“East Rising, West Falling”: Not So Fast, History Suggests

Abstract

US relations with China and Russia remain deeply problematic. Any hopes for change for the better under a Biden presidency were quickly dashed by the harsh Sino-US exchanges in Alaska in March and by the fallout from “SolarWinds,” Moscow’s brazen hacking attempt. No breakthroughs were expected or forthcoming at the US-Russia summit meeting in June, while celebrations of the Communist Party of China’s 100th anniversary in July reconfirmed Beijing’s strident foreign policy course. What’s more, Washington’s principal authoritarian rivals have been cooperating to mutual advantage. Summits between Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin have been a hallmark of Sino-Russian diplomacy since 2013. It was telling that, right after the US-China encounter in Alaska, Foreign Ministers Wang and Lavrov met in Guilin, China to pointedly condemn Western “interference” in their internal affairs. The evolving Sino-Russian partnership has sparked much interest and growing concern among strategists. Andrea Kendall-Taylor and David Shullman have warned of Beijing and Moscow’s “dangerous convergence.” Christopher Walker and Jessica Ludwig paint an even starker portrait of Sino-Russian “sharp power”: by “preying upon the openness of democratic systems,” they write, Xi Jinping and Vladimir Putin are engaged in “making the world safe for