Bush's clumsy move into Central Asia and the Middle East has provided the Russians all the political capital among friendly neighbors and a power vacuum as big as the one in Bush's skull created by the used up US military. Bush has managed to restart the Cold War. Make no mistake, Russia knows it can trust the US only as far as it can force it to move.
The US has been quite provocative, unnecessarily so. A new arms race seems to be in the offing.
AlterNetA particular irritant to Putin, parallel to the arguments about CFE, is the U.S. proposal (a pet project of former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld) to deploy 10 ground-based interceptor missiles in Poland and a 360 degree X-band radar in the Czech Republic. These are linked to an Alaska-based ballistic missile defense system, for which Gordon Brown agreed in late July 2007 (without the public debate Tony Blair promised the previous February) to provide facilities at Fylingdales and Menwith in Yorkshire. This U.S. system was initially justified to counter a threat from North Korea, then rationalized against an Iranian threat.
Putin, however, sees U.S. missiles deployed in central Europe as primarily directed against Russia, specifically the Topol, Topol-M and RS-18 ICBMs stationed in the Russian regions of T'ver, Ivanovo, Kaluga and Saratov. Putin's fears are well-founded as a memorandum signed by Rumsfeld in January 2002 and a national security directive signed by Bush the following December (NSPD-23) both specify that these BMD systems would be upgraded as U.S. technology advanced.
Putin's initial response in February 2006 to the prospect of missiles in Poland was to threaten new missiles in Kaliningrad. In a slightly more conciliatory mood at the G-8 meeting in early June 2007 in Heiligendamm, Germany, Putin offered, as an alternative to a U.S. radar in the Czech Republic, the use of Russia radars in Gabala, Azerbaijan, and at Armavir in southern Russia, an offer he repeated in early July to Bush in Kennebunkport. The American response was cool, proposing only some form of "joint architecture."
[..]In an effort to resolve differences on a number of security issues (including CFE, BMD and the thorny issue of independence for Kosovo) the U.S. and Russia recently launched a series of 2+2 meetings comprising foreign and defense ministers to be held every six months. At the first of these on October 12, 2007, in Moscow, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Secretary of Defense Robert Gates made no headway on CFE. This was reflected in the vote of October 16, in the Security Committee of the Russian Duma, endorsing Putin's proposed legislation to abrogate the treaty on December 12. On BMD, however, Gates suggested to the Russians that radars and interceptor missiles would not necessarily be deployed in the Czech Republic and Poland if the Iranian threat did not materialize, a suggestion he repeated ten days later in Prague to the Czech defense minister.
Meanwhile, at the National Defense University in Washington, D.C., Bush reiterated the immediacy of the Iranian threat and the need to act now on BMD in Europe. Opponents of BMD took heart at this apparent rift in administration thinking, which reflects the deep apprehension throughout the U.S. about the Bush-Cheney project to demonize Iran in preparation for yet another war. In any event, Putin seemed unimpressed by the concession offered by Gates in Moscow and Prague. At an EU-Russia meeting in Portugal in late October, Putin invoked the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, noting that Soviet deployments of offensive missiles in Cuba were a direct response to U.S. missile deployments in Turkey, implicitly threatening a similar Russian response to American BMD deployments in central Europe.
Putin has responded as the Russians always have.
PINRDuring the past few months, the Russian Federation has implemented a new doctrine of increased military activity, as well as the development of new thermobaric bombs. There are a number of political implications for Russia's close neighbors and for the international community.
The renewed bomber runs, which have been a regular occurrence since June 2007, have skirted U.S., British, and Norwegian airspace. Besides their provocative nature, Russia has not violated any international laws since the bombers have never entered the airspace of another country. Instead, the bombers have remained in international airspace, and only come close to U.S., British, and Norwegian airspace.
Nevertheless, the bombers have caused sufficient concern, as has been seen by the scrambling of Norwegian, British, and U.S. interceptors to "escort" the Russian bombers back toward Russian airspace. The perception of these flights has been summed up by Gene Renuart, commander of the North American Aerospace Defense Command (N.O.R.A.D.), who told the media last month that "any time you have an unidentified aircraft approaching sovereign airspace of the country there's some concern about the intentions of the airplane."
The statement from Renuart encompasses the concerns of the political and military elite in the West. The return of the bomber runs has many of the older members of the Western political and military elite reminiscing about the days of the Cold War. This unnerve in the West is exactly what the Russians want, as Moscow is using the bomber runs in order to extend their influence over their neighbors, and to achieve leverage from their political adversaries in the West.
Another change in the military spectrum of the Russian Federation is the recent development of the so called "Father of All Bombs," or F.O.A.B. Aside from the obvious play on words used on the U.S. military's "Mother of All Bombs" (M.O.A.B.; the acronym was originally derived from the technical name, Massive Ordinance Air Blast), the F.O.A.B. represents an explosive leap forward in non-nuclear weaponry, especially in the field of thermobaric weaponry. [See: "Keep a Watchful Eye on Russia's Military Technology"]
The F.O.A.B. is allegedly four times as powerful, and produces an explosion that is twice as hot, as the next most powerful thermobaric weapon, the aforementioned M.O.A.B. It is also interesting to note the rhetoric involved with the name of the new bomb; while the United States may have the Mother of All Bombs, the Russians want everyone to know that they have the Father of All Bombs.
Jane M. O. Sharp, MIT Center for International Studies offers us an alternative. Cooler heads will have to wait for the next president.
The main problem facing Europe in dealing with a belligerent President Putin and a lame duck President Bush bogged down in Iraq is that neither is inclined to accommodate the other. Putin is an increasingly difficult leader for western powers to deal with on Iran, Kosovo, and many other issues. Nevertheless his goal of establishing a measure of parity with NATO should not be dismissed out of hand.
The parity principle also serves the goal of international stability and should be supported as long as western security interests are not put at risk. This requires an alliance leader strong enough for the give and take of multilateral diplomacy, one who can resist Russia's effort to block Kosovo's independence, but also open up a number of arms control possibilities. For example: freeze the needlessly provocative BMD plans for Europe; extend the START-I agreement; begin new Strategic Offensive Reduction Talks (SORT), which Bush promised Putin in Kennebunkport in July; and open up the bilateral INF treaty to new partners -- including Iran. Putin might then re-think his threat to abrogate CFE, a win-win situation for everyone.
Hundreds of angry protesters, some waving ceremonial swords from trucks equipped with loud speakers, gathered Friday outside the presidential palace to denounce a teacher whose class named a teddy bear "Mohammed" -- some calling for her execution.
Club-wielding police fought stone-throwing rioters in the northern suburbs of Paris for a second night Monday, with at least five officers suffering injuries during the clashes, authorities said.
They don’t just make deals on Wall Street. They make myths. And last week Wall Street's myth-making machine was roaring at full throttle — after the news broke that America’s five biggest investment banks will this year shell out a record $38 billion in bonus pay.
