That Am , has been my question ever since I started following this international chess game - of 'all countries' trying to hang on to their own resources while other countries are just as determined to wrest control of other countries resources, by any means possible. It seems to me he is 'Damned if he does and 'Worse' if he doesn't '... I am sure glad He is him and I am me ...
The Kremlin plays the China card. But is it really going to shift strategic ties? Not likely.
By Frank Brown Newsweek International
Jan. 17 issue - In the suburbs of Vladivostok, they say darkly, you can't hear the frogs on a summer evening anymore. Why? Chinese immigrants ate them all. On the Russian side of the Amur River, people talk about the preponderance of boys among Chinese infants—and suggest that 35 million Chinese men will soon be looking north for Russian brides. China is a "demographic threat" to Russia, say nationalist politicians like Dmitry Rogozin, who's been known to mutter that a war might even be brewing.
Russia has long looked East with a trepidation bordering on the xenophobic. So what to make of recent events? After watching the West intervene in Ukraine on behalf of a presidential candidate keen to leave Moscow's orbit, Russia's Defense minister announced the first-ever joint military exercises with China. Then, after presiding over the near destruction of Yukos Oil, a stock widely held by Western investors, the Kremlin turned around and offered China's state oil company a 20 percent stake in a key Yukos asset. Last week the Russian Army dismantled tank redoubts on once contested border territory. Russia is ceding 130 square kilometers to China to end a sometimes bloody dispute dating back decades. "The big question is whether this is the Russians' just firing a shot across the West's bow, or whether this marks a real strategic shift," says Cliff Kupchan, vice president at the Nixon Center, a research institute in Washington.
On the face of it, there's good reason why Russia might indeed rethink its strategic relations. To the East, despite its fears, it sees enormous commercial opportunities in a rising China, with its booming export markets and demand for Russian oil and natural resources. To the West—natural-gas sales notwithstanding—it sees nothing but disappointment. Kremlin hard-liners believe they have "lost" neighboring Ukraine to a Western conspiracy designed to isolate Russia and strip it of regional influence. Relations with the United States and Europe have suffered over everything from Iraq to Chechnya. By contrast, China isn't about to give Russia any flak for rolling back democracy.
Top Russian officials are quick to downplay talk of a major realignment. The sudden flurry of new arrangements "does not mean the birth of some military-political alliance," says Deputy Foreign Minister Alexander Alexeyev. Yet time will tell. Apart from helping to stabilize world oil markets, the United States has been pressing Russia to keep refusing to sell top-shelf weapons to China, home to the world's largest army and heavily dependent on Russian arms (worth a record $5.7 billion last year). But now Washington is worried. This year's military exercises are widely expected to end in a Chinese shopping spree. Will the Chinese be offered for the first time a souped-up version of the SU-30 fighter jet, the kind the Indians get to buy? On another front, experts note, the next Yukos asset likely to be seized for nonpayment of taxes is Tomskneft, a Siberian oil and natural-gas operator well positioned to supply China if the Kremlin were to approve a pipeline. Once safely in government hands, will the Kremlin do just that, or even offer the Chinese a stake in the company?
The Kremlin's signals these days are anything but clear. Even as it cozies up to Beijing in some spheres, it's kept its distance in others. Case in point: the decision last week to build a new oil pipeline from Russia's Siberian fields to the Pacific Coast, for shipment primarily to Japan, rather than inland to China. "Beijing was very unhappy," says Keun-Wook Paik, an energy expert at the Royal Institute of International Affairs in London. As consolation, Russia oil majors are promising to nearly double rail shipments of oil to China this year to 60 million barrels.
What explains this step-forward, step-back dalliance? Classic balance-of-power politics, according to experts. "What we're seeing is an old Russian tactic: if the West doesn't accept us, we'll go East," says Dimitry Trenin of Moscow's Carnegie Center. Yet at the same time, the ex-KGB and intelligence types surrounding President Vladimir Putin—the now famous siloviki—are wary. "The siloviki are very much against providing energy to China," says Paik, for fear of building up an already formidable rival.
This has already created awkward contradictions. The Kremlin is looking to make Russia the world's leading oil and gas producer—with itself in control. It's merging the country's largest company, natural-gas giant Gazprom, with state-owned oil major Rosneft to create an international giant rivaling Saudi Arabia's Aramco in size. To this they will soon add the major assets of Yukos. (It's worth noting that, among other sins, former Yukos CEO Mikhail Khodorkovsky advocated the construction of a private oil pipeline to China.) Yet, the realization of this dream depends partly on China. A case in point is southern Siberia's immense Kovytka natural-gas field, which South Korean and Chinese energy firms are hoping to develop. An $18 billion exploration and financing plan is in place. But Gazprom, soon to be under the control of Kremlin hard-liners, won't proceed unless it has full control of the pipeline network serving the field. The result: a stalemate that could bring the whole project down. "I'm not sure the Chinese are going to wait around," says a Western energy analyst who advises Gazprom. "The guys at the top don't understand this."
When it comes to Russia's East, reason often gets clouded by emotion. This is the demographic threat that Rogozin and others refer to. Visit the border cities of Russia's Far East, and the fear is palpable. About 7.5 million people live in the swathe of Russia stretching from Vladivostok on the Pacific to the Mongolian border. In the Chinese provinces directly south, the population is 20 times that. It doesn't help when visiting Chinese tourists start talking about reclaiming Russian territory that was under China's control in the 19th century. "In every tour group, there is always one person who tells me, 'This was our land.' There's always one person who will make a toast, 'To our victory!' " says Yulia Shamlova, a tour guide in Vladivostok. Today, it's the vanished frogs. Tomorrow, many Russians secretly believe, it might be the whole of Russia's Far East. Not the sentiments on which to build a new strategic relationship.
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