【明報文章】Over the past few months the United States has engaged Russia diplomatically to produce rapprochement over a range of issues that troubled both countries. Relations between Moscow and Washington has been nosediving for over a decade since 2014 when Russia annexed the Crimean Peninsula. After the war in Ukraine began in 2022 tensions ran high and it seemed implausible that the two powers would have strived to achieve mutual compromise. This scenario all the more unrealistic as any move by Washington to reach out to Moscow would have found its European allies sidelined and disgruntled.
Yet, past few months proved that a rapprochement between Washington and Moscow is not so impossible. The driving forces behind these attempts are multiple, but for the United States it is all about its long-time geopolitical objective of shifting its attention away from the European and Middle Eastern theaters to the Indo-Pacific region. The goal is to compete with China whose power has grown exponentially over the past decade and Washington feels it might be overtaken militarily both on land and at sea.
Competing and containing China, however, would not be possible with having a completely estranged Russia. Parts of the United States’ political establishment always harbored the idea of normalizing relations with Russia in order to pressure China. Yet, analysts and scholars in the West powerfully argue how America’s efforts are unlikely to succeed. One of the arguments is that Russia and China view the United States as their major geopolitical competitor. Beijing and Moscow also do not share the kind of tensions and disagreements that characterized the Sino-Soviet relations in the Cold War period.
Back then the Soviet Union and China geopolitically were on opposing sides. Both had large population, territory and nuclear weapons. Both were ambitious countries bent on increasing their international weight. Moscow often looked down on Beijing and the latter did not like it and resisted as much as it could. The two even fought a brief war on their common border. This meant that disagreements ran high, and the background was favorable for the United States to make a move in the 1970s to build closer ties with China to the detriment of the Soviet Union. Surely, it was not the US-China rapprochement that ended the Soviet Union, but the move did indeed put significant pressure upon Moscow in the 1980s.
It was not only the Soviet factor that motivated Washington and Beijing in the Cold War era. Indeed, it was all also about trade: China was gradually opening up, while the United States eagerly sought new untapped markets; China needed technology and investments, while the US wanted a cheap working force. It all worked well then, but does similar dynamic play out presently between Russia and the United States so that the latter could oppose China more confidently?
Nowadays China and Russia are true partners. They have their own share of disagreements but those are outweighed by advantages of mutual cooperation. Moreover, neither Russia nor the United States could offer each other in the way Beijing and Washington did in the 1970s. Moreover, China in the Cold War did not demand something spectacularly uncomfortable for the United States. Russia, on the contrary, to limit its cooperation with China, could ask much from Washington. It could be the whole of Ukraine in one form or another and near-exclusive influence over the South Caucasus and Central Asia. But more uncomfortably for the United States, Russia has also hinted at expecting Washington to pull out militarily of eastern Europe altogether. These demands for a veritable sphere of influence could eventually turn out to be unpalatable for American policy-makers.
Yet, there is one area where the United States could indeed hope for some sort of rapprochement with Russia. The latter’s foreign policy has been heavily tilted toward Asia since 2022. If before the war in Ukraine, Russian policy makers were able to balance their ties between the West and Asia, now a heavy emphasis on Asia is prevalent in Moscow. While economically this might be beneficial, Russian politicians and analysts have occasionally argued in favor of a more balanced approach. This could serve as a basis for better relations between Moscow and Washington, but when it comes to attempts to peel off Russia of China, as argued above, there are few comparisons with the Cold War era. In fact, the opposite is true – Russia and China are quite comfortable with their bilateral relations.
Emil Avdaliani is a professor of international relations at the European University in Tbilisi, Georgia, and a scholar of Silk Roads. He can be reached on Twitter/X at @emilavdaliani.
