In 1995 and 1996, Russia and China moved closer on economic and military issues, after many years of insecurity along the two countries' long common frontier. On the Russian side, the move was prompted by a new general emphasis on relations with Asia that also includes the Korean Peninsula and Southeast Asia; on the Chinese side, there was concern about the stability of the Central Asian republics and the possible spread of separatist sentiments together with politicized Islam, especially in the predominantly Muslim Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, which borders Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Kazakstan. With Russia sharing those concerns, in April 1996 Beijing and Moscow announced a "strategic partnership" that was hailed as a watershed agreement and was accompanied by combined blasts at Western attempts to dominate lesser countries. China voiced support for Russia's Chechnya operation, and Russia backed China's claims of hegemony in Taiwan and Tibet.

New military agreements provide for long-term military and technical cooperation, including Russian aid to Chinese arms industries, modernization of weapons already sold to China, and the sale of new weapons to China at advantageous prices. Among the reported terms of the April 1996 agreement is the sharing of space technology by Russia's State Space Agency, the sale of diesel submarines and S-300 air defense missile complexes, and production in China of Su-27 jet fighters.

In the April 1996 talks, the two sides pledged to observe earlier border demarcation agreements, and Russia ceded some disputed pieces of land. The issue of reducing military forces and defining the border was the subject of ongoing talks in 1996.

The NATO Issue

The Russian military has unanimously opposed any expansion of NATO in Central Europe or the former Soviet Union since the idea first appeared in the early 1990s, and virtually all political factions are in agreement. Russia worries that such expansion would leave it in a strategically untenable position, despite NATO's claims of the purely defensive character of its alliance. In the mid-1990s, Russian fears have been fanned by the increasingly influential anti-Western factions in the State Duma and by the increased urgency with which Central European and Baltic states have sought NATO membership.

Russian military thinkers see NATO expansion as moving the world's most powerful military force to the very border of the former Soviet Union (or even past the border, were Ukraine and the Baltic states to join). Contrary to Western claims, Russians see no potential for improvement in Russia's security in this process, except in the unlikely inclusion of Russia as a full NATO member. In 1994 Russia was offered, and eventually accepted, membership in the NATO Partnership for Peace (PfP--see Glossary), into which all former Soviet republics and former Warsaw Pact members were admitted by the end of 1995 (see NATO, ch. 8).

In the period 1994-96, top-level Russian national security representatives put forward a variety of threats and proposals on the subject of NATO expansion. Extreme nationalist factions used the issue to back their argument that the United States is leading an international plot against Russia. In 1995 a set of perceived NATO deceptions of Russian negotiators in Bosnia and Herzegovina was used as evidence of NATO's untrustworthiness. Russia counterproposed that NATO transform itself into a strictly political alliance that would become part of a new pan-European security system on the model of the OSCE. Meanwhile, Russia has exerted strong pressure on the states most imminently eligible for NATO membership, especially Poland, Hungary, and the Baltic states, including threats that nuclear war might break out in Central Europe if Russia needed to defend itself against NATO forces that had moved into the region. In 1995 Russian national security representatives promised that NATO expansion would suspend Russian compliance with the CFE Treaty and make impossible Russian ratification of part two of the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START II)--two cornerstones of disarmament in the view of Western policy makers. Meanwhile, the "NATO threat" was a rationale for maintaining a large garrison at the western outpost in Kaliningrad.

Data as of July 1996

NOTE: The information regarding Russia on this page is re-published from The Library of Congress Country Studies and the CIA World Factbook. No claims are made regarding the accuracy of Russia The NATO Issue information contained here. All suggestions for corrections of any errors about Russia The NATO Issue should be addressed to the Library of Congress and the CIA.