Russia and China are busily involved in joint military exercises. They are the first ever — itself a somewhat remarkable situation. Not even during the early 1950s when the two countries were on the same ideological wavelength and relations had none of the sourness they later had, there were no such “war games”.
Today’s exercises demonstrate how close ties between the two neighboring giants have become of late; they have clearly crossed a decisive threshold and forged a strategic relationship. They are about much more than the Russians hoping to sell the Chinese arms or the Chinese wanting to profit from Russia’s military sophistication — although both have a part to play in the picture. They make a very clear political statement — that Russia and China are powers to be reckoned with, at least when acting together, with the muscle to be a counterbalance to the US. It is no longer a one superpower world is the message from Moscow and Beijing.
If Washington is concerned at China’s rapid military modernization on the back of its economic growth, the Middle East or rest of the world is certainly not going to worry any counterbalance to America’s global domination — providing it is not the cause of a new arms race or a new Cold War.
However, there are other reasons to worry about this new strategic relationship.
The line coming from Moscow is that a major spur to the new relationship is concern about Central Asia and, in particular renascent Islam there and possible knock-on effects in their own countries. The Russians are clearly thinking about Chechnya and the Chinese about Xinjiang. Both are thinking about the recent uprisings in the Central Asian republic of Kyrgyzstan, which succeeded in toppling a friendly government, and in neighboring Uzbekistan, which did not. What obviously concerns them is that the opposition to the regime in Uzbekistan (and also in next door Tajikistan) is Islamic. If a fear of renascent Islam in Central Asia and at home is indeed a reason for the new strategic alliance, then it is cause for alarm. It is Islamophobia - sealed in guns and missiles, and pregnant with menacing threats - the most obvious being that if any of the former Soviet Central Asian states were to become an Islamic republic, the new allies would have to act. The threat cannot be ignored.
Given the added economic incentive to keep energy-rich Central Asia in their own patch (China is currently trying to buy a major oil company in Kazakhstan, Russia will take over the power grid in Kyrgyzstan), there would be a strong impetus to intervene.
Islamophobia cannot be tolerated in Russian and Chinese policy-making any more than it can in the West. The Central Asian states are not Russia’s or China’s to dictate to or invade. The Muslim world does not want a replay of Afghanistan or Iraq in Central Asia.
