The China–Russia Axis May Be Less Intimidating Than It Looks

By Bobby Miller

Friday, April 07, 2023

Last month, when Xi Jinping visited Moscow to meet with Vladimir Putin and reaffirm their “friendship with no limits,” it appeared as though the United States’ greatest fears were materializing. To many in Washington, the burgeoning Chinese-Russian partnership is a geostrategic nightmare becoming reality: our biggest adversaries working in tandem to end American primacy.

This dreaded axis of revisionism is why we’ve long sought to triangulate and work with one against the other, as Richard Nixon and his secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, did when they exploited the Sino–Soviet split to America’s advantage. In the estimation of some foreign-policy analysts, our abandonment of this strategy, together with NATO’s expansion into Russia’s traditional sphere of influence, pushed Russia into China’s arms. These so-called realists argue that, in the face of Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, we must correct course to avert catastrophe. They argue that if we don’t urge the Ukrainians to sue for peace, we risk pushing Moscow even closer to Beijing, solidifying what Daniel Drezner calls a “Legion of Doom” committed to overtaking us on the world stage and threatening the homeland.

The amity between Russia and China, however, is not a result of the West’s support for Ukraine. It is a natural outcome of the shared aspirations of the current political leadership in Moscow and Beijing: to challenge Pax Americana and create a more multipolar world. The two authoritarian regimes, in addition to their mutual distaste for liberal democracy and the Western conception of human rights, have increasingly found common ground on economic issues. Russia has been looking to diversify its economic ties away from Europe and toward Asia. While NATO expansion may have heightened Russian fears of Western encroachment, the alliance between Moscow and Beijing was likely inevitable given the other geopolitical factors at play.

And while the recent thaw in Sino–Russian relations may look like 1949 all over again, when the Chinese Communists emerged victorious from their civil war and Washington was seeing red, in reality, it may prove to be more like something that happened ten years earlier, when another Russian leader hosted the dignitary of a rising power promising cooperation.

In 1939, on the eve of World War II, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin welcomed German foreign minister Joachim von Ribbentrop to the Kremlin, where the German minister and his Soviet counterpart, Vyacheslav Molotov, signed a nonaggression treaty that became known as the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact. In addition to the public stipulations of the treaty, that neither country would attack the other for ten years, the agreement included a secret protocol that delineated the German and Soviet spheres of influence across Eastern Europe.

Most historians believe that Stalin entered into the deal with Hitler to buy the USSR time to prepare for a potential war with the Third Reich. He believed that the Nazi war machine would first vanquish Western Europe before turning its attention to the East and hoped the deal would give the Soviet Union time to prepare its defenses. Less than two years later, the pact was terminated when Hitler invaded the Soviet Union.

Are there lessons for modern-day Russia in this history? Putin’s motivations for playing buddy-buddy with Xi of course aren’t about forestalling an imminent invasion by the People’s Liberation Army, though the two powers have had territorial disputes in the past. (In 1969, the Soviets and the Chinese were engaged in a conflict over Damansky Island on the Wusuli River in Manchuria.)

But Russia could easily get sucked into the red dragon’s black hole rather than jointly projecting power with China as partner. Michael Beckley, an American scholar of grand strategy and a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, told National Review that “schisms may open up between them as China begins to exact concessions from its newfound vassal.” Beijing may seek more advantageous trade agreements, particularly in the energy sector, from Moscow, for instance. China is also supplanting Russia as the biggest player in its backyard, Central Asia.

The two countries, meanwhile, will continue to trail the United States. Beckley has noted that “the veneer of [China’s] double-digit growth rates has masked gaping liabilities that limit China’s ability to close the wealth gap with the United States.” China is seemingly at the zenith of its power, likely to see an erosion of its standing in the coming years due to confounding demographic, housing, and water crises, and Russia is more debilitated and isolated than ever.

Beckley told National Review:

China’s economic growth has been impressive, but despite having a bigger GDP, it is still substantially less wealthy than the United States and headed in the wrong direction under Xi. And in terms of global power projection, America’s military was vastly superior to China and Russia even before Putin decided to send his army into the meat grinder in Ukraine. So, from a purely material perspective, the United States maintains an edge over both its chief rivals.

He also argues that it’s not hard to find a historical analog for this moment:

Before World War II, the United States was a decisive player on the world stage in a multipolar environment and ultimately fought a war against two aggressors concurrently and prevailed. Today, the deck is even more stacked in favor of America, so it’s not a question of resources. It’s a question of national will. 

Collective resolve is undoubtedly indispensable at this juncture. But increased Chinese–Russian collaboration does not automatically spell the end of the U.S.-led world order.