Siberia as the 58th State?
First Independence, then join the Union!
January 3, 2012 - 7:07 pm
I don’t watch tv, and nobody’s vodkablogging Iowa, so I’ve been surfing. And I came across this amazing story from that great newspaper, Pravda. And it tells me that “the Siberians” want a referendum on independence from Russia. Assuming they win, the leaders of this movement will attempt to follow Alaska and California into the warm (well, you know) embrace of the United States.
Maybe it’s a spoof. But it’s much too good to check. It would certainly help energy independence. And there are probably some good places for new ski resorts. Not to mention lots of facilities for the American regime to park those guys they’re going to arrest all over the place, wouldn’t you say, comrades?
Welcome comrades.
Siberia has energy and energy is wealth – Russian politicians will let that go only over their cold, dead bodies. On the other hand, what would Obama do with Siberia? Probably establish a bunch of soon-to-be-bankrupt solar panel factories there (with taxpayer money, of course.)
Come on over,its warmer over here!
The EPA would establish some sort of protection over the whole place and then nobody would have access to any of its resources. Right now I’d rather see it in the hands of corrupt Russian kleptocrats than our own gov’t. At least the kleptocrats would use the place.
Michael,
Back in the 1990s, after the demise of the USSR and the collapse of the ruble, the idea of annexing Siberia to the USA was floated by parties on both sides of the Bering Strait.
In addition, see this long history of linking Asia and North America via a bridge crossing the Bering Strait, dating back to the 19th Century.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bering_Strait_crossing
You’d be surprised at how many Americans would leap at the chance to homestead in Siberia.
Having watched a lot of Americans jump at the chance to “homestead” in Alaska, they should all make sure they have a roundtrip ticket before the set out. That fool in the story “Into the Wild” was neither the first nor the last; far from it.
There’s no place in Alaska more than three or four hours from all the modern amenities – if you have the money for the plane fare, and yet very few make it in that idyllic life in the woods they’d envisioned. Even the ones that look like they have the wilderness lifestyle drive long-haul trucks or work turns in the oilfield or similar occupations so they can afford the satellite TV and all the other amenities in that wilderness “cabin” of only 2500 square feet with the four car garage, one bay of which can accomdate the motorhome and another the boat.
Many years ago, I watched a documentary about people trying to homestead in remote Alaska. It showed that many people come there but few last more than a year. The long, cold winter of isolation tends to drive most of them away.
One of the more interesting families that had stuck it out was two parents and their 16 year old daughter. She was a tough wilderness girl who frequently went out alone for days at a time to check her trapline. The nearest family lived over 40 miles away. Those may well have been the only parents in America who worried more about their teenaged daughter being eaten than getting pregnant.
Oh, Alaska’s teenaged girls are very adept at getting pregnant no matter how remote they might seem to be; its that f**k or freeze thing, I guess.
It is really much, much harder to just get to work and keep things going in this climate even if you live and work in suburban Anchorage, Fairbanks, or Juneau. There are places in the Lower 48 that get colder than ANC or JNU, not FAI, FAI is in a league of its own, but the winter in Minnesota doesn’t last nearly as long. That said, if you make enough money, you can live very comfortably in the urban areas and only spend a modicum of time cussing at the snow blower or the car that won’t start or is stuck. But when you try to have that romantic wilderness lifestyle that they all are seeking, the difficulty takes a quantum leap unless you brought megabucks with you to build and equip your wilderness cabin. There ain’t a whole lot of modern women who are OK with a bath once a week using water from melted snow heated on the woodfired cook stove. The unmistakeable odor of eau d’Bush permeates everything; a combination of rancid dishwater from the pot on the stove, wood smoke, and half=burned diesel fuel. When the hippies came in from the weeds late every winter for the Juneau Folk Festival, your nose knew they were in town before your eyes and ears. But what chases most of them away is that subsistence living is just damnably hard work; your life is governed by wood and water if you have money for food. If you thought you were going to live off the land, your life is governed by hunger, water, and wood.
I have only one SHTF or TEOTWAWKI plan: hope I see it coming in time to get far, far south of Alaska. Alaska was barely supporting an Indian, Aleut, and Eskimo population of less than 100K at a stoneage level of existence at contact. The flora and fauna of Alaska can’t support any more than that now. Interrupt that supply chain to Alaska and there are about 600,000 people too many here. If ANYTHING threatens the shipping lanes to Alaska, I’m throwing my Get Out of Dodge bags in the truck, loading my guns, and running for the border.
OMG !! SOLD !!
That would be AWESOME !!!!
This alone could bring recovery……
We dont need Siberia for energy independence, we heave plenty of our own…just need to find the way to strangle EPA.
The Siberians see a kindred soul in the White House. After all, what’s the difference between the political tactics of a Stalinist mafia & Chicago-style politics?
The police could send the mobsters to jail, but nobody had the power to send Stalin’s minions there.
Make them an offer…oh wait we*re 15.3 Trillion in the hole,what was it that we bought again?
The Russians have been building up a bank account of rancor and emnity with the folks in Siberia for centuries. I’m not at all surprised that they might want to seek a bond with the people that took down the last version of the Russian Empire.
I have my suspicions that China has their eye on the lightly populated, resource rich north next door. And with a surplus of military age, unmarriageable males that they’ll need to do something with it’s likely to be an interesting couple of decades over there.
I was thinking the same thing! If they do dance maybe for once we can stay out of it!
Tovarich Ledeen, half the Ural Mountains being part of US territory? Would AMTRAK service it?
Of course! We’ve already built the Intercontinental Railroad!
This is just what we’ve always needed–a shared border with China! What could possibly go wrong?
We can dig up that Tunguska thingy and all be dripping with the fantastic power of Element X.
Yaay!
And learn to use a mini-blowtorch to fry the hoards of flies in mid flight Siberian-style so they just drop into our mouths juicy and warm. I once did so many at one time I couldn’t swallow them all.
We laughed and laughed.
Such a complete non-starter. Siberia just as an independent region free of Muscovite control could be rich and happy.
Many Alaskans want out of the U.S. — and if the numbers haven’t gone up since 2008 I misjudge my former neighbors greatly — so if Siberia cuts loose from Putin-land maybe the two could hook up.
The Alaska Independence types are pretty much confined to Sarah Palin’s Matanuska-Susitna Valley, the Fairbanks suburbs, and the live in the woods and work in the oil-patch types in the Interior. It’s been almost forty years since a Libertarian was elected in Alaska, and the AIP has been a non-entity since Joe Vogler was killed. Hickel gamed the election laws to become Governor on the AIP ticket but Walter Hickel was Alaska’s foremost Republican. I know people like to make noise about it and oilfield workers who don’t like paying taxes shake their fists at the sky, but there is no way in Hell you could pass a secession resolution or other similar action.
Oh, and the sane people of Alaska sure as Hell don’t want Siberia; we have our own problems with vast empty spaces with very dependent people interspersed in them.
Annexing eastern Siberia may or may not be a good thing, be it would surely change our geopolitical and strategic base. I imagine it would scare the Chinese because they would be in much easier range of our ballistic missiles and strategic bombers, if we were to deploy them there. The mineral resources are considerable, no doubt, but shipping them out of there would not be easy. There are no ice-free ports and no route to the west unless it’s an ice road across the Bering Straits. The only other way out would be by rail across Russia. The nearest port would be Vladivostok, over 2,000 miles away. There are good reasons why Russia has never been able to develope it. Could we do better while at greater geographic disadvantage? I don’t know. It is interesting to think about but probably only a pipe dream for now.
My above comment is about Siberia east of the Lena River, about which there was similar speculation just after the Soviet Union broke up. As for Siberia proper, I don’t think Russia would ever let it go, and we would be crazier than a Ron Paul to try to annex it, willingly or not.
There are no problems this that aren’t good problems to have.
If we really want Siberia there is a good way to get it. We offer the Russians our entire EPA in exchange for it. The Russians would get the world’s best environmental scientists to clean up the world’s most polluted country. The bureaucrats at the EPA would get to live in the police state they have always wanted. And we would get to extract all the natural resources of Siberia without any restrictions.
Let’s see the number of scientist working for the EPA? What two maybe three?
The rest are political hacks and lawyers.
Shipping cost to and from Alaska are ridiculous. There should have been more invested into roads, railways, and pipelines to that state long ago.
It would make more sense for Alaska to separate from the US and Join up with Siberia and work financial deals with China, S.Korea, and Japan for development.
China is Alaska’s largest export market. We also do a lot of business with S. Korea and Japan. Alaska Airlines tried to open the Russian Far East, but it is simply too corrupt and unstable to do business in unless you’re big and rich enough to act like the British East India Company. My best story of doing business in Russia is the story of when the Alaska Airlines return flight from Magadan to Anchorage couldn’t get any de-icing fluid because somebody had stolen it all. The AS agent went to the bars, liquor stores, and wholesalers and bought up all the vodka, which they then used to de-ice the plane. I was told that story on good authority; I don’t know if it’s true, but if it ain’t it ought to be. If it’s true, there was probably one Helluva case of the DTs in Magadan.
Clearly Ledeen did not like Senor Equis’ questions regarding Ledeen’s neocon buddies’ sudden enthusiasm for the Muslim Brotherhood (excuse me, freedom fighters) of Syria…since y’know, their backed by Qatar and those freedom loving Saudis, so we’re cool now. If this is Senor Equis bait, it’s rather weak.
“texasbryanp Bryan Preston
Paulbot on plane next to me. Won’t shut up. #godhelpme @PJTatler #tcot”
Ah Preston, the guy who hugged ‘Paulbots’ back when he was working for the TX GOP and then in the past two weeks decided they and their candidate needed to be destroyed. What a piece of work.
Old joke from Soviet years:
Boris is sitting on a park bench in Irkutsk, moaning and groaning.
His friend Ivan asks “What are you so upset about?”
Boris says, “Tsar Alexander II.”
“What about him?” says Ivan.
“He sold Alaska to the Americans! Everything from Canada to the Bering Strait!”
“Yes, but that was a long time ago. Why are you upset now?”
“Because he stopped there!”