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Well, that China flashes its muscles now is hardly surprising given the situation in Ukraine. Chinas 3 main defecits were the fact that the energy they need has to come to them through naval waterways, and the amercians controll these. The second main problem is the lack of serious allys. It says a lot that Pakistan is their most serious ally right now. The third main problem is that they simultaneously had to deal with direct US containment attempts while also dealing with more sublte Indo-Russian influence games in central Asia. This subtle Indo-Russian "restrain the Chinese dragon without stepping on his toes" alliance on occassion included Vietnam. The crushing defeat Russia suffered in Ukraine likely spelled the end of a meaningfull Russian led Eurasian Union to compete with the Chinese and Western economic blocks on its own terms. Russia is no longer able to be its own side in the great power game, and since it was the west that broke their not really far reaching ambitions (seriously, the only strategical value Ukraine represents for the west is denying it to Russia), they immdiatly went to align with China. The US is a lot less able to interedict Pipelines from Russia to China than it could interdict oil tankers going to China, so Chinas sea-borne energy issues are mitigated. Russia would be a very serious military ally for China, and can make a decent claim about having the worlds second-third most powerfull military. Lastly, a Russia that allies with China will have to mitigate its alliances with India and Vietnam considerably, especially concerning the latter. To an extent, the sucky situation for Russia, whose direct ownership of Crimea is a very tiny consolation price for loosing the rest of Ukraine, is a mirrored situation for the west concerning the Eurasian Union. Controlling remaining Ukraine is a tiny consolation price for having the remaining Eurasian Union align with China. Basically, Western antics/actions in Ukraine fixed or seriously mitigated 3 of Chinas main strategic issues.
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May 31, 2014 13:46
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dilbertschalter posted:As exciting as it is to blame everything single event in the world on villainous western meddling in Russia's rightful sphere of influence, China has been taking an aggressive stance on this issue well before anything happened in Ukraine (the same even applies to closer relations with Russia: since Xi came to power relations with Russia have steadily improved, while relations with America have deteriorated). They are more assertive now though. There is considerable movement of land forces towards the Vietnamese border. And Russia de facto kow tow before China is very significant.
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May 31, 2014 15:04
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While Russia certainly has issues (actually, most of those have recently gotten better), as an ally, they are a huge improvement over Pakistan. Russia has been "ready to collapse" since 2003 according to those western pundits. The only time when it actually collapsed in 1998 with the bankrupcy, these same pundits were going on on how "the worst for Russia is over". Its kind of a turned version of triangular diplomacy actually. This time, China is the one with better relations to both Moscow and Washington. Also, from the Chinese pov, Russia is their strongest neighbour, especially militarily. Expansionist, even you claim that China is expansionist and that can be disputed, nations generally dont go after the "big fish" if they have a lot of smaller fish available.
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Jun 1, 2014 10:02
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