Domestic Drivers Influencing Russia-China Alignment: Implications for Challenging the West

The status and outlook of the China-Russia relationship have significant implications for the Eurasian region and global order. The United States, and increasingly its allies and partners, view the two powers as determined to undermine the interests of what is often labeled as "the West" and the U.S.-led "liberal world order." The two authoritarian powers work ever more closely together in seeking the expansion of their power and influence in both their respective priority spheres of influence—China in Asia, and Russia in Europe and the Middle East—and elsewhere in the world. The Chinese-Russian efforts vary and reflect particular interests for each power, but usually these activities have a common dimension in seeking to weaken the power and influence of the United States and the many elements of the international order it supports that impede these states' ambitions.

Against this background, accurately and fully assessing the driving forces behind the development and consequences of Chinese and Russian behaviors challenging the prevailing order is very important. Foreign assessments of the drivers for China are undergoing change as U.S. policymakers and those of associated states came late in appreciating the challenges posed by China's behavior coming at their countries' expense. U.S. and other policymakers also may be underestimating Russia's domestic drivers and capacities to challenge and counter U.S. interests and influence.

Kathryn Stoner's comprehensive assessment in Russia Resurrected: Its Power and Purpose in a New Global Order of Russian military, economic, and political capacities involves careful considerations of hard, soft, and so-called sharp power and provides an important corrective for those tending to underestimate Russian strength. James Reilly likewise provides in Orchestration: China's Economic Statecraft Across Asia and Europe an in-depth analysis of the paramount method China uses to spread influence abroad—employing party-state control of access to Chinese money, what he calls Chinese economic statecraft, to become a leading power in Asia and the world. Both specialists see the patterns of the two powers' behavior, deemed very challenging in the West, as deeply rooted in domestic determinants and practices and unlikely to change.

Examining Stoner's assessment, the reader sees the Putin regime's success in effectively developing oil, gas, and other resources and competently managing the Russian economy to sustain growth sufficient to allow impressive improvement of military capacities. Putin's regime has also made increasingly sophisticated use of cyber intrusions and manipulations and other sharp-power means to counter, influence, and control international opponents. These advances are most significant regarding Russian nuclear and conventional weapons development and in the overall readiness of a much more professional and better trained military force. Robust autocratic political control to the advantage of Putin and his colleagues effectively neutralizes political opposition. Social welfare gaps and adverse demographic trends have not translated into societal discontent undermining the regime. Indeed, a key argument of the book is that Putin is driven to develop military and other capacities and to use them to take decisive actions in defense of Russian and regime interests in world affairs as a means to sustain his support among the Russian people. The pattern of behavior seems to be working well, suggesting its durability at least until Putin leaves the scene.

What this means for Russia's relations with China in a period of acute U.S. rivalry with both states seems obvious and positive for the Russia-China relationship. In real power terms, Beijing is in the dominant position with an economy ten times the size of Russia's. Yet Beijing remains very intertwined with and dependent on the United States and the West economically, and it seeks to avoid serious disruption in those relationships that might come from strongly aggressive actions confronting U.S. and Western interests. With much less to lose economically, Moscow instead takes on these tasks in challenging the West, indirectly benefiting Chinese interest in weakening U.S. and allied capacities.

The more confident Russia depicted by Stoner is less dependent on support from China in dealing with Western sanctions and other pressures. Such...