Admiral Rockwell Tory
Diamond Member
Some of you appear lost, the prepper forum is down the hall....
Here is what the experts say about Russia and China in the next ten years.
Russia will collapse ...
"There will not be an uprising against Moscow, but Moscow's withering ability to support and control the Russian Federation will leave a vacuum," Stratfor warns. "What will exist in this vacuum will be the individual fragments of the Russian Federation."
Sanctions, declining oil prices, a plunging ruble, rising military expenses, and increasing internal discord will weaken the hold of Russia's central government over the world's largest country. Russia will not officially split into multiple countries, but Moscow's power may loosen to the point that Russia will effectively become a string of semi-autonomous regions that might not even get along with one another.
"We expect Moscow's authority to weaken substantially, leading to the formal and informal fragmentation of Russia" the report states, adding, "It is unlikely that the Russian Federation will survive in its current form."
... and the US will have to use its military to secure the country's nukes.
A deactivated Soviet-era SS-4 medium-range nuclear-capable ballistic missile.
Russia's nuclear-weapons infrastructure is spread across a vast geographic area. If the political disintegration Stratfor predicts ever happens, it means that weapons, uranium stocks, and delivery systems could end up exposed in what will suddenly become the world's most dangerous power vacuum.
The breakout of Russia's nuclear weapons stockpile will be "the greatest crisis of the next decade," according to Stratfor.
And the US will have to figure out what to do about it, even if it means dispatching ground troops to secure loose weapons, materials, and delivery systems.
"Washington is the only power able to address the issue, but it will not be able to seize control of the vast numbers of sites militarily and guarantee that no missile is fired in the process," the Decade Forecast states. "The United States will either have to invent a military solution that is difficult to conceive of now, accept the threat of rogue launches, or try to create a stable and economically viable government in the regions involved to neutralize the missiles over time."
China will face one huge problem.
China may have a rough decade ahead as economic growth slows, leading to widespread discontent toward the ruling Communist Party. But the party will not liberalize, which means its only viable option for controlling the gathering chaos while remaining in power will be to increase internal oppression.
Beijing also faces another, perhaps even bigger problem: China's growth hasn't been geographically distributed very evenly. Coastal cities are thriving, but China's interior has less access to international markets and is comparatively much poorer. That problem will only get worse as China continues to urbanize.
"The expectation that the interior — beyond parts of the more urbanized Yangtze River Delta — will grow as rapidly as the coast is being dashed," the report says. And the growing rift between China's coast and its interior could presage even deeper, more ominous splits.
As the report notes, regional fissures have been a persistent driver of political chaos throughout China's history, and there is an unlikely but "still conceivable outcome in which political interests along the coast rebel against Beijing's policy of transferring wealth to the interior to contain political unrest."
Finally
StratforThe South China Sea islands won't start a war — but there's a catch.
The regional powers will decide that South China Sea island disputes aren't worth a major military escalation, but they will still be a symptom of a hazardous power dynamic.
"Fighting over the minor islands producing low-cost and unprofitable energy will not be the primary issue in the region," the report predicts. "Rather, an old three-player game will emerge. Russia, the declining power, will increasingly lose the ability to protect its maritime interests. The Chinese and the Japanese will both be interested in acquiring these and in preventing each other from having them."
Dangerous great-power dynamics are returning to East Asia, even if it may not result in armed conflict in the South China and East China seas.
You can now return to your regularly programmed shows.
Interesting post
With oil hovering about $38 a barrel, Russia has lost its economic swagger. If the economy were to collapse, Putin would have to return to his despotic ways creating a civil war within the alliance
What happens to the nukes? How would they be secured? Would we go in to seize the nukes?
Russia has 8,000 nukes spread out over a huge geographical area. The United States couldn't handle that big a job so I'm inclined to think they would utilize low yield EMP to render the devices inoperable and then coordinate internationally to physically secure them. Of course it would help if we could get Russia to reduce the number of weapons before something does go haywire.
I wish i had a dime for every internet know-it-all that likes to talk about EMP!
Wipe your nose and I think I hear you mom calling you for dinner!