A thought: the China/Russia combined operations drill that happened recently seems more like a show of weakness, than strength; if they were in a position of strength we would see it in Ukraine, or the Taiwan Strait, and not at some public relations-planned site in the middle of nowhere.

@7 if it's the first of its kind they'd have to do it between their two nations, otherwise the logistics would be incredibly complex to ship/supply Chinese forces to/in Ukraine and vice versa

@7 we're in 1930 not 1938 and Ukraine is China, if I had to guess

@skells I think that would be correct if Russia weren’t deadlocked in the Ukraine, and if it weren’t done as a PR campaign. Two birds with one stone, to be sure, but look at what’s between them – it’s not that great of terrain to be practicing in considering their interests. The BRICS nations will appreciate it, certaily.

@7 Russia doesn't need the commodities Japan did, what it wants is BRICS to break from the West/multipolar world

US wants Ukraine to be another Afghanistan

Russia wants to show cajones in resisting US hegemony

place your bets

@skells I’m done even feigning sides in this matter, I’m in it for studying the military strategy and geopolitics. I want BRICS to break away for all the positive and negative reasons, and I want the US to make it’s death rattles, and I want to see the patriots rally for exactly what they were against a few years prior, and I want to see what comes of it all. The US has done such an amazing job at crippling itself that it’s six-to-five and pick-‘em what would happen if a world war broke out; it’s no who is stronger, it’s can the Americans reinvigorate a national war industry given the last 40 years, and can they do it before the Chinese and Russian junk-heaps are able to do what little they would need to do? And that’s if a declaration of war didn’t crack the country into pieces and leave a far bigger mess to clean up for any invading force.