Reposting an article that was published today on War on the Rocks. Co-authored with Elizabeth Wishnick, Paul Schwartz, and Brian Waidelich.
There is widespread consensus among analysts that, although Russia and China have been moving toward closer cooperation through the entire post-Soviet era, the trend has accelerated rapidly since 2014. The specter of a Russian-Chinese partnership is deeply threatening to the United States, not only because it makes U.S. military planning more challenging, but also because it raises the possibility of two formidable adversaries joining forces to counter U.S. interests and potentially working in concert to attack U.S allies.
The strategic partnership, first established in 2001, was boosted in the mid-2010s by Russian leaders’ belief that Russia needed to seek out alternative relationships to survive its sudden confrontation with the West. China was the obvious candidate because it had a suitably large economy, was friendly to Russia, and was not planning to impose sanctions in response to the 2014 invasion of Ukraine. Xi Jinping’s rise to power also has contributed to a deepening of the partnership, as China under Xi shares President Vladimir Putin’s concern with regime security and the two leaders increasingly align on issues of global and regional security. Moreover, the two countries had a record of cooperation dating back to the early 1990s that could serve as a basis for expanded cooperation.
This article summarizes a CNA report that tested this proposition. To do so, we focused on measuring military cooperation, specifically on military diplomacy and other political aspects of the defense relationship, military-technical cooperation, and exercises and joint operations. Our goal is to provide an analysis of the dynamic of the cooperative relationship in the period since 2014, including a discussion of what the relationship allows the two partners to accomplish together that they cannot do alone, and what analysts can infer about where this bilateral relationship is headed.
To read the rest of the article, please click here.
Russian Military Reform 