2022.02.15中国和乌克兰

shiyi18

By Invitation | Russia, China and Ukraine
Sergey Radchenko, an expert on Russia’s foreign relations, writes on its evolving friendship with China
Opposing the expansion of NATO together is easy. Navigating geopolitics is not
By Sergey Radchenko


Feb 15th 2022

PRONOUNS MATTER to Russia’s President, Vladimir Putin. He likes to demonstrate his closeness to some world leaders by calling them ty, instead of the more formal Vy. Angela Merkel, Emmanuel Macron, Silvio Berlusconi and Victor Orban are all referred to in this amicable way. But Mr Putin has always maintained formality with his “dear friend” Chairman Xi Jinping. They have met 38 times, with the most recent encounter in Beijing on February 4th. Yet for all the etiquette, Mr Putin and Mr Xi are political twins. They share an autocratic outlook on world affairs and a deep commitment to the Sino-Russian relationship, which, they both have claimed, is at its warmest in history.

The relationship is one of equals because Mr Xi allows it to be. It is true that economically China and Russia are not in the same league. China’s economy is roughly six times the size of Russia’s. China is Russia’s top trading partner but Russia is not even among China’s top ten. Yet Mr Xi indulges Mr Putin because Russia’s amity is a valuable asset for China. Russia is one of China’s very few true friends, and one of considerable international influence. This gives Mr Putin a degree of leverage in the Sino-Russian relationship that is rather out of proportion to Russia’s economic clout.


Russia’s nuclear status, its role as a permanent member of the UN Security Council, and, most of all, its willingness to flex its military muscle—as it has done with the build-up of Russian troops around Ukraine and its recent lightning deployment of “peacekeepers” to Kazakhstan—are reminders to Beijing that Russia will not easily accept the role of China’s junior partner.

Any effort to enforce a hierarchy would be counterproductive. This was, after all, how the Sino-Soviet alliance forged by Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin crumbled in the 1950s: Moscow expected deference to its global strategy and Beijing proved unwilling to bow. Now Beijing does not—and cannot—expect Moscow’s deference. That means their friendship probably will endure for longer than the alliance built by Stalin and Mao.

China and Russia do not call their relationship an alliance. They have not offered one another security guarantees like those covered by NATO’s Article 5. They are aligned, not allied, and this arrangement allows each a degree of flexibility, permitting their interests to converge and diverge as the situation requires.

In recent months Beijing and Moscow have converged frequently. They have even begun to construct an ideological frame of reference for their relationship, grounded in similar values and in a shared view of long-term historical trends. Intriguingly, Mr Putin and Mr Xi continue to claim that the Sino-Russian partnership is unconstrained by a shared ideology, in contrast to what they see as the ideological rigidity of the collective West. They challenge its definitions of “democracy” and “human rights”, most recently in a joint statement from Beijing. Using anti-colonial rhetoric, they assert that the West represents an overbearing “minority” and that its politics is “rejected by the international community”.


Despite the bold assertions, the evidence suggests that Mr Xi and Mr Putin wish to reform, but not to replace, the global order. Their vision is fundamentally conservative. One of Mr Putin’s treasured talking points shows as much. He says he wants to expand the role of the United Nations Security Council, and in particular that of its five permanent members, in global policymaking. It is ironic that a leader who lambasts the West for its outdated cold-war mentality seeks to boost institutions that hark to even earlier times, and that by no means reflect the current distribution of power in international politics.

Mr Putin’s preoccupation with forestalling further enlargement of NATO—a motive behind his threats to Ukraine—is another element of his conservative vision that harks back decades. It reflects conceptions of European security favoured by Leonid Brezhnev, a former Soviet leader. Mr Brezhnev feared China, and on his watch the two neighbours even fought a brief border war. By contrast, Mr Putin has enlisted Beijing in the effort to oppose NATO enlargement.

Prompted by his own troubles in Hong Kong, Mr Xi has also helpfully endorsed one of Mr Putin’s old fixations: stern opposition to supposedly Western-inspired “colour revolutions”. This showed recently in China’s quick approval of Russia’s response to rioting in Kazakhstan. Mr Xi agreed even though he can hardly have liked troops being dispatched through the Collective Security Treaty Organisation, a Russia-led military alliance, in which China has no voice.

The biggest question about the Sino-Russian alignment is whether it will endure in a rapidly changing geopolitical environment. It is one thing for China to back Russia in opposing NATO enlargement as it costs it nothing to do so. It’s quite another for China to help Russia evade the economic sanctions it would face should it decide to invade Ukraine. It is also one thing for Russia to back China in its opposition to AUKUS, a trilateral defence pact between Australia, the United Kingdom and America unveiled last year, but quite another for it to support China in the event of conflict in the South China Sea or in a clash with India, with which Moscow maintains cordial ties.

The closer Russia and China become, the more the two assume they can count on each other in times of need. But with old geopolitical rivalries re-emerging in Europe and Asia, it may not be long before Mr Putin and Mr Xi find themselves in the uncomfortable position of unpicking the difference between an alignment and a formal alliance.

_______________

Sergey Radchenko is the Wilson E. Schmidt Distinguished Professor at the Kissinger Center, School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University in Bologna.



应邀参加｜俄罗斯、中国和乌克兰
俄罗斯外交关系专家谢尔盖-拉琴科就其与中国不断发展的友谊写道
一起反对北约的扩张很容易。驾驭地缘政治则不然。
作者：谢尔盖-拉德琴科



2022年2月15日

对俄罗斯总统弗拉基米尔-普京来说，发音很重要。他喜欢通过称呼一些世界领导人为ty，而不是更正式的vy，来显示他与他们的亲密关系。安格拉-默克尔、埃马纽埃尔-马克龙、西尔维奥-贝卢斯科尼和维克多-欧尔班都是以这种友好的方式称呼的。但普京先生与他的 "亲爱的朋友 "习近平主席一直保持着正式关系。他们已经会面38次，最近一次是2月4日在北京的会面。然而，尽管有这些礼节，普京先生和习近平先生是一对政治双胞胎。他们对世界事务有着共同的专制观点，对中俄关系有着深刻的承诺，他们都声称中俄关系处于历史上最温暖的时期。

这种关系是平等的，因为习近平先生允许它是平等的。的确，在经济上，中国和俄罗斯不在同一个联盟中。中国的经济规模大约是俄罗斯的六倍。中国是俄罗斯的最大贸易伙伴，但俄罗斯甚至不在中国的前十名之内。然而，习近平先生纵容普京先生，因为俄罗斯的友好是中国的宝贵资产。俄罗斯是中国为数不多的真正的朋友之一，也是具有相当大的国际影响力的朋友。这使普京先生在中俄关系中拥有一定程度的影响力，这与俄罗斯的经济影响力不相称。


俄罗斯的核地位，它作为联合国安理会常任理事国的角色，以及最重要的是，它愿意动用其军事力量--就像它在乌克兰周围集结俄罗斯军队以及最近在哈萨克斯坦闪电般部署 "维和人员 "那样--都提醒北京，俄罗斯不会轻易接受中国的小伙伴角色。

任何强制推行等级制度的努力都会适得其反。毕竟，毛泽东和约瑟夫-斯大林建立的中苏联盟在20世纪50年代就是这样瓦解的。莫斯科期待着对其全球战略的尊重，而事实证明北京不愿意低头。现在，北京没有--也不能--期待莫斯科的恭顺。这意味着他们的友谊可能会比斯大林和毛泽东建立的联盟持续更久。

中国和俄罗斯不把他们的关系称为联盟。他们没有向对方提供像北约第5条所涵盖的安全保证。它们是结盟，而不是同盟，这种安排使双方都有一定程度的灵活性，允许它们的利益根据情况需要进行交汇和分歧。

近几个月来，北京和莫斯科经常交手。他们甚至已经开始为他们的关系构建一个意识形态参考框架，其基础是相似的价值观和对长期历史趋势的共同看法。耐人寻味的是，普京和习近平继续声称，中俄伙伴关系不受共同意识形态的限制，与他们认为的西方集体意识形态的僵化形成对比。他们挑战西方对 "民主 "和 "人权 "的定义，最近一次是在北京发表的联合声明。他们使用反殖民主义的言辞，断言西方代表了一个霸道的 "少数人"，其政治 "被国际社会所拒绝"。


尽管有这些大胆的断言，但证据表明，习近平先生和普京先生希望改革，而不是取代全球秩序。他们的愿景从根本上说是保守的。普京先生珍藏的谈话要点之一就表明了这一点。他说，他希望扩大联合国安理会的作用，特别是其五个常任理事国在全球政策制定中的作用。具有讽刺意味的是，一位抨击西方过时的冷战思维的领导人试图加强那些更早时期的机构，而这些机构绝不能反映当前国际政治中的权力分配。

普京先生专注于阻止北约的进一步扩大--这是他威胁乌克兰的动机--这是他几十年前的保守观念的另一个因素。这反映了前苏联领导人勃列日涅夫(Leonid Brezhnev)所赞成的欧洲安全概念。勃列日涅夫先生惧怕中国，在他的眼里，这两个邻国甚至打了一场短暂的边境战争。相比之下，普京先生已经让北京参与到反对北约扩大的努力中。

由于自己在香港的麻烦，习近平先生还对普京先生的一个老毛病给予了帮助：严厉反对所谓的由西方激发的 "颜色革命"。这表现在最近中国迅速批准了俄罗斯对哈萨克斯坦暴乱的反应。习近平先生同意了，尽管他不可能喜欢通过集体安全条约组织派遣军队，这是一个由俄罗斯领导的军事联盟，中国在其中没有发言权。

关于中俄结盟的最大问题是它是否能在迅速变化的地缘政治环境中持续下去。中国支持俄罗斯反对北约扩大是一回事，因为这样做没有任何代价。而中国帮助俄罗斯逃避其决定入侵乌克兰时将面临的经济制裁则是另一回事。俄罗斯支持中国反对去年公布的澳大利亚、英国和美国之间的三边防务条约AUKUS也是一回事，但在南海发生冲突或与印度发生冲突时支持中国又是另一回事，因为莫斯科与印度保持着友好的关系。

俄罗斯和中国的关系越密切，双方就越认为在需要的时候可以相互依靠。但是，随着旧的地缘政治竞争在欧洲和亚洲重新出现，普京先生和习近平先生可能不久就会发现自己处于一个不舒服的位置，即弄清结盟和正式联盟之间的区别。

_______________

谢尔盖-拉琴科是位于博洛尼亚的约翰-霍普金斯大学高级国际研究学院基辛格中心的威尔逊-E-施密特杰出教授。