CIAO DATE: 02/02

Russia's Eurasian Security Policy

Roland Dannreuther
Director, New Issues in Security Course, Geneva Centre for Security Policy

Joint Workshop on Europe and Transatlantic Security: Issues and Perspectives
Kandersteg, Switzerland
August 25-27 2000

The Geneva Centre for Security Policy

Introduction

Ever since Catherine the Great pronounced that 'Russia is a European country', Russia has been an inescapable part of the European balance of power. Russia's European credentials are indisputable. The larger majority of the Russian population, and most of the major economic centres, are located in the European part of Russia. Russians are Christian, if of the eastern orthodox faith, and Russian poets, novelists, artists and composers have made an extraordinary contribution to European culture. Russians perceive themselves as part of European civilisation, not least when confronted with other ancient civilisations, such as Iran, India and China. Moreover, other European actors have recognised Russia as an intrinsic part of the European order, even if at times this recognition has been mixed with strong doses of suspicion and fear.

But, Russia is not only in Europe. Geographically, the larger part of Russia's territory, however inhospitable and poorly populated, lies in Asia. Culturally, Russia has periodically been hermetically sealed from mainstream developments in Europe. During the medieval period, Russia lay under Tartar rule; during the Soviet period, the borders were, in Stalin's words, under 'lock and key' and Western influences were rigorously excluded. The consequent backwardness of Russia, which has been a consequence of these intermittent linkages with the more developed West, has diluted Russia's European credentials. Russia's Asian destiny was also a deliberate act of state policy with Russia's borders being continually expanded into Asian territory. Russia had a similar experience to the United States with a continental expansion to the Pacific, which was driven, as in America, by entrepreneurial colonists who subsequently decimated the local populations. Towards the South, Russia followed European imperial practice and engaged in a mission civilisatrice to bring European-style rule over purportedly backward peoples. The Russian imperial experience differed from the British and French examples in one critical element: no division was made between the metropolitan centre and empire and thus no clearly demarcated border existed between the Russian state and its imperial appendages. The Tsarist military historian, Mikhail Vernukov, argued that this absence of a separation involved a different imperial practice when compared with 'Englishmen in India who do their utmost to avoid mingling with the natives . . . Our strength lies in the fact that . . . we have assimilated subject races, mingling affably with them'.

For these and other reasons, Russia's European credentials have been questioned, not only by other Europeans but by Russians themselves. For west Europeans, the vast geographical expanse, the relative backwardness and large population, the heady mix of despotism and mysticism, has made Russia an alien entity, the 'other' from which the enlightened rational West can be contrasted. The well-known French proverb - 'Grattez le Russe, et vous trouverez le Tartare' - illustrates this European scepticism well. Russians themselves have often been drawn to emphasising the exceptionalism of Russia, not as in America because Russia represents the 'new' rather than the 'old' world, but because Russia's unique position between Europe and Asia makes it belong to neither and the fusion of East and West preserves the benefits of Western civilisation but without its decadent rationalism and materialism. The notion of Moscow as the Third Rome has been a continual source of attraction to the more mystical members of Russian society.

This complex set of historical experiences, mutual perceptions and attitudes have contributed to the frequent shifts in Russia's policy towards the rest of Europe. At times, Russia has fully embraced the West so as to 'catch up' and modernise; at other times, Moscow has retreated into its citadels so as to preserve its uniqueness and the universality of its message. In terms of security policy, Russian leaders have been consistent in promoting as fluid and weak a set of alliance structures in Europe as possible. Alexander I, at the Congress of Vienna, was arguably the first to conceive of the notion of collective security and this legacy has been followed in more recent times with Gorbachev's promotion of a 'common European home' and the Soviet and post-Soviet predilection for defining the CSCE/OSCE as the overarching framework for the European security order. These collective security proposals, which have consistently baffled and irritated other Europeans powers, have had a strong realpolitik dimension, alongside the requisite dose of mysticism. Such schemes are designed to exclude a concentration of power in Europe, which might be directed against Russia, and to prevent the type of direct aggression which Russia suffered through the Napoleonic and Nazi invasions. Such flexible arrangements are also the most favourable mechanism for promoting Russian influence in Europe and to securing Russia's consistent desire, even obsession, to be treated as an equal with the other European great powers.

It is clear that the West's rejection of the proposed collective security arrangement for the post-Cold War European order, and the corresponding expansion of NATO, has been viewed in Moscow as a humiliating geopolitical defeat. The sense of betrayal, of promises made by the West and then reneged upon, has been profoundly felt. With the perception of a Europe excluding and marginalising Russia, there has been a turn towards the East in the search for alternative avenues for projecting Russia's power and influence. Again, there are historical parallels with the nineteenth century when the concerted European effort to block Russian expansion into the Balkans, with its ultimate pan-Orthodox goal of capturing Constantinople, led to Russian energies being re-directed towards expansion in the Caucasus and Central Asia. In a similar vein, in March 1997, the Russian Presidential Spokesman, Sergei Yastrzhembskii, stated at the Russian-USA Helsinki summit: 'If NATO expansion is going to continue . . . Russia will be confronted with a need to reconsider its foreign-policy priorities. Our relations with China, India . . . and Iran are developing well'.

The objective of this paper is to assess the nature, complexities and the relative success and failure of Russia's purported 'turn' to the East. Three areas will be briefly surveyed: recent Russian policy towards the Middle East, to Central Asia and to China.

The Middle East

It is not surprising that it was with Evgennii Primakov's elevation to Foreign Minister in 1996 that Russia's engagement with the Middle East assumed a greater priority and intensity. Primakov, as a former Director of the Oriental Institute of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, and personal friend of such Arab luminaries as Gamal abd al-Nasser, Hafiz al-Asad and Saddam Hussein, was naturally habituated to the complexities of Middle Eastern politics and traditional Soviet manoeuvring in the region. Although a reorientation had been initiated under his predecessor, Andrei Kozyrev's reputation was linked to the early 1990s when he, along with the other democrats of the new Yeltsin administration, had sought to repudiate the Soviet Union's relations with the Muslim world, which it was felt had led to some of the most damaging excesses of the Soviet period: the invasion of Afghanistan; the arming of Iraq, Libya and Syria; and the concomitant exacerbation of the Arab-Israeli and Iran-Iraq conflicts. Primakov's mandate was to challenge and qualify, if not reverse, this Atlanticist orientation, and the presumption of unquestioning support for Western positions towards the 'rogue' states of the region. With Primakov's becoming Foreign Minister at precisely the time when the debate over NATO enlargement had become most confrontational, he was expected to explore the potential markets, both political and economic, in the Middle East, to provide some countervailing balance to the unequal political struggle to reverse NATO's decision.

Primakov assumed this task with opportunistic relish. His strategy had some affinity with Khrushchev's embrace of the Arab world in the 1950s which involved leap-frogging the wall of containment as established in the British-sponsored Baghdad Pact. In the mid-1990s, Russian elites had increasingly come to view the Western penetration into the Caucasus and Central Asia, by the activities of both Western oil multinationals and through NATO and its Partnership for Peace programme, as a new form of containment of Russia, mirroring NATO's policy of containment in Europe. Primakov sought to 'leap-frog' this new perceived hostile barrier by engaging in more intensive relations with those countries of the Northern tier who have, for one reason or anther, difficult or hostile relations with the West.

The key states that have been the focus of the renewed Russian involvement are Iraq and Iran. For both states, there has been a refusal by Moscow to accept that these countries should be characterised as 'rogues' or 'deviants' who need to be effectively quarantined until they radically modify their behaviour. With Iraq, Russia has not gone so far as unilaterally to abandon the UN-imposed sanctions on the country. But, Moscow has become Iraq's strongest champion for a weakening and overturning of these sanctions, with France admittedly not far behind. On a visit to Baghdad in March 1998, Victor Posuvalyuk, Russian Deputy Foreign Minister, noted that compared to the situation in 1990-1, 'I feel that the present attitude is completely different, that at present their supreme task - they are literally possessed by it - is to achieve the lifting of sanctions'. As a consequence, he argued that that, 'if we can show that there is a light at the end of the tunnel . . . then I think it would be possible to avoid any exacerbation'. When the United States and the United Kingdom have decided to ignore this advice, and initiate bombing strikes, Moscow has condemned such actions or, as far as possible, sought diplomatic action to avert such an outcome, as in the successful resolution of the March 1998 US-Iraqi stand-off.

No such UN-imposed constraints apply to Russia's intensive relationship with Iran. In justification for a more full-bodied relationship, Primakov has argued that Russia 'believes that Iran should be a fully-fledged member of the world community'. In the broader historical context, the Russian rapprochement with Iran is unprecedented in that it reverses the many centuries of Iranian perceptions of Russia as a major security threat. There is certainly an important economic dimension to these relations, as Iran is a captive market for Russian military and technological exports. These economic ties have remained intact despite the considerable US and Israeli pressure on Russia to curtail such activities, particularly in relation to the alleged transfer of ballistic missile technology. However, these common economic interests are supplemented by significant political and geostrategic factors, particularly in relation to Russia and Iran's regional interests in Central Asia and Caucasus. Apart from a common sense of being contained and pressurised by Western encroachments in this region, there is also a coincidence of interests in that both countries are multiethnic, fearful of internal disintegration and seeking to stabilise their immediate conflict-ridden and hostile periphery.

Thus, Iran and Russia worked cooperatively together to bring a resolution of the Tajik conflict, which integrated the Islamist opposition into a coalition with the existing Tajik government. They have also acted together to limit and to offset the Taleban advances in Afghanistan. For its part, Iran has dutifully supported Russian actions in Chechnya, despite pressures from the wider Muslim world, as well as Russian diplomacy towards the Nagorno-Karabakh issue and the delimitation of the Caspian Sea. Although it would be an exaggeration to call the Russian-Iranian relationship a 'strategic partnership' - given their ideological differences, it is principally a tactical relationship - they do see themselves as allies in opposition to the perceived US, Turkish, Saudi and Pakistani ambitions in the Caucasus, Central Asia and the Gulf region.

In relation to the Arab-Israeli conflict, even under Primakov's assertive leadership, Russian engagement has been more subdued than in the Northern Tier countries. The geographical distance, Russia's economic weakness, and the absence of a universalist ideological component to post-Soviet Russian policy, have limited Russia's interest to challenge US domination of the Arab-Israeli peace process. Where Russia has acted, it has tended to seek a relatively constructive niche between US and EU diplomacy. The relative insignificance of the Russian engagement has been criticised by many of the Arab countries, who still maintain a rather nostalgic memory of Russia's former balancing role and who sustain the unrealistic hope of a Russian return to this role. Moscow, for its part, is happy to maintain the semblance of a purposeful commitment to the Arab cause but without translating this into anything substantive.

The Russian connection with Israel is rather more interesting. The restoration of Russian diplomatic relations with Israel and the presence of over 600,000 Russian-speaking Israeli citizens has set up new potential opportunities. In general, the Israeli government has been reluctant to develop relations with Russia which might potentially undermine the close strategic relationship with the United States. But, there has been an exception. During the Kosovo conflict, the Israeli foreign minister, Ariel Sharon, visited Moscow three times and expressed reservations about the NATO intervention which came close to the Russian stance. In private comments he was reported to say that 'the moment Israel supports the pattern of action we are witnessing in Kosovo, it could be the next victim. Israel must not grant legitimacy to forceful intervention of the type that NATO states, led by the United States, are employing in a bid to impose a solution in regional conflict'. Sharon continued by saying that 'today they strike in Kosovo: tomorrow they could attack Israel should Israeli Arabs in the Galilee claim autonomy'. During his visits to Moscow, Sharon concurred with the Russians that it would be inadvisable to create a 'terrorist' state in Kosovo.

The Israeli prime minister, Benyamin Netanyahu, officially distanced the government from Sharon's comments and formally supported the NATO action. But, he did not disavow Sharon's statements and stressed that the government was 'speaking with one voice'. Netanyahu also fully supported the rapprochement with Russia, which officially sought to convince Russia to curb the flow of ballistic missile technology to Iran. The unofficial and more plausible reason was the upcoming Israeli elections and the resolve of Netanyahu to solidify his support among the Russian-speaking Israeli constituency. Sharon actually betrayed this ulterior motive in an interview with William Safire in the New York Times on 8 April when he stated 'if I can get another 3% of the electors who came from the CIS to support Bibi [Netanyahu], we will win the elections, and the Russian immigrants want relations with Russia to improve'.

In the end, these manoeuvres by Netanyahu and Sharon failed as the opposition leader, Ehud Barak, won a convincing electoral victory and reinstated the traditionally close Israeli relationship with Washington. But, this 'moment' of Russian-Israeli amity is, at least suggestive, particularly as there is a real prospect of Sharon as a future Israeli Prime Minister. The Likud party has consistently criticised the Israeli left for excessive dependence on the United States and ignoring the many common interests, and increasingly converging, views between Israel and Russia. President Putin's continual references to the dangers of 'international terrorism' and 'Islamic fundamentalism' is common to Israeli political discourse. For the Muslim and Arab world more generally, it can be asked how long their empathy with Russia will be sustained, given the indisputable evidence that post-Soviet Russia has demonstrated a deeply entrenched antipathy to the plight to Muslims, at least in relation to Bosnia, Kosovo and Chechnya. For the moment, the perception of Russia remains fixated on a Soviet-era view of Moscow as a global balancer to the United States, broadly sympathetic to the Muslim and Arab cause. At some point, the reality that Russia is not the successor to the formally supranational and anti-imperialist Soviet Union but a predominantly Christian and European country, with a hostile attitude to the claims of the Muslim world, might cause significant shifts in Russia's standing in the region.

But, for the moment, Russia's presence and influence in the Middle East is greater than might be expected, given Russia's chronic economic and political problems. Russian diplomacy has managed to procure some diplomatic cards in the region - an Iraqi card, an Iranian card, a Syrian card, and potentially even an Israeli card. But, the reality remains that the United States and the West hold trumps. And, as the Soviet Union found out in Egypt, the countries of the Middle East are essentially fickle in their external relations and have no particular affection or need for Russia except as a less satisfactory alternative to relations with the West. As was the case with the Soviet Union, Russia can only be an independent actor in the region as an anti-Western obstructionist power. But, given current Russian weakness, such a role would be even less sustainable than it was for the Soviet Union.

Central Asia

One of the reasons for Primakov's engagement with the broader Middle East was to mitigate, and ideally reverse, the perceived decline of Russian influence in the Caucasus and Central Asia. In this endeavour, Primakov failed to make much inroad. Certainly, some of the countries of the region, such as Armenia and Tajikistan, whose very existence depend on Russian support, have had no option but to remain firmly wedded to Moscow. The same could be said, if to a lesser degree, of Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan, whose geographical proximity to Russia also counsels caution, but who have also not been fully constrained from seeking alternative regional and international supporters. It is the other countries of the region where Russian influence has been most under threat. Georgia and Azerbaijan have warmly embraced the interest the West has shown, with Baku offering NATO a base on its territory and Georgia putting forward its application to join the Alliance. For its part, Turkmenistan assumed a studied neutrality with a clear tilt to the West.

The most dramatic shift was, though, in Uzbekistan, which can plausibly be considered the key geostrategic country of Central Asia, and who engaged in the mid-1990s in an intensive effort to greatly reduce, and even to eradicate, Russia's presence and influence. In the military field, all Russian forces were obliged to withdraw from Uzbek territory and significant resources were dedicated to constructing a national army, which currently numbers about 150,000 troops. In the economic sphere, Tashkent pursued a successful policy of energy self-sufficiency, thereby undermining one of the main instruments Moscow has used to elsewhere to promote its interests. And, politically, the extent to which President Karimov has provided unqualified support for the United States - including over such issues as NATO enlargement and policy towards Cuba - has been quite unrestrained by fears of incurring Moscow's wrath.

With the ascendance of Vladimir Putin to power, there has been a significant turn in Russia's fortunes. This first visits to foreign countries after Putin's inauguration as President were to Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. At these visits, there was an official affirmation of Russia's closer and more intensive relations with these two Central Asian states who had gone furthest in developing relations with the West. The shift in orientation of Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan is also symptomatic of a more general consolidation of Russian influence and interests in Central Asia.

One major factor for this Russian reengagement has been Moscow's success in capitalising on a discernible shift in Western US priorities which has led to a reduction in the strategic importance accorded by the West to the region. One significant reason behind this has been the realisation that the region's oil and gas reserves are less substantial than earlier estimates, most notably the 1995 US State Department's projection of 200 billion barrels. It is now generally assumed in the oil business that the probable oil reserves in the Caspian Sea region will be in the order 30-70 billion barrels which would make the region the equivalent of 1-2 North Seas. The idea that the Caspian Sea might represent a new Saudi Arabia, which would permit a real diversification of oil supplies from the Persian Gulf region, is now generally accepted as vastly over-optimistic.

The declining economic context of Western engagement has also meant that there has been less justification for the West to overlook the democratic failings and human rights violations within the Caspian region states. This is perhaps most notable in Turkmenistan where the failure to secure an agreement on a trans-Caspian pipeline for Turkmen gas takes away the incentive for Western capitals to ingratiate themselves with President Niyazov and to overlook the quasi-totalitarian state he has constructed. In the security sphere, Western states have been keen to dampen expectations of the putative role that NATO might play in the region. With the Georgian and Azerbaijani démarches to NATO, there has been a fear that the Central Asian states have interpreted the essentially symbolic nature of PfP membership as a genuine security commitment from the West. This has led Western leaders privately to emphasise that NATO has no intention of intervening in the region.

It is, therefore, at least in part due to the strategic vacuum left by the West's economic and political withdrawal from the region which has provided a favourable context for a Russian reassertion of its interests in the region. But, the more deliberate and proactive elements in Putin's strategy towards Central Asia and the Caucasus have also been important. There are two aspects of this strategy which have been the principal focus of Russian diplomatic activity. First, the Putin administration has sought to pursue a geoeconomic policy which makes a clearer political linkage, involving principally according greater loyalty to Moscow, in exchange for economic benefits. Such a policy also involves a greater Russian willingness to provide more favourable terms, at some costs to Russia itself, for the purchase of Central Asian gas and oil which would weaken their determination to diversify export routes. In general, the Putin administration is promoting this policy, with a subtle and sometimes not so subtle mix of sticks and carrots, in a more co-ordinated and purposive manner than was the case during the Yeltsin era.

The second part of the strategy has been to promote Russian pretensions as a guarantor of stability in the region. In practically every speech that Putin has made since coming to power, he has provided a ritual incantation and conflation of the dangers of Islamic fundamentalism and international terrorism. For the leaders of Central Asia, in particular, this discourse has found an increasingly favourable reception. For President Karimov of Uzbekistan, the fear of Islamic fundamentalism has become a driving obsession, ever since the assassination attempt on his life in Tashkent in February 1999. Subsequent developments, most notably the military successes of the Taleban in Afghanistan and the incursion onto Kyrgyz territory in August 1999 of militants from the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (now called the Hizb ul-Tahrir) have increased the anxiety of all the states of Central Asia.

Putin's strategy has been not only to highlight the dangers of the export of Islamic militancy but to emphasise that, as shown in Chechnia, Russia has the will and capability to do something about this. For the countries of the South Caucasus, this is more an admonitory message, which reminds them that Russian power can still be projected in the region. But, for the countries of Central Asia, the Chechen campaign was observed with some enthusiasm and provided a degree of reassurance that, if similar 'terrorists' with Islamist objectives were to threaten Central Asian stability, Russia would be able to provide critical military support. This was more directly confirmed by the large-scale military exercise - Commonwealth Southern Shield 2000 - which took place in March, involving about 10,000 Russian, Tajik, Kazakh, Kyrgyz and Uzbek troops, and specifically rehearsed an anti-terrorist operation in the mountains of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

In general, all these various factors has led Russia to regaining a degree of influence in Central Asia which would not have been predicted prior to the second campaign in Chechnia. Indeed, most analysts prior to this concurred that Russia was engaged in a post-imperial process of withdrawal. Even if these projections have proved false, it can still be questioned how sustainable this Russian reengagement might be. There remain political sensitivities in the region concerning renewed Russian neo-imperialism and President Karimov has stressed that bilateral Russian-Uzbek relations must be founded on conditions of equality and on Russia respecting the independent decision-making of the Central Asian states. In the economic sphere, there remains the basic problem that the Russian and Caspian region economies are more competitive than complementary and that the economic imperative for both Russia and the Caspian region is to attract external investment and to secure markets in the global international markets.

The nature and content of the security commitment which Russia is offering to the region ought also to be critically assessed. There is a real question whether, if it came to the crunch, Russia would have either the military capabilities or the will to engage in a major intervention in the region. Chechnia has certainly not expunged the memory of the disastrous Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. More generally, there is the underlying reality that the threat of international terrorism and externally-supported Islamic fundamentalism do not represent the most significant sources of instability in the region. Rather, the more dangerous and probable source of insecurity lies in the authoritarian and increasingly dictatorial rule of the Central Asian regimes, whose acts of repression provide the breeding ground for opposition groups to assert a radical Islamist agenda. There is a real issue whether Russia, by openly supporting the increasingly authoritarian practices of the regimes of the region, might be contributing towards, rather than resolving, the internal Islamist-inspired challenges to regional stability. Indeed, Russian diplomacy in Tajikistan revealed a very different approach whereby it fostered and supported a process of reconciliation between a warring secularist government and the Islamist opposition. It must be a question whether this Tajik model is not also appropriate for Uzbekistan, and other states in the region, and that promotion of this more pluralist and inclusive approach to conflict management might not be more efficacious than support for the regional predilection towards authoritarian repression.

China

The lynchpin of Russia's turn to the East has been its so-called 'strategic partnership' with China which was formally agreed at the Yeltsin-Jiang Summit in April 1996. The actual wording in the final statement for the partnership was 'a formula of constructive cooperation developing into a strategic partnership oriented towards the 21st century', which is suggestive of the same type of studied ambiguity as the EU Maastricht Treaty's infamous 'eventual framing of a common defence policy, which might in time lead to a common defence'. Despite the evidence that China has a more minimalist understanding of the content of the partnership, there has nevertheless been a remarkable improvement in Sino-Russian relations. The most visible evidence of this has been the border agreement between Russia, China and the Central Asian states, which has meant that for the first time the entire length of the border is not only accurately defined (except for three islands) but is also marked, again barring some small sections. The settlement of the problem of the former Soviet-China border has been a major achievement and has made a very significant contribution to security in East and Central Asia.

This achievement needs to be assessed in terms of the distance travelled from the late Soviet period. After the Sino-Soviet split in the 1950s, Soviet and Chinese relations were characterised by a totally militarised and confrontational relationship, with Moscow regularly defining China as the eastern flank of NATO. Gorbachev initiated the thaw but not with the same enthusiasm or commitment as his embrace with the West. Even this initial thaw, though, was put under strain in the early years of Yeltsin's presidency, when the partnership with the West was accorded priority. During this period, one Russian analyst characterised Yegor Gaidar's attitude as: 'China is a totalitarian state; we are a democratic country. We have nothing to learn from China; we have no common business with a totalitarian state'. A more pragmatic and less supercilious approach was subsequently adopted which developed into the drive for a 'strategic' relationship with China to secure a more 'multipolar world' to offset US hegemonism and NATO expansion. The sense of a common geostrategic position was undoubtedly strengthened in 1999 with the Kosovo conflict where both China and Russia reacted strongly in opposition to 'hegemonism and power politics' (Beijing's code words for the United States).

Putin's visit to China in July 2000 further established the strong mutual convergence on key issues in international affairs, most notably on this occasion in relation to the US National Missile Defence programme. Putin's visit to China followed his visit to North Korea, the first such visit made by any Russian or Soviet leader, and which marked a dramatic turn in Russian engagement on the Korean issue, though the nature of the reassurances from Pyongyang on the 'peaceful purposes' of its ballistic missile programme failed to convince most Western countries. In any case, the highly-publicised Asian tour by Putin gave him a certain authority and granted him a degree of respect from the other leaders of the G-8, who met in Okinawa immediately after Putin's visit to China. It certainly provided a very public forum to highlight the closeness of Sino-Russian relations and the new-found activism of Russia's Asia-Pacific policy under the new Putin administration.

But, however flowery and warm the rhetoric of amity between China and Russia, it cannot mask the essential inequality and continuing complications of the relationship. Russia is not engaging China as a potential hegemon, or even as an equal, as in Moscow's relations with Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Middle East. The inequality of Russia's relations with China is especially painful for Russians as it is such a recent phenomenon. Over a decade ago, China was still lagging behind the Soviet Union. By the mid-1990s, data shows that China's PPP GDP was four times the size of Russia's, making this one of the most dramatic about-turns in the history of international economic relations. The gap between the two economies is also bound to grow and, even on relatively conservative estimates for growth in China, within ten years the gap between the two countries GDP levels may increase ten-fold. It is also probably not long before China's per capita GDP will overtake Russia's.

This economic disparity is paralleled by a growing demographic divergence with Russia suffering a severely deteriorating demographic situation. This is most striking in the difference between the size and density of the population on either sides of Russian-Chinese border. The population of the southern districts of the Far East is about 5 million whereas on the other side of the border, in three Chinese provinces, it is about 100 million. The Russian response to this, particularly by some of the 'patriotic' leaders in the Far East, tends towards a heightened xenophobia and fear of the 'yellow peril'. This has been fuelled by much-publicised media reports of mass Chinese migration into Russia, which actually has not taken place. This hostility to Chinese migration is short-sighted, as any potential development for the Russian Far East, which is currently in a terrible condition and almost completely cut off from the rest of Russia, will require a large-scale migration of Chinese workers. This sentiment of distrust towards China is not limited to the popular or mass level. The Russian military still considers China a potential threat to Russian security. Among the Russian elite more generally, there remains a certain disdain, at times verging on an attitude of superiority, towards China and its continuing semi-totalitarianism. For their part, the Chinese certainly respond in kind with a large dose of contempt for Russia's chaotic semi-democracy and its continuing failure in implementing successful economic reform.

The lack of personal chemistry and warmth in Sino-Russian relations has not, though, undermined the strategic dynamics which have brought these two countries together. The heart of the relationship lies on the 'grand strategy' level as China and Russia have increasingly seen the advantages of working together in international fora, most notably at the UN Security Council, to counter their common fears of US hegemonism. For Russia, there is also no logic for it to seek a confrontational relationship with China, especially since China would only become an enemy if Russia made it one. China, for its part, has been careful to accord respect to Russia, not to humiliate it, and to salve its battered pride. For China, a stable North is also of considerable strategic importance, as it leaves China able to concentrate its energies on the more problematic and confrontational situation in the South. Chinese support for Russia's stance on NATO enlargement has a strategic dimension as well, since Beijing fears that improved NATO-Russian relations could make things more difficult for China.

There is also an important regional dimension to the relationship. China is, like Russia, concerned about the encroachments of the West into Central Asia and to the threat posed by Islamic fundamentalism flowing from Afghanistan. China is willing to support Russia as a security guarantor in the region and has expressed a strong preference for Russian rather than Western hegemony in the region. This is supported by the congruity in Russian and Chinese views on the need to protect the principle of the territorial integrity in international law. While China unreservedly supported Russian campaign in Chechnia, Moscow has been unflinching in defending China's claims to Taiwan, Tibet and Xinjiang.

It is in the economic sphere that Sino-Russian relations are at their weakest. The proclaimed objective of Yeltsin-Jiang summit in 1996 to increase bilateral trade to $20 billion by 2000 has failed to materialise. In the first half of 2000, two-way trade totalled only $3.56 billion. To put it into comparative form, Russian-Chinese trade is 12-times less than Chinese-Japanese trade and 10-times less than US-Chinese trade. Russia does have potentially lucrative markets in terms of arms and military technology sales and in the supply of oil and gas. However, in both these areas, there remains a degree of distrust and fear of dependence. Russia is concerned that its arms sales might undermine Russian national security; China fears that too great a dependence on Russian energy would weaken its energy security.

Overall, the failure to develop more intensive economic relations highlights the critical weakness of Russia's purported 'strategic partnership' with China. In reality, what Russia really needs to develop are the low-level economic, social and business linkages with China which would contribute to the economic modernisation of the country, not least so as to avert a major crisis in the Far East provinces. But, these essential needs have been consistently overlooked by the elite fixation on broader geopolitical goals which hark back to inappropriate nineteenth century stereotypes. The oft-promoted notion of a Russia-India-Iran-China axis is the clearest example of this exercise in wishful thinking as China, without whom such an axis would be meaningless, has no interest in such a scheme. The Chinese leadership's foreign policy strategy is limited to the medium-term goal of a successful economic transition and to the longer-term ambition of rectifying the perceived historic territorial injustices it has suffered. In pursuit of these goals, China has adopted an essentially pragmatic approach. It has no interest of joining the chimera of a Russian-coordinated global confrontation with the United States.

Conclusion

It can certainly be concluded that Russian leaders and policy-makers have been active and inventive in developing and improving relations with a large array of countries in Asia. But, overall, this activism has not constructed a substantive diversification or alternative to Russia's relations with the West. This is principally because the élites and leaders in Russia (and the population more generally) remain firmly Western-orientated. Indeed, the Russian commitment to democracy, however imperfect it might be in practice, itself represents a Russian commitment to the West and its values. This, in turn, is a reflection of the nature of the country being identified by its population, primarily through the growth of Russian nationalism, as more firmly European and Christian and with the corresponding weakening of the Soviet-inherited multinationalist and universalist conceptions. The energy which Russia expended in its campaign against NATO enlargement is itself an indication that it is the status quo in Europe which Russia is most keen to defend.

There is also the brute reality that, as one Russian commentator has expressed, the Eastern strategy is fundamentally flawed since 'there is no East to turn to'. The underlying political and economic weakness of Russia makes its impossible to construct alternative alliance structures which can genuinely balance the United States. Other countries in Asia are more than aware of Russian weakness and are unwilling to sacrifice relations with the West and the United States for an inherently implausible Russian-directed global challenge to the post-Cold War political order. For Russia, there are other alternatives, such as Moscow submitting itself to a subordinate role in a Chinese-dominated alliance structure. One Russian analyst has called this the 'finlandisation' option. But, this is too humiliating for Russia to consider, unless relations with the West deteriorate to a disastrous level. The weakness of Russia's geopolitical strategy is also evident in the fact that the US-China-Russia triangle simply no longer exists; rather, Russia is one factor, admittedly of significance, in the US-China relationship.

What are the implications for the West of Russia's continuing fidelity to the West? One option is to conclude that Russia, given its internal weakness and its unwillingness and incapacity to adopt the tradition of Soviet obstructionism, can continue to be safely ignored and that there is now an historic opportunity to construct a European order which essentially excludes Russian influence. The other option is to engage constructively with Russia's commitment to the West and to utilise positively Moscow's influence and engagement in many of the regions of Asia where Western interests are most threatened. If this second option were to be pursued, though, it would demand greater Western sensitivity over Russian claims in Europe, particularly over the issue of further NATO enlargement.