[Somaroton]

China doesn't play with Russia, it plays against USA. This is just a temporary partnership, their interests are almost opposite.

[Igor Antunov]

This is just a temporary partnership, their interests are almost opposite.

lol wut. Their interests are near identical. Russia needs to exploit its resource base to get rich, China needs resources to purchase to get rich, russia and china are opposed to the US-russia in europe china in asia-pacific, etc.

[Atlantis]

China doesn't play with Russia, it plays against USA.

This is just a wordplay. The bottom line is that China is Russia's only possible ally and that Russia is China's only major ally. Their alliance is based on mutual interests.

China is not going to challenge the US militarily, but the dynamics of Chinese economic and technological development will infringe on the US's "perceived" national interests sooner or later. The US does not know how to resolve conflict other than by military might. That's why it spends so much on defense.

As long as the Chinese can develop their own interest under the pax-Americana they will do so, but there will invariably come a time when the Chinese will refuse to toe the US line.

In the long term, the Russia-China alliance is the only option, unless of course, Europe decided to rid itself of US domination and enter a loose alliance with the Russians. That would be beneficial to both the Russians and the Europeans.

[Igor Antunov]

I don't like the way europe and russia are bandied around as separable terms ever since the US inherited half of europe. Russia is the largest european nation, with a distinctly european culture and origin located on 40% of the European landmass. It as a European power that colonized the far east and kept hold of it. By no means does asiatic siberia and its 30 million define the 110 million russians and other distinctly european cultural groups living on the european continent within russias boundaries.

EU and russia, western europe and russia, but not europe and russia. Might as well say europe and europe.