On the Verge of an Alliance: Contemporary China-Russia Military Cooperation

What is it about?

The deterioration of Russia-US relations as a consequence of the Ukraine crisis and growing tensions in US-China relations have given rise to the perception that China–-Russia relations are an actual or incipient alliance. However, the alliance elements in China-Russia relations have never been systematically defined and empirically assessed, which makes assessing alliance dynamics in these important bilateral relations difficult. This article develops and applies a set of empirical criteria for an alliance to define how closely the post-Cold War China-Russia military relations have approached the alliance condition. It demonstrates that China and Russia have created strong institutional foundations for an alliance, and now only minor steps are necessary for a formal and functioning military alliance to materialize. However, the occurrence of such steps is not yet guaranteed.

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Why is it important?

Systematic attempts to explicitly define China-Russia military cooperation in terms of alliance and thus demonstrate how close, if at all, it has approached the alliance condition have been absent or lacked a justifiable combination of objective indicators. By explicitly applying an alliance framework consisting of observable, objective indicators, this study enhances the clarity of the existing discussions of the “allianceness” of China-Russia relations and delves into the underreported routinized inner workings of China-Russia military cooperation.

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