you found heartless
marika
like i care for them to have weapons to take down china either
Russia: Big Threat or Paper Bear
March 23, 2009
The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming! Or are they? That depends
on whom you ask.
President Dimitri Medvedev announced last Tuesday that Russia would
modernize its large but decrepit armed forces, starting in 2011. New nuclear
and conventional weapons systems will be acquired, but there will also be
large cuts in Russia's 1,027,000 armed forces, including large numbers of
officers. Defense spending could rise 30%.
Conservatives in North America and Europe are warning the Kremlin's
military overhaul threatens Europe and shows Russia has aggressive
attentions. Eastern European capitals are particularly worried. But the
facts tell a different story.
According to Russia's defense minister, Anatoli Serdyukov, only 10% of
Russia's current arms can be considered modern. The rest are outdated or
obsolescent. His figures appear accurate. Serdyukov hopes to raise to 30%
the number of modern weapons by 2015, provided Russia's economy, badly
battered by the nosedive in oil prices, can afford it. That remains in
doubt.
President Medvedev claimed the defense buildup was due to the need to
modernize ageing nuclear forces, and growing threats to Russia around its
borders. He particularly cited `attempts to expand the military
infrastructure of NATO near Russia's borders.' Medvedev was expressing a
deeply felt Russian anxiety.
The US-led NATO alliance has pushed right up to Russia's frontiers. Mikhail
Gorbachev's agreement with Washington to withdraw the Red Army from the
protective glacis of Eastern Europe in exchange for NATO's agreement not to
advance east was blatantly violated by three US presidents as the alliance
moved to the shores of Black Sea and Baltic.
In recent years, the US has been expanding its influence into the Caucasian
states of Georgia, Armenia and Azerbaijan. In addition, the US has set up
bases in former Soviet Central Asia and Pakistan.
What Medvedev did not mention was Moscow's growing unease over its huge
neighbor, China. There are only 20-25 million ethnic Russians in the
distant, vulnerable Russian Far Eastern provinces facing 1.3 billion
Chinese. Chinese-Russian relations are amicable, but tens of thousands of
Chinese are steadily slipping across the border into Russia. At the same
time, Russia's Pacific region is being drawn ever deeper into China's
economic orbit.
Russia has announced defense modernization plans for the past two decades.
The little war in Georgia last year showed that Russia's ground and air
forces badly needed new communications gear, modern command and control
techniques, better tactical integration, drones, and improved space
reconnaissance.
So Moscow plans to downsize its land forces and try to make them more mobile
and responsive by focusing on 3,500-4,000 man brigades provided with better
air and land transport. These reforms make it clear that NATO in Europe will
no longer be the `main enemy.' Future military operations will focus on a
new `Great Game' around Russia frayed borders in the Caucasus and Central
Asia, as President Medevedev noted.
To put all this in perspective, during the Cold War, Russia used to have 12
million men in 100 divisions (about a third immediately combat ready) and a
stupendous force of 50,000 battle tanks. Today, Russia's modest million-man
armed forces are unable to defend or even properly monitor the immensity of
the Russian Federation, which borders on 14 nations.
In fact, Russia's borders, 57,792 km, are the world's longest, encompassing
an immense area almost twice the size of the United States.
Scaremongers who warn of a new Russian military threat should do the math
and study maps. Russia spent $40 billion last year on defense. Medvedev's
planned increases - if they ever materialize - will increase military
spending to $52 billion.
The United States will spend US $741 billion on its military this year. Add
another $54 billion for the department of Homeland Security.
President Barack Obama has just earmarked $200 billion this year to finance
America's occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan. That alone is more than the
combined defense budgets of Russia and China.
The US accounts for almost half the world's total military spending. Russia
must also take into account the $330 billion military spending of America's
wealthy NATO allies and Japan.
I think we can safely allow the Ruskis a few more modern weapons systems.
The Red hordes are not at our gates quite yet.
30
copyright Eric S. Margolis 2009
marika
even closer by Tibet
Chas Freeman blasts Rep. Wolf over op-ed
By Kevin Bogardus
Posted: 03/23/09 08:12 PM [ET]
Chas Freeman, who withdrew his nomination for National Intelligence Council
chairman amid controversy over his past statements, is fighting back against
one of his main congressional critics, Rep. Frank Wolf (R-Va.).
Freeman sent Wolf a letter - which was obtained by The Hill - blasting the
Virginia lawmaker's March 14 op-ed in The Washington Post that suggested
Freeman orchestrated his own fall with his ties to the China National
Offshore Oil Corp. (CNOOC) and for making past statements about China and
Tibet.
"The man who leapt to this bizarre conclusion about me clearly was not
interested in the facts, and cannot be the Frank Wolf I thought I knew,"
Freeman wrote in his March 21 letter.
Speaking from his Washington home, the former Obama administration nominee
said he wrote the letter because he wanted to respond to Wolf's comments.
"I thought it was full of errors, so it deserved correction," Freeman told
The Hill.
Dan Scandling, Wolf's chief of staff, declined to comment in response to
Freeman's letter.
In his letter, Freeman at first praises Wolf for his public service,
thanking the member for helping to create the Iraq Study Group in 2006.
Freeman participated as an adviser in that group.
But then Freeman, a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia, begins to take apart
several of the points Wolf raised in his op-ed.
The congressman said that CNOOC had invested in Sudan's oil sector. Freeman
says in his letter that the oil company has never invested nor had
operations in the African country.
He also counters Wolf's criticism of his past comment that a March 2008
Tibetan protest was a "race riot."
Freeman says his description was backed up by other foreign observers as
well as Tibetans who said the violence was ethnic in nature and was directed
against Han and Hui Chinese.
Wolf wrote that he was not contacted by any lobbyists prior to penning the
op-ed. But Freeman disagreed, saying Wolf "repeated verbatim the bill of
particulars drawn up and shopped around the blogosphere and Congress by a
group of lobbyists with a narrow and very particular agenda."
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