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...failure the two strongest countries with both the capacity and (arguably) incentives to counterbalance U.S. power and influence in world affairs suggests why the United States continues to enjoy unprecedented global preeminence. This article analyzes why Russia and China have not allied against the United States and offers policy recommendations on how to avert such an anti-U.S. bloc in the future.
At their third November summit in 1997, Boris Yeltsin and Jiang Zemin (then the presidents of their respective countries) set for their two countries the goal of establishing "strategic partnership for the twenty-first century" During subsequent meetings, they reaffirmed this commitment and jointly criticized NATO's intervention in Kosovo, U.S. plans to develop ballistic missile defenses (BMD), and other American policies they opposed. The many comparable statements by representatives of the two governments, the large number of meetings between senior Chinese and Russian officials, and Russia's extensive arms sales to China intensified expectations that the two governments would form an anti-American bloc. (2) At this time, U.S. intelligence agencies undertook a major initiative to analyze evolving Chinese-Russian relations and their implications for the United States. (3)
Notwithstanding these plausible expectations, however, the normalization of Chinese-Russian relations during the past decade has proceeded for reasons mostly unrelated to any joint effort to counterbalance the United States. For instance, the quality of Russian arms purchased by China has been impressive, but these transactions alone do not constitute a Chinese-Russian military alliance. Furthermore, the two countries' policies on a range of important issues have been uncoordinated and often conflicting. Finally, although the two governments have signed border and other security agreements signifying the end of their Cold War hostility, nondefense economic ties and societal contacts between Russia and China have remained minimal compared to those found between most friendly countries, let alone allies.
POST-COLD WAR IMPROVEMENTS IN RUSSIAN-CHINESE RELATIONS
Chinese-Russian relations improved along several important dimensions during the 1990s, but how one assesses the extent and significance of these changes depends on what metric and starting point one uses. For example, ties between Moscow and Beijing might be said simply to have experienced a "regression toward the mean" from their excessively poor state during the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s. The changes look so impressive only because Sino-Soviet relations were so problematic before Mikhail Gorbachev came to power in the Soviet Union in 1985. Ties between Russia and China have come to resemble those one would expect to exist between two neighboring countries sharing important interests and concerns but differing on many others. Indeed, despite recent improvements, relations between China and Russia remain less harmonious than those existing between Germany and France, the United States and Mexico, or Russia and India.
Border Stability and Arms Control
During the past decade, China and Russia largely have resolved the boundary disputes that engendered armed border clashes in the late 1960s and early 1970s, and they have demilitarized their lengthy, 2,640-mile shared frontier. (The section to the east of the Russian-Mongolian border is 2,606 miles long; that to the west is thirty-four miles.) (4)
Border demilitarization talks began in November 1989. They soon split into parallel negotiations, one on reducing military forces along the Chinese-Russian frontier, the other on establishing confidence and security building measures in the border region. In July 1994, the Russian and Chinese defense ministers agreed to a set of practices to forestall incidents. These measures included arrangements to avert unauthorized ballistic missile launches, prevent the jamming of communications equipment, and warn ships and aircraft that might inadvertently violate national borders. In September of that year, Chinese and Russian authorities pledged not to target strategic nuclear missiles at each other. They also adopted a "no first use" nuclear weapons posture with respect to each other. (5) In April 1998, China and Russia established a direct presidential hot line--China's first with another government. (6) China has also signed multilateral security agreements with all the adjoining former Soviet republics.
These security agreements reflect a common Chinese and Russian desire to manage instability in the volatile neighboring region of Central Asia. (7) At their December 1999 encounter, Jiang told Yeltsin, "China is ready to cooperate with Russia, and make use of the meeting mechanism between China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan and the links with Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, in order to promote stability in Central Asia." (8) Both governments fear ethnic separatism in their border territories, emanating in part from Islamic fundamentalist movements in Central Asia. Russian authorities dread the prospect of continued instability in the northern Caucasus, especially Chechnya and neighboring Dagestan. China's leaders worry about separatist agitation in the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region, where deadly uprisings have occurred since the 1980s. Of the ten million non-Han Chinese in Xinjiang, eight million are Turkic and have ethnic and religious links to neighboring Turkic populations in Central Asia. (9) From Beijing's perspective, the security agreements also facilitated the favorable revision of its borders with Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. (10) Chinese and Russian policy makers also have worried about the activities of Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and the United States in Central Asia.
The institutional manifestation of these shared Chinese and Russian interests in Central Asia initially was the so-called "Shanghai Five," a loose grouping of China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan. On 26 April 1996, the five governments signed in Shanghai a treaty on military confidence-building measures that imposed restrictions on military deployments and activity within a hundred-kilometer (sixty-two-mile) demilitarization zone along their mutual frontiers. On 15 June 2001, these governments, along with Uzbekistan--a country that had not participated in the original Shanghai Five, which initially focused on border security, because it does not adjoin China--formally established the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). (11) (Both India and especially Pakistan also have expressed interest in joining.) (12) Building on the arms control achievements of the Shanghai Five, the SCO has sponsored extensive, senior-level consultations on several issues, including crime, narcotics trafficking, economic development, transportation, communication, energy, the war in Afghanistan, and terrorism, which has become its most important issue of concern. The parties are establishing concrete mechanisms to facilitate such cooperation--including annual meetings of their defense, foreign, and prime ministers--as well as formal structures to interact with nonmember governments and other international institutions. In particular, they agreed in September 2002 to form a SCO secretariat in Beijing, which will be headed by Zhang Deguang, China's current Russian-speaking ambassador to Moscow, who will serve a three-year term as the SCO's secretary general, supervising a four-million-dollar budget. (13) The previous year, they established a regional antiterrorist center to share intelligence and coordinate responses to terrorism. The latter agency has an initial staff of approximately forty and resides in the Kyrgyz capital of Bishkek, where a Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) antiterrorist center already functions. (14) The SCO members also signed a formal twenty-six-point charter in St. Petersburg on 7 June 2002, and a "Shanghai Convention on Combating Terrorism, Separatism, and Extremism" at their June 2001 summit. (The juxtaposition of these three terms highlights the priority the organization's members place on countering ethnoseparatism and antigovernment dissent as well as terrorism per se.) In October 2002 China and Kyrgyzstan conducted the first bilateral antiterror exercise within the SCO framework, involving joint border operations by hundreds of troops. It marked the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA)'s first maneuvers with another country's military. (15) The Chinese military also transferred small arms, ammunition, and other military equipment to Kyrgyz security forces, and they have not opposed neighboring Kyrgyzstan's permitting Russian warplanes to deploy at Kant airbase, near Bishkek, or the basing of U.S. forces at Manas International Airport. (16) Other SCO members have announced their intention to conduct analogous exercises.
Since the USSR's collapse, Chinese leaders have favored a preeminent security role for Russia in Central Asia, as a hedge against untoward changes in the region's political status quo and the growth of radical Islamic and American influence. They also believe a Russian-dominated regional security environment would allow for the region's economic development by Chinese and other firms, especially in the important realm of energy, and permit China to concentrate on more vital issues--such as Korea and Taiwan. (17) The Russians have sought and welcomed this Chinese support. Through the SCO, Moscow recognizes as legitimate Chinese interests in Central Asia, and China finds a mechanism to promote these interests, in close cooperation with Russia. The newly independent states of Central Asia have become not objects of rivalry between Moscow and Beijing, as was once expected, but a major unifying element in Chinese-Russian relations.
Mutually Supportive Policy Statements
During the past decade, Chinese-Russian joint statements typically have criticized various American policies. Although these pronouncements normally have not referred explicitly to the United States, the target was obvious. In place of an American-dominated international system, the two governments frequently have called for a "multipolar" world in which Russia and China would occupy key positions, along with Europe, the United States, and perhaps Japan. They evidently have hoped that such a system would establish a geopolitical balance that would prevent one great power (e.g., the United States) from dominating the others.
Chinese and Russian officials also regularly endorse each other's domestic policies. Russian representatives have not challenged China's human rights practices in Tibet or elsewhere, and they have not backed American-sponsored UN...
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