Bushists Act As Uniters Not Dividers of US Military Rivals

Bush-Cheney Policies Help Revive Russo-Chinese Military Alliance

The implementation of Bush-Cheney Foreign Policy, 2001-2007, has succeeded in reviving strategic and tactical Russian-Chinese military ties for the first time since the Russo-Chinese Military Alliance split apart over three decades ago. US Foreign Policy from Nixon-Kissinger on tried to help make this split permanent, and to cultivate separate relationships between the US and China, and the US and Russia, on two separate tracks.

Now, thanks largely to Bush’s "Bring ‘em all on" approach to world diplomacy, and to the inept, misguided, and badly informed Bush-Cheney operators in the State Dept. (John Bolton & Co.), this military alliance has been revived. Through a series of strategic and tactical blunders, Bush-Cheney policies have helped revive a long-past Russo-Chinese alliance, now known as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which certainly is potentially not good news for the United States, in the short or the long term.

In fact, many analysts regard the new SCO Organization as a potential global challenge to NATO, which is now at least nominally in charge of our own military operations in Afghanistan.

PLA Troops Arrives in Russia for Joint Exercise

Member states of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), China, Russia, Tajikistan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan will be holding their first joint military exercise ‘Peace Mission 2007’ in August. The first train carrying PLA troops and equipment arrived at the China-Russia border on 27 July.

A total of 6,500 military personnel and 80 fixed-wing aircraft and helicopters will take part in the joint exercise, which will be held between 9th and 17th August in the Chebarkulsk training ground in the Privolzhsko-Uralskiy military district in Russia.

Russia will send 2,000 military personnel and 36 aircraft to participate the exercise, with an additional 2,700 personnel to provide logistic support. China will contribute 1,700 troops and 46 aircraft. Tajikistan and Kazakhstan will each send an airborne company, and Kyrgyzstan will send an airborne platoon. Uzbekistan will also send officers to take part in the exercise.

full article here

I had to look hard to find any detailed news or statements on this new SCO situation in Eurasia from "reliable" US sources, but I did finally manage to locate a fairly recent and relevant in-depth big-picture study, put out by a real specialist at the US National Defense University. It provides a lot of good background information.

The Russians and Chinese made some initial moves to work jointly back in 1996, but it wasn't until June 2001 that these efforts accelerated. Military relations began to develop more fully in 2005. Uzbekistan, which had become a part of Bush's "Coalition of the Willing" in 2001 after 9-11, was subsequently estranged, and now is an active partner in the new Russian-Chinese military alliance instead.

China, Russia and the Balance of Power in Central Asia
by Eugene B. Rumer, Senior Fellow at the Institute for National
Strategic Studies of the US National Defense University, Nov. 2006

--an article in PDF format you can download from here

Countries like India, Pakistan, and Iran have also already begun to establish permanent liaisons with the SCO. Some of them will have observers at the large-scale Russo-Chinese military exercises which start tomorrow. So, it might be really advisable if Secty. Rice considered rethinking the Bush policies which result in this kind of foreign policy fiasco, before things get any worse from the US perspective.

•  I Heard This News

  on the now once-again objective post-Blair BBC, and it seemed to be something that it's good for us here in the US to be aware of as well.

  I don't think I've heard much news about this on CNN, though I may somehow have missed it.

  For what it's worth, the old British Empire "Great Game" of international diplomacy and foreign intrigue was designed exactly to keep Russia from forming a major power bloc like this in Central Asia.

  The new GW Bush policies (or un-policies) seem to have brought about the geopolitical situation the British were concerned over, and the Russians hoped for, all the way back to Victorian times, as portrayed in Rudyard Kipling stories and the like.

  by Existentialist on Wed Aug 08, 2007 at 12:02:26 PM PDT

  •  accomplishing

    a return to the past without the aid of a "time machine" is the entire goal of this regime.  

    the whole empire thing really worked so well for the various British colonies after all. that is a snark, the indigenous populations suffered terribly and the founders of this nation chafed and rebelled against such colonial rule!

    there's so much we have to witness and understand because the world has gotten so much smaller since i was born in the dark ages (1950s) and, in my little corner of north texas, no one seems to care much, and certainly bush/cheney only care about their halliburton/exxon-mobil and other corporate cronies.  to hell with the rest of us peasants and our children is the bush/cheney motto!  

    so many pitfalls, and this regime is trying to push us into every darn one!

    by labwitchy on Wed Aug 08, 2007 at 01:13:16 PM PDT

    •  Seems Like Only A Few

      on this list find this topic to be of any importance.

      I do other kinds of work, albeit intellectual, so I don't have leisure to study geopolitical matters. I rely on the BBC for a lot of analysis. Since Blair's gone, the BBC has made an amazingly rapid recovery, and is once again up-front and objective.

      You probably already know this, but you can go to a BBC news page with the latest "print" news, and the radio tab up above gives you access to all of BBC radio. I'm not sure about TV access, since I work and can't afford to get addicted to TV programs.

      About a year ago, I heard on the BBC about the "BRIC" countries--Brazil, Russia, India, and China--which are projected to become the most important nations by the end of the 21st century. If the US pays attention, it could remain as important as now.

      I also learned via the BBC about Gorbachev's statement a week ago that he's disillusioned with the results of the "break-up" he helped create, since US foreign policy has focused on global dominance and not much else. He knows about the BRIC concept, but says he doesn't think BushCo has a clue as to the importance of this.

      BBC analysis also projects that in a few decades much of the major remaining great world oil and natural gas reserves will be the ones in Russia.

      Calculating folks here are focused on Middle East oil, and uncalculating folks are focused on the Bible-Holy-Land bit. Their mutual synergy seems to more of a problem than a solution.

      Speaking of the British Empire, my American grandmother went through India back around 1920, and told me that all the construction the British had done there looked to be intended to last for a century or more. The British surely miscalculated the future--but they were smart enough to extricate themselves from their empire in time.

      It still remains to be seen just what US calculations will bring us to. BushCo, as you say, seems to think the clever thing is to try to maintain power over the areas the British went away from.

      Few seem even to be aware of the SCO--not to speak of being concerned. As a young person in the 1960s, I knew people in the US Govt. who saw way down the road to the Sino-Soviet split a decade later, and were thinking about plans to cope as that developed
      --and those plans worked for Nixon-Kissinger.

      Later, under Bush I, the State Dept. worked with Gorbachev to let Germany be reunited as a centrist nation in Central Europe, and let the USSR dissolve without any war.

      But then Russia was left to disintegrate internally, creating animosity instead of friendship. China was regarded a source of the cheapest labor imaginable for US multinationals, and little else. And the Balkans were put back pretty much in their pre-1914 situation.

      There's still some time for the US to salvage the situation, but I'm afraid the only maps GWB & Company look at are the ones you find at the back of a high-class Bible, and oil resource maps.

      I guess I should focus more on my day job from now on, and hope the next generation may work all this out, realizing (or nor realizing) actual global priorities as best (or worst) it can. Instead of waiting until there's a huge global confrontation--which might result in all the Bible calamities they seem to groove on so much.

      by Existentialist on Thu Aug 09, 2007 at 03:39:36 AM PDT