The New World Order: The Strategic Partnership of USA & China, Russia's New

Chimerica, The New World Order, A Strategic Partnership USA & China, Russia, Odd Man Out Russia Profile Weekly Experts Panel: “Chimerica’s” Challenge to Russia Introduced by Vladimir Frolov Russia Profile Print this E-mail this Send us your feedback Russia Profile Weekly Experts Panel: “Chimerica’s” Challenge to Russia, Introduced by Vladimir Frolov Chechnya: Wilder, Deadlier and Out of Control, By Roland Oliphant Russia Profile Weekly Experts Panel: A Battle of the Pipelines, Introduced by Vladimir Frolov Central Asia Carpe Diem, Comment by Oksana Antonenko Russia Profile Weekly Experts Panel: A Year after the Five-Day War Russia Profile Weekly Experts Panel: Bad Signs for Russia in the Post-Soviet Space Russia Profile Weekly Experts Panel: A Battle of the Pipelines Russia Profile Weekly Experts Panel: Will The Obama - Medvedev Commission Help Boost US-Russian Relations? Russia Profile Weekly Experts Panel: Is Obama Wading Into Russian Politics? Russia Profile Weekly Experts Panel: Obama Goes to Moscow Russia Profile Weekly Experts Panel: the Quest to Boost Russia’s Image Russia Profile Weekly Experts Panel: Farewell to the WTO Russia Profile Weekly Experts Panel: Medvedev’s “Vision Issue” in Foreign Policy Russia Profile Weekly Experts Panel: Medvedev’s Quest for Innovation Contributors: Stephen Blank, Ethan Burger Two weeks after President Barack Obama went to Moscow to reset America’s relations with Russia, he hosted Chinese President Hu Jintao in Washington to launch the United States-China strategic and economic dialogue. President Obama underscored the significance of this event by saying that the relationship between the United States and China will shape the 21st century. But the question is: where is Russia in this equation? How does the rise of China as a global partner or a peer competitor to the United States affect Russia’s interests and Russia’s trajectory as a state? Some analysts believe that this might be an understatement—the United States and China will rule the world in the 21st century in what might shape up to be a mutual-dependency alliance - a tightly integrated unit that Nigel Ferguson of Harvard University has called “Chimerica.” Indeed, there are many arguments in favor of such a scenario. China and the United States will be the two largest economies in the world in the 21st century, accounting for as much as some 40 percent of global GDP, and 50 percent of global growth. Both will be the largest military powers, as China bridges the gap in military technologies with Russia. Both will be the leaders in technological innovation, as China increasingly becomes an operating platform for some of the world’s best high-tech companies. These two economies are already highly integrated and dependent on each other in a somewhat peculiar way, with China doing most of the consumer goods manufacturing and the United States purchasing most of the Chinese low-cost goods. China has plowed enormous amounts of capital into U.S. dollar-denominated assets, allowing the United States and the world the luxury of cheap credit. It is currently the largest holder of the U.S. public debt, with over $400 billion of its hard currency reserves invested in U.S. treasuries. Although there are signs that this mutual dependency may not be sustainable in its current form as the financial crisis forces China to rely more on domestic consumption as opposed to exports to the U.S. market, and to gradually diversify its investments away from depreciating dollar assets, it is hard to argue against the idea that in the 21st century the world will be dominated by the United States and China. No other power or coalition of states will have the capabilities to shape the world like those of China and the United States. It is a matter of debate whether a world where China and the United States are dominant powers would be pi-polar, with the two powers evolving into fierce economic and even military competitors (Ferguson argues that this is where things are going), or to a large degree uni-polar, with China and the United States shaping a condominium to impose a world order that sustains peace and global growth (a scenario that James Fallows of the Atlantic Monthly suggests). Some in the United States (Zbigniew Brzezinski and Henry Kissinger, for example,) have begun to argue that the latter scenario should be the objective of the U.S. foreign policy. The strategic dialogue launched by Obama and Hu Jintao may well be the first step in this direction. The question is: where is Russia in this equation? How does the rise of China as a global partner or a peer competitor to the United States affect Russia’s interests and Russia’s trajectory as a state? The differences between the “rivalry” and the “condominium” scenarios are stark, but it is not clear whether Russia could be a beneficiary in either of them. What would Russia gain or lose were China to become a major adversary of the United States? What does it gain or lose were China to become America’s partner and ally of enormous power? Some in the United States and Russia argue that the latter needs the United States to help contain China, and thus needs a political and military alliance with the United States to help defend its sparsely populated Eastern territories. How true could this be? Many in Russia argue that China is Russia’s natural ally against U.S. hegemony, and that such an alliance should be the objective of Russia’s foreign policy. How realistic is this proposition? And what is the state of the Chinese thinking on this? Ethan S. Burger, Adjunct Professor, Georgetown University Law Center, Washington, DC: George Orwell's character Winston might construe this week’s inquiry to be whether "Oceania" should ally with "Eastasia" against "Eurasia" in the next century. Certainly, Eastasia would seem to have more to offer at the present time. Those who have read 1984 will recall the shifting alliances that occurred throughout Orwell's seminal work. Nonetheless, in my view it would be most unfortunate if the United States and China were to form a broad entente aimed against Russia. Indeed, Nigel Ferguson's views will get considerable attention because he was clever enough to coin the term "Chimerica." Fortunately, his recent works have been praiseworthy, so it is not as if he is undeserving. He is a scholar with a lot to say that is worth listening to. His analysis of the situation is probably correct, but by no means unique. Parag Khanna of the New America Foundation and others have pointed out the three poles of the international system in the 21st century—China, the European Union and the United States. Ignoring the Kremlin's sensibilities, at present Russia is part of the second world, and will remain so for the foreseeable future (Moscow is an anomaly in a country of considerable poverty, not unlike Argentina or Brazil). Russia is a state in decline dependent on the export of raw materials, having failed to diversify its economy and to modify its political system. It is a country whose population is shrinking—in a sense, it is today's "sick man of Europe," if one wants to consider it as being part of Europe. Yet one needs to be cautious not to overestimate China's ability to fulfill its potential. Anyone who believes otherwise would benefit from reading James Mann's "The China Fantasy" and Minxin Pei's "China's Trapped Transition." They might be wrong in their predictions, but I find them convincing. Personally, I believe that the United States should maintain a flexible foreign policy. The country's interests change with the passage of time. There are some countries to which the United States appears to be fraternally bound by culture, history and values -- Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom and New Zealand (some might add France, Israel, Italy, and most EU members, in fact). Of course, it was not entirely clear in the 18th century that the British and Canadians would be our "permanent" allies. The British burnt the White House to the ground and the U.S. nearly invaded Canada twice. Israel's and Italy's special status is in large part due to domestic U.S. politics, suggesting that Mexico will be part of this list in the future, as well as Japan, the Philippines, and South Korea. I think it preferable that the United States steer clear of being too closely identified with either China or Russia, even though it is hard to overlook the America's need for China to keep buying U.S. bonds and producing inexpensive inputs for the products of "U.S." corporations. The more daunting China becomes, the more likely that it will either come to dominate Russia, or force Russia to join Europe, in the sense of not merely signing certain Council of Europe conventions, but actually functioning like a COE country. Except where the United States' vital interests are stake, when formulating foreign policy Washington should first take into account the interests of the EU, and then consider the degree to which China and Russia conform their behavior to generally accepted norms in the international arena and treat their own people. I may be a bit naive, but the more responsive a country's government is to its people's needs, the more likely its interests will be compatible with the United States. Leaving aside the issues of moral relativism and whether policymakers should differentiate between the "worth" of groups of individuals and the importance of geographical regions, I would find it troubling to be "friends" with a country that violates its neighbors’ sovereignty with impunity and treats its own people as if they are not deserving of human dignity. In most respects the human rights conditions in China seem far worse than those in Russia (possibly with the exception of Chechnya). Today, the Uighurs in West Turkestan and the Tibetans in Tibet are within the borders of China, and China does not have an enviable record in observing the human and worker rights of its population when compared to Russia. But how is one to measure the situation? If most people are better off in a country, but a few are treated inhumanely, is that better than a country where the level of inhumanity is not as repugnant but more widespread? At present, China seems more respectful of its neighbors' borders and opposes anything it views as infringing on a nation's sovereignty no matter how repressive its government may be (e.g. Zimbabwe). Does this make it a more acceptable partner than Russia? Frankly, I don't know. That is why each situation needs to be examined on a case-by-case basis. Principles are usually important to uphold, but there are exceptions. It would be foolish for the United States to believe that we are again in a situation equivalent to the early 1970s and that we should play the China "card" against Russia to accomplish goals in the area of arms control. After billions of dollars were spent on armaments and millions of people killed in Vietnam, one needs to ask whether the underlying assumptions in Beijing, Hanoi, Moscow and Washington upon which policymakers operated were well-thought out. Professor Stephen Blank, the U.S. Army War College, Carlyle Barracks, PA: Russia loses either way, because it has already mismanaged its relationships with these two states. Its inveterate anti-Americanism has led it to become China's junior partner. This has only been aggravated by the economic crisis. On energy, Russia tried to play China off against Japan, and ended up with no outlet to Japan. In the end, Rosneft and Transneft had to crawl to Beijing for loans that were given in return for a knockdown price of oil, and the opening up to China of Russian energy properties (is the West a worse partner than China in this regard?). Worse yet, in a reversal of Russia's efforts to keep the Far East out of China's hands, on May 21 Dmitry Medvedev more or less admitted that unless China invested in large-scale projects in the Russian Far East, the grandiose development plans undertaken by Moscow in the past could not come to fruition. Medvedev frankly admitted that the economic development of the Far East will depend not on Russia's ties to Europe, but rather on the development of its ties with Russia's main Asia-Pacific partners. He also stressed that Russia’s regional development strategy must be coordinated with China's regional strategy of rejuvenating its old industrial base in Northeast China, e.g. the Heilongjiang province. Other officials quickly followed suit. Nikolai Patrushev, secretary of the Security Council, subsequently conceded the weaknesses of the Russian Federation, but said that Russia’s most important priorities were the development of cross-border cooperation with neighboring countries, enhancement of transit possibilities, development of infrastructure and capacities for wood processing, seafood processing, and the output of products competitive on the world market. Likewise, while liberal and other critics of the regime continued to warn about China, the government's leading spokesmen praised the Russo-Chinese relations as being at their highest point ever. The Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Rybakov actually praised Chinese investment in Central Asia for its transparency. Rybakov further claimed that “we believe that our friends and partners in Central Asia are appropriately meeting the situation and solving the task facing them in the sphere of economic and social development, using the opportunities that present themselves as a result of cooperation with China. Hence, this can only be welcomed.” Here we must remember that until now it has been virtually taken for granted that Russia fears China's economic rivalry in Central Asia. Indeed, Moscow's elite has hitherto appeared to view any gain by China (or by America, for that matter), in Central Asia with unceasing paranoia. The fact is that Russia cannot compete economically with China, and has been forced to accept Chinese investment which will be the first step in converting the Russian Far East into part of a Chinese-dominated security order in Asia. This means that Russia will come under ever greater pressure to follow China's interests in its relations with America, whether they be pro or anti-American. But those interests will not necessarily be in Russia's interests. Send us your feedback Subscribe to RP RSS

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