When Russia opens a "billion-dollar bridge" on its Pacific coast this summer, Vladimir Putin can expect an enthusiastic audience among the 5,000 islanders whom it will connect to the mainland, at an eye-popping cost per head.
But the president will be looking, too, for attention from a few miles further off, in China, whose rise as a trading and diplomatic partner but also as a potential rival for control of thinly populated Siberia's resources has brought a new focus in Moscow on both business and military investment in the far east.
Putin, who meets Chinese leaders in Beijing on Tuesday as he settles back into his role in the Kremlin, has poured money into the Vladivostok area since it was chosen five years ago to host this September's Asia-Pacific APEC summit.
The pivot is surely needed, since China is already there and looms over Russia's sparsely populated and ill-defended Far East:
The worry in Moscow, which forged an imperial dominion over sparsely populated Siberia in the 19th century, is that China's influence is now challenging Russian hegemony in its own lands.
"(Russia has) a neighbor that is becoming more and more powerful economically and its eastern territory is becoming increasingly focused on that powerhouse next door," said Trenin.
"Literally, they are becoming an appendage to China's growing industry."
Russia will sign a deal to move Russian natural gas south. I think that is a mistake. Making China dependent on Russian sources of energy give China an incentive to plan military moves to ensure delivery. It would be far better to build an incentive for Japan to defend their own energy imports from Siberia. And as the article I've quoted states, Russia is in no position to defend their Far East:
"Russia can talk about a strategic partnership with China but they will never be actual allies because China is too much of a potential threat to Russia," a Western diplomat said. "Russia cannot avoid being concerned about China."
Yet Putin is looking for more military cooperation with China:
"We assign an important role to the joint initiative on strengthening security in the Asia-Pacific region and in this context we will maintain the relationship between our militaries," Putin said in an earlier statement.
I'm certainly in favor of Russia shifting their defense efforts to their own Far East. And I'm eager for China to look for energy in the interior of Asia to divert China's attention from Taiwan and our fleet beyond it--but not in Russia. I don't want to make a Russian-Chinese war more likely. I'd rather they balanced each other and kept each other occupied.
We shall see if Russia wants to be a junior partner to China or if Russia just wants to pretend until their own pivot to the Pacific gives them the military means to hold off China. I suspect the latter. But you never know. Russia might never build up the military means to hold off China, after all.
