Introduction: Analyzing the Shifts in Sino-Russian Strategic Cooperation Since 2014

Abstract

The aim of this volume is to contribute to an ongoing discussion on the scope and meaning of Russian-Chinese cooperation since 2014, the year Russia invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea. During the past few years, the number of research projects on Sino-Russian cooperation at Western think tanks has markedly increased, complementing a likewise increasing number of monographs and edited volumes that had begun to appear on related topics during the preceding years.

The aim of this volume is to contribute to an ongoing discussion on the scope and meaning of Russian-Chinese cooperation since 2014, the year Russia invaded Ukraine and annexed Crimea. During the past few years, the number of research projects on Sino-Russian cooperation at Western think tanks has markedly increased¹, complementing a likewise increasing number of monographs and edited volumes that had begun to appear on related topics during the preceding years.²

The present volume is the result of a research project that began in 2019 as an outgrowth of the Foundation for Science and Democracy’s (SWuD) project “Global Transformation and German Foreign Policy” that was overseen by Joachim Krause and Svenja Sinjen.

In order to explore the new dynamics created by the increasing rapprochement of China and Russia—two Eurasian great powers that had emerged as the prime challengers of the US-dominated postwar order—the editors of this volume decided to focus on the bilateral relationship between Russia and China and its impact on their joint power to challenge the West. In late 2019, we began to convene an international group of experts on Russia, China, and international security affairs to initiate a process of fact-finding in various fields of Sino-Russian cooperation. The goal was to capture the multifaceted and, as we expected, far from uniform empirical reality of Sino-Russian coordination along and within various strategically relevant fields. The focus of our research lay primarily, but not exclusively, on the security and military domains of Sino-Russian cooperation, as well as on fields that can be assumed to hold strategic importance for either of the two countries—fields where significant vulnerabilities exist that are relevant for ensuring regime survival, or where both countries can be expected to see a high potential for disruptive, anti-Western “grey zone” activity.

In mid-January 2020, we convened a 2-day international fact-finding workshop in Berlin that was attended by 24 experts from 8 countries representing 14 institutions as subject matter contributors and 11 officials from 3 different countries as participants and discussants. Directly afterward, the Konrad Adenauer Foundation (KAS) convened a panel discussion in Berlin and another closed workshop for European and NATO officials in Brussels where the results of the Berlin workshop, and in particular the military-strategic analyses, were presented and discussed. In the aftermath of these workshop discussions, we decided to make the key findings of our research process available to the public and present as many of the empirical case studies that these assessments were based on as possible.

Some of the chapter authors in the present volume were in attendance at the 2020 Berlin workshop and took its intense discussions into account when finalizing their contributions to the present volume. Other contributions to this book were commissioned later in the process with an aim of covering as broad a spectrum of relevant research topics as possible under the circumstances, with authors writing from different regional, professional, and institutional angles.

Looking back on the 2-year process of our research agenda, a lot has changed in the Russian-Chinese relationship, even within that short time frame. In line with this fast pace of development, the perception among Western scholars regarding the nature and quality of this bilateral relationship has likewise shifted. Earlier deemed by many Western observers to be no more than at maximum a “wary embrace” (Lo, 2017) or a “marriage of convenience” (Lubina, 2017), analysts became increasingly concerned about the scope and quality of the actual cooperation (Dibb, 2019; Kashin, 2019, October 22) and the potential synergies that could pose serious challenges to the Western alliance (Kendall-Taylor & Shullman, 2021). Some erstwhile skeptics of a true Sino-Russian rapprochement were finding it necessary to rethink their earlier stance (Weitz, 2021, July 9; cf. also Gabuev, 2021, March 19).

The question is, however: to what extent could this be just an elaborate ploy, as it could be in the Russian and Chinese leadership’s interest to signal an entente to the USA and its allies as a form of “information warfare”? How can analysts even distinguish between purely symbolic gestures that are intended to inspire fear on the one hand, and actual indications of a deepening strategic trust on the other—the latter being a necessary precondition for a functioning alliance? And in case there is indeed cause to acknowledge such a deepening strategic trust and increasingly coordinated activity—where could this lead, what are its limits, how long might it last, how far could it go, and what would the consequences of all this be for the West, especially the USA, Europe, and NATO?

With two powers that are ruled by leaders who seemingly adhere to a starkly realist worldview that might have been formed through their socialization within a communist system and surviving the breakdown of order (Vladimir Putin during the dissolution of the Soviet Union and Xi Jinping in his youth during China’s Cultural Revolution), a key factor to study is the question of where the Russian Federation’s (RF) and the People’s Republic of China’s (PRC) geopolitical interests align, where they diverge, and where the survival interests of Putin’s and Xi’s leadership systems align and overlap. Against the backdrop of a geopolitical climate that is increasingly characterized by systemic competition between democracies and autocracies, the Western practice of imposing arms embargoes and other trade sanctions as a measure against overbearing autocratic behaviors had the unintended consequence of pushing China and Russia closer together while limiting their options for closer cooperation with Western countries. Such outside structural factors that are creating constraints or incentives for cooperation need also to be factored into the analysis.

The editors of this volume propose that to gain a better understanding of where this bilateral relationship stands and where it might ultimately be headed, it is useful to focus on empirical analyses of the rather substantial changes in the breadth and depth of the actual cooperation that have occurred since 2014 in various policy fields that can be assumed to carry strategic importance for both countries. Enhanced cooperation in areas that were in the past deemed too sensitive can be a good indicator of reaching new levels of strategic trust. This first and foremost pertains to types of military cooperation, in particular joint exercises, defense-related cooperation agreements, military-technological exchanges, and actual vs. declared coordination of military activities against other countries, e.g., with regard to their timing. Other strategically important fields include areas where both countries have considerable vulnerabilities and/or overriding strategic interests, such as energy security and oil and gas exploration; Russia’s desire to maintain control over the Russian Arctic coast vs. China’s desire for Arctic development through its “Ice Silk Road”; both leaderships’ strong commitment to suppress domestic dissent and fight separatist forces; both countries’ strong interest in cyber control, space development, and emerging (“4IR”) technology cooperation; as well as the increasing coordination of their activities in the international arena, especially within the UN system, to fend off Western criticisms of their human rights violations which are seen as Western attempts at subversion.

Cooperative developments in each of these areas need to be weighed against significant and persisting constraints that have in the past worked against a full Sino-Russian rapprochement. These include Russian fears of Chinese economic domination and of illegal migration flows into Eastern Siberia, where China had historic territorial claims; the general Russian anxiety about foreign powers’ activities near the Russian Arctic coastline; external constraints through both countries’ long-standing strategic partnerships with other countries (such as India and Vietnam in Russia’s case, or Ukraine in China’s) with which the other party has significant territorial tensions; and last but not least, a long history of mutual betrayals and opportunistic behaviors to the detriment of the other. The question is how to evaluate current changes in one strategic field that point to significantly deepened cooperation against constraints that may still be at work in another field. It is important to note here that it would be unrealistic to expect any two countries, and much less countries as large and diverse as Russia and China, to ever arrive at fully convergent priorities, perceptions, and evaluations in all strategically important areas. That is not realistic even with much smaller powers within the EU or NATO, where long-standing animosities and, indeed, tensions can continue to exist, e.g., between Greece and Turkey.³ Therefore, expectations of China and Russia ever being fully in agreement about their respective national goals, priorities, and perceptions and for them to never experience instances of friction or clashes of interest would be naive. Rather, the degree to which they are demonstrably able to find common ground in fields where cooperation was in the past inhibited through constraints of various kinds may be measured against the situation during previous times where they had found themselves locked in competition bordering on hostility.

A path-dependent dynamic should be taken into consideration when evaluating their developing cooperation, because successfully concluded cooperation projects in one area may lead to the discovery of further synergies either in the same field or others. Further, a history of fruitful encounters between particular actors can induce the participants to adjust their originally negative or skeptical perceptions of each other and can gradually lead to the building of trust on the personal, and later institutional, levels, which can create a new and more positive dynamic. In Europe, long-standing historic enmity between neighboring countries such as Germany and France, or Germany and Poland, has been overcome against very long odds (given the atrocities that Germany had inflicted on these neighbors) through just such a process of trust building that was enabled by an alignment of geopolitical interests and strengthened through successful cases of initially limited cooperation. In this, outside pressures, and in particular the geopolitical climate of the time, were undoubtedly a crucial factor, just as in the current Sino-Russian case. There is therefore, as such, no particular reason why a rapprochement should not be possible between Russia and China despite mutual historical grievances. Depending on the general geopolitical climate and what is at stake on both sides, both countries are arguably seeing each other increasingly as assets for protecting one’s national interests and reaching one’s geopolitical and regime survival goals rather than only through the lens of a competitor. The starting point of this development may have been Russia’s invasion of Georgia in 2008, later reinforced by Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

1 Changing Perceptions of Sino-Russian Cooperation over the Years

At the start of the research process behind this volume in 2019, there was still a surprisingly large variety of opinions among experts—Russian, Chinese, and Western—on the quality, trajectory, and potential of Sino-Russian strategic cooperation. Whereas strategists such as Zbigniew Brzezinski (1997) had expressly feared such a development many years ago and warned against it as the worst possible geopolitical outcome for the USA and its allies, others (e.g., Lo, 2017) remained convinced that the challenges hindering Russia and China from ever cooperating on a deep strategic level would remain largely unsurmountable.

Some analysts express doubt that there is any genuine deepening in the strategic relationship between China and Russia that goes beyond opportunistic short-term gains and consider related leadership declarations of the deepening strategic partnership to be geopolitical signaling directed at the West. The arguments brought forward in support of such a viewpoint point to the stark power asymmetry between both countries in terms of their economic weight; to their long tradition of strategic distrust and betrayals; and to a historical lack of mutual understanding and people-to-people engagement, resulting in mutual ignorance and a lack of “empathy”; and, they note that the partnership seems primarily interest-driven rather than based on a genuine like-mindedness or affinity (Lo, 2017, pp. 7–9; Kluge, 2019, June 27). Other experts conversely note the increasing scope of Russian-Chinese defense-industrial cooperation that now includes the joint development of experimental systems and technology transfers involving Russian state-of-the-art systems that were long unthinkable. These developments seem to indicate a possible shift in this complex relationship that requires further attention. More recently, increasingly coordinated foreign policy behavior suggests that at the very least, China and Russia indeed share a similar strategic outlook and worldview and find themselves united in their desire to see an end to the unipolar post-Cold War world order, as outlined in their 1997 joint communiqué titled “The Russian-Chinese Joint Declaration on a Multipolar World and the Establishment of a New International Order” (Sinkkonen, 2018, January, p. 3). In that case, are we dealing with an “axis of revisionists” (Stent, 2020, February)?

Simon Saradzhyan in 2020 provided a useful overview of the various stances taken by notable Russian, Chinese, and Western experts until that point in time, capturing the wide scope of disagreement between them when trying to label the Sino-Russian partnership (Table 1):

Table 1 How Russian, Chinese, and Western policymakers and experts describe the Russian-Chinese relationship (according to Simon Saradzhyan, 2020)

Overall, it seems that depending partly on individual experts’ national or professional identities and experiences, but most of all depending on the main subject matter of their expertise, they come to widely diverging assessments, ranging from flat-out dismissals of Sino-Russian rapprochement as a pure propaganda ploy without substance on one extreme of the continuum to analyses that see an almost inevitable trend toward even a formalized security alliance on the other, with most falling somewhere in between.

One reason may be that in Western writings on Russia-China, the military-industrial and military-strategic aspects of the cooperation were for a long time somewhat under-analyzed. As a counterpoint to that type of view, other observers noted that after the Crimea annexation of 2014, which ended the period where Russia was still considered a “partner” of NATO and placed considerable strain on the Russian national economy as a result of Western sanctions, unprecedented developments in Sino-Russian military-industrial cooperation and other military-strategic fields began to take off (Schwartz, 2019; Kofman, 2014, December 4; Kofman, 2020, August 6). Even if purely driven by need and a lack of alternatives, this seemed to indicate the development of some sort of strategic trust. At the same time, new and significant cooperation projects in Arctic LNG and other types of natural resource exploration, in a geographic area of particular Russian sensitivity no less, pointed in the same direction. Noting the significant synergies that Russia and China would be able to exploit economically, in terms of energy security, but also militarily if they came to an even deeper understanding, and with both regimes standing united in their shared opposition to Western notions of an international rules-based order, some analyses point out that the possibility of a far greater collusion in the future should not be discounted (Mitchell, 2021, August 22).

Interestingly, according to a study by Alexander Gabuev and Dmitri Trenin cited and analyzed by Radin et al. (2021, p. 222), “the Russian government conducted a detailed assessment of the benefits, costs, and risks of a closer engagement with China in early 2014” that led to “the reassessment of two risks: a threat of a Chinese takeover (demographic or military) of Russia’s Far East and China’s copying of Russian military technology, both of which were determined to be exaggerated or no longer important. In addition, Russian decisionmakers reevaluated Russia’s position on China’s BRI in Central Asia.” The same RAND study, in two appendices, analyzed numerous commentaries from within the Russian and Chinese policy and expert communities, bolstered by interviews, that show that a mutual process of positive reevaluation seems to have taken place since the Crimea annexation of 2014, which seemingly served as “a distinct inflection point.”⁴ Based on their “shared worldview” and having learned from a problematic past, many Russian and Chinese experts on both sides expressed the notion that neither of the two countries wants to return to their fairly recent state of non-cooperation (Radin et al., 2021, pp. 226–228). Rather, they tended to be overall optimistic about the future of the relationship, predicting ever closer integration (p. 243).

2 The Structure and Aims of This Volume

The present collection of papers brings together 20 authors from 9 different countries (Germany, France, UK, Poland, Norway, Finland, Estonia, USA, Australia) that are based at the time of this writing in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, France, the UK, Norway, Finland, Estonia, the USA, and Singapore. Some are Russia specialists, others are China specialists, and a few specialize in both, while some have primarily a transatlantic or NATO and defense policy focus. Some have previously been among the most prominent voices in Western discourse on China-Russia, while others are focusing on Russia-China cooperation for the first time. Together, they bring a multitude of methodological, institutional, and regional perspectives to the project that enhances its scope and depth. All the chapters contribute in some way to answering one or several of the guiding questions of this volume:

• What is the potential for increased Sino-Russian cooperation based on their existing synergies?

• What obstacles stand in the way of fully exploiting these synergies?

• What is the impact of structural incentivesand constraintson their cooperation?

• What is the likely broad trajectory of the bilateral relationship in light of all the above?

• What problems could ensue for NATO, and how could Western countries deal with them?

A particular focus of this volume lies on defense-industrial and military-strategic aspects of Sino-Russian cooperation, as these are especially sensitive areas that require a large amount of trust. They also hold the strongest implications for the question of what military synergies could be exploited by Russia and China and how likely the forming of a military alliance (in substance if not in name) ultimately is.

The volume is divided into four main parts. Part I contains analyses of mutual perception patterns and narratives about each other and the shifts that have occurred within these over time. Part II presents case studies of cooperation in fields that have a decidedly military-strategic or defense-industrial connotation. Part III contains case studies of cooperation within physical or nonphysical spaces—the Arctic, Eastern/Central Europe, cyberspace, as well as multilateral organizations. While these case studies discuss non-military issues, they nonetheless can be assumed to have strategic importance for both governments, as they are connected to issues of bolstering and projecting autocratic control while securing areas of regime vulnerability.

The case studies in all these fields look separately into the evidence of cooperation within that narrowly defined field in order to capture in their sum some of the complexity of actual Russian-Chinese cooperation along different fields before attempting a synthesis of “what this all means.”

This attempt is then presented in Part IV, which builds on the work of the previous parts and contains three analyses of the challenges—military and otherwise—that the trajectory of current cooperation presents to NATO, the Europeans, and the Americans.

In Part I on mutual perceptions:

Hannes Adomeit’s chapter titled “Putin’s Russia: Global Strategic Outlook and Policies − What Role for China?” asks how the Putin administration views the world and how it evaluates the role of China in furthering the Putin administration’s domestic and geopolitical goals. Contrary to an often reiterated position that Russia as the “junior partner” has much to lose in relation to an ever more powerful China and was driven to embrace China primarily through Western “rejection,” Adomeit argues that Putin’s Russia stands to gain more from a strategic alliance than even China and that it furthers Putin’s geostrategic, economic, military, and systemic goals.

Jo Inge Bekkevold, in his chapter “Imperialist, Comrade in Arms, Foe, Partner, and Now Ally? China’s Changing Views of Russia,” conducts a complementary analysis of the historically fluctuating perception of Russia in China, arguing that external pressures generated through great-power relations with the USA have to be regarded as the principal factor explaining the shift from China viewing Russia as a foe to embracing a partnership that is directed against the US-led West. Keeping China’s strategic rear safe has an overriding import for China in its strategic competition with the USA, and the turn toward Russia is based primarily on security interests.

Following these assessments, Marcin Kaczmarki’s chapter “Domestic Politics: A Forgotten Factor in the Russian-Chinese Relationship” sheds light on the role of domestic constituencies within Russia that have an opinion-leading role for shaping the perception of China in Russia. This analysis focuses in particular on societal forces that are key for supporting or resisting a deepened cooperation. Notably, he points out that groups interested in regime survival that influence the Kremlin’s threat assessments and groups that have particular interests at stake, e.g., in the energy sector, exercise a strong influence in favor of deepening cooperation with China, forming an influential “pro-China lobby.”

The case studies in Part II focus on the military and military-technological dimension of the unfolding strategic coordination.

Sarah Kirchberger’s chapter “Russian-Chinese Military-technological Cooperation and the Ukrainian Factor” discusses how arms-industrial cooperation between Russia and China was impacted and massively enhanced as a by-product of Russia’s 2014 annexation of Crimea. She argues that old resentment and distrust toward China within the Russian defense-industrial sector, while not completely overcome, was ultimately superseded by new incentives to cooperate more fully. Encouraged by strong Russian leadership support, this resulted in a greatly improved level of cooperation in strategically relevant and highly sensitive arms-technological fields with direct implications for other forms of military cooperation.

Alexandre Sheldon-Duplaix’s chapter “Russia-China naval partnership and Its Significance” takes an even closer look at the rich history and the current state of cooperation in naval technology and maritime security that goes back to the founding of the PRC. Despite instances of grave violations of trust, not least through Chinese reverse engineering of Russian arms on a massive scale, this has now evolved to include joint naval maneuvers in areas as far-flung as the Arctic, the Baltic Sea, the Mediterranean Sea, the Pacific, and the Indian Ocean and even to trilateral naval exercises with Iran. In marked contrast to Adomeit’s earlier piece, Sheldon-Duplaix contends that it was primarily external pressures after 2014 and the Western sanctions against Russia that have brought about this remarkable shift.

Richard A. Bitzinger and Michael Raska’s chapter “Chinese and Russian Military Modernization and the 4th Industrial Revolution” complements the previous analyses by focusing on emerging and disruptive technologies, shedding light on the question of how the two countries might develop their military-technological cooperation into the realm of so-called “4IR” technology fields that could become military game changers—AI, robotics, unmanned systems, or hypersonics. While they see potential for joint development, they also note constraints in particular with regard to the stark asymmetry between both actors with regard to their economic power, which limits Russia’s potential to become a top-notch innovator in many 4IR technologies.

Finally, in a chapter entitled “China-Russia Cooperation in Nuclear Deterrence,” Brian G. Carlson concludes this part with a sobering study of the significant disruptive potential that could be realized by Russia and China if they decided to combine forces in the strategic field of nuclear deterrence. Carlson argues that against the backdrop of historically very strained relations in the nuclear field, both countries have in recent years begun to act in a coordinated fashion and mutually support each other’s efforts to counter US missile defense and high-precision conventional weapons. The trajectory of this open development might point to synergies in nuclear deterrence that could have an impact on US nuclear deterrence in a crisis.

In the collection of case studies that comprise Part III, Elina Sinkkonen and Jussi Lassila’s chapter “Digital authoritarianism and technological cooperation in Sino-Russian relations: common goals and diverging standpoints” analyzes how both countries’ interests in controlling the cyber sphere and creating a high-tech brand of “digital authoritarianism” have led to significant synergies in the past few years, with Russia poised to learn from the more fully developed Chinese example of cyber control. However, they also note and explore some interesting divergences between both countries’ approaches, with China exercising far more sophisticated and complete cyber control than Russia.

In a chapter entitled “Sino-Russian Scientific Cooperation in the Arctic: From Deep Sea to Deep Space” that deals with a key geographic region of traditional friction and distrust, but also of great mutual interest, Frank Jüris explores the current state of and significant potential for scientific research in dual-use technologies such as hydroacoustics that have important implications not only for seabed resource extraction but also for submarine operations. Concerningly, by mining Chinese scientific papers and organizational activities recorded on institutional websites, Jüris notes that there seems to already be rather substantial and institutionalized research cooperation in hydroacoustics between Chinese and Russian scientists in which numerous organizations with deep defense ties are involved on both sides.

The chapter by Edward Lucas and Bobo Lo looks at another region of potentially significant cooperation in which little coordination seems to exist so far. In “Partnership without Substance: Sino-Russian Relations in Central and Eastern Europe,” they conclude that despite significant activities on both sides, the synergies between the Russian and Chinese approaches to that region that theoretically exist have so far remained largely unexplored, rendering Central and Eastern Europe a mere “backwater” of Sino-Russian cooperation. Looking at this chapter alone, one might come away with the impression that there is not much evidence of any deepening strategic cooperation between the two great Eurasian powers. Lucas and Lo even note a widening asymmetry that calls into question the longevity of the relationship but also note that “the real test [of the Sino-Russian relationship] lies elsewhere—Northeast Asia, Central Asia, the Arctic, Antarctica, and the future of the global order.” China’s lack of overt military support for Russia’s full invasion of Ukraine in 2022 tends to support that conclusion.

The final chapter in this part by Olaf Wientzek focuses on Sino-Russian collaboration in the international arena, taking the Geneva-based international organizations as a case study. In his contribution titled “Cooperation between Russia and China in multilateral organizations—a tactical or a strategic alliance?” he demonstrates that there is a rising degree of Sino-Russian coordination in the international arena that seems increasingly geared toward challenging the norms of global governance that have defined Western-led multilateralism during the entire postwar era. He describes this behavior as a tactical alliance that is “often defensive rather than proactive,” yet even in its limited form already poses challenges to rules- and values-based multilateralism, calling for measures to contain the influence of this “tandem.”

Building on the empirical studies presented in Parts I to III, Part IV, the final part, attempts to build on these case-based analyses of Sino-Russian cooperation to answer the question of where these developments could lead and what this ultimately signifies to NATO, to Europe, and to the USA. Is there really cause for concern that an alliance in form if not in name could be in the making? If so, what would be the political and security implications? Or, do the case studies conversely indicate that barriers to a deepening military cooperation seem hard to overcome in actual practice?

Realizing that there are significant divergences of perception and opinion among and between the various transatlantic allies regarding these issues, Part IV begins with a sobering analysis that was originally conducted by Brigadier General (ret.) Rainer Meyer zum Felde for our January 2020 workshop in Berlin titled “What a military alliance between Russia and China would mean for NATO.” Drawing on his experience in numerous official NATO functions, he details the concrete military threats that would emerge for the transatlantic alliance if Russia and China were to make even limited use of their military synergies and turned their strategic cooperation into a tactical, opportunistic alliance to exploit the potential of strategic simultaneity of Russian aggression in Europe and Chinese aggression in the Indo-Pacific. He concludes that Europe is unprepared for such an eventuality, NATO having focused exclusively on scenarios where Russia would be acting alone. Meyer zum Felde stresses the urgent need that follows from this analysis of enhancing NATO’s deterrence posture in Europe and thereby assisting the USA in upholding deterrence in the Indo-Pacific, with an aim to influence both China’s and Russia’s risk calculus and make joint military adventurism on their part less attractive.

In the following chapter on “Options for dealing with Russia and China—a US perspective,” Andrew A. Michta addresses the question of what can and should be done to address the military concerns outlined in the previous chapter. Pointing to significant weaknesses in Europe’s defense, like Meyer zum Felde, he argues that rearming Europe is a necessity. He makes a plea for “burden transferring,” where the USA provides only high-end and nuclear capabilities to Europe, while Europeans themselves take care of core military capabilities as the best way forward to counter the risks of a Sino-Russian alliance.

This American view is then complemented by a chapter penned by Joachim Krause titled “The way forward from Europe’s point of view.” Taking a historical perspective by discussing previous instances of authoritarian powers forming axes for opportunistic gain, he points out that the question of whether or not a Sino-Russian military alliance would be long-lived is ultimately not the truly pressing question. Rather, analysts should be concerned with the destructive potential that even a very short-lived, purely tactical collusion might cause and how the mere existence of such an alliance between autocrats already raises the risk of war. Like Meyer zum Felde and Michta, Krause stresses the need for Europe and NATO to rearm and enhance deterrence to discourage an attempt on the Baltic NATO members or Poland.

In that sense, all three chapters in the synthesis part of this book are largely in alignment in their analysis of the security challenges posed by Russia and China, and all three chapters agree that much is left to be done on the part of NATO, Europe, and also the USA to enhance deterrence in case Russia and China should decide to collude more strongly in the military realm.

The concluding chapter by Barry Pavel, Sarah Kirchberger, and Svenja Sinjen “Connecting the dots and defining the challenge” summarizes the main strands of the discussion presented throughout this book, addresses the discrepancies found between authors studying various empirical fields analyzed in the case studies, and reconnects these reflections with the overarching questions posed at the outset of the volume. Finally, it sketches out areas of Russian-Chinese cooperation that this volume was not able to include in its scope of analysis, but that would merit further empirical research, thereby proposing an agenda for future research.

By bringing their 2-year research process to a conclusion, the editors and contributors are delighted to make the results of their work freely available to all. They hope that their efforts will provide the research community food for thought, inspiration, and ample material for further analyses of the unfolding Russian-Chinese cooperation: a bilateral partnership between Eurasian giants that is poised, for better or worse, to shape the future of Eurasia.