Russia and China have announced a new era of military cooperation as part of a growing “strategic partnership.”

On Tuesday, Russian Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov, during a meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Liang Guanglie, announced that Russia and China would hold up to 25 joint military maneuvers this year. “This points to a high level of cooperation between the defense ministries of the two countries,” he said.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev then met with China’s defense minister on Wednesday. He said that Russia has “special relations in all fields” with China.

This year is the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between Russia and China. Representatives of both nations are using this milestone as an opportunity to draw the two countries closer together.

The “strategic partnership and cooperation between the RF [Russian Federation] and China is successfully advancing,” said Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi during talks with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov on Monday.

In his remarks following the meeting, Lavrov stated:

Russia and China have a common vision of the contemporary world and of its development trends; a common vision of ways to tackle global and regional problems based on international law, a more central role for the UN, and multilateral diplomacy. Secondly, Russia and China, in the framework of the approaches I have set out, always support each other on concrete issues that directly affect the national interests of Russia and China. Such comradely mutual assistance is only going to be strengthened. Today we have agreed about this.

A major joint Russian-Chinese “anti-terrorist” exercise called “Peace Mission 2009” had already been scheduled for this summer.

Russia and China held their first set of war games in 2005. These were also labeled anti-terrorist exercises, but in reality were far more than that. They involved over 10,000 troops, warships and airplanes. They involved landing attacks against hypothetically hostile shores and even large-scale paratroop drops. Experts believe they may have been a trial run for a joint Russia-China invasion of Taiwan, or for supporting a Central Asian government against an American-backed insurgency. The war games this summer will probably also be far more extensive than anti-terrorist exercises. United Press International reported March 26:

U.S. analysts, Republican and Democratic alike, have repeatedly discounted the series of joint Russian-Chinese maneuvers as being of little consequence, contrasting their occasional nature with the sophisticated, long-established and integrated permanent joint command structure of the U.S.-led North Atlantic Treaty Organization or the old Soviet-led Warsaw Pact military alliance.However, nato and the Warsaw Pact were both unusual examples in modern history of permanent, integrated alliances of nations. Before World War ii and until U.S. entry into the war in December 1941, Britain and the United States held no exercises comparable to the scope and complexity of the 21st-century series of Russian-Chinese summer maneuvers.

Liang is in Russia this week for a meeting of defense ministers from the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (sco). The sco is comprised of Russia and China together with Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. India, Pakistan, Mongolia and Iran have observer status.

For the first time ever, an American observer will be attending this meeting, giving extra weight to the organization that Russia likes to market as Asia’s version of nato.

Last December, Chinese President Hu Jintao praised the growing military alliance between China and Russia. “As the strategic partnership between China and Russia develops, the relationship between the two militaries has also continued to become more consolidated and stronger,” he said. “I hope … to advance the China-Russian strategic partnership and the relationship between the two militaries from a new historical starting point to better and faster development toward the future.”

Watch for Russia and China to continue to cooperate militarily. As Lavrov said, the two nations do have “a common vision of the contemporary world.” As the world gets more dangerous and as national ambitions increase, these two nations, which are natural allies, will start to pool their resources to increase their security and military reach. For more information, see our booklet Russia and China in Prophecy.