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A Russian Perspective on the Sino-Russian Rapprochement
A rapprochement between Russia and China is clearly taking place today. Yet as cooperation between Moscow and Beijing has increased in recent years, significant differences have emerged between how Russian and Chinese pundits view the relationship and its prospects, on the one hand, and how observers outside the two countries perceive it, on the other. Current U.S. policy takes the contradictory approach of exerting pressure on both countries, surrounding them with military bases, and bolstering inimical military alliances with their neighbors, while at the same time trying to reach separate agreements with each country on specific issues. Such new principles of world order would also serve to restrain emerging powers such as Russia and China that increasingly act at their own discretion in the absence of such rules. However, that would require the United States and its allies to relinquish the monopoly on interpreting international law to which they have become accustomed since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Although Western elites will find this prospect extremely objectionable, the West must inevitably relinquish that dominant role because its influence in world politics is clearly decreasing, while that of other players is growing.