China and Russia: a strategic partnership with many limits

The threat of a China-Russia alliance poses significant geopolitical challenges to the United States and the European Union. However, the strength of their relationship may not be as powerful as they declare.

In his September visit to Stockholm, the Republican chairman of the US House Foreign Affairs Committee, Representative Michael McCaul, warned that the strengthening relationship between Russia and China was the most significant “threat to Europe and the Pacific … since World War II”. This viewpoint, as sensationalist as it appears, has some merit. Both China and Russia are nuclear-armed, both can paralyse the United Nations Security Council with their veto powers, both have in the last decade become more authoritarian at home, and both have engaged in a variety of malign activities that damage democracy abroad.