Putin doesn't rule out a formal alliance with China. If he does that it is an admission that Russia is too weak to protect its Far East from China.
Asked during a video conference with international foreign policy experts Thursday whether a military union between Moscow and Beijing was possible, Putin replied that “we don’t need it, but, theoretically, it’s quite possible to imagine it.”
Russia and China have hailed their “strategic partnership,” but so far rejected any talk about the possibility of their forming a military alliance.
Russia has quite the dilemma with China. Russia owns large swathes of Chinese territory in an era when China feels it is gaining the power to reverse their "century of humiliation."
Russia thought it bought time with a policy of appeasement to be able to face China:
Russia has spent the post-Soviet era trying to please China by--until recently--selling arms to China that China then copied, and coming to agreements with China on the border that give China room to push for more one day.
Perhaps one day rather soon.
And Russia complains loudly about American and NATO plots against Mother Russia when in fact NATO in Europe has mostly disarmed while America was happy to not think about Russia much.
From our point of view, this makes no sense. Can't Russia see that the West is no threat while China is the threat? Why not work with us?
Well, from the Russian point of view, Russia is acting very logical.
Russian power collapsed in 1991, leaving their Far East vulnerable to China whose power soon began to rise even as Russia's power continued to erode.
Was it logical for Russia to openly treat China as a threat and cozy up to the West that was disarming and never going to help Russia defend the Amur River line?
Not really, when you think about it. Yes, in the end, Russia will have to recognize that China is a threat and not NATO. But we're far from whenever "the end" is and until then Russia can't afford to anger China.
So Russia sells weapons designed to point China's modernizing military out to sea against America, Taiwan, and Japan rather than against Russia.
This isn't just clever politics. This is a form of appeasement.
And who knows, as I argued in the last link in the above quote, the Russians probably thought that maybe Russia's effort to engineer a U.S.-China war--by sharing "sensitive military technologies that helped significantly boost China’s military potential, " as Putin boasted in that initial article--would take out two birds with one stone.
But Russia failed in their race against time and had to admit their conventional military cannot protect Russia from a land threat--which only China poses despite all the Russian noise about the nonexistent NATO threat.
That aggressive stance against NATO was an effort to disguise Russia's policy of appeasement to buy time. An alliance with China would indicate that Russia lost their race and--despite my recent hope to the contrary--needs to give China even more to avoid losing the Far East by force.
How long can Russia hold off China by dangling such an alliance before Xi? What would China demand as their price for an alliance to keep quiet about their lost territory in Russia?
Let's see if this pays off for Russia.
