strategic-culture | Once
in a while, think tanks such as the Brookings Institute are able to
deal with highly strategic and current issues. Often, the conferences
held by such organizations are based on false pretences and copious
banality, the sole intention being to undermine and downplay the efforts
of strategic opponents of the US. Recently, the Brookings Institute's
International Strategy and Strategy Project held a lecture on
May 9, 2017 where it invited Bobo Lo, an analyst at Lowy Institute for
International Policy, to speak. The topic of the subject, extremely
interesting to the author and mentioned in the past, is the strategic partnership between China and Russia.
The
main assumption Bobo Lo starts with to define relations between Moscow
and Beijing is that the two countries base their collaboration on
convenience and a convergence of interests rather than on an alliance.
He goes on to say that the major frictions in the relationship concern
the fate that Putin and Xi hold for Europe, in particular for the
European Union, in addition to differences of opinions surrounding the
Chinese role in the Pacific. In the first case, Lo states that Russia
wants to end the European project while China hopes for a strong and
prosperous Europe. With regard to the situation in the Pacific,
according to this report, Moscow wants a balance of power between powers
without hegemonic domination being transferred from Washington to
Beijing.
