Deep partnership with Russia makes China stronger

It means that, as much as they've been helping each other for years as they spread the oppression of their regimes and undermine democracy, now they'll cooperate even more.

A lot of this will be about increasing stress on the US as it struggles to maintain stability in Asia and Europe.

In fact, Beijing and Moscow were already becoming pretty close before last week's joint statement from them.

"China and Russia are allied in a quest to refashion a world order that is safe for their respective authoritarian systems," Australian National University Professor Paul Dibb wrote in October.

They both also want more territory. Russia under President Vladimir Putin is obviously trying to rebuild as much as possible of the former Soviet Union. And Xi Jinping's China wants Taiwan and the South China Sea - and, almost certainly, the obedience of other countries on this side of the world.

For Australia, the big question now is how Russia can make China stronger.

The two countries issued their declaration in Beijing on the day that the Winter Olympics opened. "Friendship between the two states has no limits [and] there are no forbidden areas of cooperation," they said.

They took aim at "closed-bloc structures" in the Asia-Pacific - meaning, groupings aimed at resisting China - and especially at the AUKUS security agreement between Australia, the UK and the US.

That adds to earlier evidence that our AUKUS achievement has really discomforted China and that Beijing thinks it will significantly strengthen Australia and the US. Well done, Scott Morrison.

Deeper trade cooperation can't be the main objective for Xi and Putin in the enhanced relationship, notably because Russia, with a modest economy, just doesn't offer much of a market. In trade, Beijing mostly needs Russia to supply energy that the US Navy cannot obstruct, and Moscow has already been sending gas to China by pipeline.

Military technology is another matter. Since the 1990s, advanced weapons have flowed from Russia to China. Cash-strapped Russian manufacturers have been keen for the money.

China's military technology has meanwhile moved ahead in leaps and bounds, so the country now has less use for Russian knowhow. But that will change if Russia is willing to reveal what it has kept to itself, such as information about submarine silencing, aircraft engines and nuclear weapons.

Maybe it is. "No limits," they say.

As for intelligence, we don't know how much information these two countries have been sharing, but presumably they'll now share more.

Then there are grey-zone activities - offensive measures short of war, such as trying to subvert democracy in those countries that have it. No doubt there's potential for them to coordinate.

If their new level of trust is high enough, Russia and China can reduce forces that face each other across their mutual borders. This would help China, and worsen the danger to peace in the western Pacific, in two ways.

First, Beijing could redeploy its border firepower to increase its strength against Taiwan and US forces trying to help the island. Second, if Moscow transfers forces to Europe, the US will be less able to reduce its strength there and build up in the western Pacific.

In fact, this would exacerbate an old problem that doesn't get enough attention in Australia: the refusal of most of the US's European allies to spend enough on defence, especially Germany, heightens risk on this side of the world by increasing Washington's burden. Thanks, Berlin.

The most worrisome possibility is that Russia and China could stage parallel wars. Conceivably, there could be a Russian move in Europe timed to coincide with a Chinese attempt at seizing Taiwan, stretching the US in both directions.

Some people see a risk of that right now as Russia assembles about 140,000 troops on Ukraine's borders, but, thankfully, nothing suggests that China is making offensive preparations.

The US and its allies absolutely would not intervene militarily in any Ukrainian war, because Russia has 4500 nuclear warheads. That's why President Joe Biden is instead threatening Russia with economic punishment.

Still, if Russia invaded Ukraine - if not this year, then maybe later in coordination with China - the result would be a war on the borders of the NATO alliance, and the US would be constrained in shifting forces to the Pacific.

The longer-term risk is that Russia will one day try to take control of the Baltic states: Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania, all of which were part of the Soviet Union. They're in NATO now, so the US would be obliged to fight for them.

MORE AGE OF THE DRAGON:

In considering the possibility of parallel wars in Europe and the western Pacific, we're talking about terrifying stuff, because China, Russia and the US are all nuclear powers.

Worse, Washington and Moscow both maintain a crazy-dangerous policy of having enough nukes of the right types for what's called a disarming first strike: shooting some to take out many of the enemy's before it lets loose. Since each side has such forces, each in a crisis would have a terrible choice: use them or lose them.

It's all the madder because neither side could completely disarm the other. A storm of shocking destruction would still come back at whoever fired first.

Hostilities between the US and Russia must be avoided at all costs.

China, commendably, has long adopted a policy like that of Britain and France, keeping only enough nuclear warheads to deter anyone from using such weapons against it. It's building more, however.

And maybe Russia will help it.