Posted on 08/26/2008 4:20:22 AM PDT by shrinkermd
'In Russia," wrote the great scholar of Russian imperialism Dietrich Geyer many years ago, "expansion was an expression of economic weakness, not exuberant strength."
Keep this observation in mind as Vladimir Putin and his minions bask in the glow of Western magazine cover stories about Russia's "resurgence" following its splendid little war against plucky little Georgia. The Kremlin is certainly confident these days, buoyed by years of rising commodity prices and a bullying foreign policy that mistakes fear for respect -- the very combination that made the Soviet Union seem invincible in the 1970s.
...Take something as basic as demography. "In the next four decades," noted CIA Director Michael Hayden earlier this year, "we expect . . . the population of Russia to shrink by 32 million people [to about 110 million]. That means Russia will lose about a quarter of its population. To sustain its economy, Russia increasingly will have to look elsewhere for workers. Some of them will be immigrant Russians coming from the former Soviet states, what the Russians call the near abroad. But there aren't enough of them to make up that population loss. Others will be Chinese and non-Russians from the Caucasus, Central Asia and elsewhere, potentially aggravating Russia's already uneasy racial and religious tensions."
Or take oil and gas production, which accounts for one-third of the country's budget, 64% of its export revenue, 30% of foreign direct investment, and a little more than 20% of gross domestic product.
There's bad news here, too. Oil production is set to decline this year for the first time in a decade, a decline that is widely expected to accelerate rapidly in 2010. Of Russia's 14 largest oil fields, seven are more than 50% depleted. Production at its four largest gas fields is also in decline.
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
I read it all
This presents the negative case for Putin’s Russia
Not that I sympathize one bit with the invasion of Georgia
But Russia is doing quite well.
They have a huge foreign currency reserve
They are piling up money on selling oil/gas
They are doing much better than under communism
From the Sino-Russian Joint Statement of April 23, 1997:
"The two sides [China and Russia] shall, in the spirit of partnership, strive to promote the multipolarization of the world and the establishment of a new international order."
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/HI29Ag01.html
Russia, China flex muscles in joint war games
Reuters: Aug 17, 2007
CHEBARKUL, Russia (Reuters) - Russia and China staged their biggest joint exercises on Friday but denied this show of military prowess could lead to the formation of a counterweight to NATO.
"Today's exercises are another step towards strengthening the relations between our countries, a step towards strengthening international peace and security, and first and foremost, the security of our peoples," Putin said.
Fighter jets swooped overhead, commandos jumped from helicopters on to rooftops and the boom of artillery shells shook the firing range in Russia's Ural mountains as two of the largest armies in the world were put through their paces.
The exercises take place against a backdrop of mounting rivalry between the West, and Russia and China for influence over Central Asia, a strategic region that has huge oil, gas and mineral resources.
Russia's growing assertiveness is also causing jitters in the West. Putin announced at the firing range that Russia was resuming Soviet-era sorties by its strategic bomber aircraft near NATO airspace.
http://in.reuters.com/article/worldNews/idINIndia-29030120070817?pageNumber=1&virtualBrandChannel=0
Bingo! Mark Steyn is looking more and more like a prophet, as demography is beginning to do its dirty math on societies with low birth rates. Russia is both sick and childless, and it is dying. In order to defend its mineral-rich homeland from Muslim and Chinese hordes multiplying on its borders, Russia knows it must expand. South Ossetia and Abkazia are just the first new pieces in the new Russian empire. The Bear must expand his territory and population, or he will die.
from day 1 reports, they missed the pipeline with multiple bombing runs. Don’t they even have precision-guided munitions?
2) Russian Rationale
3) Chinese Rationale
4) Russia's Missile Assistance
5) Russia's Nuclear Assistance
6) Russia's Missile Defense Assistance
“With the exception of Robert Mugabe, no other leader has so completely fouled his own nest as Mr. Putin, or squandered so much international good will.”
________________________________________________________________________________
That’s at the heart of the matter, Putin and his cronies are doing nothing to help with Russia’s real problems, they just want to loot the place.
After the recent thuggish ripping off of foreign investors, (BNP, Sakhalin II) Russia’s re-nationalized oil and gas industries are going to rot—Venezuela and Iran style—for want of any further suckers to invest money and technology.
Annex more Christians
To hold out against Muslims and China
But still, China is invading Siberia via immigration legal and illegal. I think lots of Koreans are there too. How is this stopped?
It's not just Russia. I hear Vancouver is very Chinese now. I'd love to see an ethnic population breakdown for British Columbia
"the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the [20th] century" -Russian leader Vladimir Putin on the collapse of the Soviet Union...
"World democratic opinion has yet to realize the alarming implications of President Vladimir Putin's State of the Union speech on April 25, 2005, in which he said that the collapse of the Soviet Union represented the 'greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.'
http://www.hooverdigest.org/053/beichman.html
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Sakhalin II....
Glad to see you mention the Russian rip off of Royal Dutch Shell. I’ll bet Putin got something out of that. Maybe 5%.
RDS participation was forcibly reduced from 50% to 24% by the Putin gangsters
Vladimir Putin = John Gotti
new republic comments ^ | August 11, 2008 11:53 PM | teplukhin2
Posted on Wednesday, August 13, 2008 9:29:55 PM by dennisw
It’s laughable to watch the likes of Stephen Cohen and the other frozen-in-the-Amber-Room lefties contort themselves trying to make excuses for a criminalized Russian state whose only ideology is that of John Gotti. Putin’s regime has no ideology, neither soviet nor Great Russian nor Orthodoxy/Autocracy. His grand strategy begins and ends with his offshore personal accounts, and the commodities that generate the cash flowing into same. If the Fulda Gap still has any interest to him and his fellow FSB thieves, it’s as a glide path for their Gulfstreams enroute to their private bankers in Zurich or Liechtenstein.
If Putin were truly interested in advancing Russian national interests in any diligent or coherent way, he would have
reformed and modernized the Russian military, which is a shambles;
reformed and improved Russian higher education, technology and scientific research, which have declined sharply since 1990 not because of brain drain but due to his government’s neglect and corruption;
pursued a policy of intensified trade, cross-border investment and military cooperation with China, rather than passively watching his Far East turn into a de facto Chinese province and doing nothing on the military or economic fronts.
Instead Russia is even more isolated diplomatically than it was 8 years ago and more economically dependent on commodity exports, and Putin’s foreign policy is mainly a series of stunts involving Gotti-style threats to make Ukrainians, Czechs, Lithuanians etc freeze in the dark plus pointless freebooter adventurism involving bandit-officers and ex-FSB goons running weapons, drugs, and god knows what else, and causing mayhem and mischief, across Moldova and the Caucasus.
Encirclement, right. The wealthiest man in the world— he’s easily over $100b by now— is “encircled.”
Think Collor, Suharto or Mobutu, not Andropov or Alexander III.
It has been quite apparent. And there is a tendency for them to have war with us through proxys. They are now feeding the demon in Iran. They work with Venezuela, Syria, North Korea. I may not be the one making the decisions, but I can see clearly we will be having war on THEIR terms within the next ten yrs. and I think it should be recognized that Russia’s Georgian invasion needs to opposed STRONGLY and they need to be told on no uncertain terms they will share in the blame if they keep up the weaponizing of Iran, North Korea, etc. They will be part of the war and the bombing/nuking would most certainly include them.
Their Precisions are missing some parts and were made by Russians.
September 23, 2005
War Games: Russia, China Grow Alliance
by Ariel Cohen, Ph.D.
In foreign policy it’s critical to “know thine enemy.” So American policymakers should be aware that Russia and China are inching closer to identifying a common enemy — the United States.
The two would-be superpowers held unprecedented joint military exercises Aug. 18-25. Soothingly named “Peace Mission 2005,” the drills took place on the Shandong peninsula on the Yellow Sea, and included nearly 10,000 troops. Russian long-range bombers, the army, navy, air force, marine, airborne and logistics units from both countries were also involved.
Moscow and Beijing claim the maneuvers were aimed at combating terrorism, extremism and separatism (the last a veiled reference to Taiwan), but it’s clear they were an attempt to counter-balance American military might.
Joint war games are a logical outcome of the Sino-Russian Friendship and Cooperation Treaty signed in 2001, and reflect the shared worldview and growing economic ties between the two Eastern Hemisphere giants. As the Pravda.ru Web site announced, “the reconciliation between China and Russia has been driven in part by mutual unease at U.S. power and a fear of Islamic extremism in Central Asia.”
Exactly. I'm very wary of people here who try to dismiss or minimize this obvious threat. Also, Ahmadinejad, to me, sounds a lot more like a leftist than a religious fanatic. Check out the language he uses below in describing Chavez ("progressive", "revolutionary", "anti-imperialist") This of course is assuming the translation is accurate.
From National Public Radio (NPR):
"Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has been visiting countries such as China, Iran and Russia as part of an effort to build a 'strategic alliance' of interests not beholden to the United States. He considers the United States his arch enemy.":
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5729764
From the Russian News and Information Agency:
"'I am determined to expand relations with Russia,' Chavez, known as an outspoken critic of what he calls the United States' unilateralism, told the Russian leader, adding that his determination stemmed from their shared vision of the global order.":
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20060727/51913498.html
From WorldThreats.com:
"Chavez pledged that his country would 'stay by Iran at any time and under any condition,' state television reported. Ahmadinejad said he saw in Chavez a kindred spirit." "'We do not have any limitation in cooperation,' Ahmadinejad was quoted as saying. 'Iran and Venezuela are next to each other and supporters of each other. Chavez is a source of a progressive and revolutionary current in South America and his stance in restricting imperialism is tangible.'":
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2006/07/29/world/main1847331.shtml
In order to accomplish something that would be good for Russia, Putin would need to clean up the cesspool that exists there, - the country is a nest of corruption, under the sway of former KGB men, former powerful military men and nationalists dreaming of Russian glory, former powerful and greedy aparatchiks (such as Primakov), criminal mafia-types with power over politicians, - all seeking to enrich themselves.
Putin works in the context of this environment, is part of it, - no way the man to clean it up (he probably would get bumped off if he tried). Things look very bad for Russia.
NM,
Most excellent memory you have there.
But you left out the part part I like best: ‘there were’.
Col. Andy Tanner: ...The Russians need to take us in one piece, and that’s why they’re here. That’s why they won’t use nukes anymore; and we won’t either, not on our own soil. The whole damn thing’s pretty conventional now. Who knows? Maybe next week will be swords.
Darryl Bates: What started it?
Col. Andy Tanner: I don’t know. Two toughest kids on the block, I guess. Sooner or later, they’re gonna fight.
Jed Eckert: That simple, is it?
Col. Andy Tanner: Or maybe somebody just forget what it was like.
Jed Eckert: ...Well, who *is* on our side?
Col. Andy Tanner: Six hundred million screaming Chinamen.
Darryl Bates: Last I heard, there were a billion screaming Chinamen.
Col. Andy Tanner: There *were*.
[he throws whiskey on the fire; it ignites violently, suggesting a nuclear explosion]
... oops, make that a single ‘part’ ...
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