When US and Russian warships almost collided in the South China Sea on June 7, there was nary a mention in the mainstream Australian media. Some believe the warship incident was no coincidence, with China’s leader Xi Jinping in Moscow at the time as the two leaders indulged in an orgy of mutual praise.
“We confirmed that Russia’s and China’s stances on the key global issues are similar or coincide,” Putin said.
Xi noted his visit would “serve as an incentive for the development of Chinese-Russian relations, comprehensive partnership and strategic interaction in a new era”. “We’ve managed to take our relationship to the highest level in our history,” the Chinese leader added. “We will continue to improve our ties and we are ready to go hand in hand with you.”
The meeting also saw a major energy deal signed (part of Russia’s plan to diversify its energy export markets into Asia) and the pièce de résistance, a deal for China’s Huawei Technologies (banned by Australia, the US, Japan and Vietnam) to supply 5G network equipment for Russia’s largest mobile network MTS. So it’s now clear Russia want to join China at the forefront of creating digital authoritarian police states.
Xi was also conveniently out of town on June 16, when up to 2 million Hong Kong citizens flooded city streets protesting a bill for an extradition treaty with China that would punch a hole in the legal firewall that keeps them relatively safe from Beijing’s brutal and opaque legal system. Xi, again, was with Putin — this time in Kazakhstan at the annual Shanghai Cooperation dialogue that brings together China, Russia, India, Pakistan and the central Asian nations of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Uzbekistan.
Yet for all the talk of the US-China strategic battle for the Pacific, the world’s equal number one nuclear power (according to the latest weapons data) has been all but forgotten by Australia. This is despite public anger over the shooting down of a Malaysia Airlines plane over the Ukraine in 2014, leading to a promise by prime minister Tony Abbott to “shirtfront” Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Since then, ministerial visits and leadership contact outside major global summits have all but dried up. Two-way merchandise trade between Australia and Russia — which was never really significant — fell to just $697 million in 2016, down from $1.83 billion in 2014; two-way services trade languished at $183 million. Russian involvement in Europe and the Middle East continues to get a great deal of coverage, but the country’s involvement in the Pacific goes largely without scrutiny.
But military and defence types in Australia are now turning their minds to the quietly growing influence of Russia in the region. Last March two Russian diplomats were expelled from the embassy in Canberra.
As it increasingly aligns with China on geopolitical issues (such Syria and Iran), Russia has continued its long-term military relationships with India. Indeed, at the Kazakhstan meeting Putin and Indian leader Narendra Modi made it clear the two nations were increasing military cooperation. This would put a major spoke in the stuttering alliance between the US, Japan, Australia and India (known as the Quad).
Russia is building ties by selling arms, but also by backing the major infrastructure projects of South and Southeast Asian nations including Bangladesh (where it is helping build a nuclear reactor), Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Pakistan, the Philippines and Thailand. It is building arms manufacturing centres in its east, aimed squarely at its increasingly remunerative Asian customers.
Under Putin, Russia has poured funds into its military — including along its lengthy Pacific coastline in North Asia. In early 2018 Russia mounted a huge war games exercise that was reported to involve more than 300,000 troops; 36,000 tanks; 1000 aircrafts, including helicopters and drones; and 80 warships and support vessels. More alarmingly 3500 Chinese troops were said to have taken part in the Russian war games under Russian control.
According to research by Curtin University associate professor Alexey Muraviev, Russian air force units deployed to East Asia were bolstered by about 300 new upgraded aircrafts from 2013-18 — about equal to the entire Royal Australian Air Force. Over this time, the Russian Eastern Military District (which is responsible for operations across the Pacific) is estimated to have received more than 6240 new assets including tanks, missiles and heavy artillery.
The Russian Pacific Fleet is also expected to get 70 new vessels by 2026, including 11 nuclear-powered and diesel-electric submarines as well as 19 new surface warships. As the Arctic continues to melt, opening up new shipping routes, Russia will be able to move naval assets from west to east.
Russia is also one of the key players/sponsors — along with China — in rapidly escalating cyber warfare via its notorious Internet Research Agency which buys bots and troll farms to drive traffic to fake news websites that use fabricated biased stories to push online debates. The aim is to unsettle public debate and politics.
In February, Prime Minister Scott Morrison revealed a “sophisticated state actor” attacked the Parliament House computer network targeting the three major parties. “Our cyber experts believe that a sophisticated state actor is responsible for this malicious activity,” he said. No further information was announced on who was behind that that attack, though it’s worth noting Russia has a keen interest in accessing Australian intelligence that is part of the Five Eyes intelligence sharing network (including US, UK, Canada and New Zealand).
An increased focus on Russia by Canberra bureaucracy’s outsourced policy arm the Australian Strategic Policy Institute has underscored the fact that the Cold War superpower is now back in Canberra’s calculations.
In short, Russia is determined to reassert itself as a power in the Asia-Indo-Pacific in myriad ways. It’s time we took more notice.
I knew Putin and Xi had considerable time travelling together between east and west Russia, getting trade deals going, along with the usual diplomatic bear kissing offensive that usually takes place amongst friendly countries. But I’m very surprised to read they were engaging in an orgy! I really didn’t pick Vlad to be a rice queen! I can’t read any further just yet, but I’m sure it will be just as enlighting.
Nice update on the, possibly, apocryphal 19thC headline (the Merkin Isle’s Mercury?) “We Warn the Tzar!” and about as intelligent.
We long suffering subscribers recently have been spared “prof” Kingsbury’s tendentious boilerplate (long may that continue!) – has this author inherited his steam driven fax machine linked to Langley VA?
Headline from 1903 Herald; “RUSSIANS DECLARE PORT ARTHUR IMPREGNABLE”. It seems like only yesterday AR.
At a time when the US is trying to find an excuse to wallop Iran, having serially interfered with dozens of other nations around the world for hundreds of years, it’s only natural that Russia and China might see value in being nice to each other. And to present their support for poorer nations as something sinister Sainsbury must have forgotten how many US bases there are spread over the globe. Nearly 800 bases in more than 70 countries. Between them, Russia, Britain and France have about 30. It’s depressing to see a piece in Crikey that’s just old-fashioned Cold War sabre-rattling.
“It’s depressing to see a piece in Crikey that’s just old-fashioned Cold War sabre-rattling.” I clenched my teeth and renewed my Crikey subscription recently, hoping for some improvement when this “inquiry journalism” thing cuts in. It really is time they found a better source of Asian/Pacific commentary than this, we are in the area and need better reporting.
Totally agree. Why bother with this blokes consistent rubbish? A cartoonist could better articulate this content with just a simple drawing.
Bit sad isn’t it?
There are questions arising in Australia about the value of the alliance with the US and the rising power of the intelligence services and this bloke gives us boiler plate piece of doctrinaire Cold War propaganda. Surely one of the reasons why Russia and China are so close is that we and our overlords have been threatening them with everything but nuclear annihilation for the last decade. Marvelous how such threats tend to make countries gather together. And just how many bases does the US have? And how many countries has it interfered in or attacked or placed sanctions upon or organised coups within in this decade alone?
Don’t you get it Michael? It’s all rather tiring and extremely hypocritical as well as head in the sand. We live at the south end of Asia and as such we had better make sure that we have strong allies near us and if those allies are threatened by forces 12000 kilometres away then we should be at least alert to the concerns of our neighbours and not rushing to do the bidding of an overlord who wouldn’t and couldn’t defend us if the going got tough. (Would the US take a nuke for us? No, I and wouldn’t expect them too).
One of the very first, indeed, PRIME targets in a nuclear ‘exchange’ (luvvly calm, unthreatening euphemism to not frighten hoi polloi) would be Pine Gap.
Could we at least get a decent rent for this ‘Suitable Piece of Real Estate‘ in the meantime, consistent with kapitalism’s prime directive?
Michael, while I believe that your article and the issues it raises are important and well worth raising, I also think that any Sino-Russian agreement will have as much stability as the Hitler-Stalin pact. Russia apologists are quick to point out that Russia was attacked twice from the West in relatively recent history. What they omit to mention is that both times those armies were completely destroyed and that, as every Russian schoolchild knows, Russia was successfully, if not fully, occupied from the East for a couple of centuries by the Golden Horde. Unless Russia will be willing to relinquish its hold on the resource rich Russian Far East, there will a long term deep mistrust and suspicion between both sides. This is not to say there will not be any co-operation between them, only that it will be quite limited.
Then again Oldie, compared to still-wet-behind-the-ears Australia, China and Russia are very old and mature polities. A thousand years in the case of Russia; at least three thousand for China. Both have lived through tremendous upheavals and political resets, over which you skip in a disjointed manner. China and Russia have emerged older and wiser from their recent resets, and I suggest that as neighbors sharing a vast single land mass both countries have have learned that there is more advantage and security in friendship and cooperation than in belligerence. Like the old story of the bundle of sticks. Separate they are easily broken one-by-one. Tied together they are unbreakable. Believing this cooperation will be limited is only your wishful thinking.
Hi Al, good to hear from you again. Only time will tell how long this co-operation will last. I can only confirm that my Chinese friends are quite convinced, with some justification, that the 665,000 square miles north of the Azur river, that Russia took control of during the 1850s and 60s, belong to China and should be recovered. A recent census showed that the Russian inhabitants in their Far East are about 6 million versus the 110 million Chinese to the south of the river. Some Chinese seem to believe, unjustifiably in my opinion, that they have a claim on Russian territory up to the Urals. Whatever, the case, China will have a strong interest in controlling, if not possessing those lands, and Russia will be very much the junior player in the future Chinese khaganate.
Hello Oldie. You see, a polite exchange of views is possible. Regarding the Azur River, there is no river of that name, so I assume you mean the Amur River which is the border between northern China and the far east of Russia. As in all borderlands there is always some degree of tension and conflict. And there is always a minority of rabid ultra-nationalists who have their wild dreams of conquest. My maternal homeland, the borderland known as Ukraina, is a prime example. But I believe that in spite of historic tensions along the Russia-China border, that as I said above, a majority accept that there is more advantage and security in friendship and cooperation than in belligerence. Particularly now that there is a common adversary. Here is a link to a good analysis of the issues.
https://journals.openedition.org/cybergeo/4141?lang=en#tocto1n5
Ultimately, it is up to the two states to sort out their borderland issues by themselves in their own way, without foreign interference.
Hi again Al. I thought all our exchanges of views have been fairly polite despite our different viewpoints!! You are quite right that I meant the Amur–I need to check my auto-corrector more often. Thanks for the link to the article, which though old, is a terrific analysis of the benefits of co-operation between Russia and China. Unfortunately, somewhere in the not too distant future, water may become even more valuable that oil and could easily raise the tension between the 2 countries. I still think that Putin’s anti-western bias, derived from his and his mates antiquated KGB-Leninist training is very damaging and dangerous to Russia. Putin has shown himself to be a very clever tactician but a lousy strategist. He really has to break out of his hyper nationalist Bannon-Dugin fantasies. On the other hand, maybe he is a smarter strategist than I think and he is simply acting on Michael Corleone’s advice to “Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.”
The past we can study. The present we can observe. The future we cannot judge. I can only hope that some wisdom will prevail so humanity doesn’t annihilate itself by the end of this century. But watching the news doesn’t give me a lot of hope.
That said, you have a tendency to go off on tangents and do so again with your comments about President Putin, which I cannot leave unanswered. I don’t know where you get your opinions from but they sound very like the venomous scribbling of Masha Gessen. Her stuff should be binned immediately. My view is very different, and that is that Putin is in the mold of those Russian leaders of the past who emerged when the country underwent some massive upheaval, and whatever you might think of them, pulled it back together into a functioning state. There is Canadian blogger named John Chuckman whose opinions I’m in general agreement with. Here is a link to one of his pieces.
https://chuckmanwords.wordpress.com/2019/03/05/john-chuckman-essay-reflections-on-putin-as-a-leader-and-on-the-world-situation-in-which-he-works/
Hi yet again, Al. To answer your question, I get my info about Putin from various sources and they all come to the same conclusion, namely that Putin, whatever help he might have given to stabilize Russia, has long overstayed his welcome and has become a cure that’s worse than the disease. Whatever tactics he has used successfully in the short term have backfired and are crippling Russia because his long term strategy (if you can call it that) is based on the semi-fascist fantasies devised by Steve Bannon and Aleksandr Dugin. I think you are like emigres I have met who are stuck in a nostalgic romanticized past where they idealize the homeland from afar. If you were to return there even for a few months, I suspect your dreams would swiftly evaporate as you saw the misery he has created for the average Russian citizen. It’s time for Russia to move on, and stop fantasizing about a past that never really existed.
Hello Oldie. You are of course free to read anything you want and form any opinion you want, as am I. My impression is that your choice of reading material comes from a particular quarter inhabited by the likes of Masha Gessen, Luke Harding, Ed Lucas, British tabloids, the BBC, and the avalanche of propaganda from US mainstream media. Our local media are just echo chambers of these. I acknowledge them but then look elsewhere.
I do however take exception when you go off on one of your tangents, in this case making assumptions about me that are not only dead wrong but woefully so. And not to mention, irrelevant to the topic under discussion. Look up the meaning of the phrase “Ad Hominem”.
Firstly, allow me to correct you. I am no “émigré…stuck in a nostalgic romanticized past”. Those were the “White Russians” of a century ago. I am not one of those. I’m the product of a post-WW2 Displaced Persons camp, located in a then politically neutral space called “US Occupation Zone of Germany”. My first formal nationality was Canadian, granted after my parents settled there. I am now also naturalized Australian.
Secondly, I have been to Russia twice during the 1990’s, when the country was being raped and looted by hordes of financial pirates, both internal and external, who feasted on her assets which went suddenly from state ownership to whoever was able to grab the most for himself. I have previously referred you to a free download of a book called “The Killing of William Browder” which describes that period.
My first trip was in October 1993, just after Yeltsin brutally put down an attempted counter-coup in Moscow. This was a business trip where a couple of us from a small mineral exploration company I worked for went over as wannabee carpetbaggers hoping to get into an advanced diamond project for a song. We visited Sankt Peterburg and Arkhangelsk, and flew by helicopter north to the exploration village which serviced the Lomonosov group of kimberlite pipes. In the cities I personally saw the misery that privatisation brought to ordinary people, who, to make ends meet, brought bags of personal belongings to sell in public places like subway station entrances. Higher up the food chain, those in a position to claim ownership of these previously state-owned assets were asking for bribes to set up a “deal”. We left with nothing achieved, fortunately, but with interesting observations.
The second trip was late August 1997 when I visited relatives in Kiev, then went on to Moscow, and a second visit to Sankt Peterburg. Things had stabilised somewhat by then, and the kind of desperate poverty I saw in 1993 was considerably alleviated. People were living more normal lives though making do in conditions of financial stress. And if you spoke with them, many preferred the previous period under Communist administration. Everyone I know who has been to the former Soviet Union reports the same sentiment.
And these visits were pre-Putin who Yeltsin appointed because he recognised him as someone who had the capacity to clean up the mess that he, Yeltsin, had left behind. And he proceeded to do so, much to the consternation of those vultures who hoped to feed off of Russia’s dead body, but she instead shook them off and rose again.
So Oldie, I think I can claim to be better informed than you on these matters, and perhaps we should bring this exchange to a close.
Al, you don’t need to believe me. Just take a look at this article that Bernard cited in his most recent Side View.
https://www.politico.eu/article/is-vladimir-putin-losing-trust-russia/
Read it. The site politico.eu inhabits the same journalistic septic tank as those I listed above. I don’t take kindly to being sprayed by septic tank contents. You obviously didn’t notice that the author, Frida Ghitis, is described as “a contributing columnist for the Washington Post, a regular contributor to CNN.com…”. Precisely the avalanche of propaganda from US mainstream media I referred to earlier. And it’s getting ever more shrill and desperate.