[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
.” 57At the moment, this trend is somewhat obscured because high naturalresource prices, particularly petroleum, have allowed the Kremlin to tempo-rize, believing it has the financial resources to provide both guns and butter.But as weapons production ramps up in 2005, Putin will be compelled tochoose one or the other.Rose-Colored Glasses AgainWestern public culture provides a long list of cogent economic and politi-cal reasons for believing the Russian will jettison militarization, assumingthat Putin’s policies are guided by enlightened rationality.Rapid fire shiftsin Putin’s foreign policy, together with the usual chatter about prosper-ity being just around the corner help to keep hope alive in the West.Ourpublic culture strongly inclines us toward nonconfrontational engagementin which we attempt to promote democratic free enterprise, emphasizingeconomic assistance and sanctions to the Russians for going where we’dlike them to go.Our president goes to Moscow and chides the Russians forslipping back from democracy.But although democratic free enterprise isprobably Moscow’s best long-range solution, the Kremlin almost certainlyP1: FCW0521857449c10Printer: cupusbwCUNY475B/Rosefielde0 521 85744 9November 5, 200614:1216The Reconfiguration of National Wealth and Powerdoesn’t have either the insight or the resolve to extricate itself from remil-itarization.The ceaseless effort to portray the economy as self-healing orself-transforming into democratic free enterprise is unconvincing.The counterlogic of the Russian economic system, and the Kremlin’sunwillingness to relinquish targets of opportunity to countervailing Amer-ican power, and a variety of other security concerns, including the potentialChinese threat, further diminish the likelihood that Russia will abandonremilitarization.Putin probably won’t overtly choose between remilitariza-tion and today’s attempt to have guns and butter, but his authoritarianinstincts will lead him to gradually ally with the forces of remilitarization.In the fall of 2005 Russia conducted at least six successful strategic misslelaunches.About these launches Martin Sieff wrote, “American analysts tendto discount the value of such weapons and such tests.But such confi-dence, or arrogance, may well be misplaced.Over the past century Russianmilitary, space and missile and technology have repeatedly astonished andconfounded the world by getting impressively reliable results from unas-suming, simple or supposedly obsolescent technology.For the key pointabout all six major missile tests that the Russian armed forces conductedin late September and early October is that the weapons actually worked.The rocket engines fired and the missiles went where they were supposedto.” 58Many Western security analysts like Keir Leiber and Daryl Press, largelyunder the thrall of the public culture and ignorant of the disinformativepurposes of Russia’s official arms control statistics erroneously imagine thatRussia’s nuclear forces are inadequate,59 and don’t believe that Russia will implement a full spectrum fifth generation rearmament by 2010, or anytime soon thereafter.There is always the possibility that they could be rightabout rearmament, but they are missing the drama, and underestimatingthe risks.Thus, contrary to all that is being said in the American and Europeanpress and by Western governments, the Soviet Union didn’t disappear –it simply reorganized, changed its name to Russia, dropped its ideologicalorientation, embarked on a publicity campaign to persuade the rest of theworld that the tiger had changed its stripes, and set out on a course ofexpediency in a changing world.Seen in this way, it can be argued that the Cold War has never really ended;it merely entered a new phase with the collapse of the USSR.Western har-monists denied this, of course, but today even those in the European Unionare being made to face the unpleasant reality.“The future of Europe’s rela-tions with Russia is all but settled,” wrote an astute European commentatorP1: FCW0521857449c10Printer: cupusbwCUNY475B/Rosefielde0 521 85744 9November 5, 200614:1Geopolitical Aspirations of the Nations217in 2006.“Official communiques on relations between Russia and the Euro-pean Union are generally tuned to the requirements of positive thinking andthe designs of strategic planners in European big business.but multilat-eral cooperation is characterised by discrete discontent on the side of Euro-pean diplomacy.The Council of Europe blames Russia of non-compliancewith a whole range of European standards and multilateral treaties.As the1997 Cooperation and Partnership Treaty between the European Union andRussia is up for renewal in 2007 the EU commission is filing a whole rangeof alterations.Russian foreign policy, however, remains quite content withthe current situation, i.e.the practical irrelevance of these agreements.” 60Russia in the Distant FutureIn the longer term, the reconfiguration of global wealth and power among thenations is making Russia more and more vulnerable.Its GDP will probablybe only 2 percent of the global total by 2025, leaving it in the dust behindAmerica, China, the European Union, and Japan.Russia’s declining population will sharply curtail the Kremlin’s ability tofield the armed forces needed to defend its borders, and a parallel fall inscientists and engineers hampers its economic and military potential
[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]