Russia and China threw a gut punch in their confrontation with the U.S.-led international order in their summit joint statement last week. They are strategizing to “meet the growing demand of the leadership” of a “new era,” presumably one where the U.S. and its allies are downgraded to junior partners.
This is a serious wake-up call. The two nations declared that “the new interstate relations between Russia and China are superior to political and military alliances of the Cold War era.” And that there are “no ‘forbidden’ areas of cooperation” between the two states.
It further noted that both nations oppose international relations based on, “confrontation between major powers.”
But one area where confrontation is needed to preserve international security is over high standards for nuclear nonproliferation and energy.
As the market for new nuclear technologies expands in response to climate change and clean energy demand, Russia and China are poised to control it while the U.S. and its allies watch from the sidelines.
This has real world implications for the control of nuclear weapons proliferation and nuclear security. The governance of these areas has traditionally been under the sway of liberal democratic nations.
But they risk losing this power if they do not get much more serious about hip checking Russia and China out of emerging nuclear markets, where the potential for significant nuclear growth resides.
The U.S has had some success with this strategy in Eastern Europe, where it has chased Russia and China away.
But it is losing the battle in the developing world. There China has established deep relationships and infrastructure dependencies under the Belt and Road Initiative. And Russia has numerous nuclear energy agreements in place.
The challenges for emerging nations interested in nuclear power are numerous and serious but fall into two basic categories – inadequate financial and human resources.
These have been the weaknesses that Russia, in particular, exploits through its state-backed approach to providing nuclear reactors. But there is a limit to the financial and operational support that Russia alone can provide as the market expands.
This is where China can be a useful partner. It has developed a significant nuclear industrial base and the education and training capacities to support its proposed massive domestic nuclear energy build-out.
And China’s export potential was just provided a major lift by the U.K. regulatory and environmental authority, which confirmed that the Chinese-developed Hualong nuclear reactor meets U.K. standards of safety, security, and environmental protection.
This assessment was undertaken when Britain and China were considering the reactor for construction in the U.K. That has now changed and Britain is seeking to remove China as a partner in the project.
But the stamp of approval from a high-standards European regulator is bound to strengthen China’s ability to market the reactor outside its borders and ride those deep Belt and Road relationships.
It also could provide China with the advantage it needs in cornering the nuclear power project in Saudi Arabia. That could be a dangerous partnership for global security.
In the meantime, the democratic nation nuclear suppliers seem unable to organize themselves to meet this geopolitical test.
One immediate opportunity is in Eastern Europe where there is growing interest in converting from coal to nuclear power. This is a region, particularly in Poland and the Czech Republic, that is ripe for cooperation among key nuclear suppliers, like the U.S. and South Korea. But commercial rivalries and government lethargy are impeding this opportunity.
This inability to organize an effective response to a Russia-China nuclear partnership also extends to small reactors. Several western nations are seriously developing the technologies to meet small and dispersed electric grid requirements. But their pathways are running in parallel not toward partnership.
Countries and companies are competing, regulations are not yet harmonized, approval processes are slow, and the cultivation of the most well-positioned purchasing nations is inconsistent.
The U.S. and its key nuclear allies need to find a common path forward where everyone gets a piece of the pie but Russia and China are not allowed to gobble up the global market.
Both of these authoritarian nations are not hiding the fact that they intend to conform the future international order to their preferred contours.
But plagued by Covid controversies, domestic political partisanship, and provocations in Ukraine and Taiwan, western governments are failing to prioritize the importance of nuclear geopolitics and the alliance needed to control it.
Ken Luongo, President, Partnership for Global Security
