Airstrip One
Completely Effed
Living in the Past. China is a fully developed country that chooses it's own path, and Putin supplies the weapons/engineering while China provides the money
Two ambitious countries who share a border.
Living in the Past. China is a fully developed country that chooses it's own path, and Putin supplies the weapons/engineering while China provides the money
Two ambitious countries who share a border.
how long is too/very long? Because they are getting closer and closer in military cooperation and economic co-prosperity
Stable, long-standing, robust alliances are based on shared values and a shared vision. That is exactly why NATO is the most successful military-political alliance in human history.
China and Russia have no shared values - cultural, historical, or political - no shared vision, and are in many senses global competitors.
Any claim that China and Russian represent a unified axis of power aligned against the United States can be dismissed as uninformed.
so you dismiss the SCO ( Shanghai Cooperation Org.) and the Vostok 2018 games as what exactly? an aberration? no.Stable, long-standing, robust alliances are based on shared values and a shared vision. That is exactly why NATO is the most successful military-political alliance in human history.
China and Russia have no shared values - cultural, historical, or political - no shared vision, and are in many senses global competitors.
Any claim that China and Russian represent a unified axis of power aligned against the United States can be dismissed as uninformed.
A couple of days later and on the occasion of a visit by a senior Chinese military delegation, Shoygu offered that the relationship between Moscow and Beijing reached “an unprecedented high level.” Interestingly on that latter occasion, he discussed the participation of Chinese units together with Russian units in the
Shanghai Cooperation Organization’s (SCO) anti-terrorism exercises that just took place in Chelyabinsk Oblast, but did not seem to mention the planned cooperation for Vostok-18. And so it does seem that Russia-China military cooperation has genuinely been regularized, with one exercise or exchange following closely upon the next and reaching higher and higher levels of intensity and scope.
https://nationalinterest.org/feature/what-russias-vostok-18-exercise-china-means-30577
get real
www.newsmax.com/raymondtanter/iran-aircraft...
"As of 2019, Iran’s state sponsorship of terrorism worldwide remains undiminished through destructive actions by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force (IRGC-QF), Ministry of Intelligence and Security (MOIS), and Tehran’s proxy Hezbollah. So, Iran remains a threat to stability of Lebanon and broader Middle East."
so you dismiss the SCO ( Shanghai Cooperation Org.) and the Vostok 2018 games as what exactly? an aberration? no.
https://www.rand.org/blog/2019/04/a-warming-trend-in-china-russia-relations.html
April 18, 2019
A Warming Trend in China-Russia Relations
U.S. Director of National Intelligence Dan Coats observed (PDF) in the intelligence community's most recent threat assessment that “China and Russia are more aligned than at any point since the mid-1950s.” Although U.S. observers have feared such an alignment for decades, there is ample evidence that relations between the two are indeed closer than they have been since the Sino-Soviet split in the early 1960s.
In July 2017, the two countries' navies conducted a joint exercise in the Baltic Sea for the first time. In September 2018, China participated in Russia's annual Vostok military exercise—another first. Russia has also sold China advanced military equipment, including an S-400 air defense system and 24 SU-35 fighter aircraft.
According to Chinese government data, bilateral trade grew from $69.6 billion in 2016 to $84.2 billion in 2017 to $107.1 billion last year, marking the first time that that figure surpassed $100 billion. Moreover, despite facing setbacks in diversifying away from the U.S. dollar, Beijing and Moscow are conducting more of that trade, albeit still in small amounts, in their own currencies.
Russia became China's largest supplier of crude oil in 2016, displacing Saudi Arabia, and it is contracted to sell China 1.3 trillion feet of cubic gas annually for three decades, beginning this year, through its Power of Siberia pipeline.
Finally, Chinese President Xi Jinping has visited Moscow more than any other capital city since he assumed power. As of August 2018, he and his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin had met 26 times. In June 2018, moreover, Xi gave Putin China's first-ever friendship medal, calling him “my best, most intimate friend.”
It is not surprising, then, that U.S. analysts are increasingly concerned by the multifaceted momentum in Sino-Russian relations.
Your logic if fallacious.
It does not follow from the fact that Russia and China pursue bilateral relations based on self-interest and mutual benefit, that they are forming a concerted and coordinated "axis of evil" allied and aligned against the United States.
Russia has been pursuing bilateral relations with China for almost two centuries. My grandfather was employed by the joint venture Chinese-Soviet East China Railroad. It did not follow that Russia and China were developing an military alliance aligned in hostility to the West.
Are you not familiar with the joint military exercises recently and ongoing between China and Russia?
The U.S. holds joint military exercises with dozens of nations throughout the world.
No, I do not think even some symbolic military exercises is evidence of a plot to have a unified Russia-China military alliance aligned against the United States.
A lot of people call it largely symbolic, including experts on Russia.Military exercises between countries are not "symbolic". They are for defined purpose. Defeating a common enemy or perceived threat.
The creation of a military alliance between China and Russia, however, needs to be treated with skepticism. Moscow and Beijing certainly enjoy a ‘special’, albeit pragmatic, bilateral relationship, but such a formal alliance is unlikely to happen any time soon. Furthermore, Vostok-2018 was not simply a bilateral exercise – although a symbolic token, the drills involved troops from Mongolia, and Turkey was also invited to participate but politely refused, sending observers instead.
https://thehill.com/opinion/nationa...ok-2018-exercises-mean-for-china-and-the-west
Beijing’s latest joint naval drills with Russia in South China Sea ‘just symbolic gesture’: experts
https://www.scmp.com/news/china/dip...-latest-joint-naval-drills-moscow-south-china
A lot of people call it largely symbolic, including experts on Russia.
The Kremlin would love Americans to think there is a rising axis of power between Moscow-Beijing, aligned against Washington.
Russia is playing a weak hand, and it is classic Russian psychological warfare to enhance, exaggerate, and amplify the international prestige and perceived power of the Russian bear.