China and Russia Align Against U.S

0 Comments | Insight on the News, August 13, 2001 | by Kenneth R. Timmerman

But for Menges, such views amount to "wishful assumptions." China and Russia "have come to share the same two-track policy toward the U.S.," he tells Insight. "This involves maintaining a sense of normalcy and dialogue so that the U.S. and other democracies will continue providing China and Russia with vitally needed economic benefits while at the same time using mostly political and covert means to oppose the U.S. in the domain of security issues and to divide the U.S. from its allies. This was the preferred KGB approach during Putin's years [1975-1991] and this has been China's approach during the Jiang Zemin years [1993 to the present]."

When the Sino-Russian pact was first announced during a Yeltsin-Jiang summit in Beijing in December 1999, the mainstream U.S. press covered it as a kind of Twilight of the Titans. "Russia, a faltering world power, and China, an aspiring one, are united in fear of American domination," wrote New York Times correspondent Erik Eckholm. The pact merely was an expression of their relative weakness, and the United States' relative strength. "Much ado about nothing," as one Bush-administration NSC official calls it.

But during the last year, Putin and Jiang have met no fewer than eight times to nail down various aspects of their newfound alliance, including the details of a vast array of new Russian arms sales.

For Arthur Waldron, a China scholar at the University of Pennsylvania, the Sino-Russian pact may be a marriage of convenience, as the administration contends, but if so, it is reminiscent of the Axis alliance between Germany and Italy during World War II. "Hitler despised Mussolini, there was no coordination and there were deep conflicts simmering just beneath the surface. Ultimately, the Axis did fall apart and we did defeat them, but they caused us a lot of trouble before they were through."

Waldron believes, as do some analysts within the Bush administration, that it is in the interests of the United States to split Russia and China apart. "We should do this not by making concessions," Waldron says, "but by showing them we will penalize them for this sort of cooperation." Waldron believes that Bush's clear statement in April that the United States would do "whatever it took to help Taiwan defend herself" in the event of a Chinese attack actually helped improve the U.S.-Chinese relationship because it drew a clear red line. "As long as the United States is maintaining a robust position with respect to its allies, this will have a beneficial effect on the Chinese leadership, who will look for ways to improve the relationship with the U.S.," Waldron tells Insight.

This latest Sino-Russian agreement has been a decade in the works, say intelligence specialists. Military and intelligence officials traveled back and forth between Moscow and Beijing with increasing frequency starting in 1994 with a draft agreement outlined by outgoing Russian President Yeltsin and Jiang in December 1999.

According to Russian researcher Alexander V. Nemets, who has been tracking the Russia-China relationship, the two leaders signed documents at that time committing Russia to sell $15 billion to $20 billion in new weaponry and military technology to China during the next five years and to work with China to construct a common missile- and air-defense barrier, a move clearly aimed at deterring any retaliatory U.S. or NATO attack. "China and Russia are both deeply anti-Western, and this is what has sparked their cooperation," Nemets tells Insight.