The Impact of Sino-Russian Relationship onto Northeast Asian Regional Security Complex and Policy Implication for the US East Asia Policy

The current development of East Asia has greatly seized the attention of the world. This thesis states that there is a significant change in the Northeast Asia regional security complex especially the complicated security dilemma in that region from Korea (ROK and DPRK), Japan and China from their individual perspectives as well as the other significant player, Russia and the United States. . In particular, there has been a great fluctuation in the Sino-Russian Relationship. In the 1960s and 1970s, the relationship became unsatisfactory and had negative impacts for both sides. At present, numbers of improvements in their relations and cooperation have occurred between China and Russia due to security concerns, economic interests and ideological similarities. The most important reason leading to this situation is the demand of these two countries’ individual development, especially due to the present booming economy in China. Currently China’s comparative advantage comes from relatively low production cost, which is not only based on domestic cheap labor cost, but more importantly, on cheap petroleum coming from Central Asia countries, which are still under the influence of Russia. In addition to these reasons, the pressure from western countries also aligned these two countries again. Similar to the rationale of “The China Threat”, this thesis raises a question about whether the improvement of Sino-Russian relations and comprehensive cooperation between these two great powers is threatening or benefiting to the neighboring countries as well as to the United States. To answer the above question, the analysis will start from quantitative and qualitative perspectives. In quantitative perspective, examining the hypothesis is made by doing analysis of OECD data, in order to how the positive relations between recent GDP developments of all countries in Northeast Asia and the current Sino-Russian cooperation. This finding could also be examined from the theoretical perspective by the RSCT (regional security complex theory from Barry Buzan and Wever 2003). Finally, based on the data analysis and theoretical discussions, the thesis offers that the cooperation of two great powers’ cooperation brought benefits to other Northeast Asian countries along with themselves while exerting more constraints to the United States.