Putin raises stakes in Asia

LONDON -- In October, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Hu Jintao stood together in the State Guest House in Beijing while their respective foreign secretaries signed an historic agreement defining the two countries' common 4,374-km border for the first time. The border was an issue over which several battles had been fought in the past.

It took a while to close the deal because of disagreement over a few islands in the Amur, Ussuri and Argun rivers, which make up China's northwest border with Russia.

Nobody spoiled the party by pointing out that this border is between Inner (Chinese) and Outer (Russian) Manchuria, both of which belonged to China until Russia forced a couple of unequal treaties on the weak Qing emperor in 1858 and 1860. In fact, these are the last treaties of China's "Hundred Years of Humiliation" that have not been canceled.

The two leaders characterized the signing as "an important contribution to the security and stability of the Asia-Pacific region and the world at large." But I'm sure nothing was further from Putin's mind than the claim to the few sandy islands he gave up. His real concern was how to consolidate Russia's influence in East Asia at a time when its base in East Europe is crumbling, and how to balance the United States' growing presence in the Caucasus and Central Asian republics.

The fact is that Russia is increasingly dependent on East Asia, China in particular, for the well-being of its economy. With the collapse of its economy, Russia's military-industrial complex would be in real trouble if it were not for the fact that the armaments industry and its suppliers have become dependent on arms sales to Beijing. This dependence has grown to the point that Russia and China will engage in extensive war games in China later this year.

Russia is treating these games largely as an exhibition of products it could sell to Beijing. The Russian military has overcome political resistance in Moscow to putting on the show. Up for sale are state-of-the-art strategic bombers, the TU22M3 and TU95. Destroyers, an aircraft carrier and other ships to help China found a blue-water Pacific fleet, and missiles designed to attack U.S. aircraft carriers that might threaten the new Chinese Navy, have all been supplied or promised.

In southeast Russia, Russian dependence on China is growing so fast that Putin is trying to slow it down. With the domestic economy collapsing and Russians leaving the area as fast as they can get out, the Chinese are moving in.

Exports of Chinese consumer goods to the region are booming as is cross-border Chinese investment in restaurants, hotels and the exploitation of natural resources -- sometimes of dubious legality, as in the deforestation that is going on and the supply of "scrap" metals from Russian state-owned enterprises.

Putin has slapped tariffs of 200 to 300 percent on Chinese exports to Russia and is preventing local governments from building new cross-border bridges and trade zones. He has also refused a Chinese request to lease two ports north of Vladivostok. He was too late to stop the completion of the railway from Vladivostok to Hunchun, the Chinese town where the Russian, North Korean and Chinese borders meet. The trade now based on that railway, and a new highway on the Chinese side, is now mushrooming.

When Putin broke the agreement that the Russian oil company Yukos had made with the Chinese to build an oil pipeline from Siberia to Daqing in China's Heilongjiang province, it seemed like a slap in the face of the Chinese. The sense of outrage grew when Russia announced a deal with Japan to route the pipeline to Nakkhoda, a port north of Vladivostok on the Sea of Japan.

This was, however, a masterstroke for Putin. He gained favor with the Japanese, and billions of dollars to help build the pipeline -- dollars that the Chinese had not offered. After the deal with the Japanese was signed, he then pointed out that it would be easy to build a short spur pipeline into China from the new long-distance line. He also promised to triple the delivery of oil by rail to China from 10 million tons a year to 30 million tons.

Putin has also offered to talk about selling the Chinese 20 percent of Yuganskneftgas, which had been the main production unit of Gazprom. Another Russian proposal on the table is to help build a pipeline from Kazakstan's oil fields into China and to share with China access to the Kazaks' Kurmangazy oil field. The Chinese could finish up better off for oil than they had been with the Yukos deal -- and the Japanese are happy too.

Just to complete the picture, the Russians sent Alexei Miller, chairman of Gazprom, the world's largest gas company, to North Korea last week to discuss the joint exploitation of gas and oil fields there, and pipeline routes to supply Russian gas to both North and South Korea.

So everyone in East Asia is happy with the Russians at the moment, except Taiwan. Putin stressed in Beijing that Russia does not favor independence for Taiwan, recognizes it as an inalienable part of China, and will prevent its joining all international agencies, including the United Nations. He did not mention U.S. sales of arms to Taiwan, but then he wouldn't, would he? If they stopped, China might not need to buy arms from Russia.

As usual Golitsyn anticipated and predicted this turn of events. Any person who thinks Russia/Soviets and Red China are not in league with each other is fooling themselves--TTS

Taken from Anatoly Golistyn’s book “Perestroika Deception”, 1995 (pp. 149-151)

Memorandum to the CIA: March 26, 1992

GEOPOLITICAL STRATEGIES OF RUSSIA, THE ‘COMMONWEALTH OF INDEPENDENT STATES’ AND CHINA…

In an earlier Memorandum to the CIA this analyst explained the common Sino-Soviet strategy of convergence with the West and the intended exploitation for the purposes of this strategy of the new openings arising from the ‘reformed’ political structure of the former USSR and the emergence of the alleged ‘democrats’, ‘non-Communists’ and ‘independents’ who are running it.

The present assessment show how, because of Western ignorance of and confusion about the strategy underlying ‘perestroika’ and because of Western political and economic support for the so-called reform of the Soviet system, the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) has been successfully installed and has begun to carry out concrete new geopolitical strategies within the framework of the long-standing overall Communist strategy of convergence.

These strategies are still being guided and coordinated by the same Soviet strategists who have simply shifted away from the use of the old worn-out ideology and the familiar but obsolete patterns, to the exploitation of geopolitical factors and of the new potentialities of the ‘reformed’ Communist system. The common feature of these geopolitical strategies is the manipulation and use of the ‘democratic’ and ‘independent’ images which the change in form from the USSR to the CIS and its individual members has provided so abundantly and the nature of which the West has, so far, failed to comprehend.

The following upgraded strategies may be distinguished:

THE FIRST STRATEGY involves the CIS and Russia in particular dealing directly with longstanding American allies like Germany and Japan and causing their allegiance to be shifted away from the United States towards economic and political alliance with the CIS and especially with Russia.

To this end Russia is exploiting American economic rivalry with Germany and Japan, together with the large-scale involvement of Germany and Japan in economic cooperation with Russia and the offer to them of lucrative market and investment opportunities in Russia. China can be expected to join in this campaign to steal away old American allies by concentrating on offering the Japanese various investment opportunities in China.

A SECOND UPGRADED STRATEGY involves the use of the new ‘independent’ Muslim states in the CIS to establish and develop economic and political cooperation with the fundamentalists in Iran and elsewhere in the Muslim world.

According to this assessment the much-advertised feud between the Armenians and the Azerbaijanis of Turkish descent in Nagorno-Karabakh may be a tactical ploy to involve Turkey, Iran and other Muslim countries in support of eventual alliance with Azerbaijan and other Central Asian Muslim states in the CIS. This strategy takes into account the growing power of the fundamentalists and the possibility of their gaining control over substantial oil reserves.

A primary objective of the strategy here is to achieve a partnership with the fundamentalists in Iran and Algeria and to replace the present American-Oriented rulers of Saudi Arabia with fundamentalists. The opening in Saudi Arabia of a Russian Embassy and the probable opening of Embassies by Muslim states of the CIS (read: Russian puppet governments) should be seen, not only as an attempt to extract a few extra Saudi Billions, but as part of an offensive to bring about a political reorientation in that country.

Chinese Muslims can also be expected to play an active role in promoting alliances with the fundamentalists. The supply of missiles to Iran by the Chinese should be looked at in the context of this strategy.

THE THIRD STRATEGY is to facilitate a shift of the emerging regime in South Africa from the Western sphere of influence towards close economic and political cooperation and alliance with the CIS using for this purpose old friendships with the leaders of the African National Congress and the South African Communist Party with which it is effectively merged. One can expect that the offensive to facilitate such a partnership will become more active and more visible than ever, after the ‘reforms’ in the CIS and South Africa have stabilized.

THE FOURTH STRATEGY is that of using and manipulating the changes in the former Soviet Union to bring about, in the longer run, radical changes in relations between the United States and Israel, in the political power structure in Israel itself, in Israel’s position in the Middle East and in world opinion towards Israel.

The fact that the new leaders in Russia have promised the withdrawal of Soviet troops from Germany, the Baltic countries and Poland, and that they are insisting on a seven-year term for the strategic arms reduction treaty being negotiated with the United States, are indications that the Russian strategists have their own timetable. This is not based on what is going to occur in the CIS according to the optimistic expectations of Western observers, but rather upon the Soviet estimate of the time needed for the strategies described above to take effect. The possibility that the United States will lose valuable allies during this period is not something new. There is nothing permanent in international relations. The Americans experienced this not so long ago when they “suddenly” lost Iran.

The vulnerability of the United States arises from the fact that its basic premises, assumptions and perceptions about the present and future Russia and the CIS are wrong. Where the United States sees golden opportunities, it is in reality facing traps set for it by the Soviet long-range strategists. The impact on the United States of the successful execution of these strategies would be devastating.

The loss of old allies and the loss of oil reserves, following the equally catastrophic loss of South Africa, would result in the re-emergence of the CIS and China as stronger adversaries, and in an ‘irreversible’ change in the balance of world power in their favor. The United States would be weakened and divided and the pressure for the impetus towards convergence of the CIS and China with the United States on Sino-Russian terms would be intensified.

Consider the following. The PRC is currently engaged in a massive upgrading and expansion of her superhighway and rail systems. The main foci of these effort are a general NW-SE corridor meant to tie together the lowlands north and west of the Tien Shan with central China and another one, oriented N-S, along the general trend of the upper Mekong then pointed straight down into SE Asia (and eventually, the Strait of Malacca, perhaps today's most critical shipping chokepoint, not to mention the oil around that area). When it's all finished, you'll basically have an ability in place to move men and materiel from the areas just East of the Urals straight down into SE Asia. It is interesting to note that the one thing the Japanese lacked, in their pursuit of the "Greater East Asia Coprosperity Sphere" was a series of overland routes with which to conduct blitzkreig. Blitzkreig from Siberia and the PRC toward the south would be a piece of cake, against the pathetic capabilities of SE Asian militaries. None of them have even considered it, and they instead have visions of wealth, and container shipments going along the roads and rails. They either are in denial about, or clueless about, the things that would happen with tanks and TELs moving rapidly southbound on the roads and rails. Interstingly, Gen. Ivashov of the "Institute of Study of Geopolitical Problems" made a comment, in 2002, to the effect that there are "powerful developments in SE Asia." Very interesting.

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