Despite its growing military and economic power, Russia doesn't see China as a threat. The potential chaos in Central Asia is another matter.
Developments in Central Asia and Pakistan are a major concern for Russia, but the growing military might of China isn’t really, at least according to Russian political and military officials I spoke with at a key conference in Moscow.
I probed numerous senior Russian officials at the off-the-record Defence and Security section meeting of the Valdai International Discussion Club on China, and received what were in some ways some surprising responses. When considering China’s growing economic power and military potential, even many US defence analysts who don’t consider China a threat still see managing its rise as a challenge. Indeed, over the past two years, the Barack Obama administration has sought to strengthen defence cooperation with other Asian countries worried about China’s rise, including Japan and Vietnam. And, like previous US administrations, they’ve also called on Chinese policy makers to make their defence policies and programmes more transparent.
Russian leaders speaking in public, in contrast, almost always repeat the official view that Russia and China are strategic partners, and that rather than fear China’s rise, Moscow welcomes it as a stabilizing factor in Asia. And although one senior military officer I met with in Moscow insisted that the Russian defence community constantly monitors Chinese defence developments, and sees clear signs of improved Chinese capabilities, the country still doesn’t see China as a current or emerging threat.
A senior Russian general confirmed that Russian defence leaders regularly discuss China with their US counterparts, but added that this was because Russian leaders are concerned that tensions between China and the United States could negatively affect the security of Asia in general, and Russia in particular.
Still, some Russian defence analysts at the conference were a little less sanguine over China’s rising military potential. For example, one told the sole Japanese participant, who had asked several questions about this issue, not to worry about the likely placement of the Mistral warship in the Russian Far East, since its main function would be to deter China, not fight Japan.
Indeed, the crash in Russian arms sales to China in the past few years has led many Western defence analysts to believe that Russia has essentially given up on the Chinese. In the past, Moscow could count on China buying various high-tech weapons systems from Russia’s military industrial complex. And, following the decision of Western governments to impose an arms embargo on China after the 1989 Tiananmen Square incident, a ban that remains largely in force today, China emerged as one of the most reliable clients of Russian defence items. For almost two decades, China accounted for between one-fourth and one-half of Russia’s foreign military sales, with Beijing buying more military products from Russia than from all other countries combined. During the 1990s, the value of these purchases ranged up to $1 billion per year, while during the mid-2000s, this figure sometimes rose above $2 billion per annum.
Photo Credit: Juerg Vollmer
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Fu Man-chu
Peter Weitz’s article reflects intellectual honesty and originality; So much unlike the many propagandistic pieces from writers or NGOs-for-hire bankrolled by CIA and Pentagon. A refreshing breeze that fans peace and harmony for mankind, even though there are still the persistent hate commentators from Pentagon and CIA here and in almost every article published by the Diplomat.
Grayburst
The CIA and American military do not run drugs into Russia nor China. The US policy toward Russia is also one of extreme caution in this area. We can’t afford to alienate the Russians due to our supply lines coming through Russian territory. The war in Afghanistan is to prevent another breeding area for islamic radicals. The Russians support the American presence in central Asia cautiously because it’s in their best interest to see radical islam stunted as an international militant force. China may have an interest in the resource of central Asia but have little care one way or another if radical islam becomes a threat to the rest of the world, as long as it doesn’t embolden the islamic minorities of China’s far western territories.
China is an empire fighting to recover from centuries of weakness including strengthening it’s territorial hold over it’s possessions while at the same time regaining the influence it had for centuries over most of it’s more distant neighbors in a cultural and economic hegemony.
Russia made it’s supreme effort as an empire in the Soviet Union, and it failed. It’s still trying to recover from that imperial era, and hoping not to follow most empires completely into insignificant or the dustbin of history. Russia has given away most if not all of it’s imperial territories. What it has left was mostly wilderness and a few minor areas it’s feels it still needs to hold for strategic security.
The United States of America is coming out of a period where for 60 years it was forced to be the hegemonic power over the West and numerous other nations as a result of repairing the damage of the Second World War, dearming the opponents in that war, and holding the Soviet Union in check. Now it has to make a choice of letting go of that hegemony or seeing it drift into an empire. It’s already moved form hegemony to the state of imperium in others, while being rolled back completely in yet more. (There is a noted difference between an empire and an imperium but both are still built upon military and economic power.)
The three powers above are all in serious periods of transition, and they are bouncing off each other like billard balls in policy, economics, and international influence. All this is going on while numerous other powers move to gain regional domination in their areas, and other nations are trying to gain stability. Not a single one of the big three can claim their motives are anything more than blatant self interest, without being guilty of charges of hypocrisy.
ozivan
Thank you Grayburst. Your comment is very good. A brilliant insight. Please oblige us more with your comments.