China, Russia See Golden Opportunity to Strengthen and Expand Axis of Instability

During the cold war, the USSR moved far and wide over the globe to promote insurrection, terrorism, and general instability. When the USSR collapsed due to domestic dissatisfaction, corruption, and non-viability of its centralised economic system, Russian global de-stabilisation efforts were temporarily de-funded. Peace began to break out all over the world, and pundits predicted "the end of history," with permanent global peace and democracy.

But when former KGB operator Vladimir Putin reached the peak of power in Russia, seized Russia's huge private energy assets for his own to control, and eliminated or neutralised all meaningful rivals, the global Russian trouble machine was back in business. There was but one huge problem with Putin's global plans for mischief-making: the Russian population has been shrinking dramatically for decades due to high death rates and low birth rates. Putin understands that a huge, rich Russia empty of people is in no position to be a long-term hegemon. If Putin were to challenge the combined economic might of the west and the military might of the US, he has to have a credible economic, strategic, technological, and manpower threat.

Where could the Russian tyrant find such a partner, willing to join him in creating instability and mayhem around the world in order to de-stabilise western hegemony? Sometimes the answer is as close as your own backyard.

Russian media reports on the meeting in the Peruvian capital quoted Hu saying the two must work together against "the most deep and serious changes since the Cold War."

Meeting on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, Medvedev told Hu the current world problems should not inhibit both sides from "discussing fully fledged cooperative, strategic relations in all their fullness," Russian media reported.

Russia and China, once bitter Cold War foes, have been developing increasingly close relations, seen by many as a potential check on US power. _SpaceWar

The economic might of the current world hegemon--the United States--is almost four times larger than China's and eight times larger than Russia's. The US military advantage is even larger, other than in strategic nuclear forces. Russia's nuclear forces are still a formidable threat. So, combining Russian nuclear forces and military production, Russia's energy wealth, China's technological infrastructure, China's economic surplus, and China's population surplus--you have a powerful alliance to make war or mischief.

Neither China nor Russia want to trigger war with the US, at a time when the US enjoys many strategic and tactical advantages. But if the two nations can chip away at the US--both directly and using proxies--the balance of power can shift. The KGB developed the art of sponsoring terrorism and instability in the name of international revolution, throughout most of the 20th century. Always, the US stood in the way of truly massive gains in Soviet influence.

Now, with the election of Obama, Russia and a Taiwan-hungry China see a golden opportunity to expand their influence. Obama has pledged to reduce the US military force, to shrink the "American Empire." Obama intends to perform a radical reduction on the US nuclear forces, and to shift most defensive spending to domestic re-distributive purposes such as mandated socialised health care.

The new US President almost certainly has the best of intentions for the future of America and the American people. He is simply far out of his depth when faced with such powerful and unscrupulous opponents as the leaders of Communist China and Putin's Russia.

Now--while all eyes are turned toward the international financial crisis and the impending inauguration of a thoroughly green and weak US President--is the time for the Axis of Instability to act across the globe. These partners in destabilisation do not need to trust each other very far. Each understands quite well what motivates the other--power and hegemony. Until now, the US has been the greatest obstacle. With the election of Obama, the obstacle appears surmountable.

Deep Sea Frontier--Extreme Challenge

Russia has presented a challenge to the rest of the world: "let us have the Arctic, or you'll be sorry!"

On August 2, 2007, Russia dropped a titanium capsule bearing its flag onto the Arctic floor, highlighting its bid for a chunk of seabed property thought to contain billions of dollars in untapped energy. The move snagged media headlines as other nations—including the US, Canada, Denmark, and Norway—sped north to make competing claims.

Never before has the world's attention been so fixed on the deep ocean. Inflated oil, mineral, and gas prices, coupled with collapsing global fisheries, are pushing industries into remote seas once too expensive to tap...At a time when still so little is known about the ocean's very nature, it has suddenly become a place of extraordinary geopolitical, economic, and scientific value....For the US, the financial stakes are huge. With its wide continental margins, it stands to gain economic control over additional territory larger than the 48 states combined, with an estimated value of $1.3 trillion in minerals, oil, and fish....

...Deep-sea mining is a much newer industry, but has the potential to balloon as oceanographers discover more and more mineral deposits on the vast ocean floor. In 2006, the world's first two deep-sea mining companies—Nautilus Minerals of Canada and Neptune Minerals of England—both launched operations. This year, India announced a $100 million-per-year initiative to probe farther into its own cobalt- and manganese-rich waters. The hotspots are ocean floor geysers known as hydrothermal vents, where mineral-rich water bubbles up from within the Earth's crust, accumulating over time into huge chimney-like stacks of gold, silver, copper, manganese, lead, and zinc.

...though it covers 70 percent of the planet's surface, much of the ocean remains unstudied. Fewer than 5 percent of the estimated 10 million organisms that inhabit its depths have been identified. Maps of Mars are roughly 250 times better than maps of the ocean floor. "There are just a huge amount of unknowns," says John Orcutt, a geophysicist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography....Geologists mapping the contours of the ocean floor for territorial claims in the Arctic, for example, have provided some of the first pictures of this remote polar terrain. The advent of deep-sea mining has spurred a rush in studies of hydrothermal vents. The future of the oceans will be determined by precisely how this information is used, and whose interests take precedence in the nexus of industry, politics, science, and law.

Seed

Conditions in the deep sea are some of the most difficult anywhere on or inside the planet. As humans move to more thoroughly explore and exploit the riches of the deep ocean, they will better learn how to adapt to the many hazards.


Russia is a huge country, geographically, with a rapidly shrinking population. Putin simply lacks the manpower to back up the large grab for seafloor he is attempting. Still, he intends to make himself the greatest tsar of them all, apparently. He is too foolish and full of ambition to understand that Russia would be much richer in every way by participating in an ethical global marketplace, than by trying to be the bluffest bully and blusterer on the globe.

Russian women are intelligent. They can look around and see the sorry state of Russian men today. Dead before sixty of alcoholic cirrhosis, likely as not. Not much to base a future upon.

By basing his power upon nationalised oil and natural gas, Putin becomes more like the Persian Gulf oil royalty and mad mullahs of Tehran. The Russian army is based upon poorly trained, much abused and demoralised conscripts. The technological infrastructure of Russia's military--other than the land-based nuclear force--is aging and badly maintained.

Russia faces a serious challenge from China over much of Eastern Siberia within the next 20 years. Putin can barely hold what he has, yet he is making a play for much more.

Small Nuclear

Brian Wang writes about recent trends in small nuclear reactors. Small fission reactors in the 100 kw to 100 Mw range make it possible for large installations and smaller communities to make their own baseload power, independent of the energy grid or weather patterns. Small reactors are also appropriate for shipboard energy, for water desalination in remote, arid coastal locations, and for combined electricity and heat production--which would come in very handy in arctic or antarctic conditions (not to mention during a little or big ice age or on Mars).

The 200 kilowatt Toshiba designed reactor is engineered to be fail-safe and totally automatic and will not overheat. Unlike traditional nuclear reactors the new micro reactor uses no control rods to initiate the reaction. The new revolutionary technology uses reservoirs of liquid lithium-6, an isotope that is effective at absorbing neutrons. The Lithium-6 reservoirs are connected to a vertical tube that fits into the reactor core. The whole whole process is self sustaining and can last for up to 40 years, producing electricity for only 5 cents per kilowatt hour, about half the cost of grid energy.

Toshiba expects to install the first reactor in Japan in 2008 and to begin marketing the new system in Europe and America in 2009.

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The goal is to produce safe, limited supervision nuclear reactors of the appropriate size for a wide range of uses. These reactors would be built to reliably provide a specified level of power for a specific period of time, before needing service.

Some small reactors are conceived for areas away from transmission grids and with small loads, others are designed to operate in clusters in competition with large units. The cost of electricity from a 50 MWe unit is estimated by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) as 5.4 to 10.7 cents/kWh (compared with charges in Alaska and Hawaii from 5.9 to 36.0 c/kWh).

US Congress is now funding research on both small modular nuclear power plants (assembled on site from factory-produced modules) and advanced gas-cooled designs (which are modular in the sense that up to ten or more units are progressively built to comprise a major power station). A US DOE report in 2001 considered nine designs which could possibly be deployed by 2010.

Already operating in a remote corner of Siberia are four small units at the Bilibino co-generation plant. These four 62 MWt (thermal) units are an unusual graphite-moderated boiling water reactor (BWR) design with water/steam channels through the moderator. They produce steam for district heating and 11 MWe (net) electricity each. They have performed well since 1976, much more cheaply than fossil fuel alternatives in the Arctic region.

Encyclopedia of Earth
Read more at Advanced Nano.

Small reactors without on-site refuelling should have the following essential features [1]:

1. • Capability to operate without refuelling for a reasonably long period consistent with the plant economics and energy security;
2. • Minimum inventory of fresh and spent fuel being stored at the site outside the reactor during its service life;
3. • Enhanced level of safety, consistent with the scale of global deployment of such
4. reactors, through wider implementation of inherent and passive safety features and systems;
5. • Economic competitiveness for anticipated market conditions and applications;
6. • Difficult unauthorized access to fuel during the whole period of its presence at the site and during transportation, and design provisions to facilitate the implementation of safeguards;
7. • The capability to achieve higher manufacturing quality through factory mass
8. production, design standardization and common basis for design certification.

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There are many disturbing trends observable in the modern world that should serve as fair warning for forward thinking groups and individuals. The concurrent rise of religious and ideological fundamentalism--both proclaiming that the ends justify the means, no matter what--and the rapid empowerment of individuals of near-average intelligence in the areas of nanotechnology, synthetic biology, autonomous vehicles, explosives technology, genetic modification, sabotage of information and communications systems, biowarfare agents, etc etc, all suggest that the massively interconnected world which we now enjoy may soon be subject to segmentation.

I suggest keeping your eyes open as much as possible.

The Secret Struggle for Siberia--The Frozen Treasure

Russia has become a major player in the international energy market. Vladimir Putin's power play--a governmental takeover of the Russian fossil fuels industry--appears to have paid off. A recent gold strike in Eastern Siberia merely adds to the huge underground wealth present in Siberia. Siberia is a huge mineral treasure trove for whoever can harvest its riches. But will that be Russia?

According to Russian calculations, Siberia holds just under 80 percent of Russia's oil resources, about 85 percent of its natural gas, 80 percent of its coal, similar amounts of precious metals and diamonds, and a little over 40 percent of the nation's timber resources. As a result of this rich base, and its exploitation, Siberia is in many respects what geographer David Hooson would call Russia's "effective national territory," or its economic heartland—the region that produces a surplus relative to the size of its population and that essentially supports the rest of the country.

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On the surface, Russia's economy appears to be booming. In fact, Putin was able to turn that popular belief into a recent election victory (with a little help from his friends, naturlich). But there are ominous cracks in the facade of a resurgent neo-Imperial Russia.

The Far East constitutes 30 percent of Russia’s total territory, but has less than 5 percent of its population. It has substantial natural resources which could stimulate economic activity and employment, but investors are becoming increasingly reluctant to commit themselves since there is almost no one left to employ there.....we are brought to the conclusion that Russia could eventually have a trade deficit, even with all the natural resources she has in play, and at the rate we are going this point may not be too far away. What we need to bear in mind is that while global oil prices may drop back slightly ..., they are unlikely to continue to rise at the same pace as they have been ...and so since Russian oil capacity is, at best, more-or-less constant ..., Russia cannot continue to rely so heavily on oil exports for continuing growth ...

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China has historical claim to a large part of Eastern Siberia. China's voracious appetite for resources to sustain its exuberant growth rate will soon bring it into conflict with its neighbor to the north.

“With a history of conflict along a 2,600 mile border, with ethnic minorities sprawling across it, with a mineral-rich and sparsely populated Siberia facing China’s teeming millions” (Waltz, 2000b: 37-38). Historically, China has never been quite content with Russian expansion towards it boarders and already now massive Chinese immigration into Russia is taking place. Already in the 1990s, Russian Defence Minister Grachev therefore noted that, “the Chinese are in the process of making a peaceful conquest of the Russia Far East” (quoted from Huntington, 1996: 243).

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The long Sino-Russian border has had an uneasy history, especially over the past 100-150 years. Now most Russians want out of Siberia, while millions of Chinese and Central Asians want in. With the huge prize of energy resources at stake, chinese workers have steadily been taking over, by default, much of the workforce in Eastern Siberia--both legally and illegally. It is unlikely that the Chinese government has taken any options for increasing its take of the booty off the table. China needs those resources. Russia does not have the human resources to develop them. An interesting dilemma, worth watching.

Hat tip Publius Pundit

Stabbed In the Back By Its Own Knife?

Russia has been selling large quantities of sophisticated military equipment, machines, and armament to its neighbor China. A lot of Russian functionaries have made a lot of money from this weapons trade. So what has gone wrong?

Russian sales to China of advanced weapon systems, including ships, fighters, radar and communications gear, have left many in Washington and in the region nervous. But now that relationship appears to heading into an autumn.
Andrei Chang, editor of the Hong Kong-based Kanwa Defense Review, said China is cutting the umbilical cord to Russia.
“As far as Russia-China military aviation cooperation is concerned,” he said, “the spring is already over, and naval cooperation between the two countries is also over.”
Chang said Beijing is moving toward indigenous production of many of the systems it originally bought in mass from Moscow, thanks to reverse engineering.
“Russia has been quite discontented with China’s persistent practice of importing a very small fraction of Russian intact naval systems and then making imitation versions of the equipment,” he said. “Many of the subsystems, like radars and the naval gun for the 054A FFG frigate, have been copied from Russian products, which indicates that the Chinese will simply copy Russian technology to build more domestic vessels.”
Reuben Johnson, a Ukraine-based aerospace and technology analyst and consultant, views Moscow’s open arms policy toward Beijing as a comic tragedy.
“China has sent legions of its own specialists to Russia and Ukraine to study the entire design process of all manner of weapon systems,” he said. “In several cases, Russian design bureaus have developed a piece of kit that is an analog — an analog and not a copy — of an existing Russian system, and presented the blueprints, design documentation and a handful of working models to their Chinese customer.

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So the Chinese buy a few models, then copy or imitate them? Where have we heard this story before?



Russia is learning the same lesson about China that the US and the rest of the western world will also have to learn. The Chinese intend to take whatever knowledge and technology it must from the barbarians. Then China will learn to make whatever it needs itself, without dependence on inferiors. Finally, China can take its rightful place in the world.

China intends to grow. First, China intends to re-possess all the lands that were ever considered part of "China." Taiwan, large parts of mineral-rich Siberia, and more. The details of the grand plan may not be fully worked out, but the end is fully in mind.

China is in a race with its own rigidly incompetent style of government. Strong forces are working toward a massive collapse of the Chinese infrastructure. As long as outside investors and "business partners" decide not to notice what the Chinese government plans for the long term, China's expansionists may succeed in their plans.