THELMA AND LOUISE:

Should We Be Worried About Russia and China Ganging Up on the West?: Probably not. Here's why. (Ian Bremmer, Aug. 29, 2007, Slate)

First, Russia is one of the world's leading exporters of oil and gas. China's demand for both has grown enormously in recent years—and will continue to rise as its economy expands. The two countries are building a solid buyer-seller energy relationship.

But the differences in their foreign-policy goals emerge when we remember that Russia needs high energy prices, while China would like to see them fall. So many international conflicts today have potential implications for energy prices that Russia and China will frequently find themselves on different sides of key issues. [...]

Second, China's economic and military expansion inspires dread among Moscow's military and security elite, which fears, among other things, that Russia's resource-rich Far East could eventually become a zone of intense Sino-Russian competition. There are some 18 million ethnic Russians in Siberia; there are now about 300 million Chinese across the border in China's northern provinces.

As Russians leave the sparsely populated eastern territories in search of opportunities in the country's increasingly prosperous cities, waves of (mostly illegal) Chinese migrants are moving in. The trend is likely to intensify, feeding an anti-Chinese xenophobia that has existed in Russia for centuries. The risk of interethnic violence is bound to grow, complicating relations between the two governments.

Third, state-owned Chinese firms have expressed interest in buying increasing volumes of Russian equities. Russia will happily accept the cash, but the Kremlin is loath to accept investment that gives any foreign power a stake in the so-called strategic sectors of the Russian economy.

More important--who cares? To the extent they think "ganging up" helps them they avoid facing their existential internal problems.

Posted by Orrin Judd at August 29, 2007 9:57 AM