The Russia-China Axis. Douglas E. Schoen
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are everywhere, and they have been mounting for more than a decade.
“Russia-China cooperation is advancing to a new stage of comprehensive partnership and strategic interaction,” Putin said on the eve of his visit to Shanghai. “It would not be wrong to say that it has reached the highest level in all its centuries-long history.”8 He was preparing to sign “a record package of documents” and agreements between the two countries, covering trade, investment, energy, infrastructure development, Asia-Pacific cooperation, and cultural exchange.9 “We are aiming at the creation of special areas of advanced economic development with an investment-friendly environment,” Putin said.10 Indeed, Putin has turned to China for financing, trying to roll back limits on Chinese investment in the Russian economy in the hope of luring cash into industries from housing to infrastructure to natural resources. Russia seeks China’s help to build a bridge to the Crimean peninsula.
This expanding trade is part of a larger story: Russia and China, once Communist adversaries during the Cold War, now increasingly act in concert. Beijing tacitly supported Russian moves in Crimea by abstaining from a vote in the United Nations, even though Moscow’s actions violated a stated core principle of Beijing’s foreign policy: non-interference. The two countries also lined up on the same side at the UN regarding the Syrian civil war.
Militarily, the two nations are cooperating and collaborating like never before. In May 2014, the Russian and Chinese navies held large-scale joint drills in the East China Sea—sending a message, most experts felt, to Japan, which has found itself in increasing tension with Beijing. “Moscow and Beijing have found advantages in working together to diminish U.S. influence and create greater room for them to pursue international economic and strategic interests,” Brian Spegele and Wayne Ma noted in the Wall Street Journal. “Mr. Putin is widely depicted in Chinese official media as a powerful leader unafraid to take on the West.”11
That’s not how the Chinese view American leaders, to put it mildly.
In spring 2014, Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, on an official visit to Beijing that included a tour of China’s first aircraft carrier, stood at a press conference with his counterpart, Chinese Defense Minister Chang Wanquan. With the media looking on, Wanquan made sure the Pentagon chief understood that the Chinese military had no fear of American power. “With the latest developments in China,” Wanquan told Hagel, “it can never be contained.”12
In different ways, Russia and China also effectively tolerate, and even facilitate, the interests and goals of rogue nations—Iran, North Korea, Syria, and others. They use their political influence to assist these nations’ efforts to procure nuclear power or weaponry, to avoid international punishment for egregious human-rights abuses, and to prop up anti-Western dictators and even terrorist groups. Despite lingering differences and suspicions, Russia and China have become both newly aggressive in their own spheres and newly cooperative as partners and allies. They have forged a powerful new alliance that marks, as Charles Krauthammer rightly suggests, “the first emergence of a global coalition against American hegemony since the fall of the Berlin Wall.”13
Put simply, this coalition has the potential to permanently and fundamentally alter international relations. It was envisioned as, and it has functioned as, a counterweight to liberal democracy generally and the United States specifically. “The unipolar model of the world order has failed,” Putin says, referring to what he sees as American hegemony. “Today this is obvious to everyone.”14 The Russia-China alliance—we call it a new Axis—already possesses extraordinary power, as is clear not just with new economic and trade agreements and military cooperation but also in the areas of nuclear proliferation and cyber warfare. Individually and together, Russia and China seek to undermine the social, economic, and political framework of democratic societies and our alliances in a way that has yet to be fully understood.
Their efforts to do so are emboldened immeasurably by a United States that is losing the confidence and trust of its allies and partners around the world. From Europe to the Middle East to the Far East, American policy is muddled, irresolute, and even feckless—as was powerfully symbolized in June 2014 when the Obama administration stood by as the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the al-Qaeda offshoot, quickly overran cities in Iraq. Our allies doubt American commitment and resolve, question or outright oppose our policies, and are increasingly looking elsewhere—or within—for sustenance and support. Even nations historically aligned with us are making tentative outreach elsewhere. The United States has no clear strategy other than retrenchment and the minimization of genuine threats. We seem unwilling to acknowledge what our adversaries our doing. Unless we fundamentally change the foreign-policy approach we have followed under President Obama, we will continue to lose ground—as will the cause of democracy and freedom around the world.
These, then, are the subjects of the book you are about to read: the Russia-China alliance, the dangers that it poses, and the desperate need for a cogent and committed American response. Without unduly flattering ourselves, let us be frank: We tried to sell the idea of this book for years before we found a taker. We’d rather have been wrong than right. Now that more Americans are paying attention, there might yet be a chance to reverse the tide.
ON THE MARCH: RUSSIA, CHINA, AND THE ROGUES
On May 9, 2014, Russian President Vladimir Putin coasted into the Crimean port of Sevastopol on a naval launch, gliding past Russian warships arrayed to greet him. It was Victory Day, the Russian holiday commemorating the Soviet Union’s triumph over Nazi Germany. Over the years, Putin has made the occasion a great celebration of Russian nationalism. He had spent the morning in Moscow attending a military parade in Red Square, an old Soviet practice he resurrected in 2008. His visit to Crimea came two months after he led Russia’s illegal annexation of the Ukrainian territory—a move condemned not only by Ukraine’s government but also by much of the world. In his remarks at Sevastopol, Putin roused his audience with patriotic themes.
“I think 2014 will also be an important year in the annals of Sevastopol and our whole country, as the year when people living here firmly decided to be together with Russia, and thus confirmed their faith in the historic truth and the memory of our forefathers,” he said, in remarks broadcast nationally.15 Putin called Victory Day “the holiday when the invincible power of patriotism triumphs, when all of us particularly feel what it means to be faithful to the Motherland and how important it is to defend its interests.”16 After the speech, Russian jets flew over the crowd, through what mere months before had been Ukrainian airspace.17
While Putin was in Crimea, Deputy Prime Minister Dmitri Rogozin celebrated Victory Day in Moldova’s breakaway pro-Russian region of Transnistria, declaring Russia the “guarantor of security” for what he provocatively called “the republic of Transnistria,” echoing the language Russia has used to justify intervention in Ukraine.18 On May 11, in a referendum widely denounced by the West, 90 percent of voters in the eastern Ukraine provinces of Donetsk and Luhansk voted for secession from Ukraine.19 Pro-Russian activists were soon saying that they wanted to become part of Russia; annexation might be only a matter of time.
Regardless of what ultimately happens in Ukraine, the Russian seizure of Crimea has fundamentally changed the international power balance. Despite the sanctions that have been put in place, Russian aggression and assertiveness have yet to be deterred, and the United States and its European allies have no clear consensus on how to proceed. For the first time, the essential principles of the NATO alliance have been called into question—with implications for Eastern and Central Europe, and indeed for the world.
While the world anxiously watched the Ukraine situation, an 80-ship Chinese fleet sailed into waters claimed by Vietnam to install a billion-dollar oil rig in the energy-rich South China Sea. When Vietnam’s coast guard arrived, the Chinese flotilla responded with force, ramming at least one Vietnamese ship and firing water cannons at others.20 Then, later in May, a Chinese vessel rammed and sank a Vietnamese fishing boat in the disputed waters.21 China claims 90 percent of the South China Sea as its own, rejecting the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and staking claims to dozens of islands and reefs that Beijing claims are historically Chinese.22