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Preface to the Paperback Edition

Authors’ note: We are writing this updated preface to the new edition of The Russia-China Axis, now titled “Return to Winter: Russia, China, and the New Cold War Against America,” in early summer 2015—at a time when events around the world only strengthen our convictions about the arguments we make in this book. What follows is a brief overview of what has occurred since the book’s first edition appeared last year.

One year ago, when we published The Russia-China Axis, we felt strongly that we had written a book compelling in its analysis, accurate in its appraisal, and prescient in its warning that the United States was at mounting risk from a new, anti-Western alliance between Moscow and Beijing. We believed that the new Russia-China partnership, across every international front, spelled enormous risk for the United States and the Western democracies, and we tried to sound the alarm that the West, especially America, has shown no strategy and no will to take it on. In our view, the United States and its allies are at greater risk than at any time since the end of the Cold War.

A year later, at the risk of sounding immodest, we can only say: We were right.

Across every front, Russia and China continue on the march. The Russians changed the borders of Europe for the first time since World War II, with their illegal annexation of Crimea, and they are poised to destabilize and possibly even annex substantial additional parts of Eastern Ukraine. The Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, as well as large parts of the Arctic, appear to be next on Putin’s hit list. Moscow is increasing its defense budget exponentially and upgrading its nuclear arsenal, and sending the message regularly to Washington and the European capitals that it is ready to confront us. Even as the Obama administration has tried to celebrate its ill-considered nuclear agreement with Iran, for example, Russian president Vladimir Putin has sold Tehran a missile-defense system that will fortify the Iranians against retaliatory attacks should they violate the agreement’s terms—an inevitability, to those who see the regime’s intentions clearly. Even more alarming has been Russia’s escalating military involvement in Syria, where it has deployed troops and heavy weapons to provide support for Bashar al-Assad’s regime.

Meanwhile, the Chinese are pursuing outright expansionism in the East China Sea and the South China Sea, where they are flouting international law and making brazen claims that, if conceded, would put one of the world’s primary shipping lanes almost entirely under Chinese direction. Beijing is also engaging in a massive military buildup—especially of its naval forces—and is aggressively upgrading its nuclear posture. And Beijing continues to tolerate a nuclear North Korea, arguably putting the world at risk.

Russia and China are adept practitioners of the dark arts of cyber warfare. Both countries have been implicated in recent years in major attacks against American targets. And both Beijing and Moscow have moved boldly—and with distressing effectiveness—to make common cause, politically and economically, with American adversaries around the world, from the Middle East to Latin America.

More quietly yet equally if not more troubling, Russia and China have pursued systematic economic expansionism internationally—including in the West, and including in America’s backyard. Chinese and Russian state-owned firms, their subsidiaries, and shell companies operating under different names have headquarters or offices in hundreds of locations around the world, constituting what a consultant to Western defense organizations calls “the fifth theater”—economic and financial. Meanwhile, at the state level, China and Russia are busy forging economic deals around the world, whether in Africa, where the Chinese have become the continent’s largest trading partner and are leading massive infrastructure investment, or in Latin America (Monroe Doctrine be damned), where the Chinese have become the continent’s top export market and leading creditor. And the Russians have busily pursued economic and trade deals, including significant sales of military hardware to U.S. adversaries.

The Russians and Chinese are tightening their economic relationship with each other, too. In 2014, they signed a $400 billion natural-gas pipeline deal that Putin called “an epochal event” in relations between the two countries. This year, the state-owned China Railway Group announced that it would partner with Russia in constructing a high-speed rail connection between Moscow and Kazan, one of Russia’s largest cities.

No wonder Putin exulted that Russian-Chinese relations have reached a level “unprecedented in history.”¹

What unites all of these efforts is a common goal: to thwart the United States and the Western alliance at every turn, providing a counterweight in the form of a more autocratic, anti-Western system of political arrangements and individual rights. We wrote The Russia-China Axis to offer readers a glimpse at how this all worked and to raise the alarm about how ill-prepared the United States seems to be to confront it. Since the first edition appeared last year, the assertiveness and sometimes outright provocation of the two partners has continued—individually, or in tandem with each other or with rogue actors—and the consequences for the United States and its allies grow graver by the day.

Yet the challenge that Russia and China present still seems largely unrecognized by our political leaders, to say nothing of the public at large. We must confront it if America is going to maintain its preeminent position in the world. That task is made incalculably more difficult by a dynamic that we have observed, and lamented, for years: Chinese and Russian aggression, assertiveness, and strategic clarity, on the one hand; and American retrenchment, lack of commitment, and strategic ineptitude, on the other. We see it across the board—whether in our wholly inadequate and uncommitted effort to fight ISIS, our refusal to engage in tough diplomacy with Iran on the nuclear deal, or in our passive and ineffective global diplomacy, with our own allies and also as regards the shrewd and determined moves that Putin and Xi Jinping are making around the world.

The bottom line is this: Russia and China know what they want, are determined and organized in how they are pursuing it, and are meeting, by and large, with substantial success in their goals. None of this can be said about the American response, let alone about any proactive American vision for leadership in the 21st century. Until this changes, it’s hard to feel optimistic. Our adversaries would be formidable on their own; working together, they cast a long shadow over the American future.

A DEEPENING, STRENGTHENING ALLIANCE

On May 17, 2015, originating from Novorissiysk on the Black Sea, the Russian and Chinese navies began weeklong joint naval exercises: Sea Cooperation 2015, as the Russian Defense Ministry billed it. Ten ships from the two countries participated, anchored by the Moskva, Russia’s Crimea-based guided-missile cruiser, which served as headquarters for the drills. The goal of the exercises was to “strengthen mutual understanding between the navies . . . regarding boosting stability, countering new challenges and threats at sea,” said Russian deputy navy commander Aleksandr Fedotenkov. “The joint drills are not aimed against third parties and are not connected with the political situation in that region,” the Russian Defense Ministry said.

Despite those disclaimers, no observer, watching the navy ships pass in tandem, could miss the message: that the Russia-China alliance, once viewed as unthinkable, continues to deepen, with profound consequences for the world. The exercises take place as Russia continues to stare down the United States and its Western allies about Moscow’s annexation of Crimea in 2014 and its continued destabilization of Ukraine, and as China is confronting the United States and its Asian allies in the Pacific, where Beijing’s aggressive moves against neighboring countries seem to be challenges to regional security. What better time than now, then, and what better place than the Mediterranean—on NATO’s southern perimeter—for Russian president Vladimir Putin and Chinese president Xi Jinping to advertise the strength of their growing partnership?

Sea Cooperation 2015 took place a week after Russia’s annual Victory Day ceremonies commemorating its triumph in World War II over Germany. This year marked the 70th anniversary of that historic moment, so the celebrations were grander than usual. Russian soldiers marched in period garb, and 2,000 surviving Red Army veterans of what Russians call the Great Patriotic War were bused in to Moscow for the ceremonies. But because of Putin’s aggression in Ukraine and violation of international law in annexing Crimea, no head of state from the Western democracies agreed to attend.

That was okay with Putin, though—because he had Xi sitting by his side.

The Chinese president was the most high-profile world leader in Moscow, where he joined Putin on the reviewing stand and watched not only Russian troops but a Chinese honor guard, too—which marched past the two leaders singing “Katyusha,” a Russian war ballad. Along with the troops and pageantry, Putin wheeled out an impressive new tank, the Armata, considered by some to be the Russian army’s new “secret weapon,” and a new ICBM launcher. In his Victory Day speech, Putin made sure to get a dig in at the West and at the United States in particular.

“In past decades, we have seen attempts to create a unipolar world,” Putin said, referring to what he sees as American attempts to control the affairs of other countries.

If the joint naval exercise wasn’t the largest of its kind, and the Victory Day parade mostly pageantry and symbolism, the two events nonetheless underscore the Russian-Chinese partnership, which is far more substantive, in all major categories—military cooperation, economic and trade agreements, cyber-security issues, dealings with rogue nations, and mutual support in international venues such as the United Nations. This cooperation would be concerning enough on its own to American interests and those of our allies, but independently, Russia and China are also engaged in what amount to stare-downs with the United States in critical spots in the world.

FLASHPOINTS

Russia’s aggression in Ukraine could be poised to reach a crucial stage. Troubling signs suggest that we could soon see a major Russian incursion. The Ukrainian government in Kiev has already lost more than two dozen towns to the Russian-backed separatists since early 2015. Ukraine president Petro Poroshenko has warned that 50,000 Russian troops remain massed on the Ukraine border—despite Moscow’s repeated attempts to deny aggressive intent—while some 40,000 separatists or Russian loyalists are operating inside the country. Those numbers taken together represent an increase of 50 percent from the same time in 2014.

The separatist militants have repeatedly violated the Minsk II cease-fire agreement, provoking armed confrontations and shooting at Ukrainian positions.² The Kiev-based government in Ukraine now claims that Russia violates the cease-fire 50 to 80 times a day. Moscow’s proxies in Ukraine have shelled Avdiyivka in eastern Ukraine, a town still held by the Kiev government, and also fired on Ukrainian forces near the port of Mariupol. Moscow’s allies have brought in heavy weaponry, including tanks—again in direct violation of Minsk. Russian special forces have infiltrated Ukraine, and the Russians have maintained surface-to-air missile systems in areas prohibited by the agreement.³ And a report from a Virginia-based cyber-security firm indicates that Russia has been waging a cyber war against Ukraine all along.⁴

In the words of a senior Western diplomat: “The familiar pattern is recurring. Russia makes high-level assurances that it wants peace, and meanwhile stokes the violence on the ground with fighters and arms.”⁵

All the signs point to a Russian escalation. The proof will come in Moscow’s deeds, not its denials. But it’s worth remembering that Russian actions in Ukraine have already crossed a Rubicon before now—several Rubicons. The annexation of Crimea itself was thought unthinkable—until Putin went in and did it. Then, in summer 2014, while Moscow was supplying the separatist rebels in Donetsk and Luhansk with tanks, rocket launchers, and advanced air-defense systems, one of those air-defense systems shot down Malaysian Airlines Flight 17, killing 298 civilians.⁶ Forensic evidence implicates Russian regular forces, as opposed to separatist rebels, for the incident, according to an independent report from a German research organization.⁷ The episode aroused memories of Moscow’s downing of Korean Air 007 in 1983, which took place during some of the frostiest days of the Cold War.

Recent years seem to have liberated Putin to be more frank and unapologetic about his aims. He has publicly acknowledged that he ordered the annexation of Crimea weeks before that region’s referendum on independence,⁸ and he admitted that he was willing to put Russian nuclear forces on alert during the Crimea crisis.⁹ Putin might also feel emboldened because his back-against-the-wall stance against the West has bolstered his political popularity at home, where his approval ratings remain very high. Western sanctions on Russia for its behavior in Ukraine show little sign of working, even after multiple rounds, the most recent following the downing of Flight 17.

Respected, sober political analysts, such as Graham Allison and Dimitri K. Simes, writing in the National Interest, warn that a U.S. response to Russian aggression in Ukraine could potentially lead to war. (Conflicting accounts even suggest that Putin has threatened to use nukes if the United States intervenes in any substantial way.) A Russian–American war seems inconceivable to many, but Allison and Simes caution that “when judging something to be ‘inconceivable,’ we should always remind ourselves that this is a statement not about what is possible in the world, but about what we can imagine.” How many of us imagined that one day Putin would dare to send two Russian nuclear bombers into American airspace over Alaska? That’s what he did in May 2015.

Allison and Simes, longtime observers of Russia, say that they are “more concerned about the drift of events than at any point since the end of the Cold War.”¹⁰ In a sign of what may come next, the Prosecutor General’s Office of Russia has begun a so-called investigation into “the legality of the independence” of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania—the Baltic States that were the first to break from the Soviet Union.¹¹

Meanwhile, Putin’s budding ally in Beijing is also moving aggressively, if more quietly, to expand Chinese influence and put pressure on American allies in Asia. The most visible, consequential, and troubling area of Chinese activity is in the South China Sea, where a newly assertive Beijing is staking claims to disputed island archipelagoes while building—and fortifying—artificial islands. In effect, China is laying claim to sovereignty over the South China Sea, a direct threat to the law of the seas, as well as to the United States and its Asian allies—whether Japan, the Philippines, Malaysia, South Korea, or Vietnam, the latter not technically an American ally but a country with a long history of difficulty with China. These countries dispute China’s claims and assert counterclaims of their own, but none have the strength and force to pursue their aims as does Beijing. Only America can thwart Chinese designs.

One key flashpoint is the Spratly Islands, home to rich fisheries as well as oil and gas deposits. The territory is disputed: China, Vietnam, Malaysia, and the Philippines all make claim to it, and they occupy pieces of the island.¹² In April 2015, satellite images revealed that China is “building a concrete runway” on the Spratlys that would “be capable of handling military aircraft,” including fighter jets and surveillance aircraft.¹³ This was only the latest evidence of Chinese militarization there: Satellite photos in February showed that China had actually constructed an 800,000-square-foot island on top of Hughes Reef in the Spratlys. China has stationed helipads and anti-aircraft towers on both islands.¹⁴ It’s all part of its broader strategy to build serviceable land areas in the archipelago to serve Chinese military and territorial pursuits.

What’s at stake here has global ramifications, not only for international security but also for the global economy. If Beijing got its way, its new claims of territory in the South China Sea would convert about 80 percent of the South China Sea and its islands from international waters to Chinese possessions.¹⁵ The South China Sea is home to some of the world’s busiest shipping lanes, through which passes a substantial portion of the world’s commerce. If China converted these waters to its jurisdiction, America and its Asian allies would be forced to heed Chinese dictates.

Tempers have been flaring—between Beijing and its Asian neighbors, especially in the Philippines, and also between Beijing and Washington. In May 2015, the Obama administration sent a surveillance plane over Fiery Cross Reef, a portion of the Spratlys where one of the Chinese airstrips is being constructed. The surveillance prompted a tense face-off with Chinese naval forces, which ordered the American plane to leave the airspace, and Beijing filed a formal diplomatic complaint.

The words heated up when China released a policy paper detailing its new military strategy, which made clear that its future plans centered around a vast expansion of its naval forces. The document accused China’s neighbors of provocations in the South China Sea, and it also warned America, though not by name. “Some external countries are . . . busy meddling in South China Sea affairs,” it said. “It is thus a long-standing task for China to safeguard its maritime rights and interests.”¹⁶

Around the same time, a provocative editorial in Global Times, a Chinese tabloid, hinted at a showdown with the United States. The editorial argued that conflict between the two great powers was inevitable if the United States didn’t stop interfering in China’s affairs in the South Pacific. “We do not want a military conflict with the United States, but if it were to come, we have to accept it,” the editorial said.¹⁷

Up to now, Beijing’s aggression has been enabled by a muddled and diffident American response. Though President Obama touted his “Asian pivot” as a key plank in his foreign policy, he has put no muscle behind it. Obama’s speeches stress the importance of Asia, but he has sent no substantial increase of naval forces into the region to bolster our beleaguered allies there, all straining to hold their own against Chinese pressure. Navy data show that the U.S. will deploy an average of only 58 ships to the Western Pacific, and that the number will increase barely 10 percent by 2020.¹⁸

Obama’s inattention has been interpreted as weakness, and it worries American allies, including Japan and the Philippines—who, perhaps in part because of it, have taken some provocative actions of their own, making the standoff with China more volatile and increasing the risks of escalation or a dangerous incident.

As we go to press, there are some hopeful signs that the United States is awakening to the Chinese challenge. Obama seems to have decided to confront the Chinese more directly—at least by way of demonstrating that Washington has no intention of ceding the South China Sea to Beijing. In May, the Pentagon began exploring options for enforcing freedom of the seas in the South Pacific; these include patrolling American ships within 12 nautical miles of those islands and sending American warplanes over the artificial islands that China is building. The goal would be to send a more concrete warning to Beijing than we have delivered before. But even these steps pose risks. What does the U.S. do if the warning isn’t heeded? Already, China has announced that its determination to say the course in the Spratlys is as “firm as a rock.”¹⁹ If the U.S. doesn’t follow through, it will once again leave its allies feeling vulnerable, and we will have lost face again in an international dispute, as Obama did in 2013, when he backed down from his heralded “red line” warning in Syria.

Clearly, the Obama administration recognizes that its passive approach in the South China Sea has failed and that something must change. It seems likely, though, that American aims are relatively modest: to dial down Chinese aggression. The airstrip and many of China’s man-made islands are near completion; the Chinese won’t abandon them. The U.S. and its allies are probably going to have to live with that, but through concerted effort, they should work to get Beijing to relinquish its wildly ambitious talk of colonizing the South China Sea and converting international sea lanes into Chinese territorial waters. In short, American options here are limited, which is why we need leadership and strategic vision more than ever. Dangerous as it could prove to be, the situation in the South China Sea holds more potential for constructive resolution than the crisis in Ukraine: American and Chinese interests are more intertwined than America’s and Russia’s, and in Xi, Washington faces a leader as formidable as Putin but less driven by motives of honor and revenge. American statesmanship has an opening here. All we need is statesmen.

ENABLING AND FACILITATING ROGUE REGIMES

On a separate front, Russia and China’s facilitation of leading rogue actors has sown discord and instability around the world.

In April 2015, the Obama administration announced a preliminary agreement with the Islamic Republic of Iran to limit Iran’s nuclear program, allowing Iran to keep its nuclear facilities open under strict limits. But those limits would be in place for only the first decade of the accord, and even under these, the only assurance that the Americans could provide was that Tehran could not “race for a nuclear weapon in less than a year.” In short, the agreement all but guaranteed that Iran would soon have a nuclear capability. The agreement was reached through the administration’s willful disregard of stubborn facts about the Tehran regime’s behavior and intentions.

Nuclear experts warn that the deal will be impossible to verify, given Iran’s history of noncompliance with similar agreements.²⁰ Ray Takeyh, an Iran expert at the Council on Foreign Relations, notes that Iran will enjoy “a sizeable enrichment capacity, and none of its facilities will be shuttered as was once contemplated.” And Takeyh points out that the 10-year “sunset clause” is the real key to understanding the agreement. After 10 years, he says, “all essential restriction on Iran’s enrichment infrastructure” will expire, thereby allowing Iran to develop highly advanced nuclear capabilities.²¹ “What is often missed,” he adds, “is that Iran’s ingenious strategy is to advance its program incrementally and not provocatively.”

Skeptics of the deal could hardly be encouraged by the increase in provocative behavior from Iran since the deal was announced. In April, Iranian Revolutionary Guard ships fired warning shots and then intercepted and seized a Marshall Islands vessel in the Persian Gulf, only days after Iranian patrol ships surrounded an American vessel.²² The United States directed a destroyer toward the area, along with patrol aircraft.²³ And the Obama administration’s reassurances to Israel about its continued security were belied when Ayatollah Khamenei, discussing the Iran deal shortly after its completion during a speech in Tehran, warned: “I’d say [to Israel] that they will not see [the end] of these 25 years.”²⁴

Iran’s aggression in the Gulf mirrors that of China’s activities in the South China Sea. In fact, China has enabled much of Iran’s naval activities, in addition to providing other military assistance: “Over the years, China has supplied Iran with anti-ship cruise missiles, surface-to-air missiles, combat aircraft, fast-attack patrol vessels, and technology to produce ballistic missiles and chemical weapons,” writes Tzvi Kahn, a Senior Policy Analyst for the Foreign Policy Initiative.²⁵ Iran’s naval commander visited China to discuss broader military cooperation shortly before the incidents in the Gulf.²⁶

Preparing for both Iranian and Chinese naval threats is straining the U.S. Navy’s current force structure.²⁷

At the same time, Russia, long a partner of Tehran’s, has just announced the sale of an $800 million, S-300 missile-defense system to Iran. Coming just as Iran began formalizing the nuclear deal with the United States, the missile-defense sale is illustrative. It suggests that Iran is emboldened by the arrangements it has made with Washington, while also preparing itself, defensively, for any consequences of breaching the agreement—especially since the Americans insist that the “military option” remains “on the table” should Iran violate the terms. Putin just made it easier for Iran to do so.

“That deal represents a lot of money to Russia and a system Iran wants,” said Russian expert Tom Nichols, a professor at the Naval War College. “From their perspective, why bother waiting? What price would be paid if they do it? This is what happens when other countries in the world feel they can act as if the United States doesn’t exist.” The missile-defense deal, he continued, was “yet another moment where Russia and Iran underscore the reality that they can do whatever they like, unconstrained by a disengaged United States.”²⁸

The S-300 sale reflects a deepening alliance between Moscow and Tehran that has developed over certain shared goals, all of which revolve, in some form or another, around checking American influence in the Middle East and around the world. Thus, Moscow has worked assiduously to help Tehran get closer to where it can reach its “breakout” nuclear capacity—after which point, a whole new reality will take shape. That explains why Tehran has dragged out the talks so long; time is its ally, and the Russians are helping them build more nuclear facilities. In 2014, Moscow announced agreement to help Iran build two more nuclear reactors in Bushehr. Moscow and Tehran have also found common cause in Syria, where they support the Assad regime, and they have played an indispensable role in its survival. Both countries are working together to blunt international sanctions against them—Iran because of its nuclear program, Russia for its annexation of Crimea and violation of Ukrainian sovereignty. The two countries have reached an agreement for Russia to market $20 billion of Iranian crude oil on the world market, weakening the U.S. effort to shut down Tehran’s oil revenues.

According to Amir Taheri, the Russians have a phrase, fortochka Obama: the “Obama window of opportunity.” It refers to the sense among many internationally that there will never be a better time than now to make advances and claims, while the United States is saddled with such dilatory leadership. As Taheri summarizes: “By the time the ‘fortochka Obama’ is closed, Moscow and Tehran hope to have consolidated a firewall spanning a vast territory from the Baltics to the Persian Gulf, shielding them against what Putin and Iranian ‘Supreme Guide’ Ali Khamenei designate as ‘American schemes.’”²⁹

The “fortochka Obama” has been left wide open in Syria, where 2,000 Russian troops have been deployed³⁰ along with tanks and dozens of aircraft³¹ to prop up Assad’s government and supplement his military. Russia has also begun to lay the groundwork for even wider involvement, building an additional weapons depot and military facility north of the city of Latakia, Assad’s stronghold.³² Putin claims he is backing Assad only to defeat ISIS, because the West has done little to stem the rise of the would-be caliphate. But the facts tell a different story: Putin is playing both sides of the Syria crisis, while America sits on the sidelines. The FSB, Russia’s security service and replacement for the KGB, has established a “green corridor” to allow would-be Russian jihadists, especially from Chechnya, to reach Syria and join up with ISIS.³³ While Putin backs Assad overtly and ISIS covertly, America has spent $500 million to train a grand total of “four or five” rebels, according to Senate testimony from General Lloyd Austin.³⁴ In Syria, Putin saw the window of opportunity and climbed through.

Russia must sense that same window of opportunity when it comes to North Korea, with whom it has recently entered into a highly touted “year of friendship,” in 2015, during which the two countries will explore deepening their economic and political ties. What some have called a “pariah alliance” would unite two of the most destabilizing actors on the world scene. We have yet to see how substantial the ties become, but, at minimum, a closer embrace with Moscow will help Pyongyang defy American attempts to isolate and punish the Kim regime.³⁵

The Russian outreach may be doubly important to North Korea these days, since China, Pyongyang’s principal sponsor in the world—often its only sponsor—has shown increasing impatience with Kim’s refusal to make economic reforms and especially with his continued pursuit of nuclear weapons. Most recently, North Korea test-launched a submarine-based ballistic missile, showing capabilities greater than what most observers had projected and leading analysts to believe that the regime could have a submarine fleet equipped with such missiles within five years.

But what has long caused the most worry around the world is the regime’s nuclear-weapons production capabilities. In a remarkable meeting with U.S. nuclear specialists in April, Chinese nuclear experts warned that Pyongyang’s ability to produce nuclear weapons has advanced well beyond American estimates. The Chinese now believe that the North may have as many as 20 warheads and the capacity to double that count within the next year, via its stocks of weapons-grade uranium.³⁶ Already, the United States is concerned about the North’s ability to mount a nuclear warhead on an Intercontinental Ballistic Missile that, while untested, would have a range of over 5,000 miles—far enough to reach the West Coast of the United States. The U.S. believes that the North has exported nuclear technology to Syria as well as missile components to Iran and Yemen. What’s striking about the recent developments is that the Chinese themselves seem worried; up until recently, they had generally dismissed North Korea’s capabilities. But according to Siegfried Hecker, a Stanford University nuclear scientist who attended the meeting with the Chinese experts, “They believe on the basis of what they’ve put together now that the North Koreans have enough enriched uranium capacity to be able to make eight to 10 bombs’ worth of highly enriched uranium per year.”³⁷

To be sure, we should be skeptical of Chinese concerns. Beijing has long maintained a complicated, good cop–bad cop relationship with its troublesome Communist ally. For example, despite its recent criticisms of the North Korean nuclear program, Beijing—through a secretive, Hong Kong–based business—is providing Pyongyang with massive amounts of foreign exchange, which is critical for the ongoing viability and stability of Kim’s secretive regime.³⁸ The Chinese have an interest in propping up that regime, if only to prevent the chaos—including a likely refugee flood—that would follow any governmental collapse. The Chinese would prefer a more stable government, but North Korea continues to serve Chinese interests as an economic vassal and as a counterweight to South Korea and a threat to the United States. North Korea’s growing nuclear capabilities should motivate Washington to bolster security—including a robust missile defense. We should not count on getting any help from China.

CYBER WARFARE, MILITARY AND NUCLEAR BUILDUPS, ECONOMIC EXPANSION

The Russia-China axis, as we call it in this book, is not just worrisome because of individual military flashpoints, as in Eastern Europe or in the Pacific; and not only because of both countries’ consistent and expanding facilitation of rogue actors. It is also a cause of great concern because, in multiple other arenas, both countries are aggressively fortifying themselves for growth and assertion around the world.

For years, both countries have been eating America’s lunch in the game of espionage and cyber warfare. We devote two chapters of this book to their efforts in these areas. As we went to press, the Obama administration revealed one of the largest breaches of federal-employee data in history, concerning at least 4 million current or former government workers. The breached data was held by the Office of Personnel Management, and the target appeared to be Social Security Numbers. No allegations were made, but intelligence officials believe that the attack originated from China—though they’re unsure whether it was state-sponsored.³⁹ The massive breach of OPM data comes on the heels of a report that last year, Russian hackers penetrated the White House’s unclassified computer systems and swept up some of President Obama’s email correspondence; the hackers also accessed the systems at the State Department⁴⁰ and the Pentagon.⁴¹

To get a sense of what the stakes are here, recall the controversy that erupted early in 2015 when congressional investigators discovered, shortly before Hillary Clinton announced her presidential candidacy, that she had used a private server to send emails when she served as secretary of state from 2009 to 2013. That arrangement was unusual enough, but what made it worse was that Clinton revealed that she had culled through the 60,000 or so emails she had received during this period and decided that only about half were public records; she deleted the remaining 30,000 or so. She made the decision unilaterally; an outcry ensued from those who maintain that Clinton herself should not be the sole arbiter of what correspondence belongs in the public record. That’s the political aspect of the issue, and it will play out during the presidential campaign.

But what about the chance that those emails—deleted and undeleted—could have been accessed by hackers from foreign countries or intelligence organizations? On Fox News, Megyn Kelly asked Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency, about the likelihood that “the Chinese, the Russians hacked into that server and her email account.”

“Very high,” Flynn said. “Likely. . . . They’re very good at it. China, Russia, Iran, potentially the North Koreans.”⁴²

Flynn isn’t alone in that assessment. Despite Hillary’s confident claims that her server suffered no security breaches, independent systems analysts, bloggers, and hackers probed the server and uncovered serious security lapses.

In short: It may well be that the Russians and Chinese are the only ones who have the 30,000 emails that Hillary deleted. That is a bone-chilling possibility in and of itself. Yet more broadly, as we show in this book, it is clear that in a host of other areas—commercial, military, governmental—the Chinese and Russians have compromised American security in ways that we never thought possible.

Compromising American security seems to be a particular pleasure of Putin’s, as he showed when he let his planes buzz Alaska—part of a pattern of increasing aerial provocations over the last year, in which Russian strategic bombers have intruded into American airspace at twice the normal rate of recent years.⁴³ Some interpret the gestures as warnings from Putin to the United States to stay out of Ukraine; the incursions also reflect Putin’s growing confidence in his military might, which he has been building up in recent years. Putin has embarked on a decade-long modernization of the Russian military called New Look, which has had remarkable success in updating and transitioning the country’s armed forces to a model more in line with today’s war-fighting demands: smaller, more tactical forces; updated, modern weaponry and equipment; and a move away from conscription to a contract-based, professionalized military. Putin has spared no expense in bringing these changes about: “We should carry out the same powerful, all-embracing leap forward in modernization of the defense industry as the one carried out in the 1930s,” he told the Russian Security Council in 2012.⁴⁴ His military investments have been Russia’s largest since the end of the Cold War, and they show every sign of bearing fruit.

Of possibly even greater concern is Russia’s nuclear posture. Russia holds a 10–1 advantage over NATO countries in nonstrategic nukes, and Moscow has been busy violating the 1987 INF Treaty, most recently with a test launch of a ground-launched cruise missile (GLCM), a sophisticated weapon difficult to track. It is “absolutely a tool that will have to be dealt with,” in the words of a NATO commander. “Militarily, a new mobile GLCM with a range between 500 and 5,000 kilometers, which is what the Russians reportedly tested, enables Russia to threaten U.S. allies in Europe, the Middle East, and East Asia,” says Senator James Inhofe. “It also puts important targets in China, India, Pakistan, and other countries within range of Moscow’s nuclear force.”⁴⁵

And yet, the Obama administration negotiated the New START nuclear treaty with Putin while Russia was violating the earlier INF agreement.

China is also ramping up its nuclear capabilities. In spring 2015, Beijing announced that it was enabling its long-range ballistic missiles to carry Multiple Independent Reentry Vehicle (MIRV) technology—nuclear-arms terminology for placing multiple warheads on a single missile. Beijing has possessed MIRV technology for years but not operationalized it until now, suggesting that its strategic calculus has changed. The upgrade might mean a doubling of the number of warheads that China could fire at an enemy. “China’s little force is slowly getting a little bigger, and its limited capabilities are slowly getting a little better,” said Hans M. Kristensen, director of the Nuclear Information Project at the Federation of American Scientists.⁴⁶

It is important to recognize that China’s assertiveness here, as in other areas, is not episodic or circumstantial, but systematic. Case in point: China’s remarkably bold aggression in the South China Sea, which includes a willingness to thwart international law in constructing artificial islands and claiming sovereignty over international shipping lanes. Troubling as all that is, it’s part of a broader vision, which the Communist Party in Beijing even translated and released to the world in spring 2015: a planning document that spelled out China’s vision of building a “blue-water” navy—meaning one that can move offensively, not just defend national coastal waters.

Historically, the Chinese land forces were dominant. The country only recently built its first aircraft carrier. But the planning document makes clear that Beijing has prioritized the creation and maintenance of a world-class naval force: “The traditional mentality that land outweighs sea must be abandoned, and great importance has to be attached to managing the seas and oceans and protecting maritime rights and interests,” the document said. “It is necessary for China to develop a modern maritime military force structure commensurate with its national security and development interests.”⁴⁷

The focus was confirmed by Xu Guangyu, a retired Chinese major general. “As China continues to rise,” he said, “it has enormous interests around the globe that need protection, including investments, trade, energy, imports, and the surging presence of Chinese living abroad.” And for Washington’s benefit, Xu went on: “China will actively build up its military capability and deterrence, just to make sure no one dares fight with us. The United States cannot expect China to back off under pressure. It needs to know that the consequences would be unthinkable if it pushes China into a corner.”⁴⁸

China is boosting its military budget by 10 percent this year alone, to $144 billion, though some observers believe that that figure is not all-inclusive. Much of the new funding is going to the naval modernization. The United States, meanwhile, oversees a navy at its smallest since the end of the Cold War.

The priorities expressed in the 2015 planning document are, in turn, a reflection of an even broader vision, what Xi has called the China Dream: a goal to become the world’s preeminent military power, surpassing the United States, by 2049, the 100th anniversary of the Chinese Communist revolution. “We must achieve the great revival of the Chinese nation,” Xi said in 2013. “We must ensure there is unity between a prosperous country and a strong military.”⁴⁹

China is on the march in other areas, including massive economic and infrastructure investments in the Third World, especially Africa. Beijing forged the new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, persuading more than 50 nations, including many U.S. allies, to join a venture that would rival the U.S.-dominated World Bank. And closer to home for the United States, South America now has China as it leading export destination outside Latin America, surpassing the U.S.—a sobering but little-noted fact.⁵⁰ In 2012, meanwhile, Russia wrote off $20 billion in debt for several African countries, as part of its strategic push into the continent, which it sees as a lucrative export market and as a potential partner in raw-materials exports. Moscow is eager get into the race for investment in Africa, where it lost much ground after the end of the Cold War. This past spring, Russia offered to help Greece with its latest financial crisis—on the condition that the Greeks agree to route Russian oil into Europe. In economics as in everything else, Vladimir Putin plays to win.

Most troublingly, both Russia and China have taken aggressive steps to invest in and form political alliances in Latin America—traditionally America’s backyard. Not all of this is new: Russia had meddled aggressively in Latin America during the Cold War, and Putin forged a powerful alliance with Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chávez and has stayed close to his successor, Nicolás Maduro. Russia and Venezuela announced joint military drills in the Southern Caribbean Sea for later this year, and rumors persist that Moscow plans to sell Caracas military aircraft.⁵¹ In March 2015, Putin’s foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, visited Cuba, Colombia, Guatemala, and Nicaragua—countries that have famously fraught relations with the United States. Nicaragua wants to buy Russian-made fighter jets—to the concern of its neighbors, Costa Rica and Honduras. One analyst said the move could spark “a small-scale arms race” in the region.⁵² Russia and Argentina might soon close a deal under which Moscow would lease 12 Sukhoi Su-24 Fencer aircraft to Buenos Aires in return for beef and wheat. Rumors of that deal prompted the British Defence Ministry to launch a review of air defenses on the Falkland Islands.

Russia is clearly determined to make clear to the West that it remains a global power—and not a mere “regional power,” as President Obama dismissively described it. Struggling under the Western sanctions and exclusion from the G8 after the Ukraine crisis, Russia is looking for new partners—and it tends to find them among nations already hostile to the United States. Moscow even appears ready to get involved in some long-running Latin American disputes, whether the U.S. blockade of Cuba or the Falklands–Malvinas Islands standoff between Argentina and the United Kingdom.⁵³

China is already Latin America’s biggest creditor. Earlier this year, Xi pledged massive new direct investment commitments for Latin America, and Chinese companies announced a slew of new deals in the region. At least for now, the Chinese push seems more economic than political, but like Moscow, Beijing is doing business with the regional players most at odds with Washington: Venezuela, Argentina, Ecuador, which all have a harder time getting loans from Western banking institutions, especially the American-dominated World Bank. China is setting itself up as an alternative funder for Latin America. The leading beneficiary has been Venezuela, which has supplied oil to Beijing in exchange for funding for economic and infrastructure-development projects.⁵⁴ Last year, Xi visited Venezuela and formally upgraded the two countries’ relationship to a “comprehensive strategic partnership.”

In the economic sphere, as in others, the United States has not kept pace with its determined adversaries, with one encouraging exception: The Obama administration has boldly pushed for passage of the Trans Pacific Partnership (TPP), a trade deal involving the United States and mostly Asian nations as well as others, including Canada—but excluding China. “China wants to write the rules for the world’s fastest-growing region,” the president said. “Why would we let that happen? We should write those rules.”⁵⁵ He has shown this kind of vision and purpose only rarely during his presidency, however.

THE CLOUD OF WAR AND THE URGENCY OF ACTION

It has become a commonplace in recent years to observe that the American public is “tuned out” when it comes to foreign policy and that during election time foreign-policy issues—with the exception of terrorism—tend not to engage voters. Certainly there is some truth to this, and in recent years the tendency has become exacerbated by a growing distaste, at least among a portion of the voting public, for international involvement on the part of the United States. President Obama’s call to “do some nation building here at home” has resonated with Americans who rightly worry about our mounting list of domestic problems, from spiraling budget deficits and unfunded entitlement programs to failing public schools and crumbling infrastructure. It’s a time-honored American tendency to want to turn away from the problems of the world.

But if there is a single prevailing point that we wish to stress in the book you are about to read, it is that the time when Americans could afford such isolationist impulses (if we ever could) has passed. A second common refrain of recent years—that we live in an interconnected world—cuts against the first. In this interconnected world, the United States remains indispensable, even if our conduct in recent years has suggested otherwise. It is our hope that, after reading Return to Winter: Russia, China, and the New Cold War Against America, you will share our view that the United States must reassume world leadership in the face of mounting threats and challenges—both for its own good and for the peace and security of the world.