Russia and China's anti-US alliance is growing even more threatening

• Russia this week launched large-scale naval and air drills with China.
• Military cooperation between the two powers is growing.

China and Russia have long railed against what they claim is the malign influence of US power.

Now, they're sending a signal to the West that they have the combined military strength to challenge US dominance.

On Tuesday, the Russian military launched large-scale naval and air drills in the Sea of Japan alongside China.

Taking place in the Pacific and Arctic Oceans, the Mediterranean, Caspian, and Baltic Seas, the "Ocean-24" exercise is massive in scale.

According to the Russian Defense Ministry, it involves more than 400 warships, submarines, and support vessels, more than 120 planes and helicopters, and more than 90,000 troops.

"This exercise aims to deepen the strategic cooperation level between the Chinese and Russian militaries and enhance their ability to jointly deal with security threats," China's Defense Ministry said Monday, reported the AFP newswire.

It's the second time in only three months that the powers have held joint military exercises, with drills held near the southern Chinese port of Guangdong in July.

It's a sign of the growing military alignment of the powers, with the China Power Project finding that of the 102 joint exercises held by the militaries since 2003, more than half took place in the last seven years.

Graeme Thompson, an analyst with the Eurasia Group, told Business Insider that Russia and China were sending a message.

"Russia's naval exercises are intended to signal that Moscow is still a global power that can operate in a range of blue-water theaters around the world," he said. "China's participation is part of a long-running trend of deeper Sino-Russian strategic cooperation and military integration."

An anti-US axis

On the eve of Russia's invasion of Ukraine, China's leader Xi Jinping and Russia's President Vladimir Putin declared a "no limits" partnership as part of their shared mission to challenge US global dominance.

In the three years since, China has provided Russia with crucial diplomatic and economic support as it faced isolation over the Ukraine invasion, and, according to the US, is providing the Kremlin with increasing support for its weapons industry.

In defiance of the West, both nations are flexing their power and showcasing their capacity to project military strength.

The Pacific, where the US and its allies, including South Korea and Japan, have a major naval presence, is a potential flash point.

The joint exercises are taking place in the Sea of Japan and Sea of Japan and the Sea of Okhotsk.

China and Russia both have territorial disputes with Japan, while China is menacing Taiwan with invasion, a move that could trigger conflict with the US.

"There's clearly an intention on the part of Beijing and Moscow to show that they can jointly project power in the Indo-Pacific," Thompson said.

China's continuing to strengthen its partnership with Russia despite increasingly stark criticism from the West.

The July military exercises came after NATO accused China of being a "decisive enabler" of Russia's war in Ukraine.

Great power competition intensifies

Some experts are warning that joint Russian and Chinese military strength poses a serious challenge to the West.

It's a potential threat on a scale the US hasn't faced in decades, with its military focused on fighting militant groups in the face of chaos in the Middle East.

"A full-scale China-Russia alliance would present the United States with a threat unlike any it has confronted since the end of the Cold War," analyst Chels Michta wrote in an article for the Center for European Policy Analysis last November.

The Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States last October urged the Pentagon to urgently revise its strategy so it could potentially fight both powers at the same time.

Some analysts, though, are pointing to tensions between Russia and China that could weaken the alliance.

Russia has become a junior partner to Xi's China, and it is increasingly reliant on it to keep its war machine and economy running.

And China is likely using the war in Ukraine for its own purposes, to weaken and distract the West as it plans a possible attack on Taiwan, analysts at the Royal United Services Institute in the UK wrote in July.

But for now, the alliance is growing closer, and Thompson said that the US would be watching the latest military exercises between Russia and China closely.

"This is yet another signal that the geopolitical environment continues to deteriorate amid ongoing great power competition," he said.

Correction: September 12, 2024 — An earlier version of this story misspelled the surname of an analyst with the Eurasia Group. It's Thompson, not Thomson.