Russia and China join forces to challenge US dominance

By Andrew Osborn in Moscow
Friday, 19 August 2005
Ten thousand Russian and Chinese troops were preparing to invade
the Shandong Peninsula in the Yellow Sea yesterday in a first joint
military exercise, seen as a reaction to US dominance of world affairs.

The eight-day exercise, called Peace Mission 2005, will use air, sea
and land forces to simulate a mission stabilising a restive country,
and marks a new friendly phase in a bilateral relationship that has
often been characterised by open hostility.
Analysts have pointed
to opportunistic reasons behind the new relationship, with China keen
to buy Russian oil, gas and weaponry and Moscow keen to sell.
Both
countries want to send a message to Washington that the world is no
longer unipolar but bipolar and that the world's largest country
(Russia) and the world's most populous country (China) have common
interests.
From a practical point of view it is important that the two get along, since they share a 2,700-mile border.
Chinese
workers have also started moving into Russia's under-populated Far East
en masse, a phenomenon that clearly worries Moscow.
Speaking in
the Russian far eastern port of Vladivostok yesterday, military top
brass from both countries insisted that the exercise was not designed
to threaten any third country.
"These manoeuvres do not have
hostile intentions," said General Yuri Baluyevsky, the Russian army's
chief of staff. "Our exercises do not threaten any one country and we
will clearly stick by this principle."
Though the exercise will
simulate an attack on a fictional restive country, Moscow and Beijing
are keen to stress that they are rehearsing a peace-keeping mission
that would be conducted under United Nations auspices.
The
fictional scenario envisages an imaginary state engulfed in a wave of
violence fuelled by "ethnic and religious differences". Both sides have
spoken of the need to "fight against international terrorism,
separatism and extremism," words that will give pause for thought to
Taiwan and Chechnya respectively.
Russian media analysts have
also speculated that Moscow is keen to send a signal to anyone thinking
about launching a Ukraine-style velvet revolution that they should
think again.
The aim of the 10,000-strong Russo-Chinese force
taking part in Peace Mission 2005 is to "restore order" and quell a
numerically superior enemy force of some 100,000.
They will do
this by launching an amphibious and airborne assault, by launching
cruise missiles from bombers and submarines and by deploying infantry
units against "illegal armed formations" who will be "played" by
Chinese troops.
In an inauguration ceremony for the exercises,
the commanders of the general staffs of Russia and China laid wreaths
at a Second World War memorial in Vladivostok.
The drills are beginning just days after commemorations across Asia of the 60th anniversary of Japan's defeat in the Pacific.
The generals repeatedly stressed at a news conference that the drills weren't intended to be a show of intimidation.
The
exercise formally started yesterday but has three distinct phases;
military-political consultations and operational planning, the delivery
and deployment of force, and armed combat.
Washington has not sent observers, but will be watching closely all the same.
The
exercise comes just days after the Russian President, Vladimir Putin,
personally observed a naval exercise by the country's Northern Fleet.