The Strategic Use of Soft Balancing: The Normative Dimensions of the Chinese–Russian ‘Strategic Partnership’

Abstract

This article examines Chinese and Russian foreign policy and military strategy from the theoretical standpoint of soft balancing. Analysis of their thinking indicates that both seek to offset US military superiority without engaging American power directly. To that end, Chinese and Russian strategists have adopted ‘soft’ or ‘normative’ power assets as strategic capabilities in their military and foreign policy. Alternative norms, such as the concept of ‘sovereign democracy’, allow China and Russia to deliberately ignore human rights issues in order to achieve diplomatic advantage with respect to the United States. The two powers have institutionalized these norms within the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, which they use to counterbalance US interests in Central Asia.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 88 citations exist upstream.

Papers that cite the same references — the relational fallback while embeddings are still backfilling.