Geoff Raby’s new book examines the evolving power dynamics in Core Eurasia, focusing on the competition between China and Russia, particularly in Central Asia. Raby highlights historical tensions, strategic implications, and the shifting global order, offering insights into China’s rising dominance and the potential for a strategic shift in US-Russia relations.

This is a most readable and very important book, following on from Geoff Raby’s China’s Grand Strategy and Australia’s Future in the New Global Order. In this book Raby, Australian ambassador to China from 2007 to 2011, focuses on the strategic situation in Core Eurasia, covering essentially China, Russia, and Central Asia, but with reference also to other relevant states such as the United States and India.  

Raby has a background in economics but is also well-versed in geopolitical analysis and history. His endnotes and bibliography show just how well-read he is and form an excellent resource for further research. In addition, the author is very well-travelled in the region under discussion. He weaves in anecdotes from his own travels, providing an additional dimension to his academic analysis.  

The subtitle, indicating the scope of the book, is a little ambiguous. Does it refer to the way in which the contest for Central Asia affects the contest for global supremacy? Or does it mean that the book is concerned with both the contest for Central Asia and the contest for global supremacy, taking into account how the two dimensions interact? 

Certainly, there is a strong emphasis on the Sino-Russian contest for supremacy in Central Asia (especially in chapter nine). However, the overall focus is on the relationship between China and Russia more generally, within which Central Asia is one area of competition. 

The book has a very strong historical grounding. Raby points out that in the relationship between Russia and China, the former has emphasised territorial control, whereas the latter has focused on the importance of buffer zones, sometimes involving direct territorial control but not always. With Russia expanding eastwards into Siberia from the seventeenth century, China reached its maximum size vis-à-vis Russia in the Treaty of Nerchinsk in 1689, with a border well north of the current Sino-Russian border. During the “century of humiliation” Russia took advantage of China’s weakness to impose the Amur-Ussuri boundary in the treaties of Aigun (1858) and Peking (1860), thus separating what became the Russian Far East from Manchuria. 

Russia’s territorial expansion at China’s expense was far more extensive than anything imposed by the Western powers and Japan, and still rankles. Mao said: “We have not yet presented the bill for this list.” 

Raby reminds us of Russian racism towards the Chinese in the border region, including anti-Chinese pogroms in the early twentieth century. There were armed clashes on this border in 1969. While Sino-Russian border tensions have been relatively low-key in recent times, the contrast between the dynamic and extensive Chinese population on one side of the border and the seemingly threatened and sparse Russian population on the other side of the border is most marked. 

Apart from Russia’s territorial expansion at China’s expense, Russia at various times has tried to detach or maximise its influence in China’s border regions, especially when the central government was weak. Under Soviet influence, Mongolia (population a little over three million today) became independent in 1924. Russia or the USSR similarly sought to promote autonomy or independence in Xinjiang and Manchuria, with Japan being the main rival in the latter case (under Japanese rule, 1931-1945). In the case of Tibet, the main threat came from imperial Britain through India, and from the 1950s from independent India. 

In relation to Central Asia, Raby presents a picture of colonial expansion by Tsarist Russia, with China mostly seeing this region as part of its borderlands, especially relevant to the situation in Xinjiang. Post-1991, the transition has been from “Sovietstan” to “Sinostan,” with China now economically dominant and able to exert correspondingly stronger political influence. 

While there has been much attention given in recent times to the “brothers forever” partnership between China and Russia, Raby sees this relationship as inherently unstable. It is not only that China is yet to present its “bill” for the unequal treatment meted out by Russia during the “century of humiliation,” but there are also vast racial, cultural, and civilizational differences between the two sides. Most importantly, in terms of geopolitics, Russia is very much the junior partner. Russia’s GDP (parity purchasing price) is only one-fifth that of China; Russia ranks just ahead of Japan and Germany according to The World Factbook. China has been distinctly unenthusiastic about Russia’s war with Ukraine, a country with which it had good relations before 2022; Russian support for secessionism in Ukraine and Georgia is contrary to China’s own anti-secessionism. 

As far as strategic analysis is concerned Raby refers to the ideas of Halford John Mackinder (turn of the twentieth century) and Nicholas Spykman (early 1940s) about the implications of a single power dominating Eurasia. From this book it is clear that China is fast becoming the dominant power in Eurasia, if it is not so already. A contest emerges, according to the approach of the grand strategists, between the heartlands (China-dominated Eurasia) and the rimlands (where the US remains ascendant). Is there a danger of the US falling into Thucydides Trap? Or is a grand bargain possible? 

On the latter, Raby argues that there is scope for the US and the Western powers more generally to detach Russia from its current partnership with China, doing a “reverse Kissinger.” This in turn involves a grand bargain with Russia that would emphasise the economic and strategic benefits to Russia of “looking West.” This would no doubt involve compromise in relation to Ukraine and limiting NATO’s eastward expansion. Is this what President-elect Donald Trump has in mind, ending the war in Ukraine while also improving the US bargaining position with China? 

As far as Australia is concerned, Raby argues that Australia needs to get used to a situation in which China is the dominant power in Eurasia. The US is a declining power, and Australia can no longer rely on a protector with which it shares similar cultural and political values. While there is merit in the argument that two bounded orders are emerging—one led by China, and one led by the US—there is also considerable overlap. Trump wants to reduce US involvement in the order set up under the leadership of Presidents Roosevelt and Truman in the 1940s. From Australia’s perspective, we should assume a more pluralistic world in which China will play a leading role regionally and globally, while also being dominant in Core Eurasia. To navigate this new era Australia will need the highest level of statecraft. 

This is a review of Geoff Raby’s Great Game On: The Contest for Central Asia and Global Supremacy. (Melbourne University Press, 2024). ISBN 9780522879667

Derek McDougall is a Professorial Fellow School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne. 

This article is published under a Creative Commons License and may be republished with attribution.