The United States’ continued preoccupation with Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran has opened a window of opportunity for Russia to win back some of her global influence and prestige. Since August 7 she has flung Georgia out of South Ossetia and crossed the border, entered into a new arrangement with Syria, threatened to return to Cuba, warned that she will arm the Baltic fleet with nuclear warheads in retaliation for the missile shield in Poland and the Czech Republic and told NATO what they can do with their “no business as usual” ultimatum.
China on the other hand has been hosting and entertaining the planet with the 2008 Olympics which have seen Beijing swallowing a lot of unpalatable reporting concerning Tibet and human rights, with far too much uncensored internet access for its citizens as one of the prices they were forced to pay for the honour of staging these games. But the games are about to end shortly with a bumper crop of golds proving that the Chinese’ formula for success is by far and away the best on the planet.
Well that’s the version they’ll be giving their citizens anyway.
“China” has been around a long time, but the borders of today represent the largest that the Chinese state has ever been. To prevent its outer provinces from breaking away (as they have many times in China’s past), one of Beijing’s geopolitical imperatives is to lash those provinces to the center as firmly as possible. Beijing has done this in two ways. First, it has stocked these outlying regions with Han Chinese to dilute the identity of the indigenous populations and culturally lash the regions to the center. Second, it has physically and economically lashed them to the center via building loads of infrastructure. So, in the past 15 years, China has engaged in a flurry of road, pipeline and rail construction to places such as Tibet and Xinjiang.
Merge these two seemingly minor details and it suddenly becomes clear that much of the mineral and energy riches of formerly Soviet Central Asia — resources that Russia must have to maintain its energy leverage over Europe — are now just as close to China’s infrastructure network as they are to Russia’s. And obtaining those resources is one of the few possible means China has of mitigating its vulnerability to U.S. naval power.”(www.stratfor.com) Peter Zeihan — China and Russia’s Geographic Divide.
http://www.1913intel.com/2008/07/22/china-and-russia%E2%80%99s-geographic-divide/
Accordingly it would make sense for China to start dislodging the Russian grip on these energy resources sooner rather than later. Russia however cannot afford to allow China to lay claim to this region because it would set her economy back to the ice-age.
What would happen if China invaded Russia?
Since the age of 12 I have always been fascinated by history and in particular military history. It didn’t matter to me which part of the planet or parties were involved, I could not stop myself from reading up on the events and circumstances surrounding global conflicts, past and present.
The dawn of the internet made a hobby into an obsession which has stood me in great stead in terms of global general knowledge because, in order to understand the underlying causes of any conflict, you have to study the players in some detail. In addition, reading authors like Tom Clancy, Larry Bond and Patrick Larkin who enjoy speculating how wars between different groupings would turn out, increased my interest in “war games”.
“War games” in terms of my definition is setting out a hypothetical situation and asking my readers to give their best guess as to how they believe it would turn out. In my own case I love going onto a site called the World Affairs Board which is populated by many military personnel of the United States and other regular readers. Their take on what would happen if China and Russia were to lock horns can be seen in their 29-page thread loaded with military experience and know-how.
http://www.worldaffairsboard.com/land-forces/14123-china-vs-russia.html
These are the views of professional military men and women with rank amateurs like yours truly thrown in. Fabulous stuff if you are into this kind of thing. A wonderful experience which teaches you a lot about your planet while affording you an opportunity to make friends.
The important thing for me is that you learn so much about what is happening around the world because, while you want to take part, you don’t want to come across as a moron. So you read up on China and Russia and all the things relevant to this “conflict” and emerge with a whole new understanding of your world and the people and countries in it.
And nobody gets killed.
What I plan to do is to try and run a regular war game on my site. There are no winners or losers, merely the thoughts of the readers as they try to plot and plan what would happen in the event of the suggested conflict taking place. As an example Russia versus China as suggested above.
Next week I’m going to try and put apartheid South Africa at war with its neighboring states. I will set out for you the countries and parties involved and ask you lot to let me have your best guess. I hope that all of you enter into the spirit of this as you will learn a lot. Your knowledge on South Africa, Zimbabwe, and Angola etc should improve a lot if you read up on the countries and what your fellow readers have to say about them. Remember not to look at your preferred country or army only. Have an in-depth look at both sides and you’ll be amazed at how your whole understanding and perception of things changes dramatically.
Hopefully these debates will get very heated. Nobody can be bothered to find out about Angola’s oil requirements or railway networks until some genius here calls them a moron for suggesting some military approach which is, or was, logistically impossible. Then everyone is looking up points frantically.
Two weeks later you’re at a party and everyone thinks you’re a genius because you know the region so well. Nobody has to know that it’s because you were determined to show the guy who called you a moron who the real plonker is.
Let’s see how it runs guys. The worst that can happen is you’ll learn a lot.
Your starter for ten is Russia versus China. You are encouraged to cheat as much as is humanly possible and come and show us what you have dug up.
Don’t let me down.
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