Originally Posted by
dead_pan
Whilst Russia is a country-mile from doing a Yugoslavia IMO, it does beg the question what would the likes of NATO, the EU and China do if it were to descend into civil war, with its various bits vying for control over its natural resources and nukes? If it came to some sort of sphere-of-influence carve-up, China could do quite well with the resource-rich eastern territories, Europe being left with all the lunatic-fringe territories west of the Urals...
I think, you raise a lot of interesting topics in just 2 sentences.
The Nukes: I don't think, that stuff is suitable for regional conflicts, apart from that, just too expensive to manage.
Natural resources: Oil can be relatively easily transported (though large scale is still overhead intensive), but gas needs the tubes. And those tubes will cross that many areas to reach somebody willing to pay for it at a large scale, that it is likely a conflicting area is crossed. When the tubes are already in place, it's a difficult situation. When the tubes need to be instated, forget it.
The China connection: It's a huge distance, so needs careful planning, protection, etc. Less suitable for conflicting areas. Mongolia isn't that much a China friend, on top of that pretty uninhabitable, so, difficult.
West of the Urals: Yeah, that was the thought of the NATO future, before Putin started messing around with reality and becoming more and more a NATO opponent again, early 2000. Apart from the Putin made mess (social, political and some more), Russians are quite nice people, a bit rough on the edge, though that is not that strange in other areas on the Globe, US Midwest, Mexico, Colombia, etc.