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Low chance of China-Russia military teamwork leading to direct attack on US: Rand report

  • Moscow and Beijing have stepped up coordination in recent years but they are not expected to become fully integrated partners, think tank says

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China and Russia have expanded military cooperation but those efforts are not expected to lead to a direct conflict with the US, according to a Rand Corporation report. Photo: Russian Defence Ministry Press Service via AP
Zhao Ziwen
China and Russia might expand military cooperation but they are unlikely to pursue direct confrontation with the US given the potential cost, according to a report from a Washington-based defence advisory institute.

The Rand Corporation report, “Future Scenarios for Sino-Russian Military Cooperation”, suggested that Beijing and Moscow might eventually work together to launch a “combined military operation” but the possibility “remains uncertain at best”.

The report, which was released on Wednesday, said deeper integration between the two would likely result in more complex and more frequent training and exercises – interactions that would likely lead to greater technology and skills transfers and operations in new geographic areas or domains.

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But China and Russia would still likely be “well below” fully integrated partners, meaning they would not share strategic systems such as common command, control, intelligence, and surveillance systems.

The two countries’ coordination on use of nuclear weapons might also be overestimated as they had “significant cleavages” in using such a deterrence, the report said.

“At no point did Beijing pursue the type of vast and diverse arsenal that the United States and the Soviet Union possessed. It focused on maintaining a sufficient retaliatory capability and made clear that its core doctrine was one of ‘no first use’,” it added.

The authors of the report also suggested that the possibility of direct confrontation between the two powers and the US, either independently or as a coalition, remained low due to the likely cost, especially from China’s perspective.

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