【英文】CNA报告：反击中俄两国的“楔子战略”（134页）

英文研究报告 2022年07月05日 08:39 管理员

The contest for allies and partners is among the most consequential domains of strategic competition. Because the US enjoys a worldwide network of alliances and partnerships, a key feature of this contest involves competitor efforts to weaken Washington’s advantage. The international relations literature describes such efforts to weaken, dissolve, or prevent opposing alliances as wedge strategies. The purpose of this study is to shine a light on the nature of contemporary Chinese and Russian wedge strategies, inform policies to promote their failure, and contribute to a growing scholarly literature on the phenomenon of alliance wedge strategies more broadly. Specifically, this study seeks answers to the following research questions: (1) What wedge strategy tendencies do China and Russia exhibit toward US alliances? (2) To what extent have these strategies succeeded, failed, or backfired on a given competitor? (3) What do the findings to the questions above reveal about which type of wedge strategy—carrot- or stick-based—is most likely to succeed? and (4) What conditions promote these outcomes?

This table points to several key findings. First, among our contemporary cases, China and Russia frequently exhibit an initial preference for carrot (i.e., reward-based) strategies. Despite this initial preference, however, they often resort to coercive and subversive strategies after their rewards fail to produce positive wedging outcomes. Second, China’s and Russia’s coercive and subversive strategies have a poor record of accomplishment. In some cases, they simply fail. In others, Chinese and Russian strategies backfire, such as by triggering balancing responses that strengthen rather than weaken opposing alliances. This outcome is seen most clearly in the case of Australia, which, following years of PRC coercion and subversion, has drawn markedly closer to Washington, including reengaging with the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (the Quad) and forming the AustraliaUnited Kingdom-United States security partnership.