The Chussia Anxiety

Since Presidents Xi Jinping of China and Vladimir Putin of Russia announced their ‘friendship without limits’ in February 2022, on the eve of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, the world has been transfixed by the threat of a China-Russia alliance of autocrats directed against the West. In the spirit of Eric Jones, this chapter draws on geography, history, economics, and politics to explain why the fear of the threat of Chussia is much exaggerated. The Chussia Anxiety is an echo of the nineteenth-century Russian Anxiety and the contemporary China Threat. As in those previous periods of imagined external threats to the West, a close reading of the history provides both important context and perspective. China and Russia have long-standing historical issues over unresolved territorial claims arising from ‘unequal treaties’ in the nineteenth century, divergent approaches to security, competing ambitions in Central Asia, different trajectories of their economies, and significantly different integration in the international system.