Us and them: East–West relations reconsidered
| Author | Leigh Sarty |
| DOI | 10.1177/00207020211017182 |
| Published date | 01 June 2021 |
| Date | 01 June 2021 |
| Subject Matter | Lessons of History |
2021, Vol. 76(2) 315 –331
Lessons of History
Us and them: East–West
relations reconsidered
Leigh Sarty
Global Affairs Canada, Ottawa, Canada
Abstract
This paper frames the contemporary challenge of the People’s Republic of China in the
context of Cold War history. It shows how apparent echoes of the past—Beijing’s
continued embrace of “socialism;” a partnership with Russia that recalls the Sino–
Soviet alliance—help illuminate the sources and nature of present-day East–West con-
flict, and suggests that Francis Fukuyama’s much-pilloried “End of History?” has been
misunderstood. Viewing the twenty-first-century standoff with Chinese (and Russian)
authoritarianism in historical perspective, the paper concludes, casts prospects for the
West more positively than recent conventional wisdom would suggest.
Keywords
People’s Republic of China, Russia, Cold War, Sino–Soviet alliance, East–West relations,
authoritarianism
Introduction
As China-US relations and indeed China’s relations with much of the outside world
go from bad to worse, it is hard to avoid comparisons with the Cold War, the great
power confrontation that defined world politics in the latter half of the twentieth
century. A burgeoning literature attests to the fascination with the possible parallels,
Corresponding author:
Leigh Sarty, Global Affairs Canada, 125 Sussex Drive, Ottawa, Ontario, K1A 0G2, Canada.
Email: leigh.sarty@international.gc.ca
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316 International Journal 76(2)
or lack thereof, on the part of historians and political scientists alike.
1
For a lifetime
practitioner in the fields of Russian and Chinese affairs, reflections on the Cold War
yield a myriad of questions with contemporary relevance. What are we to make of the
fact that the early twenty-first century finds the US and its allies squaring off against a
country that proudly calls itself socialist, the hammer and sickle adorning the insti-
tutions of Chinese state power as they did those of the former USSR? How do we
account for the fact that Beijing’s most powerful ally in its altercations with the West
is Moscow, the “elder brother” in the Sino–Soviet alliance that fuelled the Cold War’s
darkest days? Finally, why is it that the end of the Cold War, far from signifying “the
end of history,” appears instead to have been followed a mere thirty years on by a
great power conflict of potentially comparable dimensions?
This essay will suggest that answers to all three questions can be found in a
common starting point: China and Russia’s response to a globally preponderant
West. It was “no coincidence,” as Soviet analysts used to say, that the two leading
standard bearers of Marxism–Leninism in the last century were the heirs of the
Tsarist and Qing Empires. Those empires vanished in no small part because of
their inability to compete with Western countries that were more technologically
advanced.
2
Marxism–Leninism appealed to revolutionaries in both countries
because it “turned the tables”:
3
instead of “humiliation” at the hands of the impe-
rialist powers, Moscow and Beijing would lead the world’s oppressed to the prom-
ised land of Communism while consigning their erstwhile oppressors to the dustbin
of history. The fact that an “axis of convenience”
4
continues to serve Chinese and
Russian interests three decades after Moscow dispensed with Marxism–Leninism
suggests that the common cause of opposition to the West remains an overarching
1. For a recent contribution that references much of this literature see Michael McFaul, “Cold War
lessons and fallacies for US–China relations today,” The Washington Quarterly 43, no. 4 (Winter
2021): 7–39. Two pieces that frame the stakes nicely are Robert D. Kaplan, “A new Cold War has
begun,” Foreign Policy, 7 January 2019, https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/01/07/a-new-cold-war-has-
begun/ (accessed 11 February 2021); and Melvyn P. Leffler, “A Cold War with Beijing is purely
optional,” The Atlantic, 2 December 2019, https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2019/12/cold-
war-china-purely-optional/601969/ (accessed 11 February 2021). Cold War historian Odd Arne
Westad has weighed in with “The sources of Chinese conduct: Are Washington and Beijing fighting
a new Cold War?” Foreign Affairs 98, no. 5 (September/October 2019): 86–95; and “Has a new Cold
War really begun? Why the term shouldn’t apply to today’s great-power tensions,” Foreign Affairs,
27 March 2018, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2018-03-27/has-new-cold-war-really-
begun (accessed 11 February 2021). A comprehensive examination of the Cold War comparison in
the contemporary US–Russian context is Robert Legvold, Return to Cold War (Cambridge: Polity
Press, 2016).
2. A point reinforced by the example of Japan: a non-Western country that thrived and rivaled both
China and Russia precisely because it successfully mastered that superior technology.
3. Gilbert Rozman, The Sino–Russian Challenge to the World Order: National Identities, Bilateral
Relations, and East Versus West in the 2010s (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center Press,
2014), 50.
4. This apt descriptor is Bobo Lo’s—Axis of Convenience: Moscow, Beijing, and the New Geopolitics
(Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2008)—and, as Lo has convincingly argued, has
held up in the period since that book was published. See Lo, “Global order in the shadow of the
Coronavirus: China, Russia and the West,” Lowy Institute Analysis, July 2020, https://www.low
yinstitute.org/publications/global-order-shadow-coronavirus-china-russia-and-west (accessed 13
December 2020).
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