At least once a year, the leaders of China and Russia get together to denounce U.S. hegemony and reaffirm their commitment to a multipolar international system. Both resent U.S. strength and status, and they are convinced that Washington is determined to keep them in the second rank of nations. Don't dismiss those declarations as railing against the gods, argue geopolitical realists: They allied before, they could do it again.
Yet according to this collection of papers, which is an assessment of the rise and fall of the Sino-Soviet alliance, the partnership was doomed almost from the start. Ideology proved too weak to override nationalism. Monumental egos -- Mao Zedong's and Josef Stalin's -- and domestic political imperatives crushed the bonds created by fraternal communism.
Editor Odd Arne Westad, a reader of international history at the London School of Economics, unfurls an impressive list of problems. "During the 40 years of collaboration, the two parties had disagreed on organization structure, military strategies and class analysis; they had suspected each other of betrayal; and they had misunderstood each other's aims because of personal rivalries and cultural differences. Both sides had, at times, been led astray in their policymaking by their belief in a shared ideology."