By J. Michael Cole
Russia and China have studied the end of the Cold War and how the US ultimately defeated the USSR by bankrupting it.
According to Chinese State Councilor Yang Jiechi and Secretary of the Security Council of the Russian Federation Nikolai Platonovich Patrushev, 2013 was “a year of harvest” for Sino-Russian relations. It was also a year of new lows for the countries’ relations with the West — and from the look of it, things could get worse in 2014.
Much has been said in recent years about how two difficult wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and a sagging economy cut the U.S. at the knees and created space for China. During this same period, China was enjoying double-digit economic growth and a relatively stable security environment, emerging as a hegemon in Asia. As the U.S. was struggling to extricate itself from, and was pouring billions of dollars into, unwinnable wars, Beijing was reaping the benefits of its “peaceful rise” by building its economy, resolving longstanding territorial disputes with neighbors, consolidating ties with smaller powers within the region, and neutralizing Taiwan as a potential source of armed conflict.
Thus, when China began flexing its muscles in the East and South China Seas, Beijing was not cowed by the U.S. “pivot,” or “rebalancing,” to Asia. For one thing, it was apparent that Washington’s renewed interest in East Asia would not — at least not in the medium term — be accompanied by a willingness to allocate sufficient capital and resources to make the pivot a credible counter to China. As Beijing and many U.S. defense experts saw it, the rebalancing was more a wish list and academic exercise than an actual strategy, let alone one that was anywhere near implementation. That is the reason why Beijing suffered little consequences when it threatened to alter the status quo within the region, such as with the November 23 declaration of its extended Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) in the East China Sea. (There is every reason to believe that a credible U.S. pivot to Asia would have deterred Beijing, which ostensibly does not seek war at this point in time, from embarking on such adventurism.)
Read the full story at The Diplomat