Crossfire War – RAPID FIRE NEWS=MOSCOW – PARIS – BERLIN WATCH – Eurasia Theatre: Moscow – Berlin – Paris – Washington – Tokyo – Taipei – Lhasa – Ulaanbaatar – Delhi/Tbilisi – Ankara – Teheran – Pyongyang – Beijing; Germany – Russia Dissolve Strategic relations with China – Moscow Cancels Military Exports – Contracts to China General Armaments Department of the People’s Liberation Army – Moscow Maintains and Increases Strategic Cooperation and Exports to India – Recognition of Taiwan Near
Night Watch: Moscow – The international community’s 35 year diplomatic – economic effort to satisfy and please Beijing is about to end with the primary reason being China’s massive support of Teheran’s nuclear weapons – ballistic missile programs and other advanced weaponry. Late last year the West finally realized Teheran never had any intention of discontinuing its nuclear warhead production and now they realize, with Teheran increasing the fighting all this year in regional theatres: West Asia (Iraq-Lebanon-Palestine), Central Asia (Afghanistan), South Asia (Kashmir) and Iran’s diplomatic- military contacts with Southeast Europe (Albania-Serbia) Teheran intends to use, offensively, whatever they have produced and entering all of those regional wars. This is the greatest threat to international security in seventy years and it was never any secret Beijing eagerly played a crucial, definitive role in Teheran’s massive preparations knowing if Iran was successful then three of China’s Eurasian rivals would become weaker, the West-India-Russia. [RIA]
China’s exports to Iran is why I suspected was the reason for then U. S. Secretary of State Colin Powell’s last trip, a quick visit to Beijing, I believe in October 2004, with no prior publicity or ceremony upon arrival. The news did not even mention the names of the Chinese officials he met with, but Beijing had been exporting advanced weaponry to Iran ever since Teheran re-activated its nuclear program in 1986 and with the end of the Cold War in 1990 Beijing shipped them through North Korea after Russia withdrew from country. That is also the reason Beijing attempted to assassinate the North Korean leader Kim Jong-Il in April 2004 with an explosion which just missed his train as it was re-entering North Korea from China. On that state visit, Kim Jong-Il had Beijing show him a stock exchange, as his way of saying he wanted North Korea to be a full member of the international community, and all the economic benefits that go along with it instead of North Korea being so dependent on weapons exports to Iran. Only when North Korea set off the nuclear test a year ago, October 2006, did Moscow begin to re-assert its old influence in Pyongyang and with Russia’s massive economic growth Beijing could not begin to match Moscow’s foreign policy budget, especially with the enormous corruption within China’s ruling circles.
That is why RIA is now reporting the meeting between Russia Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov and Chinese officials in Beijing that was scheduled for later this month has been cancelled and this is the second cancellation. It is no coincidence this announcement has come with the current strategic private visits of former France President Jacques Chirac and former German Chancellor Gerhard Shroeder, with both of them representing industrial economies, whose access to resources all over Eurasia, are directly threatened by China’s weapons-technology exports arming Iran’s offensive foreign policy, proving Beijing hates the West even more than Teheran does and it is not a new hatred. Paris and Berlin are also two primary members of the Paris Club of creditor nations that control Russia’s economy as they did all during the Cold War. Moscow-Beijing recently conducted some joint maneuvers in the Ural mountains but it was no real indication of a new strategic alliance, just some maneuvers both governments periodically use to monitor each other and of course discuss the latest international news, because they both are aware any real joint action between them against common international threats is an illusion and that is why the Russia-Chinese Inter-Governmental Commission has not met once in two years.
Moscow is also aware of the statement by Beijing’s Ambassador to Delhi, last November, that northeast India-Arunachal Pradesh is Chinese territory. Russia has maintained serious strategic relations with India since World War II (1939-45) for the express purpose of blocking China’s territorial ambitions on the sub-continent. China attacked India very successfully in October 1962, mostly from across its border with Arunachal Pradesh and during the month long invasion China’s advances extended into Assam state which borders the Bay of Bengal. Therefore, in response to these latest developments Moscow will discontinue further exports of Sovremenny Class destroyers equipped with supersonic anti-ship cruise missiles built at the Admiralty Shipyard in St. Petersburg. Exports of submarines are also being suspended and there is a long list of advanced weaponry in the linked article that will no longer be sent to China, a list so extensive it includes every piece of equipment required by a modern state of the art military. Russia, however, has sent aircraft kits for the Sukhoi SU-27 aircraft including the engines and avionics Beijing requested to China’s air force factory in Shengyang but not licenses for production lines.
Chinese officials of the General Armaments Department of the People’s Liberation Army have long complained Russia’s exports were never extensive enough and ineffective. No doubt, the reason being border issues between the two governments are not completely resolved. Moscow therefore has refused to supply orders for massive shipments of armored personnel carriers, tanks, anti-tank missiles, self-propelled guns and artillery. Moscow even made certain the Chkalov Aircraft Production Plant in Tashkent, Uzbekistan refused to fulfill orders for several dozen Ilyushin Il-76 MD Candid Strategic Transport planes for China’s air force and Russia refused to re-locate production to its Ulyanovsk Aircraft Plant in the Volga region not far from China’s border in the Russia Far East. No major contracts Russian armaments firms have with China are now being fulfilled. This is not only due to Beijing’s ambitions concerning India but it also secures Moscow’s hold over its Far East, since that is the region serious fighting began between the Soviet Union and China in the mid-1960s and came close to a nuclear war Moscow intended to start in 1975, but pressure from industrial services in the West, that had been re-building the Soviet Bloc after World War II, convinced Moscow to take another approach. That was done when the Soviets invaded Afghanistan in 1979 as a way of outflanking China, with Soviet troops remaining for ten years until Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev had the summit in Beijing in May 1989, which temporarily ended the border dispute, but not the interest each government had in the other’s foreign policy.
Moscow knew it would have to confront Islamic extremism while Beijing decided to work with it since China had the same enemies as the Islamic world. Moscow’s sense of security must have been re-assured in watching the performance, or lack of, by China’s 100-millimeter self-propelled gun during the Peace Mission 2007 joint maneuvers conduced at Ural Mountains base of Russia’s 34th Motorized Rifle Division. The gun was manufactured in China with sub-standard steel and could not negotiate the moats and potholes in the difficult terrain. Industrial services in China had long been noted for cutting corners with its industrial products but I had assumed Beijing made certain quality was a top priority for its military, but for years articles would mention the generals and admirals in the People’s Liberation Army had long been more concerned with their investments in hotels and resorts.
Beijing’s efforts to find European armament-exports firm to fill orders have met with no success since Europe and the U. S. cut off sales of weapons technology to China after the massacre of the student-labor pro-democracy movement in June 1989 in Tiananmen Square.
Berlin – As a small indication of the rapidly deteriorating relations between Berlin/Beijing, the German Chancellor Angela Merkel openly received the Tibetan leader Dalai Lama in a blatant insult to China’s Central Government. Beijing immediately protested by calling it a “gross interference in the internal affairs of China.” As the above article explains the interference was deliberate as Berlin is leading the West response to Beijing’s gross exports of advanced weaponry to Iran. But this is only just the beginning of the end of relations between the West and China. Berlin-Delhi-Paris-Moscow and a host of other capitals are about to have a fun diplomatic competition as to who will be the first to make the biggest insult to Beijing by recognizing Taipei. And Taiwan is very well prepared militarily. A historian once said a major war would cause changes in a few years that in peacetime would have taken decades. We are about to witness those changes very quickly in international relations. Though this World War III began in 1994 it is about to become (f)allout now. [IRNA]
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