China's internal structure is explosively unstable, consisting as it does of a crypto-statist overpowerful government in one part, a rapidly expanding entrepreneurial second part, and a miserably poor agrarian rural third part. The Politburo are riding the tiger; now that a couple of hundred million citizens have tasted the better life offered them by the prospect of even a modest version of entrepreneurial capitalism, the government quite literally DARE NOT take its continued development away. Equally, the Politburo haven't a clue what to do, long-term, with the 700-million-odd peasants, some of whom are beginning to demand similar opportunities. Where exactly the fault lines will occur, I would not attempt to say, but the explosion's schwerpunkt will be somewhere in the vicinity of the first major failure produced by the vaunted ''One China, two systems'' policy.
The Russians, love them or hate them, are between the devil and the deep blue sea. The nation is going nowhere further into the ''Core'', especially economically, until consistent rules of law and private property are developed and implemented. Will this occur? Possibly enough, but probably not soon enough, for Russia is sitting on half a dozen ticking internal bombs. The muslim problem is just the highest profile one at this time, but there are numerous others. For example, it's entirely unclear how long the narod will tolerate a declining standard of living simultaneously while receiving more and more information about prosperity in other nations. The ancient Russian saying about relieving the plight of the peasants is these days back with a vengeance and a modernised flavour: ''G-d is too high up, and Putin is too far away.''
Additionally, Siberia is FAPP indefensible in its entirety, and when (not if) some sufficiently greedy nation makes an attempt upon its vast resources, Russia will have a huge dilemma: defend its territory and watch some huge fraction of its not-exactly-robust economy unravel in the process, and possibly even the nation itself, or submit to a de facto partition. And all this business is just the ''warm-up'' to nastier problems still.
It's all a dog's dinner, and any man's view of and hopes for the sequel can be as correct or as incorrect as any other man's, but the notion that these nations can be tidily treated as exactly two discrete sub-components of this academically pristine ''Core/Gap'' dichotomy is simply laughable.
A point he does not gloss over in his other works.
Not knowing exactly what FAPP means, I would ask who is going to take Siberia away from Russia?
Thanks, SAJ, interesting analysis.
Funny, that you find him such a lightweight. Rumsfled listens to him and he serves as Assistant for Strategic Futures, Office of Force Transformation (OFT), Office of the Secretary of Defense, which is the group that Rumsfeld assigned to figure out to tear the Pentagon out of the cold war and move it into the 21st century.
Thr US shoudl offer to a 99 year lease for Siberia.
Thera are already increasing links between the people of Alaska and the Russians in Siberia.