Incompatible Strategic Cultures Limit Russian-Chinese Strategic Cooperation in the Arctic

Abstract

Russia's full-blown invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 has led to concern about the implications for Arctic governance and stability. The Arctic Council has been temporarily suspended and the security tension between Russia and the seven other Western Arctic states has intensified. A more isolated Russia under Western sanctions leans even more towards the East, where China, especially, figures as an attractive strategic partner. In this article, we set out to examine the prospects for Russian-Chinese strategic cooperation in the Arctic. We introduce a social constructivist perspective highlighting how strategic culture may serve as a lens through which to analyse developments in states' strategies -specifically their ends, ways and means. Applying our culturally applicable ends-ways-means (EWM) model, we show how Russian and Chinese strategic cultures set distinct limits to their strategic cooperation in the Arctic. The two states' identity-driven urge to secure and display their great power position will increasingly collide. It is therefore our prediction that Russia and China will eventually act in ways that will gradually come to undermine their strategic cooperation in the region.

China’s Arctic Strategy – a Comprehensive Approach in Times of Great Power Rivalry

“…Following its war of aggression in Ukraine, Russia is facing severe economic and geopolitical challenges; it is today very greatly isolated among developed economies. Russia's economic dependency on China, it is considered, may see it entering a de facto vassal relationship, possibly providing China with ample opportunities to demand more access to the Arctic region -whether Russia likes the idea or not (Gabuev, 2022;Staun & Sørensen, 2023).…”

“…Apart from a few exceptions (e.g. Brady, 2019;Lanteigne, 2020;MacDonald, 2021;Staun & Sørensen, 2023), not much scholarly attention has been paid to China's security interests in the High North and none have situated these interests within China's broader concept of total national security -a gap in the literature that this article seeks to fill.…”

Editors’ Note: Stocktaking of an Emergent Field After Five Years of the Scandinavian Journal of Military Studies

“…A third example is Jørgen Staun and Camilla T. N. Sørensen's article on the limits to Russian-Chinese cooperation in the Arctic (Staun & Sørensen, 2023)…”