Bamboo Curtain Central Asia.
My information from best source is that the explanation for why Russia remains reluctant to cooperate on the UN Security Council with stern sanctions on the Tehran Twelvers is that Russia must now concern itself with the China threat in the energy neighborhood. China has moved into Islamabad; China has moved into Tehran; China is moving into Baghdad and Amman and Damascus. China's appetite is for energy and natural resources in order to continue to grow its imperial reach and defenses. China is the hungry predator and no concern for border wars or nuke threats will turn China away from its grab of allies and clients along the Silk Road to the Med and across the Gulf to sub-Saharan Africa. The Bamboo Curtain now falls across Central Asia. Why is Ahmadinejad increasingly confident of his survival? Because Beijing endorses the status quo ante of rogue states. Why does Russia also aim to keep Tehran in place? Because it remains a wedge between the jihadists of the Gulf and the vulnerable Moslem populations of Central Asia that surround the energy fields. China and Russia in a contest for Tehran's favors and approval.
China the Weakling.
Spoke to Leslie Hook, AWSJ, in re the Beijing jailing of Tan Zuo-ren for five years. His crime? Tan Zuo-ren was trying to compile a list of the estimated 5,600 children killed in the May 2008 earthquake in Sichuan Province when their shoddy school buildings collapsed on them during class. The Beijing CP is so frightened of its own people that the court claimed Tan was sentenced for participating in some fashion in a memorial of the banned talk of the 1989 Tiannamen Square protest. Beijing fears the existence of the names of the dead children, because it would be a reminder of the kleptocracy that created those death-trap schools and the gangster officials in Sichuan and Beijing who profited from the contracts.
Both Russia and China have come to recognize America's present weakness and are making strategic moves to divide up the world between them. Their aim is to position themselves as to make it so that America will never again be able to act as an obstacle to their expansionist plans. Both countries recognize that now is their chance to set the table to their liking. America will not interfere as long as Obama remains in office. Chances are that after the next presidential election America’s leadership will not be quite as forgiving.
As such, China has been positioning itself in Asia and Africa, forming alliances and settling scores; buying up all the natural resources it can get its hands on with what it knows will soon be the worthless dollars it has stashed away in its vaults. In addition, China has its jaundiced eye set on Taiwan and India.
Russia continues to lust after the eastern block which it seeks to bring back under its influence. It also 'owns' Europe as the West continues to be so shamelessly dependent on Russian gas.
Trouble in the Middle East is tolerated - even stoked - for now as it serves to keep the U.S. distracted. After the two heirs apparent have successfully dispatched of the U.S. economically and politically, and put their own affairs in order (vis-a-vis each other), the Islamists can expect to suffer a virtual bloodbath. Radical Islam will no longer be appeased. It will be stamped out. There will be no pretense of observing human rights; no ponderous crafting of a two-state solution. Russia and China will tolerate no hint of trouble. They will wipe them out should they find it expedient to do so. They won't even send in their soldiers; they'll just bomb them back into stone.
Americans will be forced to work to pay off their debt until so diminished as to allow open entry to their new masters. And a new age will have begun, with old books re-written and maps re-drawn to reflect new realities.
I remember going to a fancy new restaurant in Chennai that featured Mediterranean food. The printed menu showed a map of the region. It was a post modern map in that it did not include Israel. I’m now wondering if similar maps (of the world) would also fail to include America.
http://peterkoelliker.blogspot.com/
The bold visionaries in the Senate and House have passed measures designed to shut off the flow of gasoline to Iran. As best I can tell, their thinking seems to be that if we act to reduce the standard of the living of the Iranian populace to Fourth World levels, then those same people--the ones that don't starve to death, anyhow--will at last come to understand America's essential decency.
Say, didn't the United States also put into place a fuel embargo against Imperial Japan in the summer of 1941? How'd that work out, anyhow?
Not sure if I follow how China's support of rogue states is helping Ahmadinejad's chances of survival. Unless they are giving his regime direct military support to put down the riots? You should have Benapsha on and ask her (if you haven't already).
Nor do I understand Mr. Batchelor's contention that "China's appetite is for energy and natural resources in order to continue to grow its imperial reach and defenses."
Couldn't China's desire for energy and natural resources also have at least a little something to do with their need to grow their economy and to continue to raise the standard of living of their billion inhabitants?
Luckily for them they are amateurs at the game of empire, so, unlike us, they don't have vast numbers of soldiers and hundreds of military bases scattered across the globe to support, thereby making the goal of sustaining and growing their economy a realistic one.
The Russians will always remain reluctant to impose sanctions on Iran. They will always act like they might, but they never will.
To suggest that they are reluctant due to Chinese efforts on their southern near abroad is mere diplo-obfuscation, to make it seem that there is some potential leverage point that might be jiggered by talking to still another party. At a certain point diplomatic efforts cease to be credible and instead become merely silly talk.
Examples of silly talk:
Chinese and/or Russian support for meaningful sanctions in Iran or North Korea
Negotiations with Iran over anything, especially the nuclear program