Russian insecurity fed by weakening ties with China
The impression we get from close observation of the Russian policymaking elite is that there is increasing anxiety about Russia’s position in the world. If Dean Acheson was right in 1962 when he said that Britain had lost an empire but not yet found a role, the same applies with even greater certainty to Russia today – and a report published in the last week by the influential Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (Sipri) on Russia-China relations reinforces this assessment. In Sipri’s view, the foundation of the strategic relationship between the two countries for the past two decades – namely military and energy cooperation – is eroding. That Russia and China may not be long-term strategic collaborators is no bad thing from the Western perspective, but a neurotic and directionless Russia will be a concern.
Russia’s strategic position is weak and getting weaker. As the recent stitch-up over Prime Minister Vladimir Putin resuming the presidency has reinforced, Russia is still far from a Western-style democracy and from joining the European mainstream. This is contributing to its continuing loss of influence in its former satellites to the west, despite the economic and political crisis within the European Union to which all these former satellites are drawn.
Also to the west, relations with Nato continue to deteriorate. We have previously drawn attention to Russia’s strident opposition to Nato action in Libya, which it has a termed a “gross violation” of UN Resolution 1973 (authorizing the imposition of a no-fly zone over Libya to protect civilians). In early September, Russia’s Nato envoy Dmitriy Rogozin complained that Nato was “placing itself on the same level” as the UN when it comes to deciding “when to start a war and when to end it”.
He clearly meant it, as he made the same point again at a news conference in Moscow on 3 October, saying: “There are influential forces in Nato that want to usurp the UN prerogative to make war and peace decisions...Nato wants to equate itself to New York [the UN].” Rogozin has said: “Russia cannot trust Nato now”.
In the past week, Rogozin has also returned to the attack over missile defence. He said on 28 September that unless a solution to the US plans for missile defence in Europe was reached, the Russia-Nato summit due to be held in Chicago in May 2012 would be in jeopardy. Rogozin said: “Unless Russia is given clear, unambiguous, and long-term guarantees that the missile defence potential does not target our security, no joint events are possible.”
He warned the European members of Nato, saying (a little opaquely but nonetheless threateningly): “If the Europeans do not care what happens on their own land, they should not complain in the future when, in addition to the Americans, someone else will be doing this.” He added: “If we do not get a meaningful response from our partners...we shall have to resort to our best guarantee, which was named by Tsar Alexander III [who described the army and the navy as Russia’s best allies].”
To Russia’s south, the Arab Spring could yet remove from power Russia’s key Mideast ally, Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad. Perhaps of even more concern in Moscow, Turkey is resurgent and will end up with more influence in former Soviet allies such as Egypt and Syria than will Russia. And whilst Ankara’s earlier efforts to extend its influence into the Turkic nations of Central Asia was a failure (the nationalist slogan of “a Turkish world from the Chinese Wall to the Adriatic Sea” always seemed to be a fantasy), there may now be a second, more subtle, attempt to expand Turkish influence into the former Soviet republics of Central Asia and Azerbaijan. Turkey under Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is also being much more active in support of Muslims in the Balkans, the historic enemies of the Russian-allied Serbs.
Russia has had some success in rallying the other Brics (Brazil, India, China, and South Africa) to the cause of multilateralism. For instance, on 4 September Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov used a joint press conference with Brazilian Foreign Minister Antonio Patriota to associate the Brics with Russia’s criticisms of Nato. At a joint press conference in Moscow with his Brazilian counterpart, Lavrov said that Russia and Brazil are “actively involved in the formation of a new polycentric world order”. Then, more specifically, he reiterated Rogozin’s criticisms of the way in which Nato has unilaterally widened the scope of UN Resolution 1973, saying: “If everything depends on the Brics countries, there will be no repetition of the Libyan scenario [in Syria]. I do not think the UN Security Council will be watching so indifferently what is happening to its resolutions.”
But if it is through the Brics that Moscow feels it can most effectively restrain American power, it must be a major concern that Russia’s relations with China are eroding. There is no suggestion that Beijing’s shared aversion to a US-led unipolar world is in any way diminishing. Both countries believe in non-intervention in the internal affairs of sovereign states, and both defend the right to determine the treatment and status of ethnic groups and minorities within their borders. Nevertheless, there is noticeably less affinity between China and Russia 10 years on from the signing of their 2001 Treaty of Good-Neighbourliness and Friendly Cooperation.
This can most clearly be seen in the sharp decline in China’s reliance upon Russia’s defence industry. China has not placed a significant order since 2005. In 2007, Russian arms exports to China fell to half the level of 2006. They declined again slightly in 2008 and further in 2009 and 2010. China’s share of Russian arms exports was just 10% in 2010, well below the average of 40% estimated for the 20 years since the collapse of the Soviet Union. On the energy front (often seen as the other pillar of an ever-closer Russia-China strategic alignment) Russia accounted for just 6% of China’s total oil imports in 2010.
There are also signs of Russian discomfort about China’s growing influence in Central Asia. The opening of the Kazakhstan-China oil pipeline in 2005 and the Turkmenistan-Uzbekistan-Kazakhstan-China gas pipeline in 2009 broke Russia’s monopoly of Central Asia’s energy transportation networks. And after Russia invaded Georgia in 2008 and secured the independence of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, China ensured that the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which links Russia and China with the former Soviet Central Asian republics, did not support Russia’s move. Since then, Russia has sought to increase its own influence in Central Asia through multi-lateral groupings that do not include China, such as the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), and the Eurasian Union that Putin has been writing about this week.
Back in May we reported that Putin was attaching much hope for a Russian revival based on the creation of a single economic space embracing Russia, Belarus, and Kazakhstan. This point has been belatedly picked up by the Western media in recent days following an article on the subject in Izvestia penned by Putin himself. Putin expressed high hopes for a ‘Eurasian Union’ capable of negotiating on equal terms with the European Union. He also hopes, no doubt, that it will consolidate Russian influence in Central Asia at the expense of China. His 4 October article said that the customs union would expand to include Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan.
Meanwhile, back on the home front Russia is continuing to fret about its ‘demographic black hole’, which, amongst other things, means that this year’s autumn call-up for the army will be the lowest ever. Instead of netting 300,000 recruits, it will net just 135,000. Between the 2002 census and the 2010 census, Russia’s population declined from 145.2m to 142.8m. Due to a high death rate (15 per thousand compared with the US’s eight per thousand), a low birth rate (10 births per thousand against the US’s 14 per thousand and a global average of 20 per thousand), and a high abortion rate (13 per every 10 live births), Russia’s population is declining by 700,000-800,000 a year, but due to the ageing factor the workforce is declining by an even steeper 1m per year. By 2050, it is predicted that the Russian population will be just 111m.
Lev Gudkov, a demographer with the Russian Centre for Public Opinion Research, warns apocalyptically: “Whole regions of Siberia and the Russian Far East are already depopulated, and new deserts are appearing even in former ‘black earth’ regions of central Russia. We will not be able to maintain our industry, agriculture, or our armed forces.” The extreme pessimists, of course, believe this presents a further vulnerability for China to exploit.
None of the above is intended to suggest that Russia is facing an immediate or serious rift with China. It is just that the combination of China’s inexorable rise with its lessening dependency on Russia for weapons and energy can only feed Russia’s feelings of insecurity – and an insecure Russia, fearful that China no longer needs it, increasingly at odds with Nato, losing allies and influence in the Middle East (where Iran may well end up being its only ally), and led by the autocratic and imperialist Putin for perhaps another 12 years, is a prospect of considerable concern. JdeC.