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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 29-Aug-2008
China rebuffs Russia over Georgia invasion.

Web Log - August, 2008

China rebuffs Russia over Georgia invasion.

What could the Russians possibly have been thinking?

A couple of days ago I saw a news article with the title, "Medvedev Seeks Support From China, Allies on Georgia." My immediate reaction was that Medvedev will get support on the Georgia invasion from China when pigs fly.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is the most paranoid group of politicians on earth. They're afraid of secessionist movements by the Tibetans in Tibet, by the Muslim Uighurs in Xinjiang, and by the Taiwanese. They're also afraid of rebellions by their own people.

There was never a snowflake's chance in hell that China would support the Russians in declaring the independence of the two Georgian provinces, of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

Shanghai Cooperation Organization group meeting in Dushanbe, capital of Tajikistan. <font face=Arial size=-2>(Source: Xinhua)</font>

Shanghai Cooperation Organization group meeting in Dushanbe, capital of Tajikistan. (Source: Xinhua)

The Russians had hoped that a meeting of leaders of several Asian countries of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) would side with Russians against the West. After all, it was to oppose Nato and the west that the SCO was formed.

After the meeting ended, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev claimed victory by saying, "We are sure that the position of SCO members will get an appropriate international response. I hope it will serve as a serious signal for those who try to turn black into white and justify the bloody adventure of the Georgian leadership."

Actually, the meeting was a significant political rebuff of Russia.

The statement issued by the SCO insisted on the need to preserve "the unity of a state and its territorial integrity," and that "placing the emphasis exclusively on the use of force has no prospects and hinders a comprehensive settlement of local conflicts.

A web site reader wrote to me:

"I'm a British student living in Belgium. I have been reading through your website and the draft of your new book with great interest and I think you've more or less convinced me; however I have one big problem with your prediction of a clash of civilizations world war. In light of all its conflicts with the EU and the US in the years since 1991, its growing ties to China and its massive historical and cultural differences with Europe and the West; is it not more likely that in any upcoming world war Russia will be against us? I've looked down the list of weblogs and couldn't find anything describing why they would be on our side."

The differences between Russia and the West have always been purely political. There is no visceral hatred or xenophobia between the West and Russians. The Russians particularly love the Europeans.

Here's a graphic that I created several years ago. It's a tiny bit out of date but it illustrates the points we want to make:

Major Crisis Wars

Major Crisis Wars

This graphic shows some of the major crisis wars of the last millennium. North America is the column on the left, Western Europe is the column in the middle, and Eastern Europe is the column on the right.

In the column on the right, you'll notice that I have three wars displayed in grey: "Great Northern War v Sweden," "Napoleon invades Russia," and "Hitler invades Russia." These are the three great wars where Europeans invaded Russia. All three of those wars were non-crisis wars for the Russians, but occurred during major crisis wars for the Europeans (the War of the Spanish Succession, the Napoleonic Wars, and World War II, respectively). And Russia won all three of those wars in pretty much the same way: Let the invading enemy go deep into Russia, where the frigid Russian defeated the invaders. There was never a genocidal Russian attack on Europe. As I said, Russians love Europeans.

Russians do not love the Chinese. Ever since Genghis Khan and the Mongols swept through Western Asia in the 1200's, the Russians and their Asian neighbors have not gotten along. The Mongols conquered Turkey, the Caucasus, and much of Russia before being driven back. Mongol descendants influenced or became part of the cultures of several Sunni Muslim populations in the Mideast, as well as in China itself. The Mongol invasions targeted the Russians and Hindus alike, and so the Russians and Indians are viscerally allies against the Mongol progeny in Pakistan and China.

Most people believe that China and Russia love each other because they both had Communist Revolutions. Actually, they had different kinds of Communist Revolutions and they didn't support one another. The only thing they had in common was that their leaders, Josef Stalin and Mao Zedong, join Adolf Hitler as the three most bloodthirsty, genocidal psychopaths of the 20th century.

In fact, take a look at the 1960s CIA intelligence report on the Sino-Soviet split. Many people in the intelligence field believed that China and Russia were close to thermonuclear war at that time.

Of course, generational theory tells us that couldn't really have happened, since neither country was in a generational Crisis era at that time.

But BOTH countries are in generational Crisis eras today. Either of their populations would happily exterminate the other's. They get along politically only because they both wish to oppose the United States and the West politically, but when they're forced to choose, they'll choose to fight each other. (29-Aug-2008) Permanent Link
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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 29-Aug-2008 China rebuffs Russia over Georgia invasion.

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Generational Dynamics Web Log for 29-Aug-2008
China rebuffs Russia over Georgia invasion.