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Russia agreed to stand beside the PRC as follows: "China and Russia give firm support to each other's policies and actions taken to safeguard national unity and territorial integrity.The increasingly rampant terrorism, separatism and extremism have posed a serious threat to the security of sovereign states and global peace and stability."

This seems all well and good until one considers the case of Taiwan. By this reasoning, and according to the PRC's assertion that Taiwan is part of PRC territory, any military action on the part of the USA to protect Taiwan in case of conflict could be met, according to the treaty, by a combined PRC - Russian force. Further verbiage from the treaty which is of great interest:

* "The foreign, defense, judicial, economic and scientific departments of the two countries will strengthen coordination and boost cooperation."

* "But the effort to build a fair and just new world order is faced with a series of challenges. The two countries will make joint efforts to strengthen the leading role of the United Nations and its Security Council in international affairs, opposing the use of the arguments of "humanitarian intervention" and "limited sovereignty" in attempts to sabotage the basic norms of international law. [This is a brash and bold barb directed straight at the USA!.... BM]

Don't be fooled by the seemingly bland and vague language in this treaty. Look at the code words. Let me translate this treaty into plain English: "We will band together to oppose what we refer to as US unilateralism, and will hold as our goal the removal of Western influence and power from if not all of, at least most of Eurasia. If the USA dares to defend Taiwan, a general nuclear strike will be mounted using the combined forces of the Chinese and Russian strategic rocket forces." And you can take that to the bank! Who is hating who back into existence?

Questions:

Given that Taiwan probably has a nuclear arsenal on the same scale as the Israeli arsenal (small, but you still don't want any of it delivered to your capital, be it by missile or by FedEx/UPS/DHL), is Russia really willing to back the ChiComs to the hilt, or will they back out when it's crunch time?

Also, how do you square this treaty's terms with China's claims to Siberia and the Russian Maritimes?

Russia agreed to stand beside the PRC===

You know that idea seems as very alien to me. Because I'm born in Sibiria then you may imagine I know mindset of those people. For russians to ally with asians aaginst europian power is unnatural.

In my opinon you overlook another interesting development in geopolitic. I gonna tell you what it is.

The foremost and unseen for 100 years converse between Russia and Europian powers like France, Germany and Italy and others. GB now is under very much of hesitation but they may ally too.
My guess we will see REAL allience here and very soon.
New Antanta. Sort of. Between United Europe (EU) and Russia.

Remember there was always some kind of allience between europian powers and Russia. At differnet times theer was different countries but aomething was there always.
The history of connections between Russia and Europe goes for centuries.
SO when Russia is now capitalistic and Soviet Union is dead and Europe unites then Europe turns to Russia as it was. As it was during rules of russian czars.
German, french, british influence in Russia was always strong. If you knew russian language then you may wonder that almost third of words of modern russian is borrowed words from those 3 languages. It is because those europians lived in Russia and teached russians.
The most famous emperatress of Russia was Ekaterina II born german.

SO you see your mistake? You talk about unimaginable allience with asian country which alien to Russia under all angles of view but overlook real business which goes on.

SO I think this allience will be soon and the combined power of THIS allience will be awesome. Imagine the industial power of EU with russian resources and military capabilities?

What China? WHo knows China then? WHo in Russia wants to ally with China? It is not real beleive me. It is just game nothing more. The real business of Russia is Europe.