Quote:
Originally Posted by Rainbow Six
That sounds pretty plausible to me. I could be wrong - it's been a long time since I read it - but IIRC Tom Clancy's Bear and Dragon used something along those lines to posit a conflict between what was by then the Russian Federation and China - I think the premise was that the Russians discovered large deposits of gold and oil in Siberia.
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Gold and oil would certainly give them some hard currency via exports and as for the Rare Earths, Russia does actually have deposits but doesn't do much with them at the moment - but that's all set to change.
From what I've read, Russia supplies about 2% of the world supply but according to some reports, has the fifth or fourth largest reserves of the elements.
So yes, definitely plausible without having to completely rewrite the history of the USSR, you'd only have to fudge the timeline for the discovery and exploitation of the resources.
Russia is apparently looking into plans to exploit the REE reserves they have, a plan that will put them at odds with China. The value of those REEs could give Russia a lot of money in the coming decades. Now, from what I understand of the talk I hear in the mining industry and what I've read in the trade papers and news, Russia initially wants to end it's reliance on China for REEs but after that, they want to be a world supplier.
I believe the West will be happy to help (because they too want to end some of their dependency on China).
According to this South China Morning Post article, Russia wants to be a world supplier in ten years (in second place to China apparently)
https://www.scmp.com/news/world/euro...ce-rare-earths
So the REE reserves are there, all we need to do with the T2k world is have the USSR discover & exploit them soon enough to allow them to have a healthy economy into the 1980s-1990s.
No need for complete rewrites of history, no need for McGuffins.
EDIT: To help add some perspective to the importance of REEs to the modern world, this article, while the same as the South China Morning Post article, adds some extra information about the Pentagon funding the establishment of a Rare Earth separation plant in Texas, USA.
https://www.mining-technology.com/ne...e-earths-plan/
And this is the article linked in the article posted in this edit
https://www.mining-technology.com/fe...ynas-contract/