-Caveat Lector-
Published on Thursday, January 18, 2001 in the Guardian of London
Russia Halts Military Cuts as Hawks Take
Over in the US
by Ian Traynor in Moscow
The Kremlin has shelved plans to cut and restructure the Russian armed
forces
radically, a decision seen by Moscow analysts as its first concrete
response to the
incoming Bush administration's decision to press ahead with the "son
of Star Wars"
national missile defence system.
In November, after months of infighting between military commanders,
President
Vladimir Putin ordered them to put their house in order by reducing
the 1.2m under
arms by 360,000 in the next five years. He also ordered a shift in
emphasis from
the strategic nuclear missiles to conventional forces.
The reshaping was to have begun last month, but nothing will happen
until March
at the earliest. "The main reason for the delay is the first steps of
the new US
leadership," the respected military analyst Viktor Litovkin said.
Only time will tell whether Presidents Putin and Bush will strike up a
friendly
relationship, but the early signs are of increasing hostility between
Moscow and
Washington on security, arms control and economic and financial
issues.
In the past few weeks Washington has accused Moscow of covertly
deploying
battlefield nuclear weapons in Kaliningrad, its westernmost enclave,
and has been
angered by Russian moves to invigorate arms sales to Iran.
Moscow, in turn, accused the US last week of breaching the Start-I
nuclear arms
reduction agreement by going ahead with the national missile defence
system
(NMD). Mr Putin described the Kaliningrad allegation as "total
rubbish."
George W Bush indicated at the weekend that his administration would
halt much
financial aid to Russia.
Yesterday the chairman of the Russian parliament's budget committee,
Alexander
Zhukov, brusquely responded: "Russia does not need large loans from
foreign
countries at the moment."
Yuri Gladkevich, a military observer at Moscow's independent Military
News Agency,
said: "There are signs of a worsening in relations, and it looks as
though things will
get a lot worse yet."
Moscow analysts see the people Mr Bush has named for his key cabinet
posts - Dick
Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Colin Powell and Condoleezza Rice - as hawks
from a
bygone era.
"These are people who see themselves as the victors of the cold war,"
said
Alexander Golts, military commentator on the news magazine Itogi.
"The Kremlin and the generals are flattered by that, because it
reminds them of the
days of the USSR when they were a great power. But the new American
administration is making a very strong and negative impact on our
military."
Moscow sent three warships on patrol in the Pacific on Monday, its
most ambitious
naval display since the Soviet Union collapsed a decade ago.
Mr Putin has been pushing for a radical overhaul of the armed forces
since the
Kursk submarine disaster August, and that has provoked a public brawl
between
the defence minister, Igor Sergeyev, and the chief of the general
staff, Anatoly
Kvashnin, who wants the currently separate strategic missile forces
integrated with
the army, navy and air branches and scarce resources redirected to
building up
conventional forces.
Gen Kvashnin was generally supposed to be getting the better of the
struggle, but
Marshal Sergeyev's hand may have been strengthened by the new US
administration's robust militaristic signals and "new realism" in
international
relations.
"Sergeyev wants to maintain the strategic missile forces as a
political-military
instrument, as the main lever for pressure on the US and Nato," Mr
Gladkevich said.
"The new US administration means Putin won't weaken the strategic
missiles forces
to the degree that Kvashnin wants."
In the past year the Kremlin has repeatedly stated that it wants major
arms
reductions, including cutting its stockpile of nuclear warheads to
1,500. But Alexei
Arbatov, an influential moderate on the parliamentary defence
committee, now
argues that Russia needs 4,500 nuclear warheads to maintain parity
with the US.
"The Kremlin sees NMD as as threat to Russia's national security which
will ignite a
new arms race it can't afford," Mr Gladkevich said.
© Guardian Newspapers Limited 2001
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