Westernizing Russia and China

Abstract

In the wake ofthe Cold War, the two most important countries for the United States are Russia and China. The reasons for their impor tance are plain: their size, their economic potential, and their military power. What is less obvious, but just as important for post-Cold War American foreign policy, is the fact that despite important differences between them, these two nuclear-armed, formerly orthodox communist countries pose the same challenges for the United States. The similarities between them are rooted in the fact that both Russia and China have abandoned orthodox Marxism-Leninism but have not yet established stable alternative political and economic arrangements. The common, central challenge that these two large countries pose is this: with the end ofthe Cold War, an international order is in place, consisting of explicit rules, implied norms, and working institutions for relations among sovereign states. It began in the West with the United States as its chief sponsor and most powerful member and has spread, unevenly, throughout the world. Russia and China are ambivalent about joining this order. Unlike a few small countries?Cuba, North Korea, and Burma?that have