AUGUST 2025
Assessing the Impact of
China-Russia Coordination
in the Media and
Information Space
Tabletop Exercise Summary
By Ryan C. Berg and Henry Ziemer
ExecutiveSummary
Since the announcement between Presidents Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping of a “no limits partnership”
on the eve of Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, concerns have swirled over the potential for a new
axis of revisionist authoritarian powers. Spearheaded by Moscow and Beijing, such an alliance could
not only threaten the Eurasian landmass but reach across oceans to challenge the United States in
the Western Hemisphere. However, the full implications and scope of the China-Russia partnership,
particularly as it may pertain to Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), remain both undertheorized
and underexplored.
For this reason, the CSIS Americas Program designed a novel tabletop exercise to better understand
the consequences of China-Russia coordination in LAC. Specically, the exercise considered a scenario
in the aftermath of a disputed election in Guatemala, where the future of the country’s relationship
with Taiwan was at stake. Players from a wide cross section of think tanks, academia, and government
conducted two iterations of the same exercise, one in which the China and Russia teams were not able
to coordinate, and one in which they were.
The ndings from this exercise have major implications for future U.S. policymaking. First, when
given the opportunity to coordinate, China and Russia eagerly did so and were able to secure a
favorable outcome to the initial crisis. However, on the subsequent game turn, the United States,
