around the world, from the Middle East to Latin America.
More quietly yet equally if not more troubling, Russia and China have pursued systematic economic expansionism internationally—including in the West, and including in America’s backyard. Chinese and Russian state-owned firms, their subsidiaries, and shell companies operating under different names have headquarters or offices in hundreds of locations around the world, constituting what a consultant to Western defense organizations calls “the fifth theater”—economic and financial. Meanwhile, at the state level, China and Russia are busy forging economic deals around the world, whether in Africa, where the Chinese have become the continent’s largest trading partner and are leading massive infrastructure investment, or in Latin America (Monroe Doctrine be damned), where the Chinese have become the continent’s top export market and leading creditor. And the Russians have busily pursued economic and trade deals, including significant sales of military hardware to U.S. adversaries.
The Russians and Chinese are tightening their economic relationship with each other, too. In 2014, they signed a $400 billion natural-gas pipeline deal that Putin called “an epochal event” in relations between the two countries. This year, the state-owned China Railway Group announced that it would partner with Russia in constructing a high-speed rail connection between Moscow and Kazan, one of Russia’s largest cities.
No wonder Putin exulted that Russian-Chinese relations have reached a level “unprecedented in history.”1
What unites all of these efforts is a common goal: to thwart the United States and the Western alliance at every turn, providing a counterweight in the form of a more autocratic, anti-Western system of political arrangements and individual rights. We wrote The Russia-China Axis to offer readers a glimpse at how this all worked and to raise the alarm about how ill-prepared the United States seems to be to confront it. Since the first edition appeared last year, the assertiveness and sometimes outright provocation of the two partners has continued—individually, or in tandem with each other or with rogue actors—and the consequences for the United States and its allies grow graver by the day.
Yet the challenge that Russia and China present still seems largely unrecognized by our political leaders, to say nothing of the public at large. We must confront it if America is going to maintain its preeminent position in the world. That task is made incalculably more difficult by a dynamic that we have observed, and lamented, for years: Chinese and Russian aggression, assertiveness, and strategic clarity, on the one hand; and American retrenchment, lack of commitment, and strategic ineptitude, on the other. We see it across the board—whether in our wholly inadequate and uncommitted effort to fight ISIS, our refusal to engage in tough diplomacy with Iran on the nuclear deal, or in our passive and ineffective global diplomacy, with our own allies and also as regards the shrewd and determined moves that Putin and Xi Jinping are making around the world.
The bottom line is this: Russia and China know what they want, are determined and organized in how they are pursuing it, and are meeting, by and large, with substantial success in their goals. None of this can be said about the American response, let alone about any proactive American vision for leadership in the 21st century. Until this changes, it’s hard to feel optimistic. Our adversaries would be formidable on their own; working together, they cast a long shadow over the American future.
A DEEPENING, STRENGTHENING ALLIANCE
On May 17, 2015, originating from Novorissiysk on the Black Sea, the Russian and Chinese navies began weeklong joint naval exercises: Sea Cooperation 2015, as the Russian Defense Ministry billed it. Ten ships from the two countries participated, anchored by the Moskva, Russia’s Crimea-based guided-missile cruiser, which served as headquarters for the drills. The goal of the exercises was to “strengthen mutual understanding between the navies . . . regarding boosting stability, countering new challenges and threats at sea,” said Russian deputy navy commander Aleksandr Fedotenkov. “The joint drills are not aimed against third parties and are not connected with the political situation in that region,” the Russian Defense Ministry said.
Despite those disclaimers, no observer, watching the navy ships pass in tandem, could miss the message: that the Russia-China alliance, once viewed as unthinkable, continues to deepen, with profound consequences for the world. The exercises take place as Russia continues to stare down the United States and its Western allies about Moscow’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its continued destabilization of Ukraine, and as China is confronting the United States and its Asian allies in the Pacific, where Beijing’s aggressive moves against neighboring countries seem to be challenges to regional security. What better time than now, then, and what better place than the Mediterranean—on NATO’s southern perimeter—for Russian president Vladimir Putin and Chinese president Xi Jinping to advertise the strength of their growing partnership?
Sea Cooperation 2015 took place a week after Russia’s annual Victory Day ceremonies commemorating its triumph in World War II over Germany. This year marked the 70th anniversary of that historic moment, so the celebrations were grander than usual. Russian soldiers marched in period garb, and 2,000 surviving Red Army veterans of what Russians call the Great Patriotic War were bused in to Moscow for the ceremonies. But because of Putin’s aggression in Ukraine and violation of international law in annexing Crimea, no head of state from the Western democracies agreed to attend.
That was okay with Putin, though—because he had Xi sitting by his side.
The Chinese president was the most high-profile world leader in Moscow, where he joined Putin on the reviewing stand and watched not only Russian troops but a Chinese honor guard, too—which marched past the two leaders singing “Katyusha,” a Russian war ballad. Along with the troops and pageantry, Putin wheeled out an impressive new tank, the Armata, considered by some to be the Russian army’s new “secret weapon,” and a new ICBM launcher. In his Victory Day speech, Putin made sure to get a dig in at the West and at the United States in particular.
“In past decades, we have seen attempts to create a unipolar world,” Putin said, referring to what he sees as American attempts to control the affairs of other countries.
If the joint naval exercise wasn’t the largest of its kind, and the Victory Day parade mostly pageantry and symbolism, the two events nonetheless underscore the Russian-Chinese partnership, which is far more substantive, in all major categories—military cooperation, economic and trade agreements, cyber-security issues, dealings with rogue nations, and mutual support in international venues such as the United Nations. This cooperation would be concerning enough on its own to American interests and those of our allies, but independently, Russia and China are also engaged in what amount to stare-downs with the United States in critical spots in the world.
FLASHPOINTS
Russia’s aggression in Ukraine could be poised to reach a crucial stage. Troubling signs suggest that we could soon see a major Russian incursion. The Ukrainian government in Kiev has already lost more than two dozen towns to the Russian-backed separatists since early 2015. Ukraine president Petro Poroshenko has warned that 50,000 Russian troops remain massed on the Ukraine border—despite Moscow’s repeated attempts to deny aggressive intent—while some 40,000 separatists or Russian loyalists are operating inside the country. Those numbers taken together represent an increase of 50 percent from the same time in 2014.
The separatist militants have repeatedly violated the Minsk II cease-fire agreement, provoking armed confrontations and shooting at Ukrainian positions.2 The Kiev-based government in Ukraine now claims that Russia violates the cease-fire 50 to 80 times a day. Moscow’s proxies in Ukraine have shelled Avdiyivka in eastern Ukraine, a town still held by the Kiev government, and also fired on Ukrainian forces near the port of Mariupol. Moscow’s allies have brought in heavy weaponry, including tanks—again in direct violation of Minsk. Russian special forces have infiltrated Ukraine, and the Russians have maintained surface-to-air missile
