By Eric Le Roy
Content 21+ On August 2, 1876, a famous American lawman named Wild Bill Hickok was playing poker in a saloon in Deadwood, South Dakota. Hickok, knowing the dangers of life in the Wild West, never sat with his back to the door of any saloon or restaurant. He wanted a clear view of who might be walking through swinging portals. Never, except for this day. Big mistake. He was shot in the back of the head by a man named Jack McCall and died at age 39.
I tell you this story because I think that Russia could well be putting itself in a position not unlike Wild Bill. I mean that Russia has spent the last three years battering away at Ukraine (with only marginal success), and this largely because Ukraine turned out to be a tiger instead of a lamb, which has required all the attention and manpower the Russian Wehrmacht could muster. Meanwhile, big trouble is coming from the rear. That’s because – truth be told – China, now allegedly Russia’s great friend, actually poses a much more serious threat to this huge but also hugely unmanageable country than even the never-say-die forces of a brave and outmanned Ukraine. The strange irony is that Ukraine’s resistance might prove Russia’s undoing in a way that neither imagined – by drawing Russia’s attention to one thing while it is being crept up by another. In fact, the process is already under way, as I intend to show you in this article.
Of course, the analogy with Wild Bill Hickok only works in terms of the befuddling misdirection that Russia hasn’t caught onto yet, which is to focus attention on the poker game with Ukraine and not on the swinging saloon doors behind it. The analogy is also weakened by the fact that here I do not speak of a sudden bullet to the brain, but more like a long shoulder rub administered by massaging fingers soaked in poison. In that sense, the analogy remains with merit.
First, a word about NATO. I have many Russian friends, and those who are pro-Putin and support the war always talk about NATO’s aggression, as if it represented some unrelenting threat, some pending blitzkrieg invasion of the Motherland. Ok, yes, NATO’s expansion following the collapse of the Soviet Union is a fact. But I would argue that – and this is strictly according to my own perceptions based on (1) reading everything I can find; (2) listening to everything; (3) sorting sifting through fake news and propaganda; (4) studying history, and (5) drawing tentative conclusions and likely outcomes based on as much objectivity as I have in me instead of wishful thinking – NATO is not a threat to Russia. No more than the Boys in the Band would to the marauders of Genghis Khan.
In short, Europe is mired in toxic multiculturalism of its own making – a failed experiment if ever there was one. Mass immigration to these small, already overcrowded nations was supposed to bring everyone together in some kind of Happy Village scenario. Instead, it has created havoc. The immigrants are mostly parasites, and the natives are getting more restless every day. An angry backlash has always been 100% predictable, but the supporters of such frenzied immigration have no answer but to call the now enraged but still entrenched population names like ‘fascist’ and ‘racist’.
As I speak, the whole of NATO combined couldn’t beat the combined forces of Greenland in a war. This loose confederation of shrinking violets (with the exception of the Balkan States, Poland, Finland, and possibly Sweden) is such a non threat to Russia that it’s almost laughable. There is no ‘NATO’ army, and if war broke out, they couldn’t put one together before they were all dumped in a bathtub full of Russian vodka. Germany and France are in shambles, a lot of Eastern Europe is now Russia-friendly and the rest would prefer to eat quiche and put on rouge.. The United States has been propping up Europe since Eisenhower and the Cold War, and now Trump’s threat to force Europe to stand on its own two feet has sent shockwaves through ‘Eurovision Community’ like nothing since Adolph marched into Warsaw.
Like it or not, that’s how it stands. Yet Russia itself is hardly a military colossus. In fact, it is a bumbling mess. If a caterpillar could be corrupted, that’s Russia. Its behavior in this war has been savage and stupid from the start. But at least the Russians are real men, unlike the Europeans, and so far the intimidation factor has worked. Hardness has bullied softness. However, having put so much of its weight behind trying to advance through clods of mud in the east of Ukraine – plus earning the hatred of most of the civilized world in the process by blowing up and destroying everything in its wake – Russia seems pitifully unaware or indifferent to what is going on in the eastern part of the vast country.
There is a visitor there who threatens to unseat the host. I speak of China. Eastern Russia is gradually being taken over – however informally and innocuously at this point – by China. But, as usual – as its history shows – Russia remains blissfully unready. Convincing Russians to prepare in advance for anything is as likely to succeed as asking God to save a nose-diving aircraft from crashing. I lived there for a long time and I can say without hesitation that whenever the first winter snow falls in Russia every year, the citizens are in shock and the roads become impassable. Snow? In Russia? In December? How can this be?
So now it’s time for a reality check.
For Russia, the worst case scenario would consist of a fairly large number of negative outcomes, one of the worst being economic subordination, which would unfold in several ways. The most significant of these is already reflecting itself in trade imbalance. Here, Russia’s pretense of an equal partnership with China is exposed as wishful thinking. By 2030 it is estimated that 50% of Russia’s exports will go to China, while Russia’s share in China’s trade would be a mere 5%, resulting in a grotesquely asymmetrical relationship.
Other factors concern resource exploitation and infrastructure control. One example of the former is the 49-year agreements for 115,000 hectares of land in the Trans-Baikal region. The areas are depleted of vital resources due to mining, deforestation and intensive farming. Such long term leases weigh heavily in favor of China. Moreover, the Chinese are steadily gaining control over essential supply chains, while major projects such as railways and ports in the Far East are under the dominant sway of Chinese investment. These sea changes in the balance between the two nations tend to go unnoticed by the ‘Who cares?’ attitude of the Russian public and the ineptitude of Russian officials in the region.
The next hard reality for Russia has to do with the demographic transformation. The Far East continues to see an exodus to Central Russia, and its present population has stagnated at 6.3 million, which means that Russian people are going out but no one much is coming in. By contrast, an influx of 200,000-300,000 Chinese migrants annually reshapes the region’s demographic makeup. In real life terms, what this means is that China is changing the cultural identity of the region by building self-autonomous enclaves separate from the Russian state. This is a subtle metamorphosis, but one whose profound effects will be revealed. Chinese is becoming a dominant second language in the Far East, with many schools adopting Mandarin as part of their curriculum. Local festivals and customs increasingly mirror Chinese traditions.
Needless to say, the political leverage which comes from economic dominance cannot be overestimated. The Kremlin is loath to admit it, but the reality is that China’s superiority in economic terms means that it is able to wrangle concessions, such as favorable regulatory changes and expanded territorial leases. In blunt language, the territorial Integrity of Russia is at risk. It is estimated that by 2040, the Far East of Russia will be little more ( except on paper) than an extension of China’s northeastern provinces, with Moscow losing effective control over the region.
Another negative for Russia concerns the environment. Because Russia is doing everything possible to export all it can to China, the exploitation of Lake Baikal is reaching irreversible collapse, and by 2035 the largest freshwater lake in the world will be a polluted cesspool. Deforestation is another problem, primarily designed to increase exports to China. By 2030, over 50% of commercial timber resources in Siberia and the Far East will be depleted due to excessive logging, and guess where it will go? China. And guess what will suffer? Russian ecology. Does Russia care? Let’s answer this question with a question: has it ever cared?
Finally, and in the long run potentially the most important development, is – you guessed it – the military. China’s military budget of $293 billion (2023) dwarfs Russia’s $84 billion, enabling China to maintain strategic superiority in the region.There is little doubt that Russia, with its dwindling resources (it could not protect the Syrian government, for example) and its total concentration on Ukraine, will struggle to maintain control over its eastern border. As Russia becomes increasingly reliant on China for trade, technology, and financial support, its ability to negotiate as an equal on the world stage diminishes. Moscow’s geopolitical role shifts to that of a junior partner, unable to assert independent policies without Beijing’s consent.
Here is a summary of what I have just said
Key Numbers in the Worst-Case Scenario
• Population in Far East: 6.3 million (Russia) vs. 38+ million (China’s Heilongjiang Province).
• Economic Control: 50% of Russian exports directed to China; Chinese investment dominates over 70% of new infrastructure projects.
• Demographic Shift: 300,000 Chinese migrants annually; Russian population continues to decline by 1-2% per year in the region.
• Environmental Impact: Over 50% of timber reserves and significant water resources in the Far East degraded or exploited by 2030.
Trying to understand the realities of Russian life on all levels has historically been an undertaking that soon finds itself shrouded in mystery, misdirection, deceit, ignorance, and malevolence. In Russia, things change in the night, and history is rewritten in the daylight. Yet, amazingly and beautifully, the Russian people endure, seemingly oblivious to hardship. They are in my experience among the most hospitable people in the world. But Russians have one fatal flaw: they do not want, need, or understand what in the West is a basic, all-embracing concept: freedom; rather, they hug to their bosom an autocrat that tells them what to do. And this ‘advice’ often comes with a club or a bullet or a long prison sentence. For now the One In Charge is well-dug in and clearly not planning to go anywhere, any time soon. Nothing will change, probably, for years to come.
But the dictator is also, as it turns out, a dreamer. Born and bred in the Soviet Union, he longs for its return; he is caught in a timewarp, a Russian fairy tale of a glorious past that in fact, no nation today, including the United States and Great Britain, can boast of without sugar coating its rotten meat and drenching its rancid butter in garlic and spice, No nation has ever enjoyed true greatness except in myth and propaganda. That includes the two greatest Empires of all: the Roman and the British. Both were built on conquest and exploitation, celebrated in pamphlets and jingoistic speeches and poems, and remembered with the kind of nostalgia only abject falsehood can produce. If ever there was ‘empire’, it was an empire for about 10% of the population. For everyone else, it was an empire of dust, drudgery, and death.
What is now happening to Russia is pretty simple to everyone who is not a Russian warhawk. The atrocities in Ukraine might well end in a treaty that is favorable to Russia, or at least one which Putin can sell to his public as Victory, an Emblem of Russia’s Manifest Destiny, a triumph of Traditional Values, and so forth. Sort of like the European settlers in America with their ‘treaties’ designed to emasculate the Native Americans, all the while pretending to ‘civilize’ them – what God wanted all along. The conquers always say they are behaving according to God’s plan, even when 75% of all involved knows it’s bullshit. In Russia’s case, what we see now is a temporary triumph of camouflage and smooth surface botox over cretinous mentality and barbaric actions.. As the Chinese build a second China on Russia’s East Coast, the Russians will sooner or later have to find a new batch of excuses to deny the obvious.
So, to conclude, while Wild Bill Russia leans forward, scowling, deep in the poker game, raising the stakes constantly and trying to stare down the opponents with threatening eyes, someone is sneaking up from behind, not with a gun, but with venomous artful fingers. It feels good at first, as it is feeling good now, but the result will be a fatally afflicted man lying on the floor, his cards gripped in a fist that simply will not let go. Above him will stand the winner, dressed in a red gown with a golden dragon emblazoned on the front.
