Fifty years after Henry Kissinger’s game-changing secret visit to China — which led to the Sino-American rapprochement and became a key turning point of the Cold War — there is no shortage of new would-be Kissingers. Important voices have called for a readjustment of America’s confrontational approach to Russia in a bid to play Moscow as a card against Beijing.
The argument hinges on a seeming power disparity between a declining Russia and its ambitious and much more powerful neighbor. Stephen Blank argues that this “ever-greater disparity … may, in time, allow the [United States] and its allies to exploit Russian feelings of resentment and resistance to subordination.” If only the United States found a way to fuel Russia’s fears of China to the point where it might, as Charles A. Kupchan recently put it, “leave a bad marriage.”
The proposed US approach to the Sino-Russian relationship rests on the assumption that Russia resents its junior position vis-à-vis an ever more powerful China, and that such resentment — and Moscow’s mistrust of Beijing’s intentions — can be profitably exploited.
The assumption that the United States can drive a wedge between China and Russia is flawed. Unlike in the past, the Sino-Russian relationship is not hierarchical and does not require Russia’s unquestioning deference to China’s wishes. The two countries are miles apart ideologically, and neither expects the other to embrace the same worldview. Finally, China and Russia work hard to avoid frictions, both because they have no desire to see these frictions exploited by third parties and because they understand — rightly — that they are destined to be neighbors. If history has taught them anything, it is that it’s much better to be good neighbors than to be at each other’s throats.
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