Secretary of Defense
Russia and China have studied the end of the Cold War and how the US
ultimately defeated the USSR by bankrupting it.
According to Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi and
Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation Nikolai Platonovich
Patrushev, 2013 was “a year of harvest” for Sino-Russian relations. It was also
a year of new lows for the countries’ relations with the West — and from the
look of it, things could get worse in 2014.
Much has been said in recent years about how two
difficult wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a sagging economy cut the U.S. at
the knees and created space for China. During this same period, China was
enjoying double-digit economic growth and a relatively stable security
environment, emerging as a hegemon in Asia. As the U.S. was struggling to
extricate itself from, and was pouring billions of dollars into, unwinnable
wars, Beijing was reaping the benefits of its “peaceful rise” by building its
economy, resolving longstanding territorial disputes with neighbors,
consolidating ties with smaller powers within the region, and neutralizing
Taiwan as a potential source of armed conflict.
Thus, when China began flexing its muscles in the East
and South China Seas, Beijing was not cowed by the U.S. “pivot,” or
“rebalancing,” to Asia. For one thing, it was apparent that Washington’s
renewed interest in East Asia would not — at least not in the medium term — be
accompanied by a willingness to allocate sufficient capital and resources to
make the pivot a credible counter to China. As Beijing and many U.S. defense
experts saw it, the rebalancing was more a wish list and academic exercise than
an actual strategy, let alone one that was anywhere near implementation. That
is the reason why Beijing suffered little consequences when it threatened to
alter the status quo within the region, such as with the November 23
declaration of its extended Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) in the East
China Sea. (There is every reason to believe that a credible U.S. pivot to Asia
would have deterred Beijing, which ostensibly does not seek war at this point
in time, from embarking on such adventurism.)
Now by working together, China and Russia could make
sure that the U.S. rebalance to Asia, if it ever materializes, remains a
diluted, and therefore ineffective, affair. They could do so by enlarging the
spatial scope of U.S. security responsibilities and further stretching its
military’s diminished resources. A few years ago, Bobo Lo, an associate fellow
at Chatham House, proposed the term “axis of convenience” to describe the
relationship between China and Russia. Five years after the publication of his
book of the same title, the relationship has never been more convenient. For
the time being at least, Beijing and Moscow appear to have set their own
territorial disputes aside, and by cooperating at the strategic level they are
hoping to force the U.S. out of Asia altogether.
A substantial amount of attention has been paid to
China’s Anti-Access/Area Denial (A2/AD) strategy, with the DF-21D anti-ship
ballistic missile (ASBM) serving as one of its principal components, and to
which we can now perhaps add the ADIZ. Less, however, has been said of Russia’s
ongoing efforts to keep the U.S. out of its backyard. It is interesting to note
that two weeks after China’s ADIZ announcement, Russian President Vladimir
Putin, meeting top military officers, stated that Russia would bolster its
presence in the potentially resource-rich Arctic. Earlier that month and a
little more than a week after China sprung its ADIZ surprise, the Russian navy
announced that the Arctic would be its priority in 2014. As The Diplomat
reported earlier this month, Russia is currently deploying aerospace defense
and electronic warfare units to the area, and is now building a comprehensive
early-warning missile radar system near Vorkuta in the extreme north, among
other developments.
The growing presence of the Russian military in the
Arctic — which stands to turn into a region of strategic importance — will
surely prompt a countervailing response from the U.S. (it has already indicated
plans to increase its foothold in the region). However, doing so — let’s call
it a “rebalancing to the Arctic” — would further strain the U.S. military
budget and thereby take resources away from the “pivot” to Asia.
Simultaneously, the Russian military confirmed on
December 16 that it had deployed nuclear-capable Iskander-M tactical ballistic
missile systems, with a range of approximately 400km, into its Baltic exclave
of Kaliningrad and along its border with NATO members Poland, Estonia, Latvia,
and Lithuania. The news followed reports the previous weekend that satellite
imagery had unveiled the presence of 10 such launchers in the exclave. Although
President Putin denied the deployment on December 19, Russia has shown every
indication that it seeks to expand its operations in its Western Military
District, which aside from Kaliningrad also includes much of the European part
of Russia.
There are questions over whether Washington can afford
to substantially increase defense spending without bankrupting the country. It
will find itself unable to counter both a resurgent China in East and Southeast
Asia, where it has been speculated that China could eventually announce a
second ADIZ, and a more muscular Russian presence in the Arctic and near the
Baltic states. Either the U.S. will focus on one, or it will attempt to meet
all contingencies, but do so with less-than optimal resources. With Washington
feeling it has little choice but to choose the latter course of action, China
and Russia will both benefit by confronting a diffuse and distracted opponent
or succeed in breaking the U.S.’s back by forcing it to overspend — unless
other countries like Japan and NATO members agree to greatly expand their
defense spending, which appears unlikely. Furthermore, there are also doubts
about whether the Japanese would agree to constitutional changes of the sort
that would allow for military burden sharing of the type envisaged here.
Whether the U.S. has a “right” to be an actor in what
Russia and China consider as their backyard is a question we’d better seek to
answer elsewhere. But what is clear is that a weakened U.S., whose ability to
meet the challenge of China’s “rise” is already very much in doubt, now seems
on the brink of facing a multi-pronged challenge from a Sino-Russian axis that,
if it is to be countered effectively, will require a number of “pivots.”
Whether Russia’s economy can sustain a military expansion on the scale
necessary to prompt a U.S. realignment is questionable, though the increasingly
authoritarian nature of its leadership means that Moscow will be far less
vulnerable than Washington to public discontent with huge defense spending in
times of austerity.
Both Russia and China have closely studied the end of
the Cold War and how the U.S. ultimately defeated the U.S.S.R. by bankrupting
it. Two decades later, it looks like Moscow and Beijing are trying to return
the favor.
J. Michael Cole
Business & Investment Opportunities
Saigon Business Corporation Pte Ltd (SBC) is incorporated
in Singapore since 1994.
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