Bill.
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http://www.themoscowtimes.com/stories/2001/02/08/009.html
Thursday, Feb. 8, 2001. Page 9
New Cold War Warms Up
By Pavel Felgenhauer
Last week Security Council Secretary Sergei Ivanov surprised an international
security conference in Munich, Germany, with an uncompromising speech
denouncing Western plans to further expand NATO, as well as the American
intention to deploy a national missile defense.
Many in the West believe that the present Kremlin positions on NATO expansion
and NMD are just public poses for domestic consumption to keep anti-Western
forces happy while the new "pro-liberal" President Vladimir Putin implements
much-needed military reforms. Further NATO expansion is virtually inevitable
and the United States will almost certainly proceed with NMD no matter what
Moscow says. So the Kremlin should begin accepting the inevitable, say
Western diplomats. The Munich conference would have been a good place to
start.
Conference attendees also hoped that Ivanov — who appears to be Putin’s main
national security adviser — is influential enough to speak reasonably on
serious matters. Instead he repeated that the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile
treaty remains a cornerstone of international security and that it forbids
the deployment of any NMD. Ivanov added that any breach of the ABM treaty
would begin a new arms race, including an arms race in space.
Ivanov’s remarks imply that today’s Russia is capable of competing with the
mighty United States both on earth and in space, a scenario that seems highly
questionable considering that Moscow does not have enough money to buy even a
few night-capable attack helicopters for its troops in Chechnya. The new U.S.
defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, told reporters in Munich that Russia
should not fear NMD since it is designed to intercept only a handful of
incoming "rogue" missiles. Rumsfeld said the Kremlin is "off the mark" in
calling NMD a threat to arms control. "That’s cold-war thinking," said
Rumsfeld.
Defense Minister Igor Sergeyev responded promptly, telling reporters Monday
that in response to NMD and NATO expansion Moscow will abandon most other
arms control agreements and will deploy "asymmetrical" countermeasures that
were designed in the 1980s to counter Ronald Reagan’s "Star Wars" initiative.
In fact, the latest Russian intercontinental ballistic missile, the Topol-M
SS-27, was specifically designed to penetrate ABM defenses. Sergeyev has been
criticized for spending virtually all the Defense Ministry’s procurement
money in 1997-99 — depriving the army of any new weapons — to deploy the
SS-27 that has, among other features, the capability to carry many decoy
warheads to baffle enemy radar and interceptors.
A number of decoy warheads were developed and tested in space during the
Soviet period. Russian "asymmetrical measures" are already in place. The only
problem is that up to now the United States does not have any missile defense
at all, while Russia is already deploying the SS-27.
For the Russian military and for Sergeyev, NATO expansion and NMD are a
vindication for squandering the country’s last resources on new ICBMs aimed
at the United States a full decade after Russia lost the Cold War. NMD and
NATO expansion will also provide the military and defense industry chiefs
with a pretext to whip up xenophobia and clamor for more money.
But why does Putin support these suicidal policies — virtually the same
policies that brought the powerful Soviet Union to collapse in the 1980s?
In 2000 Putin united Russia and won a landslide victory at the polls by
giving the people a clear enemy — the Chechen separatists, supported by an
international Moslem extremist cabal. Now the war in the Caucasus has been
officially proclaimed to have ended in victory, so a new enemy is being put
forward to mobilize the nation.
Of course, the Kremlin apparently hopes it can manage the level of
confrontation with the West, so that Russians feel threatened and work harder
but Western investments continue to flow in. But will the gamble work? In
Chechnya, the Kremlin originally planned a limited engagement, but a
full-scale war that Russia cannot win ensued.
Today the same military chiefs hope to replay the Cold War again and to
"restore" the Russian military to its Soviet glory in the process.
Pavel Felgenhauer is an independent, Moscow-based defense analyst.
