What's your poison?

Putin's finding the most exotic poison to assassinate leaders, critics and what not. KGB poisoned Alexander Litvinenko with a rare compound -- Polonium -- apparently available in earth’s crust.

So, should I delete entries that pull Putin's leg? Who knows, my next vodka shot may contain some poison extracted from Pluto. I'm just a small fry, and Russia's playing for bigger stakes – the Russia is using China as its poison against the US.

Russia and China are not buddies – by no stretch of imagination – they are conveniently using each other to counter U.S. They almost went to war multiple times, most notably during the Cold War days, and that rift continues. Those conflicts revolved around border disputes in northwestern China (over islands in major rivers), and in the Far East.

Though, the two realize the threat U.S. poses to them. Basically, it's stupid if they didn't gang up to bully the U.S.. That alliance is shaking U.S.'s security interests globally. So, what exactly are they doing together?

Sharing weapons:

Russia's like the Wal-Mart of weaponry, they are supplying weapons to U.S.’s purported rivals – Iran, Venezuela and China, which concerns the U.S. China military spending is nuts ($105 billion or so, estimated), and that threatens U.S. dominance in the region. At best, the U.S. is trying to keep its Pacific relevance alive by using Taiwan and Japan as a bone against China, but China’s overpowering economic power is crushing it.

China's getting close to 95% of its weapons from Russia. China bought ship-borne fighters, a diesel submarine, tanks and other big iron from Russia. That’s a LOT, and the U.S. naturally is very concerned. Russia spent close to $6 billion on arms supply in 2006 according to Putin (yeah, right!).

The U.S./EU have tried slow Russian weapons supplies through sanctions on arms companies (Rosboronexport for arms and Sukhoi for jets), but failed as it barely pinched Russia. Russians don’t really care, they have arms customers in China, Iran (a missile-defense system), India (t-90 tanks), Venezuela (fighters and choppers) and many other countries in Africa and Asia.

Oil

China's oil spending is crazy, in the future they may overtake the U.S. The problem? They don't have their own oil reserves, so like the U.S., they may look outside.

The U.S. is going to war for oil, while China prefers to aggressively acquire oil companies in strategic areas. China’s strategic approach isn’t pissing off countries while growing its sphere of influence globally. That approach is worrying the U.S., and we all know that oil defines political influence.

So aggressive is China, that it even tried to acquire a dominant U.S. oil company, Unocal. The US gov't blocked that, worrying it would increase China’s influence over the U.S. oil industry. China's acquision of Central Asian oil firms has already increased its influence in Caspian oil reserves. But, the U.S. still holds an edge in oil because of OPEC’s blessing.

Russia already has global oil influence through Gazprom, and its growing oil relationship with China will hit U.S. directly in the belly. That is one area to look at closely in the future.