Western world, which has also seen the emergence of a new political community: Greater Eurasia. His vision of the new China–Russia rapprochement will be essential reading for anyone interested in understanding this evolving partnership and the way in which it is altering the contemporary geopolitical landscape.

1
RUSSIA, CHINA, AND THE CHANGING INTERNATIONAL SYSTEM

Although the Russian-Chinese rapprochement that began in the late twentieth century has a particular value and internal logic of its own, it is also an integral part of a larger trend in world politics. And while changes in the world order exert a significant, if not decisive influence on that rapprochement, the very fact of two major states developing closer ties affects the international situation as well. It is therefore impossible to understand Russian-Chinese rapprochement without first analyzing the main trends in the development of the international system in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, as well as the evolution of the Russian and Chinese approaches to the outside world as a whole.

At the turn of the twenty-first century, the world entered a new period of development. The customary bipolar system of the Soviet Union and the United States that prevailed after World War II had collapsed following the self-destruction of one of its poles. One can long argue why this happened, but it is clear that the Soviet communist project was unable to compete and failed. In fact, Soviet ideology had cornered itself. Born of the Western secular Enlightenment tradition, it inherited its idea of technological progress and the satisfaction of people’s material needs. But Soviet ideology vowed that faster progress would be achieved not by enhancing self-rule and respect for individual rights and private property, but by concentrating resources in the hands of the state, nationalizing property, and ensuring its fair distribution. This project proved economically unviable. Also, the Soviet Union pursued a policy that was based on the ideological goal of spreading its system to as many countries as possible, and eventually to the whole world. This wasted considerable, albeit not limitless, resources and exacerbated economic problems.

The world’s first ever bipolar system of global confrontation between the two centers of power had had its positive and negative sides. The control exercised by the two centers over large parts of the world and the rules of the game they set in international relations provoked occasional conflicts on neutral territories, and virtually any local outbreak in the Third World turned into a standoff between the two main centers, with each supporting one of the conflicting sides. In addition, people living in countries and territories controlled by the Soviet center enjoyed very little freedom and had to struggle with the social abnormality of totalitarian regimes.

But those conflicts could hardly compare with the horrors of world wars. There were international rules after all, written and unwritten, and both the Soviet Union and the West showed their ability to find consensus on them (the Helsinki Accords, nuclear nonproliferation agreements, and documents reducing and banning weapons of mass destruction are the most vivid examples of that).

The West

The collapse of the Soviet center of power, which had overestimated its strength caused not by war but by outside pressure and internal problems, was followed by the triumph of the West.¹ Having sought global control, Soviet leaders lost much of what they could otherwise have achieved.

The situation in the early 1990s was marked by the strong, if not decisive, influence of the United States and its allies on international developments. Their victory in the confrontation with the Soviet camp had made the Western political and economic model more popular. Some of the former Soviet associates sought to join the West; others, including Russia itself, had elected leaders who sincerely showed their appreciation for the West. The United States and its allies were also unparalleled in terms of military capabilities.

However, the breakup of the Soviet camp did not affect other key tendencies in global development processes. Such non-Western centers of power as China, India, Brazil, and others continued to rise and become stronger. They tried to solve their own problems and protect their interests, at least near their borders. Being interested in cooperation with the West, they did not seek confrontation with it, as they had no means to do so, but at the same time they did not share many of the West’s goals, to different extents and for different reasons, and were actually quite worried about some of them.

The former Soviet empire was a blend of different attitudes. While some of the Eastern European countries (excluding Serbia, which had not been part of the Soviet empire) had unconditionally agreed to join the Western system as its junior partners, the new Russian authorities hoped for equal cooperation based on a common understanding of global development goals. Central Asian republics feared a drive for Western-style democratization: some of them gravitated toward Russia, others tried to find a balance between Russia and the West, while still others chose autarchy.

In that situation, the United States and its allies could have pursued a balanced policy of keeping, wherever possible, much of their influence through improved relations with major global players. For example, Russia could have been integrated into the Western system to a large extent either by admitting it to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), as George H. W. Bush’s Secretary of State James Baker repeatedly suggested,² or by adopting a flexible policy combining real assistance (a new Marshall Plan) with due respect for Moscow’s interests and concerns. This could have produced a close partnership with Moscow without any formal alliance with it, in much the same way as had been done with Mexico or Egypt under Sadat and Mubarak.

This was a realistic scenario, but it required some concessions and compromises, which, however, were not required to achieve the ideological goals pursued more and more vigorously by Western politicians. Intellectuals in the United States and Europe had long been leaning toward the ideology of “democratism,” a one-sided mixture of political liberalism, the concept of “fundamental human rights,” Enlightenment secularism, and colonial theories of Western supremacy. As a result, as had often happened in history before, the West tried to impose upon the world its own model as a universal solution.

The underlying principles of foreign policy based on the ideology of “democratism” are quite simple. Western political ideologists who set trends in foreign policy believe that the best way to integrate “backward” nations into the world of “freedom and democracy” is to submit them to political influence through economic and political alliances. For this to happen, they need leaders who understand that this will benefit their countries (that is, Western-leaning ones) and who will therefore work toward this end. Even if these forces fall short of “democratic” standards, it will not be a big issue. Once they submit economically and politically, they will be pushed up to the required level with Western prodding.

The course chosen by the West after the Soviet Union’s breakup was based on this ideology rather than realism. Infatuated with victory, its leaders saw no reason to show any regard for the interests of other countries: the whole world would soon be at their feet anyway as all nations could not wait to melt into the West on the basis of its “universal” values, the only correct ones. This idea was expressly stated by Francis Fukuyama in his The End of History and the Last Man.³ But the largest part of the world rejected, not without good reason, most of these “universal” values as an ideological smokescreen for the West’s attempts to impose its hegemony. Many of those values also were at variance with the traditional cultures and religions prevalent in other major civilizations.

The West had overestimated its abilities both politically and culturally. The world was more complex and its values more diverse than Western leaders had realized, being intoxicated by their success but restricted by their ideology. The attractiveness and objective possibilities of the West were dwindling due to the economic and political rise of non-Western centers of power and due to demographic processes. Western capitals, and especially Washington, continued to act as if “history had come to an end,” using pressure, and often force, to project their own vision of the world and even of internal life on other countries and whole regions that did not want to Westernize. This policy produced chaos in Iraq, Egypt, Syria, and Ukraine.

Some Western observers have eventually noticed this tendency, in hindsight. American foreign policy analyst Richard N. Haass wrote in his “The Unraveling” that the US actions have exacerbated global disorder:

The post–Cold War order was premised on US primacy, which was a function of not just US power but also US influence, reflecting a willingness on the part of others to accept the United States’ lead. This influence has suffered from what is generally perceived as a series of failures or errors, including lax economic regulation that contributed to the financial crisis, overly aggressive national security policies that trampled international norms, and domestic administrative incompetence and political dysfunction.⁴

Haass further says:

Order has unraveled, in short, thanks to a confluence of three trends. Power in the world has diffused across a greater number and range of actors. Respect for the American economic and political model has diminished. And specific US policy choices, especially in the Middle East, have raised doubts about American judgment and the reliability of the United States’ threats and promises. The net result is that while the United States’ absolute strength remains considerable, American influence has diminished.⁵

While Haass explores foreign policy flaws, Henry Kissinger points to the growing degree of ideologization in American policies as one of the reasons for their failures, but uses a different term: “The celebration of universal principles needs to be paired with recognition of the reality of other regions’ histories, cultures and views of their security.”⁶

Europe, too, has recently, and belatedly, been criticizing the policy based on the “end-of-history” ideology. An essay published by the European Council on Foreign Relations says that the way of life adopted by the European Union (EU) as a universal model for the whole world to use in the future was actually an exception for that world:

The new European order was different from all previous post-war settlements … The remaking of Europe took the shape of extending Western institutions, most of them created for a bipolar world. The unification of Germany became the model for the unification of Europe … Europeans were aware of the distinctive nature of their order but they were also convinced of its universal nature. From the World Trade Organization to the Kyoto Protocol, and from the International Criminal Court to the Responsibility to Protect, European norms seemed to be in the ascendant. Europeans were convinced that economic interdependence and converging lifestyles would be the dominant source of security in the world of tomorrow. Intoxicated by its own innovations, the EU became increasingly disconnected from other powers – and saw only where others fell short of European standards rather than try to understand their different perspectives. This applied to the EU’s neighbors, other great powers such as China, and even to allies such as the United States. And the claim of the European project to be, at one and the same time, exceptional and universal made it impossible for Europeans to accept any alternative integration projects in their continent.⁷

In general, the United States and Europe, as well as faraway Australia and New Zealand, and to a lesser extent Japan, should be viewed as one center of power cemented together by the common totalitarian ideology of “democratism,” that is, the desire to impose their model upon the rest of the world. In the foreseeable future, the policy of this center of power, which remains the strongest in the present-day world, will be defined by the gap between growing ideological ambitions and dwindling relative capabilities. Faced with challenges that are both external (the rising influence of non-Western centers of power) and internal (the changing demographic and political situation), the West is objectively losing its influence in the world.

The popularity of the Western model and ideology was based mainly on the assumption, quite common among many non-Western nations, especially after World War II, that the Western political model could secure the highest level of economic well-being. Freedom is attractive, of course, for a part of the population in not-so-rich and ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• About the Author
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• 1 Russia, China, and the Changing International System
• 2 Russia in the Eyes of China
• 3 Russia’s Pivot to Asia or Just China? Russian Views of Relations with China
• 4 From Normalization to Strategic Partnership
• 5 The Strategic Partnership Matures: Multidimensional Cooperation
• Conclusion: Beyond Strategic Partnership? Managing Relations in an Insecure World
• Index
• End User License Agreement