Russia's collapsing military-industrial complex

[Christian Zionist]

Red as in Rust
Russia's collapsing military-industrial complex.
by Reuben F. Johnson
05/26/2008, Volume 013, Issue 35



Novosibirsk, Russia
Russia's May 9 Victory Day was marked this year with more than normal fanfare and a massive show of military hardware rolling through Red Square--the first such display of weaponry on this holiday since the end of the Soviet empire. Standing on a special platform to review the parade--in front of a Lenin's tomb covered in bunting and Russian flags--were newly inaugurated president, Dmitri Medvedev, and his predecessor, and now prime minister, Vladimir Putin.

Since the fall of the Soviet Union the traditional Communist celebrations have faded. But May 9 continues to have historic resonance for the Russian people. Soviet losses in the war against Nazi Germany were between 20 and 30 million, the country's industrial base and infrastructure were left in ruins, and the nation was nearly bankrupt. It took decades to recover from the wholesale destruction.

Still, the 63rd anniversary is not a kruglaya data, as the Russians refer to nice, round-numbered 40, 50, or 60-year anniversaries, so no special celebration would seem to have been warranted this year, much less tanks, armored personnel carriers, and mobile ballistic missile launchers rolling through the streets.

The reasons for such a grand public spectacle were twofold. One was that Medvedev had been inaugurated only two days before on May 7, so the military show was a way of signifying the transfer of power to the new president and a demonstration that Russia remains a strong and united nation.

The other, more significant motivation was the culmination of the Putin regime's years-long crusade to send a message to the world that Moscow is once again a great military power--that it intends to challenge the West at every possible juncture.

This military posturing has manifested itself in a number of ways. Russian strategic bombers have begun flying patrols near NATO airspace again, for the first time since the end of the Cold War. In early February, a Russian bomber patrol buzzed a U.S. carrier battle group in the Pacific--violating Japanese airspace in the process. During April's NATO summit, Putin reportedly threw a temper tantrum and threatened that he would cause Ukraine to "cease to exist as a state" should the former Soviet republic attempt to join NATO. Russia's Kommersant newspaper, quoting a diplomat who witnessed the spectacle, reported that Putin threatened to encourage the secession of the Black Sea peninsula of Crimea and eastern Ukraine, areas where the population are pro-Moscow.

The story is easy to believe because Putin threatened far worse earlier in the year. In a joint press conference with Ukrainian president Viktor Yushchenko in February, Putin threatened his neighbor with nuclear annihilation if it allowed NATO to establish bases there. "It is frightening not only to talk about this, but even to think that, in response to such [NATO] deployments .  .  . and one can't theoretically exclude these deployments, Russia would have to point its warheads at Ukraine," he said.

But for all of the bluster, Russia's military hardware is aging and decaying before our eyes, whether it is chugging through Red Square or flying at 2,000 feet above a U.S. carrier's flight deck. Defense attachés and intelligence officers assigned to Moscow used to live for these military parades, which sometimes gave them a chance for a first glimpse of some new weapon system. But there was certainly nothing to get excited about in the latest parade.

"If they wish to take out their old equipment and take it for a spin, and check it out, they're more than welcome to do so," said Pentagon spokesman Geoff Morrell at a press conference. Russian military observers were even more dismissive. "Our armed forces today are merely a bad copy of the Soviet Army," said retired General Vladimir Dvorkin in an interview with the Associated Press.

The steep decline of the Russian military began in the 1990s when orders for Russia's defense screeched to a halt during the Yeltsin era. But the "happy days are here again" era of $100 per barrel oil under Putin has not brought a cornucopia of new orders from the Russian ministry of defense. Procurement of new fighters and other systems has been anemic; most of the budget allocated for aerospace R&D has been diverted from military projects to the development of the Sukhoi Superjet 100, a regional passenger airliner. Meanwhile the Tupolev Tu-95s that were sent to buzz the Nimitz battle group in the Pacific are a design that is more than 50 years old.

Most weapons systems in the Russian arsenal today are warmed over versions of designs that were made in the Soviet period. Remarkably few innovations have been turned out since then, and almost none that are anywhere close to production status. This is a direct result of Moscow--despite all of its new-found wealth--turning off the investment spigot to the R&D centers of the defense industry.

Under Yeltsin the drying up of R&D funding was arguably a case of benign neglect, but under Putin--and now Medvedev--the state seems strangely determined to starve its defense industry, perhaps because it is not a power center for Putin and his St. Petersburg cronies.

One of Russia's premier institutions of scientific excellence is the Siberia Aeronautical Research Institute (SibNIA) in Novosibirsk. A discussion with the senior staff there tells the tale. "Our yearly budget is about 400 million rubles [$17 million], but of this sum we only receive 20 million rubles--5 percent--from the government," a SibNIA official tells me. "The rest we have to go find ourselves by doing work for foreign customers or commercial projects like the Superjet. If the government wanted defense and aerospace technology to really advance in this country we and other institutes like ours would be fully state-funded as NASA is in the United States, and we would not be knocking on doors all the time with a tin cup in one hand."

But Moscow's failure to invest is only part of the story. The senior officials appointed by Putin now want to kick all of Russia's designers and engineers out of their design bureaus and institutes in Moscow and move them out to a new national design center in the city of Zhukovsky, which is some 25 miles from the far southeast edge of Moscow.

The official rationale for this move is that it places all of these experienced personnel into one facility and thereby creates synergism. A better explanation is that Putin's cronies want the land these defense facilities sit on in central Moscow, which is worth untold millions to real estate developers.

This is a move that will kill off what remains of Russia's defense industrial base. Most of the personnel still working at these design centers are pushing 60 or more. "None of these people will make the move all the way out to Zhukovsky," says one of the SibNIA senior researchers. "Most of them would rather retire than submit to a two-hour--each direction--commute every day across the whole of Moscow.

No one in Moscow officialdom seems particularly bothered by the collateral damage from this real estate scam. All they care about is how much money they are going to be able to stuff in their pockets. The fact that there may soon be no one left to build the weapons the Russian military needs is at most a minor inconvenience.

Which may be another reason for the parade of tanks returning to Red Square after a 17-year hiatus. These old weapons are nearing the day when they will no longer be considered modern. Better to show them off one more time, before they become museum pieces.

Reuben F. Johnson writes frequently on Russian politics.
 
http://www.weeklystandard.com/Utilities/printer_preview.asp?idArticle=15116&R=13AD952D0

[Lewinsky Stinks, Dr. Brennan Rocks]

I wouldn't put too much stock in this, CZ. Even if conventional weaponry in Russia has been neglected, nuclear weaponry sure hasn't been. Putin has invested a substantial chunk of his newfound petrodollar wealth into making what was already the world's biggest and most modern nuclear arsenal even bigger and more modern.

(And Dubya's response is to destroy the obsolete ICBMs we already have!)

[Mifletzet]

Don't right the Russkis off yet!

"Meshech" and "Tubal" are two allies of Gog and Magog, Yechezkel 38, identified as "Moscow" and Tobolsk"!

Prof Eidelberg's take on the growing Russian threat:




Edward Lucas’s book, The New Cold War (2008), is must reading, especially for Americans wondering about whom to vote for in the November presidential election.

The subtitle of Lucas’s book is How the Kremlin Menaces both Russia and the West. The book has been endorsed by former prime minister of Estonia Mart Laar. Vladimir Bukovsky, a former Soviet dissident, also endorsed the book. Bukovsky warns that former KGB operator, Vladimir Putin, who came to power in 1999, is attempting to “restore the Soviet Empire.” Twice elected president, Putin is now Russia’s prime minister.

Lucas points out, however, that under Putin Russia “has dropped three Soviet attributes from its foreign policy: a messianic ideology [i.e., communism], raw military power and the imperative of territorial expansion.” This makes the Russian threat less visible but more dangerous.

Despite some democratic reforms in post-Soviet Russia, authoritarianism and Russian nationalism are steadily and cunningly resurgent. Russia, says Lucas, “has adopted the trappings of a Western system—laws, elections and private property, to conceal a lawless, brutal and greedy reality… It uses the Soviet Union’s most powerful legacy, the monopoly hold on gas and oil pipelines running from east to west, to blackmail and bribe its frontier satellite countries.” Lucas provides some startling data:

Bulgaria, Slovakia, Finland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania are 100 per cent dependent on imported Russian gas. Slovenia, Romania, Poland, Czech Republic, Hungary, Austria and Greece are more than 50 per cent dependent on Russian gas. Switzerland, Netherlands, France, Italy and Germany are 13 to 40 per cent dependent—and the trend is upward.

Russia presents an attractive face to the West. The Russian middle class is getting richer; the workers are not doing badly; and there are now Russian billionaires or “oligarchs. By 2004, however, Putin had the business community under his thumb. Capitalism had become state capitalism. Meanwhile, criticism of post-Soviet Russia by the media has been evaporating.

“Russia,”says Lucas, “has become one of the most dangerous places for journalists.” Since 1992, forty-seven have been killed. The record under Putin is not encouraging. According to the New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists, since Putin’s ascendancy, fourteen journalists have been murdered and eight suspicious cases are under investigation. Nor is this all.

As in the days of Stalin, various critics of the regime are being sent to psychiatric hospitals. And yet, despite this repression, Putin enjoys a very high public approval rating. Indeed, since his rise to power, “the FSB [successor to the KGB] has achieved something the KGB never quite managed: its members, current and former, are running the country.” They run the country and own the country. Some commentators call Russia a “criminal state.” Does the United States know how to deal with this new Russia? I wonder.

During the first Cold War, American Sovietologists spoke of an inevitable “convergence” between the US and the USSR. They believed that the dynamics of the modern industrial state inevitably leads to decentralization of power. They were wrong. Power is increasingly concentrated in Russia’s executive branch. “Every member of Russia’s legislature,” says Lucas, “owes his … seat to the Kremlin’s whim.” Hence, “they must dance to the Kremlin’s tune. Their task is to look enough like a parliament to maintain the pretense that Russia is run by a legislature with real powers.” (This reminds me of Israel’s Knesset, which, during 60 years, has never toppled a Labor-led or Likud-led and now Kadima-led government! Quite a democracy.)

What shall we call Russia? Since February 2006, Putin’s administration has been described as a “sovereign democracy.” Its supporters interpret this to mean that the government’s actions and policies ought above all enjoy popular support within Russia itself and not be determined from outside the country. However, Masha Lipman of the Carnegie Endowment maintains that “Sovereign democracy is a Kremlin coinage that conveys two messages: first, that Russia’s regime is democratic and, second, that this claim must be accepted, period. Any attempt at verification will be regarded as unfriendly and as meddling in Russia’s domestic affairs.” This resembles the dogma that Israel is a democracy which no American Zionist organization dares criticize for the same reason!

Some Western observers scorn the term “sovereign democracy” in Russia as a subterfuge to mask what is otherwise known as dictatorship. (We have something like this in Israel. Thus, when Likud Prime Minister Ariel Sharon adopted Labor’s policy of “unilateral disengagement” in December 2003, he nullified the results of the January 2003 election, when the public overwhelmingly rejected Labor’s policy. Labor’s policy nonetheless became a fait accompli, since Sharon’s cabinet ministers knew that if they voted against unilateral disengagement, the Government would fall and they would lose their cabinet posts and power. No public figure dares tell the truth: democracy in Israel is a subterfuge to mask an illegitimate government and prime ministerial dictatorship.

Returning to Russia: despite its tremendous growth in wealth spurred by soaring oil prices, Russia is still a hard place to live. Since 1991, almost ten million people have left the country. Life expectancy is only 59 years; and such is the decline in the birthrate that the Russian population is shrinking by almost a million a year.

Nevertheless, the old nationalism of imperial Russia excites the Russian mind. Russian racism and xenophobia are on the upswing. Thus, despite some political pluralism in the 1990s and the veneer of capitalism, the old authoritarian style of government in Russia is very much alive along with Russia’s global ambitions.

Although Russia does not pose an immediate military threat, since most of its nuclear weapons are obsolete, Russian economic penetration of the West via its newfound wealth is ominous. Given its state capitalism, its tremendous oil and gas resources, its penetration of Western markets and stock exchanges, Russia has the wherewithal to split the American-European alliance, especially now when Europe is steeped in anti-Americanism.

How ironic! Not Russian communism but Russian money is the key to Russia’s imperial ambitions. Thus, while Russia uses business investments for political objectives, the myopic West sees only business. It allows state-run and even criminal enterprises in Russia to compete in international capital markets, which should only be open to private and lawful enterprises.

The question arises: Is American up to this challenge? Unfortunately, none of the candidates running for president measure up to Ronald Reagan. None seem equal to the threat posed by the New Cold War—a threat compounded by Islamic imperialism. Senator Barack Obama is worrisome. He has no experience in international affairs, and his position on the far left of the political spectrum renders him more inclined to negotiate with and appease tyrants and terrorists.

Also ominous, Professor Zbigniew Brzezinski, former President Jimmy Carter’s national security adviser, is in the Obama camp. Brzezinski persuaded Carter to lower the U.S. defense budget, just as Obama has promised to do if elected president. Moreover, with Brzezinski as his national security adviser, Carter undermined the Shah of Iran and virtually installed the Ayatollah Khomeini. The anti-Western Iranian Revolution that followed may be the most momentous in world history if Iran obtains nuclear weapons.

It should also be borne in mind that Brzezinski is a globalist. He believes that the nation-state system fragments mankind and is historically obsolete. Obama may be close to this position even without Brzezinski. When he calls for change, he may have in mind the subordination of the United States to the United Nations. This would advance Russia’s global ambitions as well as Islam’s. The fate of Western civilization—or what’s left of it—may hang in the balance of America’s forthcoming presidential election.

[cjd]

Russia is still very dangerous. Even though the Russian  people may not be reaping the gain the government has been putting its financial issues in order and from what I understand they are in a lot less debt then we are here in the U.S.A.  Whatever the condition of their arsenal is I am sure it is still very large and quite deadly. Russia has a lot more tolerance for casualties they will just throw more men and and weaponry into the mix to compensate for the aging systems.

[Johnson Brown]

From what I hear the Russians are a very strange people, they can be smiling at you and talking to you but watch out because they are always plotting or thinking one step ahead of you.
The Russian military is still very strong, don't believe all this about rusting weapons, yes the old ones might be rusting but the new ones are shiny and new.
Russia is just watching and waiting, they are waiting for someone like Obama to get into office then look out and even that idiot Obama said Russia is more of a threat then we think.

[MassuhDGoodName]

A word to the wise:

Adolph Hitler and his entire Reich leadership laughed and sneered at the Russian Red Army 70 years ago, with numerous self-serving propaganda articles of the type similar to this one by Reuben Johnson.

First of all, I question what credentials Mr. Johnson has in his life which would establish his being an authority on the capabilities of the modern Russian military.

Such opinions as these he offers serve only one thing:  to lull those of us in the West to sleep, so that we consider "the Russkis" to be of no importance; posing no threat to our security.

The armed forces of The Third Reich were the most advanced and powerful the world had ever witnessed, of unquestioned technical and numerical superiority.  Its leadership publicly boasted that the entire Soviet Union would be crushed within two weeks time of a full on Nazi invasion.  At the time of the invasion, the USSR was caught sleeping, its armed forces technologically and numerically inferior, as were its overall standard of living and economy.

A more carefully researched view of history than the one offered here by Mr. Johnson, might afford some here a slightly more "healthy" respect for Russian national pride and Russian national capabilities.

I state this because it was not the highly advanced U.S. Army which defeated Nazi Germany.

It was in the fact the Soviet Red Army which not only repelled the mightiest fighting force the world had ever seen, but then staged a full on counterattack which did not stop until it had surrounded all of Berlin and seized half of Nazi Germany.

Hitler was crushed at Stalingrad by the very Russians who were under a starvation level siege by the Nazis.

Seems that "the size of a dog in a dog fight" is less important than "the size of the fight in the dog".

[briann]

THis article isn't accurate.  Its ignoring the fact that Russia's economy is flourishing with the high oil prices, and a few other economic reforms.

Russia's military is just beginning to flex its muscles.  Just you wait and see.

[MassuhDGoodName]

I fear that a strong Russia is going to team up with a Superpower Communist China with the expressed intentions of doing us in.

[briann]

I fear that a strong Russia is going to team up with a Superpower Communist China with the expressed intentions of doing us in.

Yes... I'll agree with that worry.

[Bruicy Kibbutz]

I fear that a strong Russia is going to team up with a Superpower Communist China with the expressed intentions of doing us in.

Nah sharing is caring each country can share the wells, just like frontlines fuel of war

[Zelhar]

I fear that a strong Russia is going to team up with a Superpower Communist China with the expressed intentions of doing us in.

Nah sharing is caring each country can share the wells, just like front lines fuel of war

China is a natural competitor of Russia, it has territorial claims from Russia and it is aspiring to take the hegemony in central Asia which the USSR once had. Russia also competes with Canada, America, Denmark and Norway for control of Arctic.

Hence Russia's natural Ally against China is India: No points of friction. And also economical compatibility- Russia has the resources and also is technological advanced in strategic fields. India has the manpower, demand for Russia's resources and it is also it's technological skills complete those of Russia.

It would be logical for Russia and America to be cooperative and balance China but ultimately History proves that Russia is not a loyal ally both due to the radical changes of government as well as because it has always aspired world domination.

Hence I foresee three major alliances: America-Europe-Japan (lead by America), China, Russia-India .

For sure the Muslim world is going to be the scourged of all the above... and God forbid, if China becomes their ally.