Recent strategic shifts by China and Russia simultaneously – and paradoxically – mark closer ties, challenges to the U.S., an unequal partnership, and rivalry between them in Eurasia.
The shifts were confirmed last month. On May 8, Chinese President Xi Jinping was the guest of honor at Moscow’s Victory Parade; a few days later, on May 11, China and Russia began their first joint naval drill in the Mediterranean Sea. The ten-day exercise displayed their power and cooperation in the American-dominated Mediterranean, around which neither Russia nor China has any coastline. They were contesting America’s primacy in international waters, which connect Europe, Africa and the Middle East. Beijing signaled that China could flex its naval muscles in distant European waters, indeed in “NATO’s lake,” just as the U.S. does in the Asia-Pacific.
China and Russia have much in common. Both are authoritarian states who see the United States as a threat to their power. Both make territorial claims on neighboring countries, and maintain a diplomatic silence over each other’s ambitions over territories including Ukraine, Tibet, Japan, and the Philippines. Their penchant for saber-rattling and conquest leaves them a lonely but threatening and powerful twosome. Both are increasing military spending at a time when America and its NATO allies are cutting defense budgets. And China and Russia have much to offer each other. Both benefit from trade in national currencies. Both are members of the emerging markets group known as BRICS, the Chinese-sponsored Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). However, China’s giant economy gives it the advantage in each of these groups.
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