GAUK Kolodii

Russia and China denote their relations as strategic partnership. Theoretically, strategic partnership as a form of interstate alignment is driven primarily by economic interests, does not seek to confront any third party as a threat, and is informal in nature with low commitment costs. In the technology realm, however, Russia and China have been increasing their cooperation on security, rather than economic, aspects of technology, have formalized their cybersecurity cooperation with a cyber-pact and have jointly been accusing the US of abusing global Internet governance. These and other instances of Sino-Russian cooperation in emerging technologies seem to cause securitization of Sino-Russian alignment and render it confrontational and increasingly revisionist, surpassing theoretical criteria of strategic partnership per se. In this regard, my project asks, how has technological and scientific cooperation impacted Sino-Russian alignment since 1991, and what strategic security implications does it entail? My key hypothesis is that technological and scientific cooperation has transformed Sino-Russian relations into a more securitized, antagonistic, competitive, and revisionist form of alignment that surpasses traditional attributes of strategic partnership. To examine this problem, my research will rely on alignment theory and focus on those emerging technologies, the dual (civil and military) use of which has profound security impact, namely nuclear, cyber and space technologies.