Cold War Veterans Blog

Russia-Chinese coalition revives Cold War realities

As the media, overall, debates which country will rise to challenge American hegemony in the world, most claim the true contenders will either be China or India, yet it seems that a huge part of the equation is being overlooked: Russia.

Placing the hype aside, evidence suggests that an informal Russia-China alliance will indeed become the next great superpower. Modern global military escalation began with the United States adopting a doctrine of “pre-emptive” warfare, forcing other countries to shore up their own defenses. China, for instance, doubled its military budget between 1997 and 2003 and continued to expand its budget by over 10 percent per year from 2003 to 2005. Numbers such as these put China’s military budget at approximately $43 billion, nearly equivalent to the U.K. and Japan.

In addition to its large military spending appropriations, China’s economy is the second largest in the world. Its GDP for 2006 was $10 trillion with an external debt of $305.6 billion. The Chinese economy is therefore only second to America, which has a GDP of $13.13 trillion, but an external debt of $10 trillion— placing America at the top of the external debt list and China at 19th.

So, given all these statistics, why is it that China could not achieve true superpower status on its own? The answer is that as China becomes wealthier and begins to enter the realm of first-world countries, its economic growth and economic sustainability come into question, and rightfully so. The reason for this is that as China nears first-world status, it will increasingly become subject to stricter rules and constraints. The most important of which is energy. China needs energy to sustain this level of growth and this is where Russia enters the picture.

After the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Russian economy was a huge mess. The economy lost an approximate total of $135 billion in the aftermath of the collapse. In the 2000 elections, Vladimir Putin won the presidency and has since helped the Russian economy recover at an amazing rate.

The key to Russia’s economic recovery is its energy. Russia is home to the world’s largest natural gas reserves and is the world’s second largest oil producer. This immediately puts Russia in a position of great advantage in a world that is heavily dependent on oil. Another point to consider is that because Russia has access to oil on its native soil and does not have to concern itself with the global search for oil, nor does it have to entangle itself in contrived diplomacy or engage in aimless, confused wars on foreign soil. Currently, Russia provides a massive amount of energy to Europe and nearly all of its pipelines head west.

It is thanks to Russia’s oil and gas economy that it has been able to begin rebuilding its military. Along with renovations in basic military technology involving tanks, helicopters, submarines and research into a fifth-generation fighter jet — Russia is said to have proposed and developed renovations to their Topol-M missile.

Said missile would make it quite literally “un-hittable” by any conventional ABM (Anti-Ballistic Missile) defense system. The missile can also resist a nuclear blast within 500 meters and can resist a direct hit from lasers, rendering the United States’ ABM system obsolete.

Also, Russia has recently created the most powerful non-nuclear bomb in the world, dubbed the FOAB (Father of All Bombs), which was built in response to the United States creating the MOAB (Massive Ordinance Air Blast Bomb, a.k.a. the Mother of All Bombs) for use in Iraq. It is important to note, however, that such developments in Russian military technology are again due to the United States’ perceived level of aggression by other countries.

Most recently, the quadrilateral initiative that involves the U.S., Taiwan, India and Australia engaged in naval wargames in the Bay of Bengal. These war games have been perceived by China as threatening due to the fact that all four countries have declared China a potential threat. This pushed China, earlier this month, to engage with Russia in military training in the Ural Mountains, where Mr. Putin hosted Chinese President Hu Jintao.

As long as China and Russia are viewed as threatening states, they will be locked together ideologically, militarily, and economically. China requires energy; Russia can provide that energy. Russia, although developing moderately, requires help from the Chinese economy. Both are members of the United Nations Security Council and both have veto powers. It would seem that the world is collectively realizing one thing: The Cold War was never really over, only now the stakes are not in political ideology and nuclear brinksmanship, but rather in economics and energy. Russia and China are leading the way.

Wasim Salman (salman@wisc.edu) is a senior majoring in international studies.