This commentary is printed with the kind permission of its author: [Copyright by Immanuel Wallerstein. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to download, forward electronically or e-mail to others and to post this text on non-commercial community Internet sites, provided the essay remains intact and the copyright note is displayed. To translate this text, publish it in printed and/or other forms, including commercial Internet sites and excerpts, contact the author at
iwaller@binghamton.edu; fax: 1-607-777-4315.
Commentary No. 5, Dec. 1, 1998
"Russia and China: Lonely Giants"
Russia and China are two of the largest countries in the world, both in area (Russia especially) and population (China especially). They have been power centers and major civilizational loci for a long time. They exhibit deep cultural pride. They are major military powers. And they are unhappy, lonely countries.
They are first of all unhappy about the fact that they are not as deeply respected by other world powers as they feel they ought to be. They are unhappy because the level of their economic production is lower than they would like it to be, and significantly lower per capita than the other great powers with which they compare themselves. And they are unhappy because they feel they have been badly treated by other world powers - or more than badly, unjustly. It is no accident that they both installed Communist regimes in the twentieth century. And even that act did not seem to change their sense of isolation in the world. Today Russia's Communist regime is a matter of history, and China's regime is transforming itself, a bit slowly to be sure, into something else.
If one looks at the world from their eyes, their faults have been minor to those of the faults outsiders committed against them. Russia has felt that it has been treated by other European powers as barbarians, as extra-Europeans - at least for the last 500 years, if not for longer. It feels that Russia suffered a terrible devastation in the Second World War, thereby saving the world from the horrors of Nazi domination, and that this human sacrifice has never been really appreciated by either western Europe or the United States. And today Russia feels that the last pillar of its national pride, its armed forces, is disintegrating.
China feels similar grievances. Heirs of the Middle Kingdom, China still feels it is the true center of world civilization. It feels it was despoiled by the Western world for at least two centuries. It feels that its national unity is still imperiled, and seeks to recreate the boundaries and glories of yesteryear. It remembers that, only fifty-odd years ago, it was internally ravaged by a devastating Japanese invasion as well as by a civil war. And China remains deeply suspicious of both Japan and the U.S.
The story of course looks different from the vantage point of the Western world and that of Japan. Russia and China are seen as having expressed once again through their adoption of Communist regimes in the twentieth century both totalitarian ideals internally and imperialist intentions externally. And they remain therefore suspect to many people and politicians in the West and in Japan.
Nor are they considered too benevolently in the rest of the world. In east/central Europe, Russia is regarded primarily as a perennially imperialist power, the one that has attempted to dominate them. China is regarded by many of its neighbors to the south as playing a similar game, if not by armed force then at least via the implantation of a merchant diaspora, who remain culturally and perhaps politically loyal to China. To be sure, outside the West and Japan, there are many countries who agree that Russia and China are regions of the world that have been exploited by the West in the same ways these countries feel they themselves have been, and are Russia and China may be admired in such countries for having had the courage of fighting back. But even when they are admired, Russia and China are often still not liked or trusted. So they are lonely as well as unhappy giants.
These images of Russia and China, self-images and those of others, play a significant role in contemporary geopolitics. They lead Russia and China to insist loudly and repeatedly on their right to have their voice heard and respected, to participate in major geopolitical decisions. These images lead Russia and China to devote a good part of their national product to maintaining and strengthening their armed forces. These images lead them to be willing to defy world opinion, whenever their interests seem to them impinged.
It also explains their other national priorities in addition to the maintenance and strengthening of their armed forces. Russia and China are desperately anxious to ensure the integrity of their present national boundaries, and in China's case, to reunify with the major national area still outside, Taiwan. They want serious and rapid improvement in their economic machinery and productivity. And they want to strike strategic bargains with specific other countries to guarantee their world roles. China seeks to gain a relationship of political parity and comity with Japan and the United States. It offers the latter economic links, both as producer and consumer. What they hope to get in return is significant improvement in their productive infrastructure plus a long-term reduction in the U.S. military presence in East Asia. China would like in addition some form of reunification of the Korean peninsula, if for no other reason than that it might lead to this reduction of the U.S. military role in East Asia.
China is at the moment more self-confident than Russia, but this could be temporary. Russia is hurting badly from the rapidity of the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. and from the economic chaos that the unrestrained entry into Russia of world market sctors has wreaked upon it. Russia seeks to contain the damage, but at the moment it has no strong center. This too may be temporary. In the medium run, Russia seeks to reestablish its role of peace-imposer in the region (but exactly what region?) and for this role to be again recognized by the other major world powers. In the medium run, too, Russia is looking to the establishment of a relationship of parity and comity with western Europe within the context of a greater Europe. Russia's erstwhile satellite states of east/central Europe are unsympathetic to such a project and most of them will no doubt seek to block it. But Russia has important military and economic cards to play in its negotiations with western Europe, if and when it restores strong central authority within its frontiers. It represents a major military force that can be rebuilt, and it represents (just like China) a major market and production zone.
The key element in the equation is that both Russia and China still nurse the grievance that they are not respected as they feel they ought to be, as they feel their status as contemporary giants and heirs to long traditions entitle them. As long as giants are unhappy and lonely, there can be no quiet in the world. The status of these two countries is a matter that requires the attention of the world, for the sake of the world.
Immanuel Wallerstein
[Copyright by Immanuel Wallerstein. All rights reserved. Permission is granted to download, forward electronically or e-mail to others and to post this text on non-commercial community Internet sites, provided the essay remains intact and the copyright note is displayed. To translate this text, publish it in printed and/or other forms, including commercial Internet sites and excerpts, contact the author at iwaller@binghamton.edu; fax: 1-607-777-4315.
