I am absolutely with you, but how long "defense wise" US will be strongest? Again what if China and Russia jointly exercise for the defense system that may challege US? Somewhere you said Sino-Russia relations is not that worth taking because of their decade long rivalry (if you don't mean to say this, then my apology) . But things has been changed after soviet's collapse....... Having said that, why in the world Russia shacked the deal with its strategic partner and romance with someone others?.... We can't disagree with the fact that Russian and Chinese are going to hold biggest military exercise in Chinese territory with Russian State-of-Art weaponary. These maneuvers can't be rule out, should be consider as China's ambitious deployment of defense system. Good points, Pisces. For Russia, China is more of a threat than America or EU like in the Cold War days because it shares its borders with China. Russia will not want a deffensively strong China. For EU and America, Russia is a threat already. Furthermore, the Clinton administration by expanding the NATO (by bringing in Poland and Czech republic in the organization) antagonized Russia. Also, America has unilaterally broken the agreement on missile shield with Russia. All these actions are seen/interpreted by the Russians as conferring a second-class status on them. So they will do anything to regain thgeir status and by resuming its various defense programs and the recent development of "misile shield breaking" missile, the Russians have embarked on their temporarily halted journey of defense development. For this Russia will need money, so it will side with Japan, an economic superpower, and will sell Japan weapons if Japan does change its offensive army to a more defensive one, which it has been proposing. Russia already awarded a huge oil contract to a Japanese company. Japan has already singled out China as a potential security threat. In the Russian and Japanese eyes, China is a threat. In the Chinese eye, Russia because of its sophisticated weaponry and Japan because of the long standing historical disputes (and some terretorial disputes) pose a long-term security threat. America is in a difficult position in East Asia. On the one hand, it has faile dto remain neutral (in the case of Taiwan), on the other hand, it has failed to win the trust of Russia, Japan and China. This is why, the Russian-Japanese pact seems quite likely. Then America's option will be to side with China (which it has already started, on the issue of Taiwan.. it has been restraining Taiwan but not encouraging China to take over militarily either). Americans will be able to achieve the balance of power in East Asia by joining hands with the Chinese. More or less you'll see the revival of cold-war politics with some changes. Of course, Joint Military exercises symbolize the trust developing between the two countries-China and Russia. But let's not forget, China recently conducted a joint military exercise with India too. These military maneuvers do help clear out the mistrust, but not entirely. The only way, both China and Russia will feel secure now is to have a mutual MAD agreement but its a bit early for that. Depends on the Japanese foreign/security policy. To sum up: I don't see a Russian-Chinese colaboration against America very likely. BOth countries have their own agenda, and they will pursue those. Russia at this point is laready capable enough to challenge America and EU, so it will go ahaed with its defense programs alone. China is highly unlikely to partcipate in any program - defense related- with Russia, except for some occassional joint military exercies.