May 14, 2019

A Russian-Chinese Partnership Is a Threat to U.S. Interests

Can Washington Act Before It’s Too Late?

By: Andrea Kendall-Taylor and David Shullman

Russia and China are strengthening ties across virtually every dimension of their relationship. Yet Washington is divided over what these growing ties portend. The conventional wisdom has long held that the Chinese-Russian relationship will remain distant and distrustful—that each country will keep the other at arm’s length. Observers such as the American Enterprise Institute’s Leon Aron (“Are Russia and China Really Forming an Alliance?”) cite a litany of barriers—historic mistrust, economic and military asymmetries, and lingering tensions on several foreign policy issues—that make the Chinese-Russian partnership an unnatural and unlikely one. In short, today’s skeptics argue that concerns about deepening Chinese-Russian relations are overblown and that the two powers are unlikely to enter into a formal alliance.

The conventional wisdom no longer applies. Already, the depth of relations between Beijing and Moscow has exceeded what observers would have expected just a few years ago. Moreover, the two countries acting in concert could inflict significant damage on U.S. interests even if they never form an alliance. In fact, whether Russia and China are becoming formal allies is not really the relevant question today. Rather, the questions policymakers should be asking are how deep their partnership will grow, how it will affect U.S. interests, and what Washington can do to shape its trajectory and ameliorate its negative effects on the United States and other democracies.

Read the full article in Foreign Affairs.

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