Just weeks ago, on the eve of Beijing’s Winter Olympics, the world’s two most powerful autocrats, Russia’s Vladimir Putin and China’s Xi Jinping, beamed as they announced a new long-term agreement. In their joint communique they promised that “Friendship between the two states has no limits” and “There are no forbidden areas of cooperation.” Foreign policy analysts asked: is this pact a mere moment in time when these two leaders’ interests intersect, or is it based on a joining of Russian and Chinese fundamental long-term objectives?
For a parallel, consider the pre-World War I period when in 1873 Germany’s gifted foreign minister Bismarck persuaded his Kaiser to join with the rulers of Russia and Austria-Hungary in the League of Three Emperors. Bismarck believed that the three rulers’ shared autocracy was enough to overcome sharply divergent geostrategic goals. He was wrong, and the alliance fractured in 1880.
Similarly, Russia and China today share a major commonality: they are both ruled by autocrats seeking ever greater dictatorial powers and global influence while chafing under the US led, rules-based international system. And their economic interests intersect – up to a point – with Russia providing some of the natural resources and agricultural commodities needed by China’s industries and consumers, Russia receiving finished Chinese goods. But the two countries’ differences are far more significant.
It is a fundamental truth that China is rising, while Russia is fading fast. China sees itself eventually replacing the US as the world’s pre-eminent power and restructuring the entire international system around a China-centric model. This means that China very much needs a stable world order in which it can expand its economic, military, cultural, and diplomatic prowess and gradually shift countries from a Western to a Chinese orientation. In this process, it pursues activities which weaken Western alliances, influence, and prestige – but within international norms. Russia, on the other hand is a global spoiler – the neighbor who lost his job and throws the furniture against the wall every night in a drunken rage. It doesn’t seek to rise back up – because it can’t – it just wants to tear the US and our allies down. The only Russians meant to rise are Putin and his cronies: through kleptocracy, hiring mercenaries to African regimes to fight their wars in return for mineral riches, weapons merchants, oil magnates and the like.
Putin’s current Ukrainian aggression is a prime example of flaws in a Russia/China alliance. The last thing President Xi needs now is to have his global reputation suffer by being seen as supporting Putin’s barbarism. He has carefully maneuvered to win an unprecedented third term at this year’s party congress, and he can’t risk any derailments. This is one reason why China abstained instead of supporting Russia at the UN over Ukraine and is trying to appear neutral. Whichever way Putin’s war goes, the Western alliance has been strengthened as has international revulsion at big powers adjusting borders through force. Not a good precedent for China vis-s-vis Taiwan.
More long-term, there will be serious problems along China’s 2,600-mile border with Russia. While all is calm now, there will be friction between the two powers over Mongolia and the former Soviet Republics – now independent states – which straddle the frontier. Those countries have been within Russia’s sphere of influence since Czarist times and Putin very much holds to that belief. Recently, when there was political violence in Kazakhstan, Putin sent Russian security forces within in days to restore calm. But here also Russian influence is waning as China’s economic might is displacing Russia’s. Just as Russia and Austria-Hungary came to war in the early 20th century over which power holds primacy over the Balkans, China and Russia will face-off at some point in coming years.
So, just as the friendship pledged by the three emperors was crushed by geopolitical realities, I believe the Putin-Xi pact will run into the same wall. Russia’s imperial two-headed eagle, with one facing Europe and one Asia, symbolizes the internal forces which have pulled Russia in different directions throughout its history. It has looked at times in one or the other direction, sometimes both ways – but it only felt safe within the Russian “core” if it was ever pushing its borders and influence outward. That era is over. Hopefully, Putin’s successors will recognize that Russia’s long-term interests lie in a closer alignment with Europe, through a more open democratic and economic system, than with an autocratic China, which shows no signs of changing for the foreseeable future.
Ambassador Tibor Nagy was most recently Assistant Secretary of State for Africa after serving as Texas Tech’s Vice Provost for International Affairs and a 30-year career as a US Diplomat.
This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Tibor Nagy Russia’s czar and China’s emperor: bromance or frenemies?
