How closely aligned are China and Russia? Measuring strategic cooperation in IR
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How closely aligned are China and Russia? Measuring strategic cooperation in IR Alexander Korolev1
© Springer Nature Limited 2019
Abstract Russia’s high-profile “turn to the East,” the deterioration of Russia–US relations after the Ukraine crisis, and China’s “new assertiveness” in the South and East China Seas have led to the perception that China and Russia are now “aligned” in opposition to US-led unipolarity. However, alignment remains an inchoate term that has not been systematically defined in the international relations literature. Thus, it is difficult to assess the degree to which China and Russia are aligned, as well as the extent to which their strategic cooperation has increased over time. This paper develops and applies an ordinal set of objective criteria for military alignment and applies these criteria to measure the degree of strategic cooperation in post-Cold War China–Russia relations. It also explores China–Russia cooperation across economic and diplomatic dimensions to assess the overall progress in the bilateral relationship over time. Drawing on multiple Chinese and Russian sources, it demonstrates that China and Russia have now developed strong military alignment, if not a full-fledged alliance, and that cooperation on each of the other two dimensions, while not yet as strong, has steadily increased since the end of the Cold War. Keywords Strategic cooperation · Alignment · China–Russia relations
* Alexander Korolev [email protected] 1
School of Social Sciences, University of New South Wales, Sydney, NSW 2052, Australia Vol.:(0123456789)
A. Korolev
Introduction Assessing strategic cooperation in post-Cold War China–Russia relations appears to be a difficult task. There has been a striking lack of progress in understanding China–Russia alignment and the degree to which it has increased over time, as manifested in the titles of leading books on the relationship. In 2000, the pervasive question was “Rapprochement or Rivalry?”1; twelve years later, the question had barely changed to “Rivalry or Partnership?”2 Numerous underspecified and contrasting terms have been used to describe this bilateral relationship. Since the mid-1990s, China–Russia relations have been referred to as “partnerships”—simply “partnership,”3 “limited partnership,”4 “strategic partnership,”5 or “limited defensive strategic partnership”6–—and a variety of “axes”—“axis of convenience,”7 “axis of necessity,”8 or “axis of insecurity.”9 To add to the lexical confusion, the term “alliance” has also often been a reference point in scholarly discussions of China–Russia relations.10 None of these or any other applied terms have been defined in a manner that is sufficient for making them subject to systematic empirical examination. There have been multiple descriptions and examinations of various empirical aspects of China–Russia strategic interactions.11 However, attempts to develop an analytical 1 Sherman W. Garnett, Rapprochement or Rivalry? Russia–China Relations in a Changing Asia (Carnegie Endowment for Intern
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