Looks like if India is planning to answer the China question, should also be ready for Russia question as well.
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At a China-Russia academic workshop today, a leading Chinese scholar suggested that Russia and China should complement their traditional cooperation on the Eurasian continent with the maritime dimension that encompasses three oceans - Arctic, Pacific, and Indian.
These are all wet dreams. Chinese tried to sell IOR to USA before.
Trust: Russia do not trust China and will remain insecure with his oil reserves. Chinese designs of Silk route, Belt road or whatever they call it has an agenda of access to Russian and CA oil lanes. Russia vetoed access via TAPI for the very same reasons and increased its hold on access routes by annexing Crimea again for the very same reasons.
Russia’s long term game is to out stock USA. Chinese are small players in this game but with their consumption needs they want both Russia and USA become oil dry.
The only paradox here was Russians agreeing to supply Europe including Germany which would have added more multiples to lower Russian stock. But American insecurity trumped as they would never like Russia have any influence on her NATO allies.
Money: All those wet dreams require a lot of Capital. Russia is heavily sanctioned and being out spent on every front including their new ventures into war zones like Syria. Chinese have export based economy heavily dependent on Western world which USA commands. In my rough calculation to sustain such expansionist agenda both need half the military spending of USA to set things in motion and I am not including India who will throw a big greasy spanner with workman’s gloves into China’s IOR Peking duck dish.
Show me the money and I will see it plausible. I will be more worried with China pimping USA than Russia at this stage.
