Posted on 04/16/2011 2:28:44 PM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
BOAO, China : Russian President Dmitry Medvedev said on Friday that his country's future was inextricably linked to that of Asia, pushing the idea of a new multi-polar world order backed by the top emerging powers.
Medvedev told a forum of past and present leaders in southern China that Moscow had no choice but to strengthen and develop its relations with countries across the region, and actively participate in regional groupings.
"Russia's future, the modernisation of our Siberia and the Far East are inseparably connected with the Asia-Pacific region," the Russian president told delegates at the gathering in Boao on Hainan island.
The forum has brought together leaders in government, business and academia from Asia and other continents every year since 2001 to discuss pressing issues in the region and the rest of the world.
It follows hot on the heels of a BRICS summit that saw Medvedev hold talks with his Chinese, Brazilian and South African counterparts Hu Jintao, Dilma Rousseff and Jacob Zuma, and Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
Analysts say the BRICS grouping of the world's major emerging economies seeks to promote itself as a counterweight to established Western powers and raise the global influence of developing nations.
Medvedev said the summit on Thursday had confirmed that its participants seek "a new multi-polar world architecture" which takes into account "the dynamic emergence of new centres of economic and political influence".
"It is obvious for us that a confident social and economic development of the countries of the Asia-Pacific region is impossible without the creation of an open, transparent and equal architecture of security and cooperation," he said.
An "equal architecture of security" is the Kremlin's diplomatic language for a world free of US dominance, analysts say.
Russia has in recent years sought to align itself more closely with China as it seeks to unlock new energy markets in Asia. This is Medvedev's third visit to the country since becoming president in 2008.
The president noted that Russia and China had already put forward a joint initiative to strengthen security and cooperation in Asia when he met Hu for talks in Beijing last September.
He said the principle of "equal and indivisible security" could become a "serious unifying idea" for the Asia-Pacific region.
If I were China, I would look escantz at this comment. Russia does not take cohorts, it conquers. That may make the Chicoms think twice about their western frontier again.
Tsar Ivan the Great rejected the Tartar (Mongol) yoke in 1480. I thought Putin has an appreciation of Russian history.
Russia is the whitest country on the planet right now, and I can safely tell you that any Russian politician who tries to change that will swiftly become gone.
What is true is that the Russians would like a significant fraction of the empire back - and giving up the Far East to Chinese immigration is not part of doing that.
We got ourselves hitched real good to China, too............
We should compete for Vietnam.
That would be somewhat true in the days of USSR because an average citizen didn't see the whole balance book (which republics are producers and which are consumers.) But dissolution of the USSR placed all these states into their personal Petri dishes, for all to see who is who. And the results are sad. Baltic states flaunt their Nazi past. Black Sea states returned to wars. Most of Middle Asian states resurrected Islam and went as far as possible from sanity. Cults of personality abound.
Now an average person can look at all that and say "no, thanks!" to any suggestions of taking those talibanized entities back into the union. It is plain obvious that these new members will be only asking for money and flooding Russia with their unemployed (and sometimes unemployable) people.
This is doubly so now because the old leaders of the USSR are gone. The new leaders (Putin particularly) are pragmatists, and they won't do anything stupid like inviting Uzbekistan back into the fold.
Besides, Russia already has more land that it knows what to do with. There isn't enough people in the country to develop the territory. That's where certain alliances with stable and educated countries like China and India may be of use.
With regard to Medvedev proclaiming that the future of Russia is with Asia ... look at Europe and see for yourself what it is. Europe is busy making sure that it has no future by killing jobs and bringing the fifth column in. China or India, on the other hand, have no illusions about Muslims - they approach the subject from a practical point of view, not from a euro-liberal multiculturalism.
But of course this statement will also give a hint to proud Europeans that they are not the only game in town.
There are alot more white people in the USA than there are in Russia.
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