The Sino-Russian Strategic Partnership starts to get serious!

plawolf said:

It is indeed a good read, there are certain aspects about it that are clearly dated and no longer valid, like the point about Russian weapons still being sort after by China, but on the whole it does a good job of demolishing many fallacies about obstacles between a Sino-Russian alliance.
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At most we may see a return of high-end arms deals between Russia and China, only with Russia as the buyer this time, and maybe joint R&D into future technologies and weapons systems. But even that is a long way off.
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SampanViking said:

Just in the nick of time, M K Bhadrakumar produces his take on the Xi-Putin summit over the weekend.

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The rest is even more interesting......

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While I agree with a lot in these posts there are some key points I quote above I beg to differ on.

Russia still has many aspects of its arms industry leagues ahead of China's but China now has other valuable aspects of its own arms industry to offer. Given forthcoming economic weakness in both countries and conventional forces non-superiority against the full range of potential foes, it makes a lot of sense for the two to commit to joint R&D (or component sales) for future systems as well as to improve upon existing projects sooner rather than later.

In the Bhadrakumar article I think he underestimates the internal cohesion issues Russia, China, as well as all their Central Asian partners face. They are serious even without third party exploitation and it is clear there are active, resourceful, and interested third parties already working hard to exploit them. Russian and Chinese influence in and relations with their containment periphery neighbors are also more tenuous and fragile than they appear, with the containment noose tightening in full swing and unlikely to abate.

At the current juncture of the "great game" everyone's plans have been laid out, the question is how quickly and effectively each one is followed through and leveraged. There is also the wildcard of how the international economy performs.

I think the key point that Bhadrakumar brings to our attention is that the situation has moved from two friendly nations with a common vision, to two closely aligned countries that have developed that common vision into a precise development plan.

In one sense you could say that Russia came with an objective (EAEU and the continent wide free trade area) while the Chinese came with the method (Silk Road Economic Belt) and of course the means to make it happen (AIIB SRDF SCOIF BRICKSB etc)

Now all these ideas and vehicles are being put together to produce a proper project/business plan.

When you have players of this size spending this amount of money and inviting everyone to the table, it buys a very large amount of cohesion in the neighbourhood. All the more so when there is the tacit understanding, that this is a main strategic plan for both continental giants and that they have the teeth to ensure that nobody tries to spoil the party.

I am no longer calling it a partnership; It is bromance.

t2contra said:

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I am no longer calling it a partnership; It is bromance.

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A starry eyed Sukhoi gazing bromance?

I wish the lighting could be dimmed, and the wife and the geezer cropped out completely.

PanAsian said:

A starry eyed Sukhoi gazing bromance?

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Don't forget best playmate.

no_name said:

Don't forget best playmate.

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Wow, that is uncanny!

I think that quite enough of that, thank you Gentlemen
Let us all instead return to rather more weighty issues - no, not Johnny Depps dogs, but even more serious than that.

I would like to cast an eye on the recent Kerry visit to Russia and his meetings with Lavrov and Putin.

I am going to post links to two articles; bith published on Asia Times; one by Pepe Esobar and the other by M K Bhadrakumar.




Two very different articles, from two very different authors, and yet some common elements agreed by both.
1) The obvious, that the US is deeply concerned by the speed of the growth of Sino-Russian ties and that they have reached what we could call "formal alliance breakout" position.
2) That the US now wishes its concentration to the Chinese Issue in the SCS
3) That the US is looking to slow down the speed of development of Sino-Russian relations
4) That the US is conceding positions on both the Ukraine and Iran with Russia to achieve this slowdown and to be able to switch its attention to the Far East.

Each of the above 4 points are worthy of considerable discussion (as indeed are each of the linked articles) in there own right, but there are also a couple of sub texts that even more interesting subjects

1) The US is having to make these concessions to Russia, becasue it connot contain both Russian and China at the same time.
2) The logical extension that says that a part of the Strategic alignment between Russia and China will be based on this understanding and so the one will use the opportunity presented, when the pressure is on the other to expand its interests and use that to relieve the pressure on the other.

Point 2) incidentally is a factor which I identified and posted on several years ago and so I do feel gratified to see this start to come into effect.

Overall, there is an inevitable sense of how such a balance is going to play out and how long the US will be able to simply run from one end of Eurasia to the other to deal with issues, in what can only be a slow drawn out and losing strategy.
If ultimately, the US concedes that it can only contain one front line, I wonder which front it would choose?
For the record, I suspect that it would choose the Far East as to give up there would mean China off the US Coast very quickly, while giving up against Russia still leaves a lot of Western Europe as its buffer zone, before the Atlantic is reached.

Of course, the Baltic geography favors Russia against the US, compared with the SCS. China should invite Russia for some naval games in its SCS playground. Putin's tiger needs no quarantine in China.

SampanViking said:

I think that quite enough of that, thank you Gentlemen
Let us all instead return to rather more weighty issues - no, not Johnny Depps dogs, but even more serious than that.

I would like to cast an eye on the recent Kerry visit to Russia and his meetings with Lavrov and Putin.

I am going to post links to two articles; bith published on Asia Times; one by Pepe Esobar and the other by M K Bhadrakumar.

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Please, Log in or Register to view URLs content!

Two very different articles, from two very different authors, and yet some common elements agreed by both.
1) The obvious, that the US is deeply concerned by the speed of the growth of Sino-Russian ties and that they have reached what we could call "formal alliance breakout" position.
2) That the US now wishes its concentration to the Chinese Issue in the SCS
3) That the US is looking to slow down the speed of development of Sino-Russian relations
4) That the US is conceding positions on both the Ukraine and Iran with Russia to achieve this slowdown and to be able to switch its attention to the Far East.

Each of the above 4 points are worthy of considerable discussion (as indeed are each of the linked articles) in there own right, but there are also a couple of sub texts that even more interesting subjects

1) The US is having to make these concessions to Russia, becasue it connot contain both Russian and China at the same time.
2) The logical extension that says that a part of the Strategic alignment between Russia and China will be based on this understanding and so the one will use the opportunity presented, when the pressure is on the other to expand its interests and use that to relieve the pressure on the other.

Point 2) incidentally is a factor which I identified and posted on several years ago and so I do feel gratified to see this start to come into effect.

Overall, there is an inevitable sense of how such a balance is going to play out and how long the US will be able to simply run from one end of Eurasia to the other to deal with issues, in what can only be a slow drawn out and losing strategy.
If ultimately, the US concedes that it can only contain one front line, I wonder which front it would choose?
For the record, I suspect that it would choose the Far East as to give up there would mean China off the US Coast very quickly, while giving up against Russia still leaves a lot of Western Europe as its buffer zone, before the Atlantic is reached.

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But what does this mean to the European countries? Germany especially would see large advantages in being part of the Eurasian Economic Union. When US were to concentrate on the Pacific would they be able to prevent EU entering EEU, especially after a likely Brexit.