Questions of national identity and foreign policy are usually linked when it comes to discussing Russia’s ambivalent relationship to the West, and especially to Europe. However, Moscow’s growing interest in its Asian neighbors is not without similar ambiguities. Its intensification of economic exchanges with China and Japan and its evolving strategic interests in the Asia-Pacific region are in part shaped by the elite’s perception of what Russia’s national identity is and should be. Identity debates in Russia do not take Japan and China into consideration in the same way: the memory of the Russo-Japanese war of 1905 is distant and less painful than that of the Zhenbao/Damanskii clashes with Maoist China in 1969. And yet, Russia settled all its territorial conflicts with China in the 2004 agreements whereas such conflicts still hamper its partnership with Japan. It is China’s rise to power and its ability—real or imagined—to reduce Russia to the rank of its junior partner, however, that provokes the deepest anxieties. By contrast, a Japan in decline is not perceived to bear much threat to the search of Vladimir Putin’s Russia for international recognition. This article discusses Russia’s security interests in the Asia-Pacific and how they shape and are shaped by the Russian elite’s perception of their Chinese neighbor and the growing narrative on Asia as being a potential alternative model to Europe for Russia.

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