Thread by @AlexGabuev

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@jensstoltenberg interview in @FT marks a shift in @NATO's approach to China-Russia axis. Waking up to the issue is welcome compared to years of ignorance. Yet conclusions based on flawed analysis that overstates 🇨🇳🇷🇺 rapport may lead to some grave mistakes 1/

2/ In his interview to @khalafroula & @HenryJFoy @jensstoltenberg outlines the profound challenge that 🇨🇳 presents to @NATO, and then suggests that the alliance should in fact treat China and Russia as parts of one problem. ft.com/content/0202ed…

3/ @jensstoltenberg to @FT exhibit 1: "This whole idea of in a way distinguishing so much between China, Russia, either Asia-Pacific or Europe, it’s one big security environment and we have to address it all together" ft.com/content/cf8c6d…

4/ Exhibit 2:"This whole idea that we either look to 🇷🇺, or to 🇨🇳, or to somewhere else, it’s the wrong way. Because it goes together. First of all, 🇨🇳🇷🇺 work closely together. Second, when we <...> increase our collective defence, develop technology, that’s about both of them"

5/ For the first time a @NATO SG states that an emerging axis between Putin's Russia and Xi's China presents a serious challenge for the alliance, and that the deepening of 🇨🇳🇷🇺partnership is a bigger problem than just sum of its parts.

6/ This clear-eyed statement is a welcome departure from the previous years, when most Western decision makers believed that there is "no there there" in 🇨🇳🇷🇺 rapprochement, or that the deepening partnership has no strategic consequences for 🇺🇸 and its allies in Europe&Asia.

7/ 🇷🇺&🇨🇳 are moving closer, and the process is driven by fundamental factors beyond Western control (need to maintain peace at 4.2k km border; economic complementarity; growing similarities btw the regimes), as well as some Western policies like sanctions. foreignaffairs.com/articles/china…

8/ 🇨🇳🇷🇺 nexus creates problems for @NATO & 🇺🇸 allies in Asia. List includes, but is not limited to: 1) Sino-Russian non-aggression pact means need to maintain significant 🇺🇸 presence in both theaters simultaneously; 2) sale of 🇷🇺 advanced platforms like S-400 or Su-45 to PLA...

9/ ...3) cooperation on dual-use technologies and fundamental research with military applications; 4) growth in interoperability of 🇨🇳🇷🇺 forces in East Asia, and a more coordinated response to missile defense. The list goes on.

10/ However, assuming that China and Russia are one challenge (like de facto allies without an official alliance), instead of two increasingly interlinked, but still separate challenges, overstates current level of 🇨🇳🇷🇺 cooperation and overlooks important nuances.

11/ For example, when it comes to online disinformation campaigns against @NATO states, both 🇷🇺&🇨🇳 are active, but they work in parallel rather than in tandem, as @LeonidKovachich & I found recently: carnegiemoscow.org/2021/06/03/com…

12/ Reasons? One of them is a significant amount of mutual mistrust. For example, FSB is visibly unhappy about aggressiveness of MSS in cyber-espionage and recruitment of human sources in 🇷🇺.

13/ But the key is that both countries are religious about their strategic autonomy. Russia knows that its relationship with China is increasingly asymmetric, and is protective of its great power status. One and only @DmitriTrenin breaks it down here: carnegiemoscow.org/commentary/855…

14/ By lumping China and Russia together as a quasi-alliance that needs to be countered through a unified toolkit, the West risks creating a self-fulfilling prophecy, when dual containment leads to further deepening of 🇨🇳🇷🇺 cooperation, that leads to more 🇺🇸 pressure etc.

15/ Key risk is that 5-20 years of hard push by 🇺🇸/@NATO against 🇨🇳🇷🇺 with no calibration will create deeper security partnership btw Moscow and Beijing than they would create without such a dual 🇺🇸 containment, and readiness to share more secrets/do more mil R&D. For example...

16/ In Valdai-2020 Putin said that the 2 are working on sensitive mil projects that he won't name, and in 2019 he unveiled 🇷🇺 help in building 🇨🇳 early warning system. Story like the one told by @Dimi& @KathrinHille could become stories with 🇷🇺🇨🇳 angle: ft.com/content/ba0a3c…

17/ Dual containment as the only tool to address 🇨🇳🇷🇺 nexus will enormously help Chinese companies like @Huawei to cement their leadership in Russian and some other FSU markets, making Eurasian tech landscape more Beijing-centered. More context: ft.com/content/f36a55…

18/ Of course, if 🇷🇺 sees growing asymmetry with 🇨🇳 as a problem, Moscow could do a better job in balancing its (inevitable) partnership with Beijing through much-needed structural economic reforms + stabilizing (and later normalizing) ties with the West. kommersant.ru/doc/4900093

19/ The West could also do a better job in calibrating its approach by acknowledging existing 🇨🇳🇷🇺 gaps, identifying areas of partnership that are most problematic & where the West has agency (5G is one example), and making sure that Western steps don't make the problem worse.

20/ Some additional food for thought can be found here: carnegiemoscow.org/commentary/841…

21/ A reminder that @CarnegieEndow has a separate project, #PaxSinica, dissecting China-Russia relationship and looking at Beijing's inroads in Eurasia: carnegiemoscow.org/specialproject…

22/ It complements great work on #ChinaLocalGlobal done by @CarnegieEndow colleagues and contributing scholars across the world led by @EvanFeigenbaum: carnegieendowment.org/specialproject…