SEEKING LEVERAGE: CHINA-RUSSIA RELATIONS IN WORLD POLITICS, 1991-2016 by Brian G. Carlson A dissertation submitted to Johns Hopkins University in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Baltimore, Maryland April, 2018 © Brian G. Carlson 2018 All rights reserved Abstract In the post-Soviet period, U.S. policymakers have viewed China and Russia as the two great powers with the greatest inclination and capacity to challenge the international order. The two countries would pose especially significant challenges to the United States if they were to act in concert. In addition to this clear policy relevance, the China-Russia relationship poses a number of problems for international relations theory. During this period, China and Russia declined to form an alliance against the United States, as balance-of-power theory might have predicted. Over time, however, the two countries engaged in increasingly close cooperation to constrain U.S. power. These efforts fell short of traditional hard balancing, but they still held important implications for international politics. The actual forms of cooperation were therefore worthy of analysis using concepts from international relations theory, a task that this dissertation attempts. An additional problem concerned Russia’s response to China’s rise. Given the potential threat that it faced, Russia might have been expected to improve relations with the West as a hedge against China’s growing power. Instead, Russia increased its level of diplomatic cooperation with China as its relations with the West deteriorated. This dissertation addresses these problems through a detailed empirical study of the evolution of China-Russia relations from 1991 to 2016, using the within-case method of process tracing. The dissertation uses a modified neoclassical realist framework, which views the structure of the international system as the independent variable and domestic factors as intervening variables. At the level of the international system, unipolarity gave China and Russia incentives to cooperate in order to restrain U.S. power but also limited their ability to balance against U.S. power effectively. Eventually, as both countries’ positions of relative power improved, they sought spheres of influence in their own regions, gaining some room for maneuver from strong relations ii with the other. At the domestic level, a convergence of national identities played a crucial role. The two countries’ shared antipathy toward the concept of a Western-led liberal international order laid the groundwork for a durable relationship, albeit one increasingly tilted in China’s favor. iii Acknowledgments I would like to express my gratitude to the members of my dissertation committee for their comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript, as well as for their support and encouragement. The committee members are Charles Doran (my adviser), Michael Mandelbaum (the committee chairman), David Lampton, Bruce Parrott, and Gilbert Rozman. I also acknowledge generous financial support from a variety of sources that made the completion of this project possible. During the 2013-2014 academic year, I conducted research in Russia with U.S. federal government funding under the Title VIII Combined Research and Language Training Program, administered by American Councils. The Moscow State Institute for International Relations (MGIMO) was my host institution. During the 2014-2015 academic year, I conducted research in China with U.S. federal government funding from the Fulbright-Hays Doctoral Dissertation Research Abroad Fellowship. I split my time between Shanghai and Beijing and also conducted research in other cities in China. During the spring of 2015, I was affiliated with Tsinghua University in Beijing. I also received generous support from my own institution, the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS). Throughout my Ph.D. studies, I received generous funding from the Bradley Foundation. As a George L. Abernethy Fellow, I was able to spend the 2015-2016 academic year at the SAIS Europe campus in Bologna, Italy, where I wrote early drafts of this dissertation. In addition to several research grants from the SAIS Ph.D. fund, I received funding from the Frederick Hood Research Fund for a trip to Moscow in May and June of 2016 and from the Henry A. Kissinger Center for Global Affairs to present a paper at the International Studies Association conference in San Francisco in April 2018 as part of a panel discussion on China-Russia relations. iv During the final stage of writing and revisions, I was based at the Center for Security Studies (CSS) at ETH in Zurich on a Transatlantic Post-Doctoral Fellowship for International Relations and Security (TAPIR). CSS provided a supportive and congenial atmosphere in which to complete the dissertation. Brian G. Carlson April 2018 v Table of Contents Acknowledgments iv Introduction 1 Chapter 1: International Relations Theory and China-Russia Relations 6 Chapter 2: From the Breakup of the Soviet Union to Strategic Partnership: 1991-1996 72 Chapter 3: From Strategic Partnership to the Treaty of Good-Neighborliness, Friendship, and Cooperation: 1996-2001 143 Chapter 4: From the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001 to the War in Georgia 193 Chapter 5: From the Financial Crisis to the Ukraine Crisis and Its Aftermath 264 Conclusion 335 Bibliography 343 Sources in English 343 Sources in Chinese 359 Sources in Russian 374 List of Interviews 394 Author’s Biography and Curriculum Vitae 397 vi Introduction For much of the period since the breakup of the Soviet Union, U.S. policymakers have viewed China and Russia as the two great powers with the greatest inclination and capacity to challenge the international order that emerged in the wake of the Cold War. The two countries were on different trajectories. China was emerging as a potential peer competitor to the United States, while a weakened Russia sought to recover its great-power status. Both countries resisted U.S. efforts to spread democracy and liberal norms throughout the world. Individually, both countries increasingly challenged U.S. interests in their respective regions. In combination, they could pose the most serious potential challenge to U.S. global leadership. No such combination emerged, as China and Russia refrained from forming an alliance throughout this period. By the middle of the second decade of the twenty-first century, however, U.S. relations with both countries were increasingly fraught. The broad outlines of a potential great-power clash between the United States and a rising China grew increasingly apparent each year. Against this backdrop, a series of maritime disputes between China and its neighbors, including U.S. allies, threatened regional stability in Asia. U.S.-Russia relations, meanwhile, suffered greatly from the Ukraine crisis, plunging to their lowest level since the end of the Cold War. Under these circumstances, the possibility of an anti-Western, China-Russia geopolitical alignment, or even potentially an alliance, reemerged with new urgency. The China-Russia relationship not only presents policy challenges for world leaders, but also holds intriguing implications for international relations theory. Most studies of China-Russia relations focus on policy implications, making little or no reference to theory. International relations theorists frequently draw upon this relationship for examples and insights but rarely make detailed empirical study of it. Both approaches have value, but an approach combining theory and 1 policy could also prove fruitful. Insights from theory may help to explain various aspects of this relationship. The empirical study of China-Russia relations, in turn, may help to inform theory. This study attempts both tasks, focusing on the period from the breakup of the Soviet Union in late 1991 to the end of 2016. In an effort to explain the evolution of China-Russia relations during this period, this study borrows a general framework from the school of foreign policy analysis known as neoclassical realism. In this approach, the structure of the international system is the main independent variable, domestic factors are intervening variables, and foreign policy decisions are the dependent variable. Neoclassical realism is a paradigm for studying foreign policy decisions rather than a theory. It therefore offers some flexibility in application. While employing a neoclassical realist framework, this study makes some important modifications to the framework compared to the way in which previous studies have employed it. In its conception of systemic factors, this study looks beyond the relatively static view of structure inherent in structural realism. It considers the impact of changes in relative power, which are crucial for understanding the relationship’s evolution during this period. When considering domestic factors, this study focuses on the important role of national identity in conditioning states’ responses to systemic influences. In contrast with pure constructivist approaches, which discount the importance of the structure of the international system, this study conceives of national identity as an intervening variable that mediates structural effects in shaping foreign policy outcomes. Both domestic factors and interactions with other states drive the formation of national identity. The resulting national identity, in turn, shapes the state’s reaction to the incentives and constraints that the structure of the international