Washington Is Not Serious About Russia-China Rapprochement

While Washington’s experts and pundits continue taking Moscow’s pivot to Beijing with a grain of salt, China and Russia announced yet another joint mega-project that will help to accelerate the formation of what many dubbed the “Eurasian supercontinent.” From an American perspective, long historical grievances, border wars, and overwhelming mistrust between the two Eurasian powers are seen as permanent factors that will inevitably downgrade the Kremlin’s alignment with China’s Communist Party. Granted, Russia’s quasi-alliance with China has become a double-edged sword. On one hand, the Kremlin uses Beijing to balance against the United States and Japan; hence the sale of sophisticated stealth fighters including the SU-35 jets and state-of-the-art Kilo–class submarines to China. On the other hand, Russians have compromised their influence in Central Asia by essentially granting Beijing unlimited access to the region’s resources, allowing China to gain a strategic foothold in an area central to China’s own security. Add to this China’s ingenious reverse-engineering, which targets Russian military technology and its burgeoning economic clout in Russia’s Far East.

Nonetheless, many American commentators fail to acknowledge that both Russia and China have not forgotten the strategic leverage that their conflict produced for the United States during the Cold War. As such, neither Moscow nor Beijing is willing to hand Washington another bargaining chip to maneuver within this geopolitical triangle. For too long, Americans have focused only on the difficulties of Moscow-Beijing relations while largely neglecting the incentives that have brought these two powers together. In short, there may not be another “Sino-Soviet split” in coming decades for Washington to exploit.

Apart from subscribing to China’s 5G network, Russians are positioning themselves as the connecting bridge between China and Europe. The recent announcement of the trans-continental route — the Meridian highway — seeks to accomplish exactly that. This will be a major contribution to China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), since the Russian part of the highway begins at the border with Kazakhstan and ends in Belarus, creating a shorter route between the Middle Kingdom and the Old World. The idea for the highway belongs to the former deputy chairman of Gazprom Alexander Ryazanov, who believes that the project will cost roughly $9 billion and take around 14 years to start generating a profit.

As Russia’s RBC Group reports, the Meridian will be a four-lane toll highway consistent with European standards, with a starting point in the Orenburg region near Kazakhstan. Already approved by Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev, the 2,000-km highway is the brainchild of the “Russian Holding Company,” and, according to Vzglyad, the company has acquired 80 percent of the corridor where the route is set to be built. Although this is a private initiative, Russian government agencies such as the Ministry of Finance and the Ministry of Economic Development will assist the company to find additional investors.

Russia’s involvement in this motorway stretching from China all the way to Hamburg, Germany, is part of a greater development to which the United States didn’t pay much attention. In his book Belt and Road: Chinese World Order, Bruno Maçães describes the 2015 Putin-Xi statement that essentially attached the Russian-led Eurasian Economic Union to China’s BRI. Maçães claims that it was anticipated from the get-go that Moscow would not tolerate Beijing’s advancement into Central Asia, and China was cautious not to do anything drastic. Moscow, however, ended up giving China the green light to enter Central Asia and Georgia, as well, for further expansion into Europe. Now Moscow is willing to bandwagon directly with China’s intercontinental ambitions.