Politics
Putin's Fear of China Weakens
Russia's Asia Pivot
Dec.
17 2014 18:56
Last edited 18:56
Denis
Abramov / Vedomosti
As Moscow's relationship
with the West continues to deteriorate, Russia has engaged in a
concerted and very public "pivot to Asia," the focus
of which has been to deepen its relationship with China. Beyond
the rhetoric, however, is there a sufficient overlap
of interests between Moscow and Beijing for the two sides
to actually implement a formal alliance?
Russia and China do
share a number of key interests, starting with energy. After nearly
a decade of negotiations, during a visit to Beijing
in May, President Vladimir Putin signed a 30-year, $400 billion deal
for Russia to supply China with 38 billion cubic meters of gas
per year to be transported from remote fields in eastern Siberia
via a planned 4,000-kilometer pipeline.
In addition
to this "eastern route" project, Putin recently asserted that
negotiations are ongoing for a second, "western route" pipeline
project that would carry gas from Altai to northwestern China.
Military cooperation is
another rapidly developing pole of the Russia-China relationship. Earlier
this year, Russia and China conducted a joint naval drill in the
East China Sea, and according to Russia's TASS news agency,
the two sides will hold two more joint-naval drills next year, one
in the Pacific and one in the Mediterranean.
Russia has long sold
much of its most advanced weaponry to China. During the 1990s
and early 2000s, China became a key Russian arms customer, one
keeping the Russian military-industrial complex on its feet after
domestic orders dried up following the fall of the former Soviet
Union.
Now, after a hiatus
of several years, Russia and China are in discussions
for new arms sales, this time for Russia's most advanced fighter jets
and anti-aircraft missile, the Su-35 and the S-400,
respectively.
Finally, Russia
and China share broadly similar perspectives on most global issues.
Ideologically, China and Russia hew to a philosophy that states
should not interfere in each other's internal affairs, and both have
long bridled at the Americans' focus on promoting democracy
and human rights.
The two Eurasian
powers also share the geopolitical objective of a multipolar world as
opposed to one dominated by the United States. Viewed
from Moscow, NATO expansion and Western meddling in Ukraine
represent an American strategy to surround and contain Russia.
Likewise, U.S. President Barack Obama's much vaunted "pivot
to Asia" is simply an excuse to prevent China
from resuming its role as the leading power in Asia.
Observing
the deepening Moscow-Beijing entente, some American analysts have gone as
far as to speculate that Russia and China could potentially form
the equivalent of a "Eurasian NATO" that would dominate
the Eurasian landmass at the expense of the United States.
A closer look at the reality, however, suggests that
a combination of differing regional interests and mutual
suspicion — primarily unspoken Russian fears regarding China's rise —
make a formal alliance between Moscow and Beijing highly improbable
A key issue
inhibiting a true Russian-Chinese alliance is the power imbalance
between the two. While the economies of the two nations were
about the same at the time the Soviet Union broke up, today
the Chinese economy is five times Russia's and growing rapidly.
Unlike in the 1950s, when China initially allied itself with
the former Soviet Union and allowed Moscow primacy, today it is clear
that Russia would be the far junior partner in any alliance.
"Every alliance has
a horse and a rider. Russia is the horse," said Stephen
Blank, a senior fellow for Russia at the American Foreign Policy
Council.
An example
of the power disparity between Russia and China can be observed
in the $400 billion gas contract Putin signed with China in May.
While the Russians have interpreted a $25 billion Chinese advance
in the contract as a prepayment for the gas to be
delivered, the Chinese now say that this advance is actually just
a loan with interest, meaning that the deal is far
from complete.
The "western
pipeline" meanwhile is purely smoke and mirrors at this point,
simply discussed in a "working group" between Gazprom
and Chinese state gas company CNPC.
"Despite
the hype regarding a strategic economic partnership, the money's
not coming from China at this point. The Chinese are extremely
tough negotiators, and they will take advantage of any Russian
weakness they can," noted Blank.
Furthermore, many
Russians worry that China actually sees Russia as nothing more than
a supplier of raw materials, much as Beijing views Africa. Moscow
sees a resource-poor China with 1.3 billion people abutting an increasingly
depopulated Siberia and worries that even without any military action
by China the Russian Far East could come under Beijing's sway
economically and ultimately politically.
China's military
capabilities are not overlooked either. As Carnegie Moscow analyst Dmitry
Trenin has observed, the Russian security establishment believes that
China military is currently focused eastward and southward on Japan
and the South China Sea. By the same token, given the economic
and demographic disparities between the two countries, Russia
understands that China's ambitions could easily turn northward someday.
Indeed, Russia's largest
military exercises to date — involving 160,000 troops, 5,000 tanks
and a number of ships and aircraft — were held in the
Russian Far East near the Chinese border. It is widely understood
in Moscow that the land-based aspect of the drill —
by far the exercise's largest component — was meant
to deter China.
Moscow's longtime
interest in ending or modifying the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces
Treaty between the U.S. and Russia is also partially motivated
by the Kremlin's desire to maintain a strong deterrent
on its exposed far-eastern flank.
Although Moscow has gone
out of its way not to explicitly antagonize China, the Kremlin
has gone about hedging its bets by cultivating relationships with other
Asian powers — many of whom have their own differences with Beijing.
For example
on his recent trip to India — a country with which China
has an increasingly open strategic rivalry — Putin and Indian
Prime Minister Narendra Modi reaffirmed the two countries' longtime
alliance, with Modi describing Russia as a "pillar
of strength" for his nation. The two sides signed contracts
for weaponry development as well as for Russia to build 10 new
nuclear power plants for the Indians.
Russia is also keen
to rebuild Cold War ties with Vietnam, a country with whom China
fought a bloody border war in 1979, and Putin reaffirmed
Russia's longtime commitment to Vietnam on his November visit
to Hanoi.
In sum, although Putin
welcomes the opportunity to piggyback on China's growing power
to challenge the U.S., a latent fear of China —
"a threat that dare not be spoken in Moscow," according
to Blank — as well as the Kremlin's unwillingness to accept
a relationship where China would be the far dominant power make
a true alliance between the two great Eurasian powers extremely
unlikely.
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