Russia's Geoeconomic Strategy for a Greater Eurasia by Glenn Diesen

Author:Glenn Diesen [Diesen, Glenn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9781351815031
Google: xEgrDwAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2017-07-06T13:37:19+00:00

From fear of geopolitical dominance to a geoeconomic balance of dependence

A strategic partnership between Russia and China has historically been obstructed by a mutual fear of unfavourable asymmetrical power and subsequent dominance. The Mongol invasion of Russian city states in the 13th century is widely recognised as the origin of Russia’s ‘Mongol complex’, the fear of being invaded and ruled by large hordes of ‘barbaric people’ from the East (Eder 2013: 16). Japan’s military victory over Russia in 1905 revived such fears and was ‘widely interpreted as a victory of Mongolian people over the European’ (Neumann 2005: 55). This fear has since been sustained by xenophobic inclinations and the vulnerability of an underpopulated and underdeveloped Far East that could lose its legitimacy if perceived as a remnant European colonial outpost.

China’s apprehensions about Russian dominance originated with Russia’s imperial expansion into Asia, making it a key contributor to the much-resented ‘century of humiliation’. More specifically, Russia exploited China’s weakness during the decline of the Qing Dynasty in the 19th century by appropriating more than 1.5 million square kilometres of Chinese territory (Eder 2013: 16). China has been ambiguous about Russia’s sovereignty over the Far East by referring to the territory transfer as ‘inequitable treaties’ and ‘unequal treaties’ (Eder 2013: 16; Hyer 2015: 152). As this territory includes a large slice of the Pacific Coast, it diminishes China’s maritime power and sets the foundation for Russia to become a major rival naval power in Asia-Pacific. Cooperation during the Cold War also became a source of Russian domination due to power disparity and lack of diversification. The shared communist ideology and adversarial relationship with the US encouraged China’s full commitment to the Soviet Union, which produced a ‘leaning-to-one-side’ policy granting Moscow an uncomfortable amount of leverage.

Following the collapse of the Soviet Union the power symmetry shifted and Russia gradually found itself under China’s shadow. The worsening conditions within Russia throughout the 1990s were juxtaposed with the rapid rise of China’s economy. Since the principal security threats to Russian security had for centuries primarily emanated from the West, the emergence of a more powerful neighbour in the East created ‘a political earthquake, the earth has moved’ (Trenin 2011b: 227). Moscow was presented with a dilemma because China is an indispensable partner in restoring a global balance of power, while extensive engagement with an increasingly more powerful China would gradually enhance regional imbalance and condemn Russia to the untenable role of a subordinate ‘little brother’. In contrast, China can be more flexible to make Russia more comfortable since Beijing is not threatened by a Russia that is stable and less powerful (Lukin 2015d).

Moscow aimed to use its potential partnership with China as a tool to increase its own ‘market value’ or bargaining power in the West (Blank 2015: 166). The prospect of a Sino-Russian partnership has been instrumental in constructing a ‘Greater Europe’ as it was intended that the West should be faced with the dilemma of either accommodating Russia or risk a Sino-Russian alliance.

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