The Great Game Changer: Belt and Road Intiative (BRI; OBOR)

[Fattyacids]

Actually, most Chinese members on PDF hope Trump can win the election.

Because the world's geopolitics are going to be fun as hell if this man is the POTUS.

You're absolutely right. Trump for President. He's a lot more entertaining than Sarah Palin.

 

[TaiShang]

Trump will be the biggest US gift for China.

The next president should definitely solve the crisis in the Middle East, even if this required putting soldiers on the ground. US should finish off the ISIS and the other previously moderate and supported by the US but now turned radical terrorist groups.

US is the only great power capable of doing this. China is just a developing country and has a different foreign policy conceptualization, hence, China must be excused.

US can summon the Britons. They are a good help.

 

[TaiShang]

How The Donald is Trumping US ‘Fake-ocracy’ / Sputnik International

Rumour has it that if real estate mogul Donald Trump wins the next US presidency, he is planning to rename the White House – to Trump House.

Okay, that’s a spoof. But nothing should surprise us about this billionaire realtor-turned-TV-celebrity-turned politician. The 69-year-old is racing ahead in opinion polls leaving other Republican party contenders trailing. He’s foul-mouthed and tacky, sports a ridiculously flamboyant hairstyle, and has an ego to match one of his many eponymous skyscrapers. And Donald Trump is proving to be a hit with the American public.

His racist views on Mexican migrants, whom he labelled “drug dealers and rapists”, far from causing a backlash, seem to have only added to his appeal. Even his latest foray of slamming Republican Senator John McCain as not being a war hero doesn’t seem to have dampened his support.


“I prefer war heroes who don’t get caught by the enemy,” was how he put it, referring to McCain’s captivity as a POW in North Vietnam during the 1970s. Most of the other presidential contenders, including Democrat Hillary Clinton, promptly ganged up to denounce Trump over his contempt for McCain. They said that, this time, the maverick Donald had gone too far by disrespecting the decorated Vietnam War veteran.

Trump, in typical rambunctious fashion, dismissed the complaints and said he would not be making an apology. He even called McCain a “dummy”.

It was McCain who started the spat by first complaining that Trump was “firing up the crazies” among rightwing Americans with his inflammatory views on Latino illegals. Firing up the crazies? That’s saying something given that McCain himself is accused of crazed extremism owing to his association with Al Qaeda-linked terrorists in Syria and the Neo-Nazi regime in Kiev, as well as his swivelled-eyed warmongering calls against Russia, China and Iran.

The three-times-married Trump, who is of Scottish and German descent, started his real estate career around the same time that McCain was learning how to use chopsticks in his Vietnamese prison camp. Trump somehow managed to skip the military draft back then due to a foot injury, although when asked recently which foot, he said he couldn’t remember.

Nearly five decades later, The Donald – a nickname coined by his first wife, Czech-born Ivana – has become a magnate with a net worth of $4 billion, according to Forbes magazine. Although the mouthy mogul boasts that he’s actually worth $10 billion. He owns a string of glitzy hotels and casinos – all with the brand name Trump.

Political commentators doubt that Trump will stay the course for the US presidential contest – with the finish line some 16 months away.

The pundits have likened him to a funny act whose role is to warm up the crowd for the more serious performers.

But Trump insists he’s in to win. A powerful weapon in his war chest is money – lots of it and apparently it’s all his own. Unlike other would-be candidates, Trump is not dependent on funders, political action committees or corporate sponsors. That means he can stay in the race for as long as it takes – assuming he wins the Republican Party nomination. It also means that The Donald does not have to couch his words to suit the political interests of donors. He appears to be free to say whatever he wants or whatever comes into his head.

He has denounced fellow Republican Jeb Bush as being a puppet bought by the multi-billionaire Koch brothers. He scoffed at Hillary Clinton’s desire to be the “people’s champion” by quipping about here philandering husband, Bill: “If Hillary can’t satisfy her husband, how is she going to satisfy the nation?”

To say that Trump does not have a coherent set of domestic or foreign policies is an understatement. The best we can say is that his worldview is that of a mega-rich individual who seems to think that running a country is the same as running a business empire. Maybe for America, he’s actually correct in that view.

The prospect of Trump becoming the next American president should fill anyone with the same kind of dread as having a loose cannon inside a submarine.

But what is enjoyable about this reactionary figure is that his ambitions to become resident in Trump House, er the White House, are serving to totally expose just how farcical and degenerate American politics have become.

Divorced from real communities struggling with poverty, unemployment, crime and unprecedented social deterioration, all American candidates for the presidency are akin to manikins propped up in a corporate sales window. Republican or Democrat, they are all the same, serving the same master of Wall Streets banks and corporate capital. Bernie Sanders, the avowedly socialist Democrat Senator from Vermont, may throw a surprise to win the party’s nomination against Hillary Clinton. But it is doubtful that Sanders will find the financial backing to overcome the corporate-controlled screening process that selects American presidential winners on behalf of the electorate.

America has long become a fake democracy – a cruel parody of one-person-one-vote – in which corporate dictate is the rule. It is arguable that the US is more accurately a form of financial fascism masquerading under the cover of a cosmetic party-political beauty pageant. And Donald Trump, who owns the media rights to Miss America and Miss Universe, knows a thing or two about such pageants.

A multi-billionaire property and media mogul becoming the Commander—in-Chief of America, whose political base largely stems from audience-fans of his hit TV show, The Apprentice, is perhaps the ultimate “reality show”.

But this dose of reality is in a paradoxical way a positive revelation. Unlike the incumbent President Barack Obama who conned the American electorate with nostrums of “yes we can” and “hope and change” – but who in reality is a puppet to Wall Street and the military-industrial complex; and unlike the other current contenders for the presidency, Donald Trump is what you see.

The spectacle of this super-rich, arrogant racist who doesn’t even bother to articulate a political program is testimony to the truly ugly and pathetic condition of American democracy.

That Trump is winning over so many American voters – at least in polls so far – is another sign of how disillusioned ordinary people have become in the prospect of real progress in America. Voting for candidates has become reduced to a surreal spectator event, where the spectator has no real effect on the actual outcome. Maybe that’s why so many people find Trump worthy of support. His reckless mouth at least provides a laugh and the feeling of rebellion against the Washington “fake-ocracy”.

And that is probably why all the other “serious” contenders – whether Republican or Democrat – are now rounding on Trump to pillory him for going too far in his irreverent rhetoric towards other politicians.

For Trump, through his brash megalomania, is inadvertently making a mockery of that much overblown institution – American democracy.

To use his popular TV catchphrase, what US voters should be saying to the whole dysfunctional system is: “You’re fired!”



Read more: How The Donald is Trumping US ‘Fake-ocracy’ / Sputnik International

 

[CN.Black]

It's not Obama who made Russia and China together.It's certain.

 

[TaiShang]

It's not Obama who made Russia and China together.It's certain.

I agree. That was bound to happen.

 

[TaiShang]

(CNS Photo)

The construction of Chinese section of a cross-river railway bridge linking the country with Russia has been half completed on July 23, according to the website of China's News Service.

The main body of the Tongjiang-Nizhneleninskoye Railway Bridge has a total lengthen of 2,215 meters, with 1,900 meters in China. It's designed loading capacity reaches 21 million tons annually. The construction of the bridge was started in February 2014 and the bridge erection is expected to be finished by the end of October.


(CNS Photo)

(File Photo)

 

[Place Of Space]

Good news, this is the second important entry port in north east facilitate regional economy growth for China and Russia.

 

[TaiShang]

How China and Russia Are Running Rings Around Washington

Pepe Escobar

Let’s start with the geopolitical Big Bang you know nothing about, the one that occurred just two weeks ago. Here are its results: from now on, any possible future attack on Iran threatened by the Pentagon (in conjunction with NATO) would essentially be an assault on the planning of an interlocking set of organizations – the BRICS nations (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa), the SCO (Shanghai Cooperation Organization), the EEU (Eurasian Economic Union), the AIIB (the new Chinese-founded Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank), and the NDB (the BRICS’ New Development Bank) – whose acronyms you’re unlikely to recognize either. Still, they represent an emerging new order in Eurasia.

Tehran, Beijing, Moscow, Islamabad, and New Delhi have been actively establishing interlocking security guarantees.They have been simultaneously calling the Atlanticist bluff when it comes to the endless drumbeat of attention given to the flimsy meme of Iran’s “nuclear weapons program.” And a few days before the Vienna nuclear negotiations finally culminated in an agreement, all of this came together at a twin BRICS/SCO summit in Ufa, Russia – a place you’ve undoubtedly never heard of and a meeting that got next to no attention in the U.S.

And yet sooner or later, these developments will ensure that the War Party in Washington and assorted neocons (as well as neoliberalcons) already breathing hard over the Iran deal will sweat bullets as their narratives about how the world works crumble.

The Eurasian Silk Road

With the Vienna deal, whose interminable build-up I had the dubious pleasure of following closely, Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif and his diplomatic team have pulled the near-impossible out of an extremely crumpled magician’s hat: an agreement that might actually end sanctions against their country from an asymmetric, largely manufactured conflict.

Think of that meeting in Ufa, the capital of Russia’s Bashkortostan, as a preamble to the long-delayed agreement in Vienna. It caught the new dynamics of the Eurasian continent and signaled the future geopolitical Big Bangness of it all. At Ufa, from July 8th to 10th, the 7th BRICS summit and the 15th Shanghai Cooperation Organization summit overlapped just as a possible Vienna deal was devouring one deadline after another.

Consider it a diplomatic masterstroke of Vladmir Putin’s Russia to have merged those two summits with an informal meeting of the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU). Call it a soft power declaration of war against Washington’s imperial logic, one that would highlight the breadth and depth of an evolving Sino-Russian strategic partnership.

Putting all those heads of state attending each of the meetings under one roof, Moscow offered a vision of an emerging, coordinated geopolitical structure anchored in Eurasian integration. Thus, the importance of Iran: no matter what happens post-Vienna, Iran will be a vital hub/node/crossroads in Eurasia for this new structure.

If you read the declaration that came out of the BRICS summit, one detail should strike you: the austerity-ridden European Union (EU) is barely mentioned. And that’s not an oversight. From the point of view of the leaders of key BRICS nations, they are offering a new approach to Eurasia, the very opposite of the language of sanctions.

Here are just a few examples of the dizzying activity that took place at Ufa, all of it ignored by the American mainstream media. In their meetings, President Putin, China’s President Xi Jinping, and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi worked in a practical way to advance what is essentially a Chinese vision of a future Eurasia knit together by a series of interlocking “new Silk Roads.”

Modi approved more Chinese investment in his country, while Xi and Modi together pledged to work to solve the joint border issues that have dogged their countries and, in at least one case, led to war.

The NDB, the BRICS’ response to the World Bank, was officially launched with $50 billion in start-up capital. Focused on funding major infrastructure projects in the BRICS nations, it is capable of accumulating as much as $400 billion in capital, according to its president, Kundapur Vaman Kamath.

Later, it plans to focus on funding such ventures in other developing nations across the Global South – all in their own currencies, which means bypassing the U.S. dollar. Given its membership, the NDB’s money will clearly be closely linked to the new Silk Roads.

As Brazilian Development Bank President Luciano Coutinho stressed, in the near future it may also assist European non-EU member states like Serbia and Macedonia. Think of this as the NDB’s attempt to break a Brussels monopoly on Greater Europe. Kamath even advanced the possibility of someday aiding in the reconstruction of Syria.

You won’t be surprised to learn that both the new Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the NDB are headquartered in China and will work to complement each other’s efforts.

At the same time, Russia’s foreign investment arm, the Direct Investment Fund (RDIF), signed a memorandum of understanding with funds from other BRICS countries and so launched an informal investment consortium in which China’s Silk Road Fund and India’s Infrastructure Development Finance Company will be key partners.

Full Spectrum Transportation Dominance

On the ground level, this should be thought of as part of the New Great Game in Eurasia. Its flip side is the Trans-Pacific Partnership in the Pacific and the Atlantic version of the same, the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, both of which Washington is trying to advance to maintain U.S. global economic dominance.

The question these conflicting plans raise is how to integrate trade and commerce across that vast region. From the Chinese and Russian perspectives, Eurasia is to be integrated via a complex network of superhighways, high-speed rail lines, ports, airports, pipelines, and fiber optic cables.

By land, sea, and air, the resulting New Silk Roads are meant to create an economic version of the Pentagon’s doctrine of “Full Spectrum Dominance” – a vision that already has Chinese corporate executives crisscrossing Eurasia sealing infrastructure deals.

For Beijing – back to a 7% growth rate in the second quarter of 2015 despite a recent near-panic on the country’s stock markets – it makes perfect economic sense: as labor costs rise, production will be relocated from the country’s Eastern seaboard to its cheaper Western reaches, while the natural outlets for the production of just about everything will be those parallel and interlocking “belts” of the new Silk Roads.

Meanwhile, Russia is pushing to modernize and diversify its energy-exploitation-dependent economy. Among other things, its leaders hope that the mix of those developing Silk Roads and the tying together of the Eurasian Economic Union – Russia, Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan – will translate into myriad transportation and construction projects for which the country’s industrial and engineering know-how will prove crucial.

As the EEU has begun establishing free trade zones with India, Iran, Vietnam, Egypt, and Latin America’s Mercosur bloc (Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Venezuela), the initial stages of this integration process already reach beyond Eurasia.

Meanwhile, the SCO, which began as little more than a security forum, is expanding and moving into the field of economic cooperation. Its countries, especially four Central Asian “stans” (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan) will rely ever more on the Chinese-driven Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and the NDB.

At Ufa, India and Pakistan finalized an upgrading process in which they have moved from observers to members of the SCO. This makes it an alternative G8.

In the meantime, when it comes to embattled Afghanistan, the BRICS nations and the SCO have now called upon “the armed opposition to disarm, accept the Constitution of Afghanistan, and cut ties with Al-Qaeda, ISIS, and other terrorist organizations.”




Translation: within the framework of Afghan national unity, the organization would accept the Taliban as part of a future government. Their hopes, with the integration of the region in mind, would be for a future stable Afghanistan able to absorb more Chinese, Russian, Indian, and Iranian investment, and the construction – finally! – of a long-planned, $10 billion, 1,420-kilometer-long Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India (TAPI) gas pipeline that would benefit those energy-hungry new SCO members, Pakistan and India. (They would each receive 42% of the gas, the remaining 16% going to Afghanistan.)

Central Asia is, at the moment, geographic ground zero for the convergence of the economic urges of China, Russia, and India. It was no happenstance that, on his way to Ufa, Prime Minister Modi stopped off in Central Asia.

Like the Chinese leadership in Beijing, Moscow looks forward (as a recent document puts it) to the “interpenetration and integration of the EEU and the Silk Road Economic Belt” into a “Greater Eurasia” and a “steady, developing, safe common neighborhood” for both Russia and China.

And don’t forget Iran. In early 2016, once economic sanctions are fully lifted, it is expected to join the SCO, turning it into a G9. As its foreign minister, Javad Zarif, made clear recently to Russia’s Channel 1 television, Tehran considers the two countries strategic partners. “Russia,” he said, “has been the most important participant in Iran’s nuclear program and it will continue under the current agreement to be Iran’s major nuclear partner.” The same will, he added, be true when it comes to “oil and gas cooperation,” given the shared interest of those two energy-rich nations in “maintaining stability in global market prices.”

Got Corridor, Will Travel

Across Eurasia, BRICS nations are moving on integration projects. A developing Bangladesh-China-India-Myanmar economic corridor is a typical example. It is now being reconfigured as a multilane highway between India and China. Meanwhile, Iran and Russia are developing a transportation corridor from the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman to the Caspian Sea and the Volga River. Azerbaijan will be connected to the Caspian part of this corridor, while India is planning to use Iran’s southern ports to improve its access to Russia and Central Asia. Now, add in a maritime corridor that will stretch from the Indian city of Mumbai to the Iranian port of Bandar Abbas and then on to the southern Russian city of Astrakhan. And this just scratches the surface of the planning underway.

Years ago, Vladimir Putin suggested that there could be a “Greater Europe” stretching from Lisbon, Portugal, on the Atlantic to the Russian city of Vladivostok on the Pacific. The EU, under Washington’s thumb, ignored him. Then the Chinese started dreaming about and planning new Silk Roads that would, in reverse Marco Polo fashion, extend from Shanghai to Venice (and then on to Berlin).

Thanks to a set of cross-pollinating political institutions, investment funds, development banks, financial systems, and infrastructure projects that, to date, remain largely under Washington’s radar, a free-trade Eurasian heartland is being born. It will someday link China and Russia to Europe, Southwest Asia, and even Africa. It promises to be an astounding development. Keep your eyes, if you can, on the accumulating facts on the ground, even if they are rarely covered in the American media. They represent the New Great – emphasis on that word – Game in Eurasia.

Location, Location, Location

Tehran is now deeply invested in strengthening its connections to this new Eurasia and the man to watch on this score is Ali Akbar Velayati. He is the head of Iran’s Center for Strategic Research and senior foreign policy adviser to Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei. Velayati stresses that security in Asia, the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia, and the Caucasus hinges on the further enhancement of a Beijing-Moscow-Tehran triple entente.

As he knows, geo-strategically Iran is all about location, location, location. That country offers the best access to open seas in the region apart from Russia and is the only obvious east-west/north-south crossroads for trade from the Central Asian “stans.”

Little wonder then that Iran will soon be an SCO member, even as its “partnership” with Russia is certain to evolve. Its energy resources are already crucial to and considered a matter of national security for China and, in the thinking of that country’s leadership, Iran also fulfills a key role as a hub in those Silk Roads they are planning.

That growing web of literal roads, rail lines, and energy pipelines represents Beijing’s response to the Obama administration’s announced “pivot to Asia” and the U.S. Navy’s urge to meddle in the South China Sea. Beijing is choosing to project power via a vast set of infrastructure projects, especially high-speed rail lines that will reach from its eastern seaboard deep into Eurasia. In this fashion, the Chinese-built railway from Urumqi in Xinjiang Province to Almaty in Kazakhstan will undoubtedly someday be extended to Iran and traverse that country on its way to the Persian Gulf.

A New World for Pentagon Planners

At the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum last month, Vladimir Putin told PBS’s Charlie Rose that Moscow and Beijing had always wanted a genuine partnership with the United States, but were spurned by Washington. Hats off, then, to the “leadership” of the Obama administration. Somehow, it has managed to bring together two former geopolitical rivals, while solidifying their pan-Eurasian grand strategy.

Even the recent deal with Iran in Vienna is unlikely – especially given the war hawks in Congress – to truly end Washington’s 36-year-long Great Wall of Mistrust with Iran. Instead, the odds are that Iran, freed from sanctions, will indeed be absorbed into the Sino-Russian project to integrate Eurasia, which leads us to the spectacle of Washington’s warriors, unable to act effectively, yet screaming like banshees.

NATO’s supreme commander Dr. Strangelove, sorry, American General Philip Breedlove, insists that the West must create a rapid-reaction force – online – to counteract Russia’s “false narratives.”

Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter claims to be seriously considering unilaterally redeploying nuclear-capable missiles in Europe.

The nominee to head the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Marine Commandant Joseph Dunford, recently directly labeled Russia America’s true “existential threat”; Air Force General Paul Selva, nominated to be the new vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs, seconded that assessment, using the same phrase and putting Russia, China and Iran, in that order, as more threatening than the Islamic State (ISIS). In the meantime, Republican presidential candidates and a bevy of congressional war hawks simply shout and fume when it comes to both the Iranian deal and the Russians.

In response to the Ukrainian situation and the “threat” of a resurgent Russia (behind which stands a resurgent China), a Washington-centric militarization of Europe is proceeding apace. NATO is now reportedly obsessed with what’s being called “strategy rethink” – as in drawing up detailed futuristic war scenarios on European soil. As economist Michael Hudson has pointed out, even financial politics are becoming militarized and linked to NATO’s new Cold War 2.0.

In its latest National Military Strategy, the Pentagon suggests that the risk of an American war with another nation (as opposed to terror outfits), while low, is “growing” and identifies four nations as “threats”: North Korea, a case apart, and predictably the three nations that form the new Eurasian core: Russia, China, and Iran.

They are depicted in the document as “revisionist states,” openly defying what the Pentagon identifies as “international security and stability”; that is, the distinctly un-level playing field created by globalized, exclusionary, turbo-charged casino capitalism and Washington’s brand of militarism.

The Pentagon, of course, does not do diplomacy. Seemingly unaware of the Vienna negotiations, it continued to accuse Iran of pursuing nuclear weapons. And that “military option” against Iran is never off the table.

So consider it the Mother of All Blockbusters to watch how the Pentagon and the war hawks in Congress will react to the post-Vienna and – though it was barely noticed in Washington – the post-Ufa environment, especially under a new White House tenant in 2017.

It will be a spectacle. Count on it. Will the next version of Washington try to make it up to “lost” Russia or send in the troops? Will it contain China or the “caliphate” of ISIS? Will it work with Iran to fight ISIS or spurn it? Will it truly pivot to Asia for good and ditch the Middle East or vice-versa? Or might it try to contain Russia, China, and Iran simultaneously or find some way to play them against each other?

In the end, whatever Washington may do, it will certainly reflect a fear of the increasing strategic depth Russia and China are developing economically, a reality now becoming visible across Eurasia. At Ufa, Putin told Xi on the record: “Combining efforts, no doubt we [Russia and China] will overcome all the problems before us.”

Read “efforts” as new Silk Roads, that Eurasian Economic Union, the growing BRICS block, the expanding Shanghai Cooperation Organization, those China-based banks, and all the rest of what adds up to the beginning of a new integration of significant parts of the Eurasian land mass. As for Washington, fly like an eagle? Try instead: scream like a banshee.

 

[Twitchingbouse]

Tehran, Beijing, Moscow, Islamabad, and New Delhi have been actively establishing interlocking security guarantees.

Once I read this I knew this article was BS There are no interlocking security guarantees between any of those 3!

Not even Russia and China have a formal defense treaty.


and don't even get me started on Russia or China going to war for Iran, or god forbid India going to war for Pakistan!

When will these 'analysts' understand that BRIC is not a collective for mutual defense, and certainly not a political bloc!

The Eurasian Economic Union is a joke, a sad shadow of Russia trying to regain its soviet past.


As for the Silk Road, no matter how well developed the land infrastructure is, it will always be cheaper and easier to transport by sea, there is no getting around that.

 

[Shotgunner51]

The top agenda always is Eurasian integration.

Later, it plans to focus on funding such ventures in other developing nations across the Global South – all in their own currencies, which means bypassing the U.S. dollar. Given its membership, the NDB’s money will clearly be closely linked to the new Silk Roads. As Brazilian Development Bank President Luciano Coutinho stressed, in the near future it may also assist European non-EU member states like Serbia and Macedonia. Think of this as the NDB’s attempt to break a Brussels monopoly on Greater Europe. Kamath even advanced the possibility of someday aiding in the reconstruction of Syria.

Yes, I also shared China's vision on the Global South
Vision on the Global South

From the Chinese and Russian perspectives, Eurasia is to be integrated via a complex network of superhighways, high-speed rail lines, ports, airports, pipelines, and fiber optic cables.

That's one of the major drives for AIIB, i.e. Infrastructures.
“Dear President, how can we help your country?” - AIIB

 

[Shotgunner51]

Once I read this I knew this article was BS There are no interlocking security guarantees between any of those 3!

Not even Russia and China have a formal defense treaty.


and don't even get me started on Russia or China going to war for Iran, or god forbid India going to war for Pakistan!

When will these 'analysts' understand that BRIC is not a collective for mutual defense, and certainly not a political bloc!

The Eurasian Economic Union is a joke, a sad shadow of Russia trying to regain its soviet past.


As for the Silk Road, no matter how well developed the land infrastructure is, it will always be cheaper and easier to transport by sea, there is no getting around that.

True, BRICS is just a term coined by an i-banker, certainly it isn't a political-military pact due to very different geopolitical visions of it "members", however there is a potential for it to become a sizable trading bloc and that might have certain influence on world financial order e.g. currency, commodity prices. The combined economy of BRICS (5 countries) are quite sizable:

Compared to BRICS, SCO is a pure Eurasian platform. Neither it is a political-military pact for the same reason like in BRICS, the inclusion of Pakistan & India is a testimony to that, it has always been more focused on promoting co-operation between Eurasian countries on economy, trade and homeland security. As an actionable initiative, the OBOR (One Belt One Road) not just comprise of "Eurasian Economic Belt" which aims to promote continental development, the "Maritime Silk Road" also aim at strengthening the traditional sea routes between Europe and the Pacific seaboard of Asia, benefiting all maritime economies in between. The combined economy of the just expanded SCO (8 countries) are quite sizable as well:

 

[Tiger Genie]

China: stock market bubble bursting; $6T to $26T potential write offs due to provincial & local govt books; completely dependent upon N.American and European retail environment for cash flow; Chinese rushing to move money out of China into US and Europe

Russia: reeling under sanctions and inflation. Oil price & supply killing them

USA: dollar pretty much dictating; recovery in good swing up; benefiting from Chinese and Russian misery

Pepe Escobar: grasping at straws

 

[TaiShang]

China: stock market bubble bursting; $6T to $26T potential write offs due to provincial & local govt books; completely dependent upon N.American and European retail environment for cash flow; Chinese rushing to move money out of China into US and Europe

Russia: reeling under sanctions and inflation. Oil price & supply killing them

USA: dollar pretty much dictating; recovery in good swing up; benefiting from Chinese and Russian misery

Pepe Escobar: grasping at straws

China: Lacking Modi.

Russia: Lacking Modi

US: Having multiple Modis.

India: For now, just one Modi.

 

[Tiger Genie]

China: Lacking Modi.

Russia: Lacking Modi

US: Having multiple Modis.

India: For now, just one Modi.

True that. those rings are just gas belts around the stars ..

 

[jhungary]

I just want to know Russia, China running ring around Washington with what?

There are no strategic partnership, nor cooperation between 2 country, in fact, history have shown time and again China are at the receiving end of Russia thread throughout multiple time during the course of history.

It is actually US running ring around China and Russia by expanding NATO eastward and pivot the other Asian interest against China. Not the other way around.

Russia is more of a problem to China than the US, simply because they share a border with Russia. Just wait until the "Soviet" reborn again.

But seeing this article is written by Pepe Escobar, well, I rest my case.