The Sino-Russian Challenge to the World Order: National Identities, Bilateral Relations, and East versus West in the 2010s by Gilbert Rozman
Although Sino-Russian rapprochement is hardly a recent development, it seems to have accelerated of late as Russia increasingly turns to China—financially, commercially and politically—in the wake of the Western sanctions imposed as a result of the Ukrainian crisis.
Any book on the subject is therefore timely. However, The Sino-Russian Challenge to the World Order by Gilbert Rozman is less about the Challenge of its title than the National Identities in its subtitle. Indeed, Rozman casts the subject almost entirely in the context of what he terms “national identity studies” and states in the introduction that the book has three objectives other than just a discussion China and Russia, i.e.:
to extend and deepen the framework of national identity studies and its application to national identity gaps between pairs of states; to revive and redirect comparative communist studies beyond the legacy left since traditional communism was replaced; and to clarify and develop and an approach to international relations that centers on national identities rather than on national interests.
One should, admittedly, review the book that was written rather than the book one wished had been written. That is, however, a difficult rule to follow in this case for two reasons. The first is that a cogent discussion of exactly the issue encapsulated in the book’s title would be a propos; here, the discussion of the current reality of Sino-Russian relations is largely restricted to this book’s seventh and final chapter. The first six chapters are historical: although viewed through the national identities framework, this material has been covered before.
Second, to follow Rozman’s arguments, one needs to be well-informed about “national identity studies” before coming to the book—and I am not—because Rozman does not provide much in way of the background. The lack of the latter makes the book something of a specialist read and risks restricting its potential audience to those already more or less au courant with this way of looking at things. However, although it is a densely-written volume, it is possible, with some effort and additional research, to extract the main outline of the argument. I am unlikely to get it right enough to summarize here, but suffice it to say that Rozman treats national identity as a multi-faceted characteristic, including such elements as ideology and the relationship of the state to the people. The expanded if not expansive nature of this usage over the laymen’s concept of “identity” is illustrated in such statements as “Russian identity has little to say about state institutions or checks and balances.”
An example of the distinction between interests and identities is included in the Introduction. Rather than ascribe the overlap of Chinese and Russian approaches in Central Asia to economic, security or “sphere of influence” considerations, Rozman phrases it as follows:
Xi toured Central Asia in September 2013 offering bountiful largesse while calling for a Silk Road Economic Belt, which was at odds with Putin’s aggressive push for a Eurasian Union. This clash indicates the importance of Sinocentrism and Russocentrism as rising themes in national identity that pose a threat to bilateral relations.
The Sino-Russian Challenge to the World Order might be read more a history of the development of Chinese and Russian national identities, their overlap and separation—and in particular what Rozman refers to as an “identity gap”, something which might wax or wane depending on circumstances—than an analysis of the specifics of Sino-Russian/Western relations per se. Some issues, such as the Arctic, the South China Sea and energy cooperation are mentioned in passing if at all, and only then to illustrate the broader thesis.
The difficulty in providing an evaluation of The Sino-Russian Challenge to the World Order is that it would require an analysis of the national identity concept, but this lies largely outside the book itself, and a discussion as to whether national identity is the most appropriate set of lenses through which to view international relations in general and Sino-Russian rapprochement in particular, which is something of a specialist discussion.
But one can take a stab at it. Rozman, in the passage above, argues for “the importance of Sinocentrism and Russocentrism” in understanding Chinese and Russian aims in Central Asia. Is it however necessary to to invoke a paradigm of “national identities” to appreciate, for example, the basic contradiction between the two countries’ aspirations in the region? An impoverished, unstable region on Russia’s southern flank is hardly in Russia’s interest, yet it is China rather than Russia that has the economic and commercial resources to improve the situation. But it is hard to see Russia—regardless of identity issues—contemplating with equanimity a realignment of the region that results in it losing the whip hand over countries that once formed integral parts of the USSR and are still referred to as its “near abroad”.
Rozman’s in-depth discussion of the development of Chinese and Russian identities and the overlaps and differences between them does however make it clear that there is much more to the Sino-Russian relationship that mere realpolitik. Whether as a direct result of this approach or not, Rozman throws up a number of cogent insights, for example:
Russia had long been a peripheral country aspiring to move to the center... In contrast, China was for many years a state accustomed to its centrality that had been abruptly relegated to the periphery.
The Sino-Russian Challenge to the World Order does not really seek to answer the question as to whether the Sino-Russian axis will become and remain critical to world affairs in the next couple of decades but rather defines a paradigm, a somewhat different paradigm than the one most commentators employ, for looking at the issue. Although those looking for a first-pass cut at understanding the potential paths of Sino-Russian relations may find it necessary to look elsewhere, those looking for a different model—based on something other than a cold-blooded tallying up of interests or the dissecting of political personalities—might find this approach illuminating, if somewhat dense reading in places.