On paper China is now the dominant military power in Eurasia, a fact that Russia likes to downplay. Many Russians fear that the aggression China is demonstrating with India and everyone bordering the South China Sea will eventually be turned towards Russia.
Ya think? Oh, no, Russia is special. China would never think of trying to retake any of the Far East that Russia grabbed from China during China's period of weakness!
China is only pushing around other neighbors as China gains the military confidence to do so for other unrelated reasons that have nothing to do with target weakness.
I know, Russia has nukes. China wouldn't dare attack Russia. It's a lovely theory.
But China has nukes, too.
So how much of Russia would Moscow be willing to lose before using nukes and risking the rest of Russia to Chinese nuclear retaliation?
In the end, you can't really count on nukes to do anything but deter use of nukes against you or perhaps prevent national conquest. Russia really needs a stronger conventional force in their Far East.
I say this not from any fondness for the Russians who are behaving like--to put it mildly--
But I would not relish China having control of even Russia's Pacific coast up to the Amur River.
Japan would not be happy. Just as they are shifting their forces south to face China from their previous Cold War-era northern focus of confronting the Soviets, Chinese forces would stretch Japanese forces back north again.
And China would gain easy access to the Sea of Japan.
But perhaps the lingering brain activity will eventually lead the Russians to finally realize that NATO is not a threat to Russia. The EU (!) is not a threat to Russia. No, China is the only long-term foreign threat to Russia. Cope with that threat, the demographic spiral they are in, and corruption, and Russia will be better off than practicing how to invade Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.
