The Amur Frontier Considered

https://www.asianews.it/news-en/Do-the-Chinese-really-want-Siberia-62318.html

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/3654427-does-china-have-designs-on-siberia/

There is nothing particularly profound or revelatory in this article but it's worth considering and filing away. The issue of resources and the Russian Far East have come up before in history. There were those in Imperial Japan who coveted these lands and had an opportunity to invade from their colony of Manchukuo (the conquered realms of Manchuria) in the 1930's. In fact after the German invasion of the USSR in June of 1941, Stalin hesitated to bring the desperately needed troops from Siberia to the West, as he believed the Japanese would invade - something Berlin was very keen for them to do.

Instead, the other faction won out and Japan turned south to the Philippines and the Dutch East Indies - a strategy that meant war with the Americans and the British Empire. The failure to invade Siberia allowed Stalin (at the last minute) to pull the troops and send them to Europe's Eastern Front. The Nazis were halted and two years later were in retreat.

One of the arguments against Japan's seizure of Siberian resources was that they were undeveloped. There was no infrastructure and so even if they had been able to defeat the Soviet forces in the east, it would probably be years before they saw returns. This was not the case in the Dutch East Indies where the desperately needed oil was ready to flow. Remember at that time Japan was already engaged in a massive struggle within China - having invaded in 1937.

The situation is quite different today. While Japanese militarism is simmering, it is Beijing that is the ascendant power. China is not looking to 'invade' Russia but sometimes the sheer investment potential (and its subsequent influence) of a mighty economy can seem like an invasion to a nation that lacks such wealth. And undoubtedly Russia needs money and investment. Unmentioned in the story, this is connected to the question of BRICS and the attempt (under Beijing's and Moscow's leadership) to forge a new economic system rivalling the G7-Atlanticist order and its institutions such as the World Bank and IMF. The fact that this multilateralist structure to the American Empire is currently being broken by Trump (who wants an authoritarian unipolar order) also comes to into play.

And yet tensions may eventually emerge over Far Eastern investment and resources. US strategic planners certainly hope so. Some would like to see the old tensions between China and Russia re-emerge, while others would like to flip Russia (and its resources) over to the American column. It's an interesting story worth watching. It's also worth mentioning that capitalism demands investment. Money cannot just sit and as such it has a tendency to utilize the nation state in order to force open new markets - and this is no less true of Beijing's capitalist model. This capitalist drive for investment and need for resources has repeatedly led to conflict and this is an element or layer to many of the wars that have taken place since World War II but especially since 1991. This is certainly the case in Ukraine, Sudan, the Congo, Syria, and elsewhere - let alone in Iraq and Afghanistan. In a world in which resources are under the strain of scarcity, the Russian Far East and Siberia will certainly come into play. It has to.

For me what would really make this story come alive (as it were) is if Putin were removed and a Western-friendly regime were installed in Moscow. That would change the dynamics of the Russian Far East considerable and suddenly these issues would become very pertinent and once again we would potentially be talking about the tensions that exploded in the 1960's when Soviet and Chinese troops were involved in skirmishes along that frontier and Mongolia was caught up in the troubles as well. That scenario is distant at the present but it could re-emerge at some point should the geopolitics change. The hyperlinked Hill article (speaking for the Atlantic Council) exposes some of the thinking that's going on in NATO circles. At that point the old enmity and historical distrust between Moscow and Beijing would quickly re-emerge. For those who want to encircle China, the thought of grabbing Siberia out of the midst of a broken and fragmented Russian Federation is tantalizing to say the least.