And it's using India and Russia to
its advantage.
Nikolas K.Gvosdes
July 11, 2015
One of China’s overriding strategic goals is to thwart the U.S. rebalance of attention and resources to the Asia-Pacific region. At the twin summits of the Brazil-Russia-India-China-South Africa forum (BRICS) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) in Ufa, Russia, President Xi Jinping presented the outlines of the triple approach that Beijing will utilize.
The first is to backstop precipitous declines in
Russian power. Chinese strategic analysts cannot help but be thrilled to have
the leading members of the U.S. defense establishment proclaim that Russia is
now the principal threat to the United States. Combined with announced cuts in
the size of the U.S. Army, this portends well for thinning out any planned
increase in the U.S. presence in the Pacific, because the focus now appears to
be on a pivot back to Europe in order to shore up the precarious eastern
frontiers of the Euro-Atlantic world. The lifeline that China has provided to
the Russian economy—not only new contracts for energy and trade deals, but also
the purchase of Russian bonds by Chinese financial institutions—has allowed the
Putin administration to blunt the impact of Western sanctions and allowed
Moscow to continue to maintain its position in Ukraine. China also benefits
from a more anti-American Russia that is important for helping to secure
China’s western territory by having Moscow guard Beijing’s backyard. Putin’s
early flirtations with creating a strategic partnership with the West—including
the post-9/11 offer of assistance to facilitate a U.S. military presence in
Central Asia—were troubling to the Chinese, who have always feared the
possibility of complete American encirclement. The Ukraine crisis has
permanently ruptured Russia’s ties to the West and pulled Moscow into a closer
relationship with Beijing.
The second is to keep India neutral. By itself, a
U.S.
pivot to Asia is insufficient to hold China in check. It requires an
effective coalition of key regional partners who are prepared to build on the
initial U.S. investment. Japan, America’s premier strategic ally in the region,
cannot fulfill these requirements on its own. India has to serve as the western
linchpin of a belt of states (including Vietnam, the Philippines and Australia)
who are prepared to work together to balance China.
India is well aware of the strategic
threat posed by China, but is also leery of being drawn in to fight
America’s battles for it in the Pacific region. Xi has worked assiduously to
engage Prime Minister Narendra Modi to try and tap down the irritants in the
Sino-Indian relationship—not only the matter of the continued territorial
disputes between both countries in the Himalayas (which led both countries into
a short border war in 1963), but also China’s support for Pakistan and
Beijing’s willingness to use its considerable economic leverage to induce
Islamabad to be more constructive concerning India’s concerns about Kashmir and
terrorist activities that emanate from Pakistan. The Chinese approach is to suggest
that New Delhi and Beijing can work together to create a comfortable modus
vivendi between both powers that does not require U.S. involvement—and to hint
that India risks having Washington drag it into conflicts that do not serve New
Delhi’s interests.
If China can start a “Shanghai process” with
India—replicating the diplomatic efforts that settled Beijing’s outstanding
border disputes with Russia and the Central Asian republics—it serves a third
purpose: convincing other Asian states with whom China has territorial and
maritime disputes that Beijing is willing to find diplomatic means to resolving
conflict—as long as the United States is kept out. In addition, part of China’s
outreach to the neighbors throughout Greater Eurasia is to convince them to hitch
their plans for growth and prosperity to the “Chinese Dream” and to connect
themselves to the new Silk Roads (both land and maritime routes) that will knit
the region together—as opposed to the American vision of a Trans-Pacific
Partnership. Via new institutions being created under the aegis of the BRICS
and SCO, as well as organizations like the Asian
Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), where China and India are the two
largest shareholders, Beijing offers to the countries of the rising Global
South the ability to route around the established institutions that remain
dominated by the Euro-Atlantic countries.
For both China and Russia, the optics of the Ufa
summit bolster their rhetoric about ongoing geopolitical shifts in the world
and enable Vladimir Putin to push back against a Western narrative that Russia
is isolated. Coming off of a successful St. Petersburg Economic Forum where a
number of leading Western business executives attended, despite the sanctions
imposed on Russia, the Ufa meetings brought together the members, dialogue
partners and observers of the BRICS and SCO—with more Eurasian states like
Armenia and Azerbaijan formalizing relationships with the Shanghai grouping
amidst talk that the SCO framework creates the basis for greater economic
cooperation among the states of East, South and Central Asia without relying on
European or American investment.
( National Interest )
Yet China did not let the rhetoric in Ufa get out
of hand. Beijing has carefully noted the extent to which Germany has become the
donor nation to sustain the European Union, and is leery of assuming a
Berlin-style role as the source of handouts and bailouts for the other BRICS
and SCO members coming to Beijing with their hands out. The Ufa meetings did
not settle some of the outstanding matters in the Russia-China economic
relationship, including the final price for natural gas and the financing of
some of the major infrastructure projects that were signed this past year.
Moscow received no blank check from Beijing. The “New Development Bank” (NDB)
and the currency pool, both critical items that Russia, cut off from Western
financing, sees as crucial for its future development plans, were finally
brought into existence—but China is likely to be very cautious in using these
funds recklessly to prop up the Russian economy. China is also not particularly
interested in turning the AIIB into a Chinese-funded piggy-bank for other
nations’ pet projects. No major new infrastructure projects to be funded either
by the NDB or the AIIB were announced at Ufa, even though the Indians brought
some concrete proposals to the table about expanding the north-south corridor
that links South Asia via Iran and Azerbaijan to Russia and Kazakhstan and thus
to Europe.
Ufa did provide an opportunity for a face-to-face
meeting between Modi and Pakistani prime minister Nawaz Sharif, which led to a
joint communique on fighting terrorism and seeking resolution of some of the
irritants in the bilateral relationship that could serve as the basis for a
limited rapprochement. Shared membership in the SCO might also provide an
institutional firewall to help contain ongoing Indo-Pakistan tension. Moreover,
Modi, in his fifth bilateral meeting with Xi, raised a set of contentious
issues. On the one hand, no breakthroughs were achieved in Ufa, but Modi and Xi
agreed to keep talking, and to accelerate work on the commission charged with
settling the boundary issues. As much as Washington likes to trumpet its good
relationship with India, the reality is that Xi has made cultivation of India
much more of a priority than Washington has. India and Pakistan are also now
set to become full members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization—which means
that New Delhi has yet another institutional framework for conducting its
relations with Russia and China in a forum that excludes the United States.
Nothing definitive was settled at Ufa—but the
foundations are being laid for a fundamental shift in the balance of power in
Asia. Washington can always hope that a massive slowdown in China’s economic
growth, coupled with increased distress in the Russian economy, could bring
many of these plans to naught. Beijing may also balk at paying the price for
becoming the main purveyor of regional public goods. But Xi and Putin leave Ufa
with positive momentum and a growing confidence that the correlation of forces
in the global arena might be showing signs of breaking their way.
Nikolas Gvosdev, a professor of national
security studies and a contributing editor at The National Interest,
is co-author of Russian Foreign Policy: Vectors, Sectors and Interests
(CQ Press, 2013). The views expressed here are his own.
( National Interest )
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