Boulder, CO; London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2016. xi, 276 pp. (Tables, figures, maps.) US$68.00, cloth. ISBN 978-1-62637-389-1.
Russia’s Far East by Rensselaer Lee and Artyom Lukin is a welcome contribution to the growing literature on international relations in the Asia Pacific, especially to the studies of international cooperation in the development of the Russian Far East (RFE) and Siberia that started to grow in quantity after Russia’s high-profile “turn to the East” in the aftermath of the Ukraine crisis. The authors call their work “a collaboration between a US and a Russian scholar” (ix) and “a stellar example of Russian-US cooperation” (x), carried out in a period of serious tensions in the countries’ bilateral relations.
As such, the book is distinguishable in that it attempts to bring the United States and its interests back into the complex picture of international politics surrounding the development of the RFE. The authors try to reinvigorate the importance of Russia-US relations for the creation of a more balanced and secure Asia. They argue that Russia and the United States have more interests in common in Asia Pacific than they do in Europe and that “the RFE could be one of the building blocks of a revitalized relationship, if other areas of contention can be deescalated or at least managed” (1). Both countries, according to the authors, will benefit from such development, predominantly because both have long-term interests in balancing against a rapidly rising China. By gaining a greater stake in the RFE, the United States will be able to offset China’s geopolitical dominance in Asia. Russia, in turn, will benefit from a more balanced representation of foreign stakeholders in the development of the RFE that will help reduce dependence on China and solidify its sovereignty over these territories. In today’s context of mutual antagonism between Russia and the United States, an attempt to draw attention to the potential of Russia-US cooperation in the region is undoubtedly commendable.
While the argument looks straightforward and concise, the actual analysis, organized in twelve chapters including the introduction, sweeps across a vast range of different issues, such as the RFE’s identity and natural endowments (chapter 2); the history of the region from Russia’s early colonization of Siberia in the mid-sixteenth century up until Putin’s years (chapter 3); the troubled period of the RFE’s socio-economic degradation in the 1990s and its consequences (chapter 4); and Moscow’s plan for the development of the region in the context of Russia’s reorientation to Asia (chapter 5). The ensuing five chapters deal with various aspects of China-Russia relations. Chapter 6 presents Russia’s changing perception of China. Chapter 7 discusses the likelihood of a full-fledged Russia-China alliance. Chapter 8 speculates on Russia’s potential dependence on China, whereas chapters 9 and 10 explore the increasing convergence of Chinese and Russian interests and policies in the region. Given the stated argument, the reader would expect to see in these five chapters the role of the United States and how it fares vis-à-vis China. But ironically only two chapters (11 and 12) deal with Russia-US relations and emphasize the long-standing special relationship of the United States with the RFE. The discussion in these chapters at times becomes critical of the US’s strategic miscalculations in the form of complete neglect by the US administration of the importance of good ties with the RFE for American interests.
Such a broad scope is both an advantage and disadvantage of the book. On the one hand, one will learn a lot from the rich and fairly up-to-date discussion of the RFE and Moscow’s policies toward it. The discussion of the China-Russia strategic partnership is also informative and reflects the most recent nuances of the strengthening Beijing-Moscow axis. On the other hand, however, meandering through such a multitude of high-profile issues in international politics, each of which deserves a monograph-length treatment, undermines the analytical coherence of this book and results in a situation wherein the originally clear and valuable message is not carried through the entire analysis but appears only episodically and fails to be substantiated by the relevant empirical data. Why and how exactly would the United States substitute or complement China’s role in the development of the RFE given that its economic interests in the region are minimal, whereas China is willing to invest heavily into technically difficult northern resource extraction projects? How would the RFE and its people benefit from the US’s more active participation that is driven not by economic considerations but by the need to balance against China so that the RFE may become a springboard for protecting America’s global strategic interests? Supporting the argument of the book would require answering these questions.
Another issue that mars the analysis is episodic attempts to reconstruct the pernicious “China threat” thinking. The bogeyman of “creeping yellow peril,” popular in the 1990s but largely debunked thanks to research efforts by some Russian scholars, reappears at multiple turns of the narration, even when the authors’ own empirical data does not support it. Thus, while it is shown that the shares of Japan, China, and South Korea in the RFE’s foreign trade are relatively equal (11, 49, 221) and Japan is far ahead of China in terms of investments in the region (18, 50), it is, for some reason, China, not Japan with its unequivocal territorial claims, that is likely to exploit the RFE’s resources and Russia’s relative weakness in Asia (11). Similarly, while it is stated that the number of Chinese migrants to the RFE has declined considerably compared to those from Central Asia and marriages between Russians and Chinese in the RFE “are virtually absent” (58), it is, again, China that continues to pose a demographic challenge and may become a cause of significant demographic change in the region (249). Such analytical inconsistencies undermine the intellectual integrity of the book and create an impression that the authors’ arms were twisted to land their analysis at anti-China conclusions.
Overall, supplemented by 7 tables and 3 figures, the book provides an updated presentation of the RFE from a very broad perspective of great power competition, and will likely become a valuable source of information for a wide readership, ranging from scholars and students in courses on Russian politics to analysts and policymakers.
Alexander Korolev
National University of Singapore, Singapore
pp. 315-317