Posted on 01/23/2018 2:53:33 PM PST by GoldenState_Rose
A Russia-led initiative involving China and Pakistan that seeks a political settlement to Afghanistan’s civil war has the makings of a diplomatic alliance that could supplant the United States as the leading power in Central Asia.
The grouping was unveiled after a third meeting in Moscow late last month and may be expanded to include regional powers Iran and Turkey, which formed a separate tripartite grouping on Syria with Russia in talks preceding the parleys on Afghanistan.
The Afghan government reacted angrily to the Moscow meeting, to which it had not been invited, because the meeting proposed the relaxation of UN restrictions on the movement of key Taliban figures involved in pre-dialogue negotiations. This contradicted Kabul’s call in November for the UN to blacklist Taliban chief Mullah Haibatullah Akhundzada because of his refusal to enter peace talks.
(Excerpt) Read more at scmp.com ...
Russia and China have become workable allies. They have almost the same relationship as we do with Canada. There’s no big surprise there. They have been at each other’s throats waiting for the other to take an action so they could duke it out for years. I think Russia is learning they are in over their heads with China. So Putin blinked when the Soviet Union started to totally collapse in 1991 thanks to Reagan. It would stand to reason Russia would look for another superpower to “get in bed” with.
rwood
“Chinese in the Russian Far East: A Geopolitical Timebomb?”
They’re like Canada to China- but a Canada with a huge military and extensive worldwide sanctions against it.
Russia’s practically a client state.
China’s goal to have a way to send it’s goods to pay for those tankers from the Mideast is key to events in the Mideast now.
A lot of people haven’t taken into consideration the huge oil amounts found in Russia yet. Then they will be everyone’s friend.
rwood
Neither one of them is looking for friends
Only cooperation in common interests
Russia is much closer to our values , western values, than is China
China is the long term challenge to both of us
Except Russia and China are glued together by geography if nothing else
I agree Russia vs. China is a very real thing but I take issue with your “Western” values trope.
1) Most people who support Putin on these forums have never lived in Russia. You can love Russia, be anti-Soros, and still be against Putin. As I am.
2) Where do you think China got their communist cues from? Mongolia? No. Russia. The Revolution in Russia.
3) Karl Marx and Friederich Engels were what? WESTERNERS. Communism is a Western idea.
4) The Soviet Union installed the Kim Il Sung regime in North Korea, a country Putin and China prop up to this day.
3) China’s economy is several times bigger, stronger, and faster growing than Putin’s Russia. Is Russia’s “Western” values holding it back? Perhaps: after all, Putin’s crony oligarchs have spent the past 20 years plundering the Russian people and their land only to then store their spoils where? In *Globalist* *Western* Banks. Why in those banks and not in Russia? Must be their Western values.
4) Putin once said: Russian “Orthodoxy has more in common with Islam than Roman Catholicism” — namely Western Christianity. You can look up the tape.
5) Just last week in an interview about Valaam monastery, Putin said “Communism is like Christianity and Lenin’s body like saintly relics.”
Indeed you should visit Lenin’s tomb in Moscow id you have not already. To the satisfaction of many, Putin has promised not to bury him.
Finally: one Orthodox bishop (in Siberia) publicly condemned Putin’s statement.
I guess we can disagree on many things
However I have spent time in Russia
Not Moscow- real Russia in the far east
Terrific people. Wonderful. Long suffering. Survivors.
In fact have adopted 2 kids from Russia so will always have family ties there
I could live with Russian people, but never with Japanese or Chinese
If this country ever fell I would look to Russia for refuge but never to China
Saying Communism is a western “ value” because Marx was a westerner ignores the fact that Winston Churchill and all the US Founders were .. westerners and Mao Zedong was an easterner
The Russians and Europeans suffered terribly at the hands of Germans ( reading now about Stalingrad) and the Chinese and Pacific nations were brutalized by Japan so calling Marx a “ westerner” or Mao an “ easterner” is a bit of a stretch in trying to define what is the nature of East vs West or where “ communism” derives its roots . Brutal North Korea’s Kim Il Sung and his dynasty were and are more influenced in their statist repression by Stalin than by Mao. Are their values eastern or western?
Tyranny fomented by secret societies that believe themselves morally superior to common people and therefore entitled to power over them is neither an eastern nor western “ value”
It was pretty terrible being a POW in WW2 but let me ask you this: what were the differences between being captured by Germans or being captured by Japanese? Imo The fundamental value of human life and humanity is the line between eastern and western values and we and Russia are closer in that than we will EVER be with China. Or Japan for that matter. Maybe even Germany.
Why do you think the globalists work so hard to isolate Russia and to keep up a permanent state of fear paranoia and enmity between us?
Have you read Gulag Archipelago?
I have more to say...but shame on all the conservative Americans who allowed the economic downturn and hatred for Obama to completely blind them to reality, and diminish their patriotism. America must succeed! For the world’s sake. For Russia’s and China’s sake.
Putin has allowed for post-Soviet distortions of history and of the historical record to salvage Russian “pride” (more fragile than ever before) and exonerate themselves of responsibility for the massive castratophes and crimes against humanity which befell their own people and much of the globe. Even Stalin is celebrated in today’s Russia. His memoribilia happily on display in stores in the city which used to bear his bame. Stalingrad now Volgograd.
Russians cannot move forward till they accept responsibility for their past, their sins against God, and their sins against each other. Not just during the WWII period, but latter years as well. For the system to survive as long as it did required the participation and spiritual surrender of the common people also. So much betrayal, so many lies, so many deaths, so many abortions. So much blood even beyond the Gulag.
They never had a Nuremberg like in Germany. They don’t commemorate their atrocities the same way either.
Indeed the worst POW to be was a Soviet returning to the Soviet base after a prisoner exchange. You’d get spat on and asked: “Why were you stupid enough to be captured?” “You brought shame to the motherland!” - then immediately sent to punitive labor. While the Finnish prisoners returned to cheers, beers, and hugs. (Reading accounts from book “Secondhand Time” by Svetlana Alexievich right now.)
Ironically its Christians from Asia and places like South Korea who have built new churches and helped draw many Russians nearer to God and nearer to the point of historical reconciliation.
And thankfully even Orthodox priests one by one are starting to challenge Putin.
The biggest concern is that the Chinese are starting a massive migration into the Russian territories and it simply isn’t true. And they say so within the article.
According to ABC, Alexander Shaikin, in charge of controlling the Russian-Chinese border, said on June 29 that 1.5 million people from China have illegally entered the Russian Far East over the past 18 months.
Reported by The Moscow Times, Shaikin’s claim is likely exaggerated, but increased Chinese migration is marking a return of Chinese influence to these territories.
The Federal Migration Service fears a flood. The service has repeatedly warned that the Chinese could become the dominant ethnic group in the Russian Far East in 20 to 30 years. Such an occurrence would require an annual influx of about 250,000 to 300,000 Chinese, less than one-third the rate that Shaikin currently claims.
Two things, if the math is correct, it is going to take a generation and a half for the fear to be placed into reality, possibly 30 years. And two only 7.4 million Russians populate the entire Russian Far East. And when you consider that most of the border region — an area roughly the size of Iran — used to be Chinese, it would stand to reason that having new Russian citizens in there that could develope the area and would be a boom to their economy. Let’s face it, there isn’t a lot happening over there so what’s the sweat?
rwood
I agree the threat is overblown. Actually there was an interesting Russian article the other day about how migrants from Tajikistan are pooulating and “saving” derelict rural Russian villages and their way of life. The response from locals? “Better them than the Chinese.”
Re: China/Russia. We shall see if mutual resentment/envy towards the West is enough of an ideological glue to tie them together. As it stands, China needs America way more than it needs Russia. And quite frankly they need us than we them. (Despite every attempt of our elites to sell us out to them.)
Likewise with Russia - they have more to gain from being in Europe and America’s good graces than China and Middle East’s.
If the Russian people are going to be concerned, they should consider that including registered muslim migrants they can count, (Tatars, Bashkirs, Kazakhs, Muslim peoples of Caucasus et cetera), that tallies an estimated number of between 20-25 million muslims in Russia. And they can’t close that number because there are too many migrants streaming in every day so they can’t keep up with a count, so they go low. And their intent is not to assimilate. It is to establish their religion and laws in place. To take over. Good luck Vlad.
rwood
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