To be added or removed from this list, please FReepmail me!!!
Posted on 08/06/2007 8:12:25 PM PDT by JACKRUSSELL
Russian and Chinese troops are joining forces this week in the first military exercises by an international organisation that is regarded in some quarters as a potential rival to Nato.
Thousands of soldiers and 500 combat vehicles will take part in “Peace Mission 2007”, organised by the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) in the Chelyabinsk region of Russia. Russian officials have also proposed an alliance between the SCO and a body representing most of the former Soviet republics.
Scores of Russian and Chinese aircraft begin joint exercises tomorrow before a week of military manoeuvres from Thursday that will include Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. At least 6,500 troops are involved in what is described as an antiterror exercise.
Colonel-General Vladimir Moltenskoi, the deputy commander of Russian ground forces, said: “The exercise will involve practically all SCO members for the first time in its history.”
Staff officers from Uzbekistan, the sixth SCO member, will also attend in what is being regarded as a major extension of the organisation’s capabilities. The SCO was founded as a nonmilitary alliance in 2001 to combat drugs and weapons smuggling as well as terrorism and separatism in the region. It has since developed a role in regional trade and is increasingly regarded by Moscow and Beijing as a counterweight to US global influence.
The secretary-general of the Collective Security Treaty Organisation (CSTO) called last week for joint military exercises with the SCO. Nikolai Bordyuzha said that the body representing Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan should work with the SCO to guarantee security across the region. Mr Bordyuzha has already announced a CSTO plan to create a large military force capable of assisting a member state in the event of an attack. A rapid-reaction force is already based in Central Asia and there are plans for a common air defence system covering most of the former Soviet Union.
Leaders of SCO member states will meet in Bishkek, the Kyrgyz capital, next week for their annual summit. Turkmenistan will also attend for the first time, while Mongolia, Iran, India and Pakistan have observer status.
Igor Ivanov, the head of Russian security, played down concerns in May that the SCO was evolving into a military alliance to counter the expansion of Nato into Asia as part of the War on Terror. But MPs on the Foreign Affairs Select Committee expressed fears last year that the West could be on a collision course in the struggle for energy resources with “an authoritarian bloc opposed to democracy” that was based on an alliance between China and Russia.
A newly assertive Russia, flush with oil and gas revenues, is moving rapidly to increase its military capability amid tensions with the West over missile defence and Nato expansion. Almost £100 billion has been set aside for rearmament over the next eight years.
Part of the developing 200 million man army from the east predicted for the end-times in the book of Revelation?
China and Russia (old USSR) have been cooperating militarily for a long time... no surprise here.
But it sure does make some other moves in the world look really interesting...
Russia,China Peace mission???? OH Brother!
The rest of the CIS is also involved, with Belarus sending units to the exercise.
To be added or removed from this list, please FReepmail me!!!
Venezuela is communist, Cuba is STILL communist, and Nicaragua returned to Communism. That is not good, given the context of these exercises in the “Former” Soviet Union.
“A newly assertive Russia, flush with oil and gas revenues”
I’m sure I could find posts from less then ten years ago from freepers telling me how Russia has a rusted war machine and no gas or oil to get anywhere.
Thanks to Thunder90 for this ping.
It’s funny how KGB dolt Putin thinks Russia will even exist in a very few years. Chinese wetbacks are showing up in the soviet areas that border China. Muslims populations are growing. And the average lifespan of Russian men is down to 58 yrs.
Ignore Russia, China and the terrorists at your own peril. Stranger bedmates could probably be found.
Rival to NATO? Hell, NATO has been a joke for thirty years. It is a toothless anachronism.
Uh, 1,800 rpm of depleted uranium is toothless?
ping
The Single Clenched Fist.
Many Western lefty idiots have long imagined that the 4th Reich would arise from Western corporations, or “the Bushies” .... wrong, very wrong. The 4th Reich now exists, and is a cabal of anti Western fiends, and their colonies here in the Western Hemisphere (Hugo, Fidel, Raul, etc). Face it or deny it, it will not go away. It will only grow stronger.
Interestingly, the secular Trotskyoid philospher, Hannah Arendt, also warned of what would occur if the Western Allies failed to deal with totalitarianism properly. As everyone knows, the failure to eradicate it completely during the late 1940s (when we could have, given our nuclear advantage at the time) has now resulted in a scenario whereby radical groups (non state sponsored Islamonazis) and uncivilized anti Western fiendish states (the SCO and their cohorts) pine for the destruction of the West, and, world conquest. Arendt and the Bible are in agreement.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.