Karen,
I refer to David Wall's article about Putin's pronouncements about new
ICBMs and so forth.
My instinct tells me that this is largely bluff on Putin's part. He's
playing the same game as Reagan did when announcing Star Wars. (Although
Reagan wasn't bluffing at the time it was realised within a year or two
that any form of comprehensive laser defence just wasn't possible, but the
US administration maintained the fiction for a long time afterwards because
they knew they had already demoralised the USSR.) I'm sure the Kremlin is
going to try to maintain and improve their ICBM system, but I doubt if
they'll succeed.
Economically, Russia is a great deal weaker than the USSR was previously.
Its declining population is half of America's and more than half of that is
impoverished. In terms of its prosperous taxable part of its population,
Russia only has a sixth or seventh of the prosperous Chinese population
along its coastline. Russia's state-owned gas and oil industry (most of it)
suffers from declining productivity and, in any case, its total reserves
probably don't exceed those of the undeveloped part of Iraq's reserves. The
number of scientists and engineers who graduate from Russia's universities
probably come to no more than 5% of China's and, apart from the occasional
brilliance in mathematics, Russian science papers hardly features at all in
any world-standard journals while Chinese-born scientists (usually working
in America for the time being) are beginning to dominate in the heavyweight
areas such as particle physics and biology.
Outside the prosperous new middle classes of Moscow, St Petersburg and
Novosibursk Russia is faltering very badly in almost every important sphere
-- health, education, transport, agriculture, morale of its armed forces,
state of military equipment. Its oligarchs continue what they've done ever
since about 1992 -- shipping their profits abroad as fast as they find
investments opportunities. In truth it is in deep trouble and very scared
indeed of China, Japan and other south-east Asian countries. Apart from
having nuisance capability in supplying Iran with ground-to-air missiles
and selling conventional military equipment (in smaller quantities from
year to year), Russia has virtually no real input into any of the big
strategic problems of the world, including the Middle East. Otherwise it
would have resisted the American invasion of Iraq this side of direct
confrontation -- for example, by assisting Iran, Syria, Egypt in all sorts
of ways that would have embarrassed Bush.
Keith Hudson
At 06:16 25/11/2006 -0800, you wrote:
When reading about Russia these days, one cannot forget for a moment how
critical her natural resources are in the Great Game and her ability to
play hardball in the precarious alliances that are made and broken regularly.
Odd Choice Of Enemies, Allies
By David Wall, Special to The Japan Times
, Nov. 25, 2006
David Wall is an associate fellow of Chatham House, London, and an
associate member of the East Asia Institute of the University of Cambridge
LONDON -- You have to admire his timing. Just before Russian President
Vladimir Putin left for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) annual
meeting in Hanoi this month, he sent out a strong warning to the world
leaders he expected to meet there.
In Moscow, Putin warned China and the United States that he was drawing on
Russia's new oil and gas wealth to expand and improve its nuclear-war
capabilities. He announced that in 2007 alone he would be spending $ 11.2
billion on new weapons, including 17 new nuclear-tipped intercontinental
ballistic missiles. He added that between now and 2015 he would be spending
$ 188 billion on new weapons.
<snip>
Keith Hudson, Bath, England, <www.evolutionary-economics.org>
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