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外交政策网九月十月评论头条
原文：http://www.foreignaffairs.com/ar ... unbalanced-triangle
The Unbalanced Triangle
The Chinese-Russian relationship is more opportunistic than strategic,Bobo Lo argues. The United States is stuck watching from the sidelinesand may be pushing Moscow further into Beijing's pocket.
TheChinese-Russian relationship is more opportunistic than strategic, BoboLo argues. The United States is stuck watching from the sidelines andmay be pushing Moscow further into Beijing's pocket.
STEPHENKOTKIN is Professor of History and International Affairs at PrincetonUniversity. His latest book is Uncivil Society: 1989 and the Implosionof the Communist Establishment, which includes a contribution by JanGross
Bobo Lo, a former Australian diplomat in Moscow and the director ofthe China and Russia programs at the Center for European Reform, inLondon, has written the best analysis yet of one of the world's moreimportant bilateral relationships. His close examination ofChinese-Russian relations -- sometimes mischaracterized by bothcountries as a "strategic partnership" -- lays bare the full force ofChina's global strategy, the conundrum of Russia's place in today'sworld, and fundamental shortcomings in U.S. foreign policy.
China's shift in strategic orientation from the Soviet Union to theUnited States is the most important geopolitical realignment of thelast several decades. And Beijing now enjoys not only excellentrelations with Washington but also better relations with Moscow thandoes Washington. Lo calls the Chinese-Russian relationship a "mutuallybeneficial partnership" and goes so far as to deem Moscow's improvedties with Beijing "the greatest Russian foreign policy achievement ofthe post-Soviet period."
Precisely such hyperbole drives the alarmism of many pundits, whobelieve that the United States faces a challenge from a Chinese-Russianalliance built on shared illiberal values. But as Lo himself argues,the twaddle about Russia being an energy superpower was dubious evenbefore the price of oil fell by nearly $100 in 2008. Even moreimportant, Lo points out that the Chinese-Russian relationship isimbalanced and fraught: the two countries harbor significant culturalprejudices about each other and have divergent interests that arelikely to diverge even more in the future. More accurately, theChinese-Russian relationship is, as Lo puts it, an "axis ofconvenience" -- that is, an inherently limited partnership conditionedon its ability to advance both parties' interests.
But even Lo does not go far enough in his debunking of theChinese-Russian alliance: he argues that it "is, for all its faults,one of the more convincing examples of positive-sum internationalrelations today." This is doubtful. The relationship may allow theChinese to extract strategically important natural resources fromRussia and extend their regional influence, but it affords the Russianslittle more than the pretense of a multipolar world in which Moscowenjoys a central role.
STRATEGIC MISTRUST
The year 2006 was the Year of Russia in China, and 2007, the Year ofChina in Russia, with both states hosting a slew of exhibits, culturalprograms, trade talks, and state visits. At the opening ceremony inMoscow in March 2007, Chinese President Hu Jintao remarked, "TheChinese National Exhibition in Russia is the largest-ever overseasdisplay of Chinese culture and economic development." (It is worthnoting that every year could be called the Year of China in the UnitedStates and that the U.S. consumer market is essentially one endlessChinese National Exhibition.)
By showcasing in Moscow 15,000 Chinese products from 30 industries-- machinery, aviation, ship building, information technology, homeappliances -- Beijing sent the message that regardless of thesubstantial role the Soviet Union played in China's post-1949industrialization, there is now a new ascendancy, with China enjoyingthe dominant position. This, in fact, is a return to the historicalparadigm -- China has generally set the agenda for relations betweenthe two countries. The Chinese-Russian relationship dates from theRussian conquest of Siberia in the seventeenth century. The Russianempire, then not very rich, sought to trade with China, then theworld's wealthiest country. The two empires also discovered a commonbut often rivalrous interest in crushing the Central Asian nomads,leaving China and Russia with a 2,700-mile border, the world's longest.Since then, this shared border has shifted numerous times and served asa source of intermittent tension. As recently as 1969, the twocountries clashed along the Ussuri River, which separates northeasternChina from the Russian Far East, and Soviet leaders discussedretaliating with nuclear weapons if China launched a mass assault.
Now, as Lo writes, their relations are, in many ways, better thanever. In June 2005, both sides ratified a treaty settling their borderdisputes. Cross-border business and tourism are brisk. In 2006, twomillion Russian tourists went to China and nearly one million Chinesevisited Russia.
Still, as Lo subtly demonstrates, the Chinese-Russian "axis ofconvenience" is bedeviled by "pervasive mistrust" rooted in historicalgrievances, geopolitical competition, and structural factors. Moreover,it is a secondary axis. China and Russia talk about being strategicpartners, but neither actually is central to the other's concerns.China's indispensable partner is the United States; Russia's is Europeor, more specifically, Germany. In 2007, Chinese-Russian trade reached$48 billion, up from $5.7 billion in 1999, making China Russia'ssecond-largest trading partner after the European Union. But currentRussian-EU trade exceeds $250 billion -- the lion's share of it beingbetween Russia and Germany -- and Chinese-U.S. trade exceeds $400billion. China and Russia, Lo demonstrates, "pay far more attention tothe West than they do to each other." Their relationship isopportunistic. As Lo puts it, the two giants "share neither a long-termvision of the world nor a common understanding of their respectiveplaces in it."
In addition -- and this is the most important aspect of Lo'sargument -- whatever opportunity does exist in the relationship, Chinais in a better position to exploit it. China extracts considerablepractical benefits in oil and weapons from Russia. In return, Beijingflatters Moscow with rhetoric about their "strategic partnership" andcoddles it by promoting the illusion of a multipolar world. In manyways, the Chinese-Russian relationship today resembles that which firstemerged in the seventeenth century: a rivalry for influence in CentralAsia alongside attempts to expand bilateral commercial ties, with Chinain the catbird seat. Lo politely calls this incongruity an "asymmetry."
GIVING AWAY THE STORE
The profound asymmetry in Chinese-Russian relations is most visiblyillustrated by the two countries' roles in the Shanghai CooperationOrganization (SCO), a six-member security group founded in 2001, and bytheir energy and weapons trades.
So far, China has consistently resisted Moscow's lobbying forbuilding the SCO -- whose other members are the former Soviet states ofKazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan -- into aquasi-military alliance that could counter NATO. In addition, the SCOdeclined to publicly endorse Russia's account of its August 2008 warwith Georgia (Moscow claimed that the Georgian army attacked first, anassertion implicitly recognized even by the U.S. ambassador to Russia).China, it seems, is unwilling to impart any strategic significance todisputes in the Caucasus.
Meanwhile, using the SCO and business investments, China has beenmaking economic inroads into Central Asia, a region that Russia hastraditionally considered within its sphere of influence. Chinesecompanies have been on a buying spree in recent years, makinginvestments throughout Central Asia in minerals, energy, and otherindustries. Beijing appears to have cracked even the difficult nut ofTurkmenistan -- a pipeline now under construction is slated to run fromthe natural gas fields in Turkmenistan to Xinjiang, in western China.To a large extent, it is Russia's single-minded focus on pushing theUnited States out of Central Asia -- lobbying Kyrgyzstan, for example,to eject U.S. forces from a military base in Bishkek -- that hasallowed China's influence there to grow relatively unhindered. Andwhereas the United States can scarcely hope to maintain a permanentpresence in Central Asia, China can be counted on to stick around.
Lo is doubtful about the prospects of a major Chinese-Russian energydeal. But in February 2009, after his book had gone to press, the twogovernments signed a deal under which Rosneft, the largest Russianstate-owned oil company, and Transneft, the Russian state-ownedoil-pipeline monopoly, would get $25 billion from the China DevelopmentBank in exchange for supplying China with 300,000 barrels of oil a dayfrom 2011 to 2030 -- or a total of about 2.2 billion barrels. Factoringin the interest payments the Russian companies will owe on the loan,the deal means that China will pay under $20 a barrel -- less than halfthe global price at the time of the deal and less than one-third themarket price for future deliveries in 2017.
This Chinese money is slated to underwrite the completion of an oilpipeline that will run from eastern Siberia to the Pacific Ocean, withan offshoot going to Daqing to serve the Chinese market. The proposedpipeline would increase roughly to eight percent Russia's share ofChina's oil imports, up from four percent now. Russian energycompanies, laden with debt, lack the capital to build the pipeline bythemselves or, for that matter, to drill for new hydrocarbons. With aprojected capacity of 600,000 barrels per day, the pipeline is expectedto supply Japan with Russian oil, too -- provided enough is available.Still, the $20-a-barrel price borders on the shocking. Considering theperhaps more advantageous energy deals that have been on the table withU.S. and European multinationals, Rosneft and Transeft's deal withChina looks like a giveaway. It appears to be a consequence of theobsession many Russian officials have with denying the United States astrategic foothold in Russia's energy sector at all costs -- even ifone of those costs is opening themselves up to exploitation by theChinese.
Energy is not even the most fruitful aspect of China's relationshipwith Russia. According to U.S. estimates, Russia supplies China with 95percent of its military hardware, including Kilo-class submarines andSovremenny-class destroyers. So far, Russian officials have not viewedthe buildup of the Chinese navy as a direct threat to Russia; instead,they see it as a potential problem for Japan and the United States.Also, the post-Soviet Russian military was long unable to affordweapons produced by domestic manufacturers, making arms exports anecessity. Still, whatever benefits Russia gained by keeping itsdefense industry alive while waiting for better times, the benefits toChina have been beyond compare. After the Tiananmen Square crackdown in1989, many of the world's largest arms merchants -- France, the UnitedKingdom, and the United States -- imposed an arms embargo on China. AsRussia moved to fill this gap, China began to reverse engineer weaponssystems and pressure Russia to sell it not just the finished productsbut also the underlying manufacturing technology. For reasons that haveyet to be explained publicly, Russian arms sales to China have declinedin recent years. Nonetheless, China has the money and remains an eagercustomer for Russia's blueprints.
According to Lo, the terms of Chinese-Russian trade "are becomingmore unbalanced every year" -- so much so that he compares the role ofRussia for China to that of Angola, China's largest trading partner inAfrica. Russia will remain important as long as the weapons and fossilfuels keep flowing (and no economically viable alternatives tohydrocarbons emerge). Lo does not say so explicitly, but in an imaginedmultipolar world, Russia looks like a Chinese subsidiary. China treatsRussia with supreme tact, vehemently denying its own superiority -- astudious humility that only helps it maintain the upper hand.
WHAT KIND OF PARTNER?
Lo quotes Yuri Fedorov, a Russian political analyst, who lamentsthat Russia is "doomed to be a junior partner to everyone." In fact, itis China that has accepted the role of junior partner to the UnitedStates, and the payoff has been impressive. It is a calculated positionand part of China's global strategy sometimes known as "peaceful rise,"a term first introduced by the Chinese leadership soon after theTiananmen massacre. One vital element of this strategy is for China totake advantage of its de facto strategic partnership with the UnitedStates while sometimes swallowing hard in the face of U.S. dominance.China guards its sovereignty no less than does Russia, but, as Lowrites, China, contrary to Russia, "does not deem it necessary tocontest Western [i.e., American] interests and influence wherever itfinds them." Nor does China view Russia as a strategic counterweight tothe United States -- whereas Russia hopes to use China to balanceagainst the United States. Chinese leaders go out of their way toemphasize that China is still a developing country and that the UnitedStates will remain the sole global superpower for a long time to come.It is a concession that leaves them ample room to pursue China'sinterests, and so they see little point in paying the enormous costs ofopposing the United States.
The second main element in China's "peaceful rise" strategy is usingRussia for all it is worth -- weapons, oil, or acquiescence in China'sexpanding influence in Central Asia. Under Vladimir Putin, Russiabecame more practical in its relations with China than it had beenunder Boris Yeltsin, in the 1990s. Moscow has made sure to trade itssupport for China's intransigent policies toward Taiwan, Tibet, andXinjiang for Beijing's endorsement of Russia's heavy-handed approach tocombating domestic instability in Chechnya and the North Caucasus. Butthe deal remains uneven. Moscow's closer ties with Beijing, meanwhile,have not increased its leverage with Washington one iota. By rejectingthe role of junior partner to the United States, Russia has, perhapsunintentionally, become China's junior partner -- an arrangement,furthermore, that will last only as long as it is convenient forBeijing. Lo concludes, "China's rise as the next global superpowerthreatens Russia, not with the military or demographic invasion manyfear, but with progressive displacement to the periphery ofinternational decision making."
One should not forget China's many vulnerabilities, nor Russia'snumerous foreign policy achievements over the last decade. After theabject humiliation of the 1990s, the sovereignty of the Russian statehas been restored -- no longer can foreign capitals dictate Russianpolicy or the appointments of government officials. Russia's annual GDPhas soared from a low of $200 billion under Yeltsin to around $1.6trillion today (a turnabout in which China's insatiable demand forglobal commodities and manufactures has played an enormous role).Russia enjoys strong relations with France, Germany, and Italy andcultivates these bilateral ties in Europe in order to blunt thecollective power of the EU. Its European partners compete with oneanother for Moscow's favor. At the same time, Russia has -- from itspoint of view at least -- demonstrated anew its influence in the formerSoviet republics.
But despite its revival, Russia, in contrast to China, remainsunable to figure out how to benefit from the immovable fact of U.S.power and wealth. Under the Obama administration, the United States hasstopped -- for the time being -- approaching Russia as a state to bereformed or disciplined. But a softening in tone cannot make up for thefact that the U.S.-Russian relationship lacks the kind of deepcommercial basis that undergirds U.S.-Chinese ties. Although aninterest in both Russia and the United States in renewed arms controlnegotiations may help restart bilateral relations, such gestures are nosubstitute for the kind of economic interdependence Washington has withBeijing.
The ultimate stumbling block between Russia and the United States --and what differentiates China from Russia from the United States'perspective -- is the clash over influence in the former Sovietrepublics. Two factors have led to this clash. The first is that Moscowhas lost its empire yet will not relinquish its assertion of"privileged interests" in Georgia, Ukraine, and the other former Sovietrepublics. Russia's influence in the former Soviet territories -- whichremained strong even during Russia's perceived weakness in the 1990s --has only grown. This reality, moreover, is an outgrowth not of militaryoccupation or of Russia's clumsy bullying but of mutual interestsforged through economic ties.
The second factor is that the United States will not cease to viewthese lands in terms of promoting or defending democracy, even underthe Obama administration's more pragmatic foreign policy. Compare, forexample, the relatively small role Tibet plays in U.S.-Chineserelations with the disproportionate hold that now-independent countriessuch as Georgia or Ukraine have on U.S.-Russian relations. ForWashington to appear to abandon the nominal democracies living inRussia's shadow for the sake of more constructive relations with Russiais politically impossible. No matter how badly those countriesmisgovern themselves or provoke Russia, a withdrawal of U.S. supportwould be an abandonment of one of the central tenets of U.S. policytoward the region since the end of the Cold War.
The upshot is that Russia and the United States are left withsomething of a paradox. Although Washington can refuse to defer toRussia's claim of "privileged interests" in the former Soviet states,it cannot undo the fact that such a Russian sphere of influence doesexist, extending to property ownership, business and intelligence ties,television programming, and the Internet. Moscow, meanwhile, cannothope to both claim its interests in its neighbors and emulate China'sapproach of accepting the role of junior partner to the United Statesfor practical benefit.
This suggests that "the new geopolitics" Lo promises to illuminateare not so new, after all. As Russia pursues the chimera of amultipolar world, the United States pursues the delusion of nearlylimitless NATO expansion. And in the process, both unwittingly conspireto put Russia in China's pocket.
THE TRIANGLE TIPS OVER
Lo's book inspires three broad observations. First, although Russiahas been known as the world power that straddles Asia and Europe, todayit is China that has emerged as the force to be reckoned with on bothcontinents. Russia's Pacific coast serves not as a gateway to Asia --as San Francisco and Los Angeles do in the United States -- but as anatural geographic limit. At the same time, China, as the dominantpower in East Asia, denies Russia a significant say in the region.
Russia's failure to become an East Asian power over the past severalcenturies is amplified by emigration from Russia's Far East, where thepopulation has shrunk from a peak of around ten million in the Sovietperiod to around 6.5 million today. Meanwhile, the population ofChina's three northeastern provinces directly across the Russian borderis estimated at 108 million and growing. As Dmitry Rogozin, nowRussia's ambassador to NATO, quipped on Russian radio in 2005, theChinese are crossing the border "in small groups of five million."Actually, as Lo indicates, the number of Chinese residents in Russia --mostly laborers and petty traders -- is probably only between 200,000and 400,000. Yet Rogozin's quote reflects domestic anxieties aboutRussia's weak footprint in Asia, a problem for which Russia has nodiscernible strategy. And on Russia's western border, China's relationswith Europe are at least good as Russia's. In other words, Russia'sbluff of maintaining an influential presence in Asia is becoming anever more pronounced strategic weakness.
Second, not only has China shifted its strategic alliance from theSoviet Union to the United States; it has learned how to have its cakeand eat it, too. China manages to preserve relations with its Cold Warpatron, Russia, while hitching its growth to the world's currenthegemon, the United States. From 1949 until the Sino-Soviet split inthe 1960s, China was an eager junior partner to the Soviet Union,slavishly imitating the Stalinist developmental model. In 1972, thecourting of Mao Zedong by Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger opened up aglobal option for China that Mao's successors would later exploit.Under Deng Xiaoping, who in 1979 became the first Chinese Communistleader to visit the United States, China began to forge its de factostrategic alliance with the United States. Then, under Jiang Zemin, apost-1991 rapprochement with Russia became a major additionalinstrument for Beijing. It is as if China went to the prom with onepartner, Russia, went home with another, the United States, and thenmarried the latter while wooing its jilted original date as a mistress.
Third, although the Soviet Union ultimately capitulated to theUnited States in the Cold War, Russia today does not feel compelled tosimilarly bow down to the United States. Such a proud stance may notoffer many rewards for Russia, but it does confront the United Stateswith some difficult policy questions. Simply put, if Moscow's fantasyis multipolarity, Washington's own delusion has been the near-limitlessexpansion of NATO. That game, however, is exhausted. For years, thecogent argument against continued NATO expansion was not that it wouldanger the Russians -- after the Soviet collapse, the Russians weregoing to emerge angry regardless. Rather, the problem was that thebigger NATO became, the weaker it got. Poland agreed to install Patriotmissile interceptors -- a U.S. and not a NATO missile defense system --only because the United States provided Poland, a member of NATO, witha security guarantee above and beyond that offered by the NATO charter.What, then, is NATO for? Russia will never join, and for all itshistoric achievements, NATO is not up to solving the contemporarysecurity dilemmas of Europe, such as those linked to energy, migration,and terrorism.
Russia has recovered from its moment of post-Soviet weakness butnonetheless remains a regional power that acts like a globalsuperpower. China, on the other hand, has been transformed into aglobal superpower but still mostly acts like a regional power.Meanwhile, the United States is still busy trying to consolidate itstriumph in the Cold War 18 years on. Recently, many people in Russiaand the United States have begun to speak of a "new Cold War." Thisidea, however, is doubly wrong -- wrong because Russia, a regionalpower, cannot hope to mount a global challenge to the United States,and wrong because the old Cold War tilting never went away, with thebattleground merely having been downsized, shifting from the wholeglobe to Kiev and Tbilisi.
There are domestic advantages for the Russian regime in continuingto talk of a new Cold War. But what does a preoccupation with thesupposed Russian menace do for the United States? And alternatively,what would the United States gain from resetting U.S.-Russianrelations? At the moment, the most important U.S. policy questions aredomestic, not foreign, and Russia will be of little help in solvingthem. Russia has no role to play in reforming the U.S. health-caresystem -- whose cost structure is the single greatest threat to U.S.power and prosperity -- nor can it help fix the crumbling U.S.retirement system. If the United States were to imitate China andindulge Russia in its fantasy about its own global relevance, it wouldnot realize the same kind of concrete benefits the Chinese get. On theinternational front, although many in Washington see Moscow as Tehran'smain backer -- even though China has deeper commercial ties to Iran --Russia does not have the leverage over Iran to forestall thedevelopment of that country's nuclear weapons program.
The overall importance of Russia for the United States, then, iswidely exaggerated. There is one crucial exception, however, an area inwhich Russia's power has not depreciated: in Europe, Russia remains adominant force, and its strategic weight in the region is reason alonefor the United States to pursue better bilateral relations. During theCrimean War of 1853-56, Lord Palmerston, the British prime minister,fantasized that "the best and most effectual security for the futurepeace of Europe would be the severance from Russia of some of thefrontier territories acquired by her in later times, Georgia,Circassia, the Crimea, Bessarabia, Poland and Finland. . . . She wouldstill remain an enormous power, but far less advantageously posted foraggression on her neighbors." This flight of imagination has sincebecome reality, and then some. But still, Russia remains a regionalforce. Indulging the claims that Russia's recent revival is solelyattributable to oil -- a code word for "luck" -- or that Russia'sdemographic problems will make the country essentially vanish cannotalter the fact that enduring security in Europe cannot be had withoutRussia's cooperation or in opposition to Russia. An expanded NATO,meanwhile, is not providing the enduring security it once promised. Itis only a matter of time before a crisis, perhaps on the territory of aformer Soviet republic and now NATO member, exposes NATO's mutualdefense pact as wholly inoperative.
There is another reason the United States should care about Russia:because China does. As Lo writes, "China will become steadily (ifcautiously) more assertive, initially in East Asia and Central Asia,but eventually across much of Eurasia." In other words, even under astrategy of a peaceful rise, China will increasingly force the UnitedStates to accommodate Chinese power. China's development of ablue-water navy recalls the rise of the German navy in the years beforeWorld War I, a process that unnerved the United Kingdom, then theworld's great power. It seems that China is already trying torecalibrate the balance of power in East Asia, as evidenced by itsharassment of the Impeccable, a U.S. Navy surveillance ship,in the South China Sea in March 2009. In the event of a crisis, Chinadoes not want its thoroughly globalized economy to be vulnerable to ablockade by either the Japanese navy or the U.S. Navy, and it likelyenvisions being able to hinder U.S. access to the Taiwan Strait.Meanwhile, China is counting on the Russian navy's not rising again inEast Asia and on continued strained ties between Japan and Russia overthe disputed Kuril Islands, a few rocks in the Pacific Ocean.
In the end, there can be no resetting of U.S.-Russian relationswithout a transcending of NATO and the establishment of a new securityarchitecture in Europe. And without such a genuine reset, China willretain the upper hand, not only in its bilateral relationship withRussia but also in the strategic triangle comprising China, Russia, andthe United States. |
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