The Chinese are moving into Russia's Far East and the changing demographics will one day endanger Russia's control of the region:
"Russia has 30 to 40 years to become an equal partner with China in Asia. ... If Russia doesn't, then China could start to have territorial pretensions," said Mikhail Shinkovskiy, director of the Institute of International Relations and Social Technologies at Vladivostok State University of Economics and Science.
Russia seized the Far East from China in the 1800s, back when Russian imperial ambitions were at their height and China was a weak country that could be pushed around. Now, the tables are turned. China's military is seeking to broaden its influence while Russian forces deteriorate to a shadow of their former Soviet might.
After years of hostility and a 1969 border war between China and the Soviet Union, Beijing and Moscow are now "strategic partners" who last year signed a treaty resolving disputes about how to draw their 2,700-mile-long frontier.
The Russians hope they are buying time by kowtowing to China in order to recover from the collapse of the Soviet Union. And if China and America get into a shooting war, from Russia's point of view, two more powerful nations just shoot each other up and Russia's relative power goes up. I'm sure Moscow hopes the Chinese hit Japan just in case, as long as they're fighting America.
The Russians best hope that they can use the decades ahead to beef up their Far East in order to repel the soft invasion they are experiencing; and they'd best hope that the Chinese don't suck Russia dry of any useful technology before then. Russia's strategy goes all to Hell if the Chinese decide that they have use for nothing but raw materials from Russia and that those resources really belong to China.
One thing I doubt is whether there will be any partnership involved when Russia recovers. Russia was once dominant and in time China resented the dominance, leading to a break. Now China is dominant and I doubt if Russia will accept junior status any longer than they have to. Will China want equality? I doubt it. Will Russia? Maybe. It depends on what kind of country Russia is when they regain their power footing.
This has a lesson for us as well, of course. While we should resist Chinese efforts to push their frontiers out into the Pacific, we must do all we can to keep such a containment policy from breaking out into hot war. In time, Russia will be a threat to China that China will not be able to ignore and China will find that it has a navy that it cannot maintain due to the need to build up their army and air force to confront Russia. China will have the classic problem of a land power trying to be both a land power and a sea power. In time, their sea power will atrophy.
The rise of India and a growing US-Indian alliance will also tend to draw off Chinese strength from confronting us but that's another story.
The recovery of Russia to balance China also means we must engage Russia to move them away from the autocracy that Putin seems determined to create, riding on high oil prices. Russia must not rely on oil exports for economic health, so we must encourage a free Russia whose economy grows outside the oil sector. If Russia does get strong enough to worry China, I want Russia to be appealing enough politically for the West to support. I want Russia to be democratic enough to recoil from alliance with a despotic China.
This assumes China remains a unified and despotic communist-run state, of course.
Still, the rise of China is neither guaranteed nor will it take place in a strategic vacuum. I've said it before and I'll say it again: I wouldn't trade places with China for all the tea in--well, you get the idea.
UPDATE: Arthur K. emails "The question is more IF Russia recovers. Their demographics stink" Good point. Russia is quite literally sick and depopulating. I guess I find it hard to believe that a Russia that recovers economically won't halt this demographic slide before it is too late. If they can't, I suppose the possibility of Russia retreating west of the Urals and ceasing to be a Pacific power can't be ruled out. Russia sold us Alaska when they figured they couldn't hold it. Will they sell bits of their Far East to Japan to keep it from China? Or to a unified Korea that I assume will one day exist? Just how much of Russia in Asia could Moscow hold if people don't want to live there? I mean without resorting to nukes?
