Carnegie Moscow Center
Though it serves to gain from greater engagement in the Asia-Pacific, Russia’s policy toward the region has been highly inconsistent. Why doesn’t Putin attend the East Asia Summit or participate in other important regional initiatives?
Russia clearly needs China much more than China needs Russia. China has a diversified economy, including multiple sources of hydrocarbons, and therefore Russia is definitely the dependent partner.
Russian foreign policy is so fixated on the idea of equal partnership that it has lost sight of the pragmatic tasks of how to benefit from the partnership with China most effectively and with minimal risks.
Moscow should stop thinking of the other members of the Eurasian Economic Union as junior partners. Russian and Central Asian weakness vis-à-vis China should inspire consolidation and cooperation rather than competition.
Facing sanctions from the West after the annexation of Crimea, Russia has reoriented its economy toward China. The results of the shift are mixed, but if trends continue, Moscow is likely to drift further into Beijing’s embrace. An asymmetrical interdependence is emerging, with global implications.
The growing Sino-Russian partnership is spurred not only by growing anti-Americanism, but more importantly by Russia’s quest for external economic support to keep the regime afloat in the wake of Western sanctions.
The Moscow-Beijing partnership is stalling. But Xi is winning over the Russian president’s inner circle with favorable loans and sweetheart energy deals.
Russia has finally hit on a security agenda of interest to its Asian partners. Buoyed by its success in Syria, Moscow is presenting itself as a standard-bearer in the war on Islamic terrorism and a source of cutting-edge practices for ASEAN countries that are facing this problem. The Syrian campaign is also helping to promote Russian military technology on Asian markets.
A recent memorandum of cooperation signed by Moscow and Beijing has Russians worried about Chinese “colonization” of the Far East. However, a careful analysis of the situation suggests there is little reason for Russians to fear Chinese industrial expansionism.
In the last two years the warm friendship between Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping is perhaps the only reason why large deals are still being made.