Military

            Mr. Chairman, Distinguished Members of the Committee, it is a great honor and privilege to testify before you today on Russo-Chinese relations, a matter of vital importance to our national security. While I am not speaking in any official capacity and am merely presenting my own personal views I hope that the information and analysis presented here and in my accompanying article enhances the quality of our understanding of this crucial relationship.

            Russo-Chinese relations have immense significance for Asia, global politics, and the national security of the United States and its allies and partners in Asia. Russian and Chinese leaders describe this relationship as an " equal strategic cooperative, trusting (or trustworthy or confidential) partnership that is oriented towards the twenty-first century." This description distinguishes it from the Sino-U.S. relationship, which China describes as a relationship building towards a strategic partnership. Thus for China the United States is not yet a partner although there are some elements in the Sino-American relationship that both states hope to build upon towards that end.

            Russia, however is a partner because it has accepted a relationship with China based on China's five principles of peaceful coexistence, mutual respect, trust, equality (an unprecedented situation in Sino-Russian relationships), and mutual non-interference in each other's affairs. China supports Russia's territorial integrity with regard to Chechnya and Russia supports a policy not only of one China and non-interference in the Taiwan issue but also embraces a posture of four nos towards Taiwan. That posture signifies no formal state-state relationship with Taiwan, no sale of weapons to it, a one-China policy, and no support for Taiwanese membership in any international organization whose criterion for membership is statehood. Furthermore, Moscow also supports Beijing's policies towards Tibet and Xinjiang and has refused to exploit the twenty-year-old Islamic-led unrest in Xinjiang. Likewise, it is of vital importance to Russia that China supports its war in Chechnya and opposes any Islamic uprisings in Central Asia or Russia.

            Both Moscow and Beijing have also repeatedly stated that this relationship is not an alliance nor is it directed against any third party. Russo-Chinese relations are also officially based on a vision of a new world order, opposed to what we mean by that term (and the Chinese have now started using that phrase in distinction to American usage of it) and on an understanding of Sino-Russian future roles within that "new world order." They also maintain that their partnership offers a model for the entire world as to how bilateral relationship among neighbors should develop, again in distinction to an American led world order that they charge is composed of hostile blocs and alliances.

            Although there are charges that this relationship is an alliance and the term has been used in various press reports, it appears from the public record that this relationship does not yet compare to a formal alliance such as that between the United States and South Korea, Australia, and New Zealand, or Japan or to the relationships we have with out NATO allies. For example, there was no sign of a formal clause binding either state to fight on behalf of the other if it is attacked. Nor have we seen until now any reliable evidence (though naturally there is the possibility of covert secret agreements to this end) of the level of integrated military planning that we see in American relationships with NATO allies, Japan, South Korea, or the ANZUS powers, Australia and New Zealand. Nevertheless the present stage of the relationship and the new trends within it are sufficiently alarming and so increasingly strongly and overtly opposed to vital U.S. military and political interests as to deserve our unflagging attention.

            The main driver in the Sino-Russian relationship is opposition to what the United States both stands for and does in world affairs. Indeed, one of the fundamental dangers to us of this burgeoning relationship is that it consolidates the domestic power of those elements in both Russia and China who most oppose true liberalization and democratic reform, the military, police forces, defense industrialists, and congenitally anti-Western political forces.

            Since the Pentagon has been obliged to state that "a cross-Strait conflict between China and Taiwan involving the United States has emerged as the dominant scenario guiding PLA force planning, military training, and war preparation" in China; this anti-American partnership and especially its military component threatens our vital strategic interests and potentially our forces in Asia. However, this hardly exhausts the situation. Already by 1998 Beijing's White paper postulated hegemonism, i.e. U.S. policy, as China's main rival in both political and ideological terms. Further examination of Chinese military writings from 1995-2000 shows a distinct increase in the scope of the perceived U.S. threat to include, not just this Taiwan scenario, but an Asian NATO, embracing Japan in the East, the use of theater and national missile defense (TMD and NMD), attempts to deny China access to sophisticated military systems, and a very heightened alarm about the penetration of Western, i.e. U.S. and Islamic influence in Central Asia and Xinjiang.  

And Russia shares the same threat perception. The four cornerstone documents of Russian national security, the draft defense doctrine in October, 1999, the national security concept of January 2000, the revised and official defense doctrine of April, 2000, and the new foreign policy concept of July, 2000 all openly cited the United States and its policies as the main source of external threats to Russian security and also went a long way to finding the hand of America behind many of the internal threats confronting Russia.

            In both cases this heightened threat assessment and increasingly overt anti-Americanism is traceable to the enhanced sense of threat generated by our military action in Kosovo. Even a cautious analysis of Sino-Russian relations' tendency towards greater unity of action and coordination observes that, four separate joint shifts in diplomacy by Moscow and Beijing would support this assessment of Kosovo's importance. Those shifts were

·From "low politics" of promoting economic relations to the "high politics" of strategic cooperation;

·From routine "high-level" talks to crisis consultations and crisis management;

·From symbolic ties "not to affect any third party" to concrete consultation and coordination aiming to exert influence upon a third party; and by

·Significant though still somewhat symbolic moves away from the US, the lone superpower, by both China and Russia.

            However, there also was a fifth step, significantly upgraded bilateral military cooperation at the strategic level. Sadly the Administration has been blind to that nexus despite its intense interest in creating a supposed alliance with Russian reform and in China's liberalization. In fact the Administration refuses to accept that this partnership is growing in a threatening direction. Nor does it acknowledge that Sino-Russian relations need not be a formal alliance like those listed above in order to pose major threats to American and allied interests abroad. Nor does the Administration take into account that at least in 1995, 1998 and 1999 Russian leaders -- Defense Minister Pavel Grachev in 1995, according to U.S. intelligence analysts, the Russian government in 1998, Vladimir Putin as Prime Minister in 1999 -- have regularly asked for a military-political alliance with China. The Russian media has often talked of an alliance and German diplomats in Moscow believed it was possible by 1996. Chinese diplomats have also stated publicly in 1996 that Central Asian states and Russia should remain military allies for this alliance also benefits China. And as a result of Kosovo many Chinese and Russian military figures are now advocating an alliance. Yet American officials persist in calling this relationship "a marriage of convenience", nothing more

            Although Beijing has regularly publicly turned down these appeals it has compensated Moscow by steadily broadening the public relationship with Russia in economics, politics, ideological affinity, and military partnership. However, on July 12, 2000 at least 2 Chinese language sources, one from New York, reporting from Taipei, and another from Hong Kong, as well as the Singapore Straits Times, stated that President told President Jiang Zemin at the July 5 Dushanbe Summit of the Shanghai Five (signatories to the 1996-97 border treaties in Shanghai) that in the event of a war with Taiwan, should the U.S. 7th Fleet sail to Taiwan's rescue, he had ordered Russia's Pacific Fleet to interpose its Pacific Fleet (a nuclear armed fleet by the way) to block our forces from getting to Taiwan. If this report were true, it would mean that Russia, unlike the Soviet Union, is willing to risk a nuclear war with the United States for the sake of China's interests in Taiwan. It would also demonstrate the practical outcome of the Sino-Russian naval cooperation announced in 1999 by the Commander of Russia's Pacific Fleet, Admiral Zakharenko, and Col. General Zhang Wannian.

            At the same time, it directly contradicts statements by Putin and Secretary of the Security Council Sergei Ivanov, in March, 2000 they Russia would sell China weapons but did not want them to be used to resolve the Taiwan issue and that the sale of sensitive technologies to China was being suspended. It also contradicts some recent signs of a certain Russian coolness towards China, at least by Putin and Ivanov. These reports also would mark a startling departure in Russian policy. Whereas in 1958 Nikita Khrushchev flatly refused to risk nuclear confrontation with the United States over Taiwan when the USSR was in a much healthier position; these reports if true, would show Russia ready to risk just that kind of maritime nuclear confrontation on behalf of China when it is prostrate.14 Finally it came at the very same time as Beijing's official statements to Defense Secretary William Cohen, that it had no intent to use force against Taiwan.

            However unlikely, irresponsible, and frightening such a possibility of Russian intervention may be, there are some signs that this may not be entirely a fabrication or wishful thinking in Beijing. First, there are those in the Russian armed forces who have publicly speculated in writing that the use by the Russian Navy (or other branches) of a tactical nuclear weapon against an American carrier battle group (CVBG) would not really constitute nuclear war.  Second, China's military newspaper published an article on the so called Russian nuclear containment strategy" in advance of the publication of Moscow's official military doctrine that was considerably more explicit than Russia was about nuclear use -- although it was in tune with Russian exercises -- and may have represented advance knowledge (or alternatively an attempt to push Moscow in a certain direction) of the kinds of strategic scenarios that are now regularly being discussed by Russian and Chinese military planners. Specifically the article stated that,

To make up for the serious shortage in conventional military strength caused by economic difficulty, Russia's military theorists have first put forward that when Russian troops suffer serious casualties in a regional war or armed conflict, or when there is the danger of an escalation of a war, Russia can gain the initiative by striking first and launch a campaign or tactical nuclear attack on the enemy to end the war as soon as possible in order to prevent the West from meddling with conflicts around Russia or Russia's domestic conflicts, thus attaining the dual goals of preventing a nuclear war or a large-scale war and containing a regional or local war. (Italics author)

            While the idea that initiation of a nuclear war is a way to terminate a nuclear war is a puzzle only dialecticians can solve, the relevance of this scenario to the type described above in and around the Taiwan Strait is obvious. Furthermore Several Chinese officials and commentators have stated that if Washington intervenes against China on behalf of Taiwan it will use nuclear missiles and other weapons against political, economic, and military targets in the United States or that Russian support for this use of force would deter Washington.

            According to former Lieutenant General Mi Zhenyu, even if China is weaker than the United States China can restrain if not defeat it because it cannot stand the thought of casualties and has too many diplomatic interests in China to risk losing them. Finally apparently China's post-Kosovo strategic discussions have also pointed to the need to preempt the buildup of U.S. power in the area by striking first

            Therefore while it would be rash to conclude that an alliance in the classical sense is definitively on until we have further confirmation, these reports should ring alarm bells in the White House, intelligence community, and the Pentagon. Moreover, this is not the only example of major political coordination beyond the known ones in the UN and on missile defense. Both the Chinese and Russian governments now say that in a reunified Korea that there is no room for American forces to stay and that they should leave. If there indeed be genuine bilateral coordination on Korea it would be the first sign of such bilateral cooperation since until now China has done nothing to bring Russia into the Korean peace process and Russia deeply resented its exclusion from that process. Certainly it is hard to discern Russian rivalry with China in Southeast Asia. Rather Russia appears unable to devise any way of truly entering Southeast Asia except through China's support.  If there were instead genuine strategic cooperation on both Korea and Southeast Asia than that would also go far to validate the claim that Sino-Russian positions on all major issues of international and Asian security are "identical."  Therefore we may be witnessing the early stages of a potential alliance that could pose extremely serious threats and challenges to the United States' interests, allies, and armed forces.

            Undoubtedly the Sino-Russian partnership is overtly anti-American. Both partners embrace positions on major issues international security in direct opposition to the United States and its allies in the UN. And they are particularly active in doing so across Central, South, and East Asia. Their partnership comprises economic, political, ideological, and military dimensions. And in each of these dimensions of the partnership Beijing and Moscow are forming closer and deeper bonds despite difficulties, and ever more openly voice the partnership's overt anti-American character.            Thus the pace of Russo-Chinese military exchanges is growing along with other forms of partnership and interchange between China and Russia. However, what is crucial is that Russia and China appear to be paying no price for enhanced anti-American military-political cooperation. This situation cannot continue without grave injury being done to the U.S.' and its allies' and partners' interests and security.

Examination of the volume of recorded military-technological transfers from Russia to China demonstrates this trend of rising strategic cooperation clearly. In 1991-96 Russia sold China an estimated $1billion/yr. worth of military weapons and related technologies. That figure doubled to 2$billion/yr. by 1997. Clearly this development, along with the conclusion of the Five Power treaty on delimitation of the border that was signed in Shanghai by Russia, China, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Kazakstan in 1996-97 (whence the term Shanghai five) and the upgrading of ties with Russia to the level of a strategic partnership owe much to the Taiwan crises of 1995-96. In 1999 the two governments doubled that military assistance package for a second time. Thus there is now a five-year program through 2004 of $20 billion worth of such transfers. That means that in the year 2000 and in each of the next four years Moscow will sell Beijing $4billion in arms and related technologies. The details of this new plan are as follows. Every year 8-12 military delegations of various services will conduct mutual visits to the other country to promote bilateral military ties. Every year 1,200-2000 Chinese military students will study in Russian military academies. Both governments' armed forces will conduct joint exercises at an appropriate time. Each will invite the other "to visit, observe, and emulate its military exercises in order to improve each other's military technology." A mechanism for the exchange of military intelligence will be established and there will be a mechanism for cooperation in the manufacture of naval, air, and air defense weapons. And given the scope of other exchanges in technology and know-how it would seem that still more cooperation is in the offing.  This intensification of this "partnership" is directly traceable to China's realization that it needs Russian support in order to challenge U.S. power in the vicinity of Taiwan and that it cannot obtain the necessary political tranquility on its borders or military assistance without that support.

            Russian transfers are seen as a way for China to catch up in selected areas of military affairs to the United States and Japan by creating what are called "pockets of excellence" and learning from foreign examples, as did the Egyptian Army in 1973. Reliance upon Russia and other states also reflects the policy decision to obtain foreign technologies for subsequent indigenous development, so that China can deter or be more technologically competitive with the United States and Japan in the area around Taiwan.            Therefore China's acknowledged technological inferiority and problems in its defense industrial base should not blind us to the implications of the accelerating and deepening military assistance coming from Russia. The figures cited above for those forms of assistance record only official transfers, the open-source evidence does not even begin to scratch the surface of what we know to be large-scale military-technological transfers in the so called gray and black markets. We know such transfers are occurring but obviously cannot measure them. Nor can we assign a precise monetary equivalent to the impact of the large number of human exchanges either through the internet or through Russian scientists in China or Chinese scientists in Russia who are working to upgrade Chinese capabilities. As it is, since 1988 several agreements have been signed and upgraded allowing Chinese and Russian scientists much more access to each other's installations and institutions to facilitate technological learning and instruction. And the fact that in 1999 China tested its JL-2 SLBM, DF-31 ICBM both of which can target the continental United States, announced acquisition of a neutron bomb, and other assorted conventional capabilities that had been lacking and singled out by Western analysts as crucial shortcomings should China attempt to project military power abroad or to Taiwan suggests the scope of this assistance and its results.

            Clinton Administration officials concede that Russia has supplied China with short and long-range mobile missile technologies and systems and have set up a regular system or process of staff talks to discuss and undoubtedly rehearse scenarios concerning Taiwan. Indeed, according to Alexander Nemets and John Scherer who have closely monitored this aspect of the relationship, Russian military-technological assistance has allowed China to narrow the technological gap between its forces and U.S. forces in some crucial areas. Thus while there still is a clear margin of U.S. superiority it is less than it was and is not foreordained to remain intact beyond the limits of current planning horizons, i.e. until 2020.

            Moreover, much of the complacency regarding China's military capability is wrongly based on the assumption that China is planning to attack the continental United States directly. Therefore a direct China-U.S. force on force matchup becomes the standard of measurement and comparison in strategic assessments. This assumption seems misplaced. Neither Russia nor China seeks or can realistically attain those capabilities and win as such anytime soon. But China does seek the capability to intimidate or capture Taiwan, and, as noted above, to restrain the United States, and become the major power in Asia without whom nothing can be done.

            Therefore the military capabilities China is procuring or developing with Russian help are precisely those it needs to achieve those purposes and precisely those capabilities that Western analysts have singled out as necessary for such purposes but which have been lacking in China's arsenal. As Malcolm Davis wrote in 1999,

 Acquisition of the Sukhoi SU-30MKK Flanker may give China an additional long-range strike capability but only if such aircraft can utilize the support of air to air refueling (AAR) aircraft and airborne early warning (AEW) aircraft--two important force capabilities currently lacking from PLAAF force structure.

By the time of this writing China had acquired the SU-30MKK and the refueling capability and was negotiating for the AEW capability. Moreover the SU-30 upgraded the previously acquired SU-27s capability to conduct over the horizon (OTH) targeting and operations. And there are numerous other examples of a similar nature. The SS-N-22 Sunburn (Moskit in Russian) is probably the best anti-ship missile on the market today and is incorporated into the Soveremennyi cruisers that Russia has sold to China. Many of those missiles in China's growing inventory are of Russian origin, specifically the Kh-15 (NATO calls it the AS-16 Kickback) and the Kh-55 (As-125 Kent) and these hardly exhaust what Russia has sold China in the way of missile technology.

Russo-Chinese Security Objectives

            Both China and Russia are illiberal and revisionist states that cannot accept today's status quo and are seeking to overthrow it. Therefore their entente or quasi-alliance holds great dangers to those states committed to the status quo and to liberalism. To a large degree this outlook derives from the profound insecurity that these states feel because they see their own borders as being under threat and the integrity of their states as still being open to question and threats. Therefore their threat assessments meld both internal and external threats and increasingly see a seamless web of threats comprising both internal and external threats, allegedly often orchestrated from Washington. This threat dimension undermines the deeply felt pretensions towards being a great power in both states, the fundamental ideological plank on which the currently anti-democratic governments in both countries rest on. Hence the virulence of anti-American rhetoric and the deeply felt need for a united front against Washington from Central Asia to the UN.

Not only is Russia's formal threat assessment conflating these threats found in its official documents cited above, its leaders like President Putin invoke a Muslim international threat from the Philippines to the Balkans which is attempting with the aid of outside states to undertake "a geopolitical reshuffling" at Russia's expense. Similarly all of China's borders with its major neighbors, India, Russia, Japan, Vietnam, Taiwan, and even, Spratly Islands are subject to counterclaims and China cannot take its borders for granted. Accordingly the consistent fears, greatly intensified in both Russia and China after Kosovo, of an Asian Serbia of the Kosovo analogy being used for Taiwan or the invocation of a no-fly zone over Tibet due to human rights violations, or the heightened concern over Central Asian contingencies involving the United States betray a profound internal insecurity which is compensated for psychologically and politically by great power claims made abroad.  And equally importantly, these claims prevent the emergence of liberalizing coalitions at home from coming to power on the basis of a program of pro-Western economic, political reform and demilitarization of security policy.

            China's aggressive threats towards Taiwan, claims on the Senkaku Islands off Japan, unresolved border disputes with most of its neighbors, and island grabbing in the Spratly Island chain, as well as its unsatisfied obsession of being a great power and gaining still more territory are ample testimony to its revisionism.  Indeed, far too many Chinese strategists use arguments uncannily resembling German arguments from before World War I and II and actually invoke the term living space (Lebensraum) for anyone in Asia or here to feel too comfortable concerning Chinese objectives.

            Russia's revisionist objectives are visible not only in its stalling on treaties with the Baltic states and the statements of its diplomats in Latvia and Lithuania that it will return to those capitals. Nor is it limited to Boris Yeltsin's attempt in 1993-94 to obtain 30 bases inside the former CIS for Russian forces or the use of Russian troops in the CIS, allegedly in peace operations but actually to restore a Russian military presence throughout the CIS. Nor does that revisionism end with the actual deployment of many Russian forces to Moldova, Georgia, and Central Asia and the shipment of large quantities of weapons to Armenia to compel those states subservience to Moscow.  Russian revisionism is evident in the statements of its leaders e. g. Yevgeny Primakov, Andrei Kokoshin, and now President Vladimir Putin concerning Russia's objectives while in power. Clearly they do not mind signaling to the world Moscow's deepest aspirations for revising the status quo and "augmenting" its territory.    

U.S. Reactions

            Yet the Clinton Administration and most of the expert community persist in denigrating this relationship's significance. They describe Sino-Russian partnership as merely a marriage of convenience, or as a relationship having little or no strategic consequence where Moscow sells weapons exclusively for cash to bail out its stricken defense industries. Indeed, in this bilateral relationship's early stages Administration spokesmen welcomed it.  Administration spokesmen actually welcomed upgraded partnership between Moscow and Beijing as it harmonized with their objectives. They reasoned that it was merely a matter of normalization of Russo-Chinese relations, which the United States should welcome. Either the Administration wanted to support Boris Yeltsin or it wanted to support Jiang Zemin, both of whom were supposedly under fire from hard-liners, and downplayed any discussion or even consideration of the relationship's strategic implications for the United States or its allies and partners in Asia.

            Thus the United States is unwittingly helping to forge, at no cost, a relationship that many analysts see as the greatest possible threat to it in the future. Yet there still seems to be an absence of such strategic reflection in many quarters here and little media coverage of this relationship in the sense of analysis of what its recent trends mean. This tendency to look away from the unpleasant and even threatening aspects of this relationship overlooks several unpalatable aspects of Sino-Russian cooperation.

The Nature and Goals of Sino-Russian Partnership   

                        It is hardly surprising that these two revisionist governments have joined forces against the United States, the principal democratic power and upholder of the status quo.      

And that was before Kosovo and the associated bombing of the Chinese embassy. Moreover, that strategic and especially military aspect of these bilateral relations is growing. Thus the Clinton Administration's basic nonchalance or complacency about this relationship's strategic purpose and quality has always been unwarranted and is certainly not justifiable at present.

            Today Russian military assistance to China comprises weapons and technologies for the Chinese Army, Navy, Air Force, air defense operations, nuclear missile technologies, command and control, and space systems, both civilian and military. The ongoing bilateral relationship also includes a regular program of ongoing high-level consultations and review of progress and future purchases and requirements, staff talks that presumably discuss anti-American or anti-Taiwanese or other contingencies, systematic cooperation against American positions in the United Nations and in Central Asia, joint political cooperation on ways of combating U.S. programs of theater and national missile defense, intelligence sharing apparently dating back to 1992, the instruction of Chinese officers in Russian military academies, joint efforts to integrate the military and police organizations of the Central Asian, and other CIS states to those of Russia and thus indirectly to China, and the ongoing integration of Russo-Belarussian-Chinese defense industries. None of this is new it is all in the open source literature cited by them and corroborated by this author. Therefore the neglect of that information and of its significance is inexplicable if not amazing.

            It is possible, indeed likely, that the closeness of this relationship has impeded progress towards Russo-Japanese rapprochement and a formal Russo-Japanese peace treaty. And insofar as Chinese military literature emphasizes contingencies and operations against the United States or its allies, especially in regard to Taiwan and more recently Central Asia, Moscow's military assistance to China obviously aims to enhance Chinese warfighting capabilities vis-a-vis the United States and/or its allies and partners.  Indeed, this is the purpose behind the regular bilateral staff talks.   

Collaboration between Russia and China also does not have to take the form of a formal military alliance to be threatening to the United States. Indeed, in 1996 Ambassador Charles Freeman raised the possibility of China receiving satellite intelligence from an otherwise "neutral" Russia in the event of a conflict with the United States over Taiwan. Even more compelling an example is the fact given their current basing mode, Chinese ICBM's that can reach the United States must traverse Russian air space to do so yet no sign of Russian concern about this has been raised.

Therefore we can say for sure that this relationship has reached a stage of strategic military-political coordination, if not alliance, mainly directed against U.S. policies and interests. Second, there are disturbing signs that a formal alliance may be in the offing. That anti-American coordination appears in the following regions or with regard to the following issues:

·In Central Asia Beijing and Moscow aim to exclude the United States from the area, monopolize the huge energy resources located there, stifle democratic and any other opposition under the guise of attacking terrorists, both real and imagined, place pro-Moscow appointees in charge of those states militaries and police, integrate them with Russia's and China's forces, integrate those states' resources and defense industries with their own, and mobilize their political support for anti-American agendas like opposition to missile defense.

·In South Asia, despite continuing strong and long-lasting reasons for Sino-Indian rivalry, Russian diplomats have long tried to overcome or at least moderate those impediments and bring India into an alliance with Russia and China or at least to a more pro-China posture. One basis for this new strategic triangle would be opposition to American hegemonism as expressed in the Kosovo operation, the bypassing of the UN and U.S. efforts to undermine state sovereignty by using the doctrine of human rights and self-determination for minorities.

·Another motive for tripartite cooperation would be the shared opposition of all three states to any form of nationalist or religious Muslim assertion in Kashmir, Central Asia, and Xinjiang. Apparently these approaches have borne fruit as the recent improvement of Sino-Indian relations indicates.

·In turn India would then contribute to the staunch Sino-Russian opposition to U.S. initiatives towards Iraq, Yugoslavia, or other threats to international security in the UN General Assembly and Security Council.

·There are several reasons why Indian association with this partnership to whatever degree it is feasible is of interest to Moscow and Beijing. Such an association would exclude the possibility of a conflict between India and China and minimize the likelihood of one between India and Pakistan.

·Another reason for bringing India into this relationship is that by doing so Moscow and Beijing would also benefit in other ways. To the extent that the international agenda can be focused on Islamic separatism, terrorism, and the United States' threats to international order as expressed in the Kosovo operation, China and Russia could shift the spotlight from a focus on their own continuing imperial and aggressive revisionism. That shift in focus would allow them to continue those policies at little cost.  On the other hand, high degrees of Sino-Indian friction will inevitably cause India to lean towards Washington against Beijing helping the United States to further consolidate what Beijing fears is its anti-Chinese containment strategy.

·Inasmuch as coalitions are essential in today's world for achieving lasting peace in many conflict areas, the Sino-Russian cooperation in the United Nations to neutralize U.S. initiatives is a disturbing augury of what may occur. Certainly it reflects the program of continuing high-level strategic coordination of both governments' policy positions.

·For example, thanks to Russo-Chinese obstruction, today there is no supervision of Iraqi proliferation efforts. While Iraq is constrained in many ways, it undoubtedly is moving to restore its capabilities for nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare. And those weapons can easily be directed against American allies in the Gulf or eventually Israel.

·Another area in which both China and Russia, perhaps independently, or perhaps together are collaborating against American and allied interests is in the continuing proliferation of nuclear, chemical, and biological warfare technologies, especially nuclear missile systems. Evidently both governments have determined that despite their international commitments to the contrary, they will support nuclear and perhaps other forms of proliferation in order to constrain and restrict the U.S.' capability to project power and deploy a forward presence abroad.

·By the Pentagon's and other analysts' accounts, even if it cannot attack Taiwan today, China is improving its capabilities to the point where it may be able either to do so or to successfully intimidate Taiwan in 5-15 years. ·Although we see no signs today of military cooperation on NMD and TMD, the existence of space and nuclear weapons collaboration plus the fact that there are unconfirmed reports of the transfer of relevant technologies cannot inspire confidence. And indeed, there are unconfirmed reports from the Pentagon of technology transfer with special reference to ballistic theater and/or missile defense systems.

·Here too we find Sino-Russian political cooperation against us in the UN and in efforts to undermine our alliances on behalf of old, discredited arguments, and phony programs. These activities reveal Moscow and Beijing's interest in a United States that cannot defend its allies due to its own exposed position. Notwithstanding all the complaints from Moscow and Beijing, their arguments against it are the same as 15 and 30 years ago. And given the high level of mendacity and low level of transparency in both states' description of their defense programs, it stands to reason that they may be building similar systems. Indeed, the available evidence strongly shows that both states are feverishly building their own such defenses and anti-American capabilities for preemptive information and space warfare against U.S. satellites, information networks, command and control, etc.

·These long-standing efforts that predate the current U.S. interest in middle defense are increasingly aligned to doctrines that call for preemptive or first nuclear or anti-space strikes or information attacks both to deter and to threaten the United States and its allies. Indeed, Chinese attacks upon theater and national missile defense along with perennial Chinese threats to use force and even missile strikes demonstrate quite clearly that China wishes to retain the unconstrained capability to threaten Japan, and the United States as well as Taiwan with nuclear and conventional missiles. Beijing evidently remains oblivious to the harm that its saber rattling generates to its own professed interest of peaceful economic development.

Partly due to Chinese policy Asia is becoming a home for missile warfare of all sorts both conventional and nuclear and this trend shows no signs of stopping, quite the opposite.  The old deterrence regime of bilateral and mutual Soviet - American deterrence where both sides and their alliances existed in a mutual hostage relationship is over. Today we must admit that we are in a new world with multiple intra-regional challenges to deterrence, including the challenge posed by this partnership to the United States, Japan, and Taiwan and potentially other states as well.

Conclusion     

The Sino-Russian strategic cooperation is threatening in many ways. It seeks to arrest the spread of democracy and to threaten the United States and its allies. The comprehensive scope of Russo-Chinese political coordination aims to frustrate the realization of U.S. interests, to preserve multiple areas of conflict in the world by which to tie down or restrict and constrain American power. They actively support the proliferation of nuclear and perhaps chemical or biological warfare capabilities. They are attempting to undermine democracy or democratic tendencies in Eurasia, and to threaten the United States itself.

Yet the response here has been one composed of complacency and ineffectual vacillations of policy. We must abandon the complacency that sees here only a marriage of convenience and a welcome normalization of Sino-Russian issues left over from the Cold War and refuses to act on actions by China and Russia that directly threaten U.S. interests, allies, and partners. Clearly the United States has it in its power to arrest the damage being done to it, its allies', and its partners' interests, and to do so peacefully albeit decisively. But if it refuses to acknowledge the true dimensions of this relationship and rethink its strategy, policy, and military posture, the United States, other governments and other peoples may well pay an exorbitant price for its complacency and blindness.