ABSTRACT
The focus of this concluding chapter is to analyze Russian foreign policy toward China, reviewing the material presented in the previous chapters, in order to identify the causative factors that explain the evolution of this relationship. In marked contrast to the Soviet period, analyses in the 1990s moved toward the opposite end of the continuum, tending to emphasize the domestic context of Russian foreign policy decision making, sometimes to the near exclusion of systemic factors. An alternative explanation, rooted in domestic considerations, was to view Russian arms sales to China as the cornerstone of the partnership. In the first decade, the Russian Federation established, assessed in an aggregate context, a successful foreign policy relationship with China, distinguished by its pragmatic attention to Russian interests. The neorealist approach is convincing in the portrayal of Russian-Chinese efforts to constrain US hegemony. As neorealist Kenneth Waltz commented: "Some students of international politics believe that realism is obsolete".
