Hacker News Reader

Comment by empath75 | Hacker News Reader

The us decoupling itself from China would be an unmitigated disaster for the us as China would align itself with Russia.

View on HN

Russia has the population of Nigeria and the GDP of Italy.

The cold war ended a while ago. Worrying about them today makes about as much sense as worrying about Autria in 1930 because Austrohungaria used to be a world power.

They have a large nuclear arsenal.

And a large military, are actively involved in cyberwarfare and psychological warfare, hacking US elections, and veto rights on the UN Security Council. Plus a history of getting many countries into its sphere of influence.

It’s foolish to discount them.

Which might not mean as much as you think, thanks to the doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_assured_destruction)

That only works as long as you have targets worth destroying. China has a lot. US, fewer... Russia, we do not even know the targets.

They can't use that arsenal to buy Chinese stuff.

> Worrying about them today ...

And yet, still the west endlessly obsesses about Russia, for some reason.

>Worrying about them today makes about as much sense as worrying about Autria in 1930 because Austrohungaria used to be a world power.

And nothing bad came out of Austria in the 1930s.

Well, our Austrian friend had long moved to Germany by 1930.

Firstly, Nigerian population is much larger than Russian (190 vs 146). And secondly, what's wrong with population of Nigeria? It's 60% of population of USA and will probably be equal in 30 years.

> And secondly, what's wrong with population of Nigeria?

I don't think it was a sleight on Nigeria. Just a poetic way to emphasize the weakness of the Russian economy by highlighting the disparity between its population and its GDP. And while the population of Nigeria is is larger it's in the right ballpark for the argument being made. They could have said Pakistan, Bangladesh or Indonesia. Although I suspect those nations have even larger populations but not by an order of magnitude.

Yeah, I didn't mean anything about questioning if it was a sleight etc, just talking about size of population. The comment was talking about Russia being substitution for USA in coupling with China, and that Russia has too low population. So it's actually about comparing size of population of USA and Russia, then Nigeria looked as an example of a country with small population compared to USA. Which is far from true.

Russia is an irrelevant economic factor in the 21st century. Their export is fossil fuels, and that's about it.

Ice/water will be a major export very soon. Countries will go to war over it.

Nope. Drought is usually local and water shortages are often from the breakdown of regional infrastructure. There are recently discovered truly massive water lakes in the earth's mantle.

https://www.livescience.com/46292-hidden-ocean-locked-in-ear...

Northeast passage in a couple of decades might be a big boom for Russia and China.

They're already aligning with Russia through SCO (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shanghai_Cooperation_Organisat...) and there's already been talk of merging with the CSTO (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_Security_Treaty_Org...) which would be a full on defensive alliance.

I mean they sorta already are? Xi Jinpeng was calling Vladimir Putin his "closest, most dearest friend" just a month or two ago. They already oppose the US (along with Russia) on every major international issue.

> Xi Jinpeng was calling Vladimir Putin his "closest, most dearest friend"

Why would anyone care what state heads say (this includes Trump and his comments about NK)? It means nothing and has no consequence...except maybe preventing fickle market fluctuation. You never hear "I hate this guy" because it's just pablum. Convince me otherwise.

I really don't understand why you would cite that as something meaningful.

I couldn't agree with you more ;-)

Well, it cannot be taken at face value, but it can mean something. It means that there is an understanding by Russian and Chinese heads of state that they could have a common interest in keeping the U.S. from acting as a world despot.

Of course, Russia and China have attempted to unite vs. U.S. interests before, and it always turns out that they have more to disagree/argue about than they have to agree on. But it doesn't mean that it's not worth mentioning.

you are aware that USSR annexed parts of China? Whatever the lang Xi uses they will never be allies.

We are not aware because it didn't happen. Having said that, among Chinese hardcore nationalists there are historic dreams of owning Siberia.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com