Angry Planet - Russia and China Aren’t BFFs

Episode Date: February 18, 2022

It’s been a concern lurking in the minds of America’s leaders for a long time: what if Russia and China could successfully work together against the United States?A combined Russo-China empire is the stuff of science fiction, perhaps, but what’s the reality today? What goals do they share and how well can they work together? And how does that cooperation affect the potential war in Ukraine?To help us understand this situation we have Andrew Radin, who is a political scientist at the RAND Corporation. He researches European security, NATO, and Russia’s foreign and security policy.Also joining me is Andrew Scobel.  is a distinguished fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace, an adjunct political scientist at the RAND Corporation and an adjunct professor at the Georgetown School of Foreign Service.They both worked on a RAND report called: China-Russia Cooperation Determining Factors, Future Trajectories, Implications for the United StatesYou can listen to Angry Planet on iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play or follow our RSS directly. Our website is angryplanetpod.com. You can reach us on our Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/angryplanetpodcast/; and on Twitter: @angryplanetpod.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege.Support this show http://supporter.acast.com/warcollege. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Love this podcast. Support this show through the ACAST supporter feature. It's up to you how much you give, and there's no regular commitment. Just click the link in the show description to support now. People live in a world with their own making. Frankly, that seems to be the problem. Welcome to Angry Planet. Hello and welcome to Angry Planet. I'm Jason Fields. Matthew Galt is taking his turn on sabbatical. It's been a concern lurking in the mind of America's leaders for a long time. What if Russia and China could successfully work together against the United States? A combined Russo-Chinese empire is the stuff of science fiction, perhaps, but what's the reality today? What goals do they share and how well do they work together? And how does that cooperation affect the potential war in Ukraine?

To help us understand the situation, we have Andrew Ray, who is a political scientist at the RAND Corporation. He researches European security, NATO, and Russia's foreign insecurity policy. Also joining me is Andrew Schobell, who is a distinguished fellow at the U.S. Institute of Peace, an adjunct political scientist at the RAND Corporation, and an adjunct professor at the Georgetown School of Foreign Service. They both worked on a RAND report called China-Russia cooperation, determining factors, future trajectories, implications for the United States. Thank you both so much for joining me. Thanks for having us.

Pleasure. Can we start with the basics? Have Russia and China always gotten along? Andrew Radin, can you maybe start us off? Yeah, I'll give you my perspective. And then Nusco Bell's got some good historical context. No, Russia and China have not always gotten along. I mean, I think one of the way that we understand current and future relationship, the way that we wanted to study that is to go back and look at the history of their relationship because the many trials and tribulations of when they were closely aligned in the communist period to Sino-Soviet split to a small border war. They really have covered quite a range of variation in how the two countries relate to

each other. So by looking at the history of how they've interacted, we gain some insight on the future and what the drivers of their relationship are. Andrew Schobell, do you want to go into some more examples, I guess? But if you go going back in history when there was a Russian empire and a Chinese empire, they didn't always get along. But sometimes they did. In the more recent past, as both as communist party states, they did get along for a period and actually signed a formal alliance, which eventually broke down. and they ended up fighting each other. So their history is a mix of conflict and cooperation. I think the difference today is whereas as Communist Party states, Russia, aka the Soviet Union, was the stronger party.

Fast forward to today, it's really China that's the stronger, more powerful partner. When the communist parties were getting along, what was the cause of the split? Because from an outside American perspective, Two communist states, they must have everything in common. Just sort of wondering what broke it apart. I think a number of factors. One was ideological. From a Chinese perspective, the Russians had become revisionists and betrayed the revolution. And so that was one aspect. But that was very much tied into Malzadung, the Chinese communist leader, who really felt that his ideological, theoretical, contribution was significant. And whereas initially when in 1950, when the two party states signed their treaty, Joseph Stalin was still alive. And there were tensions there between the two

leaders. And yet, Mao really revered Stalin as a veteran revolutionary and leader. And so even though there were tensions and disagreements, Mao was willing to defer. to Stalin, and of course in exchange, get lots of assistance from the Soviet Union. But then after Stalin's death and Nikita Khrushchev became the Soviet leader, that added a dimension to the tensions because now Mao saw himself as senior to Khrushchev and bristled when Khrushchev and the Soviets in the Chinese view tried to dominate the relationship. So, A bit of a bit of personal animosity and ideological dimension and then the power dynamics at play, too. One of the reasons why I asked the question is, I'm wondering, we have two very strong leaders now in Russia and China.

And I'm wondering what draws them together. Is it just pure practicality? or did they like each other? I mean, in the past, personal politics mattered. I'm curious if that's also a factor this time around. Is one of you want to jump on that? I mean, I'll give you, one of the purposes of our report was to explore the question of kind of what was the underlying drivers of the relationship in terms of power, ideology, economic, complementarity, or perceived threat from the United States.

And by looking at the changes over the past 20 years, we see power dynamics and an increased threat from the United States as motivating shifts in the two countries to develop a closer relationship. In particular, a shift in 2014 after Crimea where Russia faces sanctions and really sees the best opportunity to forge a closer relationship with China, to compromise on the price of gas. perhaps to recognize that China was going to steal military technology, but that that was sort of acceptable and within the realm of what they could work with. And Russia had very few options at that point. But is it a personality thing? I mean, I think it doesn't hurt that Putin and Xi get along. I think there is perhaps a contemporary ideological component as well

that some people have looked at that the two countries share a authoritarian, element, a desire to control their own domestic media space. And they've shared tools and techniques for that. Is that driving the relationship? Personally, I don't think so. I think it doesn't hurt. But the driver is, in my mind, the concern about the United States and the power dynamic that leads the two countries to seek cooperation where they

can and to seek mutual advantage. That would just add. There is a bromance of soul. between the two leaders. I think they genuinely like and respect each other as strong men, sort of macho authoritarian leaders who are also willing to stand up to, in their view, a domineering United States. And I think there's a, even though we, we tend to paint, I think China and Russia as being strong, powerful and threatening, whether it's, you know, on the military massing along the border with Ukraine or mounting provocations in the Taiwan

straight. My sense is that certainly the Chinese, but I think also the Russians, see themselves as weaker or vulnerable or are quite vulnerable to the United States and our allies, whether it's in the hard power realm or the soft power realm, I think they see a challenge. And so that also is pushing them to cooperate. So soft power in the sense of they see Western-style democracy and human rights as being threatening. So I think that's a powerful force driving the Chinese and the Russians to cooperate to counter-perceived the U.S. threat. In the past, these kinds of things have drawn countries together, but they've rarely lasted when you have two great powers. And it seems to me that Russia certainly is, by definition, through having

nuclear weapons and a rebuilt military, they are a great power. And China, of course, is on its upswing. Can the two, do you think, get along for the long term? Or is this just a short-term alliance? I think it'll, a lot will depend on what the nature of the perceived relationship with the United States and Europe is. The question is if the United States and Europe is no longer perceived as a mutual threat by Russia and by China, it's hard to see how that's going to change anytime soon, but let's suppose that were to change. Would China and Russia continue to have this close relationship or would they find reasons to fall out with each other? There are hindrances in the relationship. A good example is the regional politics. Russia goes out of its way to maintain

a good relationship with South Korea, with Japan. It has a long-standing defense cooperation with India. India's arrival of China that they have a conflictual relationship. There's also economic issues in the far east of illegal logging over the border in the far east of Russia. Absent the geopolitical push drawing them together, will those issues start to pull them apart? I think that's very possible. But that's a long-term question. I mean, I think from a U.S. perspective, we see U.S. policy towards Russia, you know, happening right now in Ukraine. That's not driving Russia away from China, quite the opposite.

Similarly, U.S. policy describing China as a competitor, Andrew can say more. I don't think leads China to change its approach at all. Then how close do you see Russia and China be coming? Are we talking about actually joint military cooperation in terms of putting out armies together, or is it just economic cooperation? What do you think we can expect to see going forward? Well, I think we already see a significant military cooperation and joint exercise have been going on for many years now. So there is already a significant cooperation across the board. I think both, because of both countries are reluctant to go to a full-blown military alliance, in part because they tried that many decades ago and it didn't go so well.

So I know neither Moscow or Beijing is particularly keen on that. But also, I think neither power wants to commit, you know, being trapped by an alliance. So the current alignment between the two countries works well for both of them. China can voice support for Russia, make the right noises. But if there were things were to escalate further between Russia and Ukraine, China is not obligated to militarily side with Russia. Similarly, if there were escalating tensions in the Taiwan Strait, Russia could make all the right noises, but there would be no, there would be, currently there'd be

no expectation that Russia would join China militarily. So I think there's already significant cooperation. Could it become even closer possible? But I think the interviews that the other Andrew did in Russia and the interviews that I did for this report in China suggests that while neither side is keen on making this a full-blown alliance, if things, got appreciably worse between the two countries and the United States, that possibility would always be there. The goal of taking Ukraine back into the Russian, not just sphere of influence, but almost into Russia, perhaps, and into some form, God knows what form that would take, and maybe Andrew Radin could explain what that might look like. But is there some similarity as far as both

country's view taking over Ukraine and taking back Taiwan? I mean, I love the word iridentism, which I only learned a couple of months ago. Do they both see each other's views on these countries as legitimate? I think you raised a good question. What exactly is Russia's plan for Ukraine? One difference between these two countries between Taiwan and Ukraine is Ukraine has been independent country that Russia has recognized as such for, since. the end of the Soviet Union. People sort of quote Putin or other Russians, is Ukraine a real country and you can find hesitation. But Putin's rhetoric of late has been more about Ukrainians having a similar origin being the same people, which is a little bit of a different story than

Ukraine is not a real country. They're blaming the West for how they've shaped Ukraine, all sort of a different narrative. What exactly is Putin's plan for Ukraine now? How does Putin break Ukraine from the Western orbit. That's a kind of dilemma that I think makes Putin's next move in Ukraine tricky. One thing that the invasion after 2014 did was it turned a society that had been quite closely integrated with Russia. The vast majority of people in Ukraine are basically bilingual, right? You can find people who just speak Russian or just speak Ukrainian, but most people you run into are basically bilingual. And Ukraine integration with Russia has really, diminish. You had many people whose primary language is Russia who are now, you know, ardent Ukrainian

nationalists in Kiev, for example. So how would a Russian invasion change that trajectory for Ukraine? That's going to be a tough thing to figure out. But what's the governance structure following some sort of Russian military action that's sustainable? All things that we really have no idea how they would work or how they could work. One fact that I think is still true, Andrew can confirmed is I don't think China has recognized Russia's annexation of Crimea. So that's a indication of how China is perhaps not willing to take diplomatic risk on Russia's behalf. And I think that is a sign that their diplomatic approach does not always align, right? They have basically a closely aligned policy on a country like North Korea, but there are other

crises and examples in the world where they don't. they could use the conflict as a way to provide mutually reinforcing diplomatic fires, but they could also see ways that their policies don't align. And I don't think it's a foregone conclusion that Russia's actions on Ukraine will actually provide China with more legitimacy or anything else concerning Taiwan. But Andrew will provide one. I think that's right. And even though I think Putin and Xi would insist they are not emperors,

I think they do have a imperial outlook in the sense that both Russia and China were once empires, and Russia, of course, more in the modern era as the Soviet empire. And you combine that with a strong ethnic dimension. It really colors their respective views to territories populated by Slavic or Han Chinese peoples. And so the term you used, iridentism, I think is quite appropriate. So there are similarities in their outlooks and approaches, or parallels at least.

But as Andrew Raiden pointed out, there were some noteworthy differences in how Russia's looked at Russian's approach to Ukraine and China's approach to Taiwan. All right, angry plaintiff. Listeners, we're going to pause there for a break. We will be right back. Thank you for sticking around. We are back on Angry Planet. Another thing in your report that stuck out to me, and I wondered if it had changed dramatically,

you say that Chinese and Russian power will continue to approach but not exceed U.S. power through 2022. Do you think things have actually turned out that way? We've spoken with a lot of people on this podcast to talk about just how powerful China has become and how Russia has restructured its own military. How strong are they at this point? Andrew Radin, do you want to at least talk about how strong Russia has become? Yeah, and I can talk a little bit about our metric for aggregate power. One of the contributions that I think is important from our work is to provide,

among all of the other literature out there, a metric for evaluating aggregate power. We use a measure of military power, basically identifying key military systems that are out there and seeing how of the three countries who has the most. How does that a relative share change over time? We have a measure of economic power, which is a measure of total size times efficiency. So GDP times GDP per capita. And then we have a technology index of some different measures. Based on when we collected the data, what you said was the trajectory, China and Russia would approach. but not exceed the United States by the current year.

Unfortunately, we haven't had the opportunity to update that. I hope we will in the future. But my guess is that while there has been sort of movement along that dimension, a lot has changed with COVID, perhaps. I'm not sure that it's going to be as demonstrative in China and Russia's favor, as many would fear. Russia certainly has had the opportunity to modernize many of its systems, but so is the United States.

One factor that we didn't have the opportunity to consider is the power of U.S. allies. What does the Europeans bring to bear? The Europeans have been shifting their own policies towards competition with China. How does that play out? Similarly, the Allies and partners in the Indo-Pacific. So I wouldn't count the West out on aggregate power yet. For NATO, which you just mentioned, Andrew Radin, can Europe actually contribute very much at this point? I mean, if, let's say Russia does somehow take Ukraine, whatever that means, if they keep their troops in Belarus, which is also a concern, can NATO, especially the countries on the border with Russia and Belarus, is there any chance that they can actually protect themselves at this point? Or would we be able to get there fast enough? Or is that so wild at this point that it doesn't even matter?

Yeah, it's a good question. Colleagues to my David Scobel and Michael Johnson, Schlepeg and Johnson, did a study a long time ago arguing that from Rand's war gaming, the Russians could seize the Baltic states with a short-notice attack absent a major reinforcement by U.S. forces. There have been some significant changes to the force posture, and hence forward presence, battalions in the Baltic states, rotational U.S. forces, increasing basing in Poland. Recently there's been announced some other changes. Does any of this change

the basic fact that the Eastern European countries are a lot closer to Russia than they are to the United States, and therefore Russia has a time space advantage? They don't. Fundamentally, that still exists. what I would say is that if you look at Russian interests, as we've interpreted them through our research, and you look at how Russia has stationed its military forces where they've chosen to modernize, indeed the current Russian force posture that exists around Ukraine, I think one can conclude that the focus of Russian interests are on Ukraine, that Russia understands Article 5, the commitment by NATO states to come to each other's defense. Russia has no great desire to start war with the United States.

They understand just as well as the United States that back could escalate to a very bad place. So Russia's focus seems to quite clearly be around Ukraine. Belarus as well, they're doing exercises there. I think the United States has taken action to reassure NATO countries as they did in 2014 with sort of additional presence and activities. That seems to me to be a precautionary measure. that's not connected to some sort of imminent threat of a Russian attack against NATO, which I hope everyone would see as crazy. But a Russian attack against Ukraine also seems a little bit crazy.

So one never knows. Is China willing to buy just an awful lot of Russian gas or other Russian products in order to help keep Russia float against sanctions that would very well. be coming after any kind of invasion of Ukraine? It's a very real politic relationship. I mean, there's some friendship there and warmth between top leaders and in a sense that their alignment is enduring. But this is about practical, you know, national interests and what's in it for China. What's in it for China is getting, getting energy resources at reliable, close, at reasonable prices. And the Chinese, 2014, most people in our report have identified that as a pivotal year. And that's when Russia, I mean, literally Putin, hopped on a plane and flew to China and said,

we're happy to sell you energy and we will give you a really good rate. Because up until 2014, the Chinese said, but yes, we're interested in buying from you, but let's talk price. And the Russians said, yeah, we'll give you the European price. And the Chinese said, no, thank you. So it's, you know, in such a situation that you described, Jason, there'd be, I think that the Chinese would be, consider that they have leverage. And yeah, we'll help you, Russia, but what do we get? So it's a friendly relationship, but it's based on cold, real politic calculation. And China has been facing something of an energy crisis recently, is that right? I mean, with some questions about their coal production, if I understand this.

And it just seems like that might make any sort of gas alliance, energy alliance with Russia that much more appealing. There's definitely economic complementarity, as I think I report underscores. So, yes, there is very useful to Russia right now. And certainly it could be even more useful or more important to loom logic. if there are tensions escalate with Europe and the U.S. Andrew Radin, what do you see as happening next? It's a fun question, and I'm sure you feel 100% confident in whatever you say. What do you think?

Yeah, will Russia launch a large-scale military operation against Ukraine? Could be Wednesday, right? Call me skeptical. My read of Russia's interests and their decisions, making in the past make me believe that they would not launch a large-scale military operation against Ukraine. The costs are simply too high. Not only in terms of sanctions, in terms of refugees and casualties, Russia, I've argued in the past, has been limited by the public opinion about Ukrainians. Russians like Ukrainians. Everyone knows Ukrainians. They're closely connected

societies. And so that I've argued is the reason why Russia denied the presence of Russian military in Ukraine in 2014, 2015. Maybe that's changed a little bit. I don't think it's changed a lot. I'm not the only one who thinks that, right? If you read some of the most prominent Russian foreign policy analysts, Russian global affairs, Karganov, Lukian, other of these guys, they all say we can't see a Russian attack against Ukraine. It doesn't make sense. That being said, there's many good reasons to think that it's hard for Putin to de-escalate at this point. And that while we've seen a pattern so far, it could change. Putin, there's a lot of Russian military presence around Ukraine. Why is it there? There are signs that it's increasing. It's expensive to keep them there.

All these things, as well as statements by the U.S. government and others, make one think that the risk of war is quite present. I guess I don't quite know how to square these two competing factors of what we see now versus what we've seen in the past. To your question of what's our confidence, I guess my confidence is I don't think it's going to be what we expect. What we've seen in Crimea or Syria, all these things make me believe that we don't usually have a good sense of what Putin's next move is, and I doubt we do now. Any final thoughts from you, Mr. Scobel? Just that the alignment current alignment between Russia and China, it's unlikely to morph into a full-blown alliance, but there are good reasons for believing that this alignment between Moscow and Beijing is fairly

robust and will continue into the future. I think there are two fundamental reasons why it's in neither country's interests to see the relationship deteriorate for any reason, such as a disagreement over Ukraine or Taiwan or the price of liquidified gas. And that is both countries, are partners with heft. They're both nuclear powers. They're both prone five members. And so that's really important. The second reason is a good relationship or a cordial relationship between the two countries.

It means that their respective backdoors are protected. They share a long border. And one thing they don't need to worry about in today's world is instability or military challenges along their respective borders. So there's a baseline for cooperation between the two countries. And I don't think, even though it's not something that most people in Washington, you know, think about, it's certainly in the back of the minds of leaders in Moscow and Beijing. Andrews Radin and Scopel, thank you so much for joining us today.

Thank you. Thanks for having us. It's great to hear. That's all for this weekend. Angry Planet listeners. As always, Angry Planet is me, Matthew Galt, Jason Fields, and Kevin O'Dell was created by myself and Jason Fields. If you like the show, Angry Planet Pod.com or Angry Planet.com, where you can get commercial-free versions of the mainline show and two bonus episodes a month. The most recent bonus was about Russian mercenaries working in Africa. Some have been recalled to Ukraine and other parts of Eastern Europe recently. It's a good episode. Should go check. it out at angry planet.substack.com. We will be back next week with another conversation about conflict on an angry planet. Stay safe.

Until then.