In a joint communique, Russia and China have formally placed national sovereignty before human rights. Their decision to do so marks a major step backwards from the advances of democracy which had marked the past decade. Russia, the largest country on earth, and China, the most populous, have between them placed the rights of their citizens - and of foreign citizens living in their countries - at a level lower than that acceptable in the civilised international community. As the European Council agreed in Helsinki yesterday: "The fight against terrorism cannot, under any circumstances, warrant the destruction of cities, nor that they be emptied of their inhabitants, nor that a whole population be considered as terrorist."
China is still, nominally at least, a communist State. The dictatorship of the proletariat in that country overrides the rights of the individual citizen. Russia, on the other hand, has pretensions towards democracy and a place in the civilised order of things. It is technically no longer a communist country although the character of its leader, Mr Boris Yeltsin, was formed by the party in which he rose to membership of the politburo. His statement that Russia would dictate to the world due to its nuclear arsenal was both frightening and pathetic. It was frightening in that the words were spoken as Russian forces threatened to exterminate the elderly and infirm residents of Grozny if they did not get out of the way of advancing troops. Subsequent claims, none of them from Mr Yeltsin incidentally, that western countries had misread the meaning of leaflets dropped on Grozny, simply do not stand up to scrutiny.
The suggestion that human rights constitute an "internal matter" has been used many times in the past by countries which have been under severe pressure from international opinion. It is not all that long ago that the government of the United Kingdom used the "internal matter" formula to stave off criticism of its actions in Northern Ireland. But the British government has now moved well beyond the narrow strictures of that outmoded principle. Negotiation in Northern Ireland has been more fruitful than attempts at dominance. There may be a lesson in this for Russia with respect to its relations with minority nationalities within its multi-ethnic State. In the meantime, however, the concept that "might is right" appears to have gained prominence over more subtle, but in the long term more effective, principles in the minds of the Russian and Chinese leaders. But the might wielded by Russia and China may be, to use a Chinese analogy, something of a paper tiger.
Both countries are nuclear powers. At first sight, an alliance between the two appears to pose a major threat. But China's economic strength binds it to the rest of the world with whom it trades. If it were placed in a position in which it had to choose between Russia and its western trading partners there is little doubt that China would choose the latter.