Politics

Une nouvelle alliance sino-russe ?

Jan 12, 2015 Joseph S. Nye, Jr.

CAMBRIDGE - Certains analystes croient que 2014 a inauguré une nouvelle ère géopolitique du type Guerre froide. L'invasion de l'Ukraine et l'annexion de la Crimée par le Président russe Vladimir Poutine ont débouché sur de lourdes sanctions économiques de l'Europe et des États-Unis, qui ont affaibli les relations de la Russie avec l'Occident et ont poussé le Kremlin à renforcer ses relations avec la Chine. Resta à savoir si la Russie va parvenir à établir une véritable alliance avec la République populaire.

À première vue, cela semble plausible. En effet, la théorie traditionnelle de l'équilibre des pouvoirs suggère que la primauté américaine sur les ressources d'énergie doit être compensée par un partenariat sino-russe.

Fait peut-être plus convaincant, il semble exister un précédent historique à un partenariat de cette sorte. Dans les années 1950, la Chine et l'Union soviétique étaient alliées contre les États-Unis. , L'équilibre a changé suite à l'ouverture à la Chine du président américain Richard Nixon en l972, quand les États-Unis et la Chine ont coopéré pour limiter ce qu'ils considéraient comme une dangereuse augmentation de la puissance de l'Union soviétique.

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0 Comments on this paragraph, 10 Comments on this article

Aghassi Mkrtchyan Oct 9, 2021

this article did not age well...
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j. von Hettlingen Jan 15, 2015

"A new Sino-Russian alliance?" Hardly, China and Russia have had diplomatic relations for 65 years. After periods of frostiness during the Cold War, the two countries claim to enjoy an extraordinary relationship, which had been upgraded since 1992 with the signing of a “constructive partnership”; a “strategic partnership" in 1996 and a treaty of “friendship and cooperation” in 2001. The latter would commit them in the next 20 years to jointly oppose the global order that the US had built up in the past decades. Since the fall of the Soviet Union the US became the world's only hegemony. With China's rise to power and Russia's growing role as an energy supplier, the two seek to create a "new international political and economic order". In recent years they set up the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, a "club for autocrats and dictators" and BRICS, the "big five" of the developing world.
Despite unprecedented ties with China and Moscow's desire to look eastward to diversify its energy customers, their "economic relationship" will soon be overshadowed by "a significant bilateral trade imbalance". Trade had beem small. Moscow had long resisted to letting China invest in its strategic oil and gas infrastructure in Russia. When the two countries signed the alleged $400 billion deal last May, they also agreed to cooperate on creating "a long-distance airliner to compete with Boeing and Airbus". Putin would like China to buy Russian weapons.
Nye points out "Russia’s lost access to the Western technology that it needs to develop frontier Arctic fields". Putin has said that Western sanctions would allow Russia to look inward and rely on its own abilities. It's true that "China generates considerable unease in Russia", which fears a Chinese "encroachment" in its Far East, where only "six million Russians live across the border from up to 120 million Chinese". This region has always been the most strategically vulnerable part of Russia. Besides part of it was acquired in 1858 following the Treaty of Aigun, seen as unfair by China, as it ceded the territory on the northern bank of the Amur to Russia. In 1969 the two countries fought a war over one of these islands on the Amur. There's little risk that China would invade Russia militarily and recapture the territory, because it would not win.
Nye says the "Sino-Russian alliance in the twentieth century was a product of China’s weakness following World War II and at the beginning of the Cold War" and "it lasted little more than a decade". Compared to a rising China, Russia is seen as a declining power. Putin has ambition to restore its former glory and may feel marginalised from regional and global decision-making. There will be plenty of frictions ahead between the two countries!
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Thomas Niles Jan 13, 2015

What is missing here is the fact that Russia and China do not really agree on their border. For the Chinese, the border was established in the Treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689. They regard the Treaties of Aigun (1858) and Peking (1860) as" unequal treaties." The Russians know this, and sooner of later this issue will rise to the surface. We are talking about a huge amount of territory.
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jagjeet sinha Jan 13, 2015

If France and Germany can be friends and the two together can be friends with Britain, the Two Red Squares surely can come together - with limited common objectives. European Unionization is a result of bloodshed of a magnitude mankind has never witnessed - and may it never again be repeated. Europe and America combined to create The West in 1945 - in the aftermath of WWII. Neither Religion nor Race nor Geography is the basis for mutually beneficial Joint Ventures. History suggests that Language perhaps creates One Economic Sphere - The Anglosphere perhaps more enduring than any other permutations. As One Language permits a melting pot of different religions, races, and regions. But every evidence can be countered with examples that don't work. Perhaps the creation of common threats and the need for collective convergence to overcome the threats leads towards Institutional Architecture - it only works if the resultant wealth is democratized both within countries and across the nations that are part of the Common Club /Common Union. China and Russia - like Europe and America - can indeed come together. Each such Club requires vision to make them work for limited objectives - virtually impossible to create a Federation in most cases with Single Nationality for all Club members. And the success of The Club depends on its attractiveness and capacity for enlargement, so any alternative challenges ends at best in equilibrium or at worst in suicidal confrontation/meltdowns.
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Paul Daley Jan 13, 2015

Not at all correct. Russia ad China are complementary economies with similar external problems. Russia is rich in land and natural resources; China has people and (now) capital. Both have natural obstacles to integration with international maritime trade and, consequently, corresponding interests in developing inland routes through pipelines, roads and railroads. The West's should have tried to develop cultural and political ties with Russia to offset the geographic and economic pressures pushing it towards China, but East Europeans fear of Russia, and NATO's institutional interest in a divided Europe have queered that play. For the foreseeable future, closer ties between Russia and China are practically a certainty.
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Velko Simeonov Jan 13, 2015

I am going to have to go ahead and disagree with the distinguished author. In my opinion at the end of the day, despite their uneasy relationship China and Russia simply have no choice if they want to achieve their strategic goals. The Chinese want to be the number one economy in the world and historically speaking, to be number one economically you need to be number one geopolitically and that means pushing the US out of the way. The Russians do not seem to covet the economic championship as much as they want to be subservient to none, especially the US. None of them can accomplish their objectives on their own and they realize it, so from that point of view cooperation between them at least in the near and medium term seems to be inevitable.
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Roy Stoddard Jan 13, 2015

Get the stunning truth about Nixon and Watergate here http://www.amazon.com/Nixons-Secrets-Untold-President-Watergate/dp/162914603X/ref=pd_bxgy_b_img_y
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Yoshimichi Moriyama Jan 13, 2015

Shigeru Yoshida was Japanese Prime Minister for about seven years in post-war Japan, a uniquely remarkable record in the country where the custom has been that a Prime Minister stays in office for a month or two. He had predicted the split of the Sino-Russian relations in his memoirs published in 1957.
The Russians have been more afraid of the Chinese historically than the latter have been of the former.

Prof. Nye mentioned, quite to the point, the limits to the foreign policy of the two countries, but it is not inconceivable and improbable that 2014 will not be remembered as a year of our very successful foreign policy.
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Petey Bee Jan 12, 2015

"And the gas deals do not make up for Russia’s lost access to the Western technology that it needs to develop frontier Arctic fields and become an energy superpower, not just China’s gas station."

This is probably the most significant part of the article. The effect is to create a captive market for China's engineering, advanced metallurgy, and high-end manufacturing tools, which are still some years behind Japan's and Germany's. If this subsidy persists, Japan and Germany may be unseated as the leaders in these sectors as they have been in others.
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hari naidu Jan 12, 2015

In 1960s, I was one of the earliest students of Sino-Soviet conflict…and was invited to present my findings at a global conference on the subject in Radstadt (Salzburg) organized by American Quaker peace movement. I’ve never accepted – unlike US academics – the concept of a (Stalinist) monolithic communist movement post-WWII. Why? Principally because the two revolutions were asymmetric – one was from the top-down and Mao’s revolution was from the bottom up.

The historical lessons (ie. devolution of Soviet Union!) are now (finally) manifesting itself – Nye’s pretending to be a revisionist(!) – because Putin’s strategic/tactical moves in Crimea has found little or no support from CPC and People’s Daily.

In Central Asia, CPC is manifestly advancing its own bilateral political and strategic relation (cf. Putin’s Eurasian Union).

However, the fact remains, Putin has (still) not requested Xi’s for economic/financial assistance.

Nor have American's and their think-tanks learnt what ticks mainland China - ie. renewal of the Silk Road.
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