Report Launch: Russia’s Use of the Instruments of Statecraft in the Indo-Pacific

About the Event

Join the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) for an event marking the release of a new report, Russia’s Use of the Instruments of Statecraft in the Indo-Pacific: Systemic Balancing and Regional Hedging, the fourth installment of a five-part series examining Chinese and Russian influence and interests in the Indo-Pacific region.

This report analyzes Russia’s use of diplomatic, military, and economic instruments of statecraft to advance its interests in the Indo-Pacific region and examines how China perceives it. 

Russia has utilized instruments of statecraft to maintain a two-level engagement pattern in the region—systemic balancing and regional hedging. At the level of systemic balancing, Russia unequivocally embraces China as an economic, military, and political ally to balance the United States or the West more broadly. However, at the level of regional hedging, Russia diversifies its economic, political, and security bets by engaging with China’s actual or potential adversaries and avoids explicitly taking one side at the obvious expense of another in regional disputes: Moscow hedges its bets between different states, including China, to maximize cooperation opportunities. 

This two-level engagement pattern does not undermine Russia’s systemic alignment with China, but it reduces Moscow’s dependence on Beijing and makes the regional aspects of China-Russia relations more complex. 

Speakers