Beware collusion of China, Russia.

• Author: Gelb, Leslie H.
• Position: The Realist - Essay

Visiting Moscow during his first international trip as China's new resident in March, Xi Jinping told his counterpart, Vladimir Putin, that Beijing and Moscow should "resolutely support each other in efforts to protect national sovereignty, security and development interests." He also promised to "closely coordinate in international regional affairs." Putin reciprocated by saying that "the strategic partnership between us is of great importance on both a bilateral and global scale." While the two leaders' summit rhetoric may have outpaced reality in some areas, Americans should carefully assess the Chinese-Russian relationship, its implications for the United States and our options in responding.

The Putin-Xi summit received little attention in official Washington circles or the media, and this oversight could be costly. Today Moscow and Beijing have room for maneuver and a foundation for mutual cooperation that could damage American interests.

Specifically, the two nations could opt for one of two possible new courses. One would be to pursue an informal alliance to counter U.S. power, which they see as threatening their vital interests. This path might prove difficult, given competing interests that have burdened relations between Russia and China in the past. Still, stranger things have happened in history between two nations that confront similar challenges. But there is a second possibility. They could play a game of triangular diplomacy similar to the Nixon/Kissinger strategy of the 1970s. In this scenario, Moscow and Beijing could dangle the prospect of a potential alliance or ad hoc cooperative arrangement with the other to gain leverage over Washington and put the United States at a bargaining and power disadvantage.

So far, Russian-Chinese ties appear in large part to be an unintended consequence of American policies aimed at other objectives. Thinking about unintended consequences in foreign policy has never come easily to U.S. policy makers, particularly since the end of the Cold War, when the pursuit of democratic and humanitarian triumphalism has virtually become a form of political correctness among both Republicans and Democrats. Though the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan eventually produced a modest degree of soul-searching, the excitement of the Arab Spring--and the external pressure of the interventionist impulses of Britain and France in particular in Libya and Syria--seems to have cut short this much-needed introspection about what works and what doesn't in U.S. foreign policy.

It is ironic that some European countries that are unable to pursue minimally sound economic policies, or to effectively integrate exploding immigrant populations, have developed the irresistible temptation to promote Europe as a model for the rest of the world--if, of course, the United States supplies the muscle. Taking into account their own history, it is especially curious that these Europeans should not recognize the increasingly apparent reemergence globally of traditional power politics at the expense of their...