Business Beagle
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Russia’s place in new world order
September 4th 2008 03:46
Russia’s place in new world order
The sleeping bear has been rumbling for some time now and it occurs to me that in all the excitement over other world events, wars, and the focus on the fight against terrorism, we may be missing the resurgence of a world power that is determined to take back a position of authority in tomorrow’s world order.
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in the early 1990’s, there has been a steady growth, progress and development in Russia’s economy. Hand in hand with this growth, has been resurgence in its military capability and willingness to use this capability. Now, please understand that I am no expert on Russia or it’s military and political objectives. To be honest, there is not even that much interest being shown towards Russia in the mainstream media either, which makes me wonder if there might be something we are missing as a collective global community that is hopefully focused on stability and peace.
Russia flexes some muscle
Here are some events I have found and will list in chronological order.
08/2007 – Russia resumes long-range bomber patrols, extending out towards both US territory and also the UK and other European nations. Now, the spin on this is that it is to give their military pilots valuable training in strategic aviation flights to remote areas. Riiiiight. There were also reports that Britain and Norway had repeatedly scrambled jets to intercept Russian military aircraft entering their airspace. All part of the training for their pilots though I’m sure… to simulate “realism”.
09/2007 – Russia and Indonesia sign a $1.2b arms deal enabling Indonesia to buy 22 Russian helicopters, 20 tanks and two Kilo-Class submarines, with 8 more in the future. Bah, Indonesia is no threat to Australia though; we have the Collins Class submarine… Part of the deal includes an agreement to allow Russia to develop space exploration facilities and satellite launch facilities from the Indonesian island of Blak, off the coast of Papua. I’m sure those facilities couldn’t possibly be used for any military purposes though…
Interesting sidenote – Russian is still the world’s 3rd largest arms dealer behind the US and France. Russia’s two biggest clients for military hardware are China and India. Russia also sold Iran a surface to air defence system in 2005 in defiance of an arms embargo on Iran.
12/2007 – Russia’s navy returns to the Mediterranean Sea and the Atlantic Ocean with the aim of bolstering Russia’s naval presence and increasing the security of Russian navigation. Navigation is clearly a very risky ….thing… it does need protection, right? Hmm….
4/2008 – Russia’s rearmament program, approved in 2006 for a period up to and including 2015 provides for a modernising of weapons to its armed forces. Once such upgrade is the SU-34 Fullback fighter-bomber aircraft. I won’t go into details of the aircraft here, except to say, it is a very advanced and capable little upgrade indeed.
Russia’s Federal Security Service has reportedly been very active as well, with reported assassination attempts (some successful) against Alexander Litvinenko, Chechen separatist leader Zelimkhan blown up in Qatar, Ukraine President Viktor Yushchenko, and Omar ibn Khattab – a financier of the Chechen resistance.
08/2008 – Russia invades Georgia. This has been fairly well covered in the media so no need to go into it here. But, they clearly went further then just “protecting the break away province of South Ossetia”.
08/2008 – Russia warns the Ukraine against joining NATO.
08/2008 – Russia warns Poland that it now faces a possible nuclear strike after agreeing to host part of the US Missile Defence Shield within Poland’s borders.
I’m sure I have missed some developments along the way, but I don’t think it takes a conspiracy-theorist cynic like me to deduce that Russia is quite interested in events outside it’s own borders and seems willing to prepare itself to be a little more then just interested.
Last thought for the day, according to Jane’s Defence Industry the top 5 countries by defence budget and expected growth to 2010 shows that a combination of large defence budgets and large growth is most clearly evident in five countries, Russia, China, South Korea, India and Saudi Arabia. Russia is by far the largest with anticipated growth of 67.5% through the period compared with the average of 30%.
So, what are Russia’s intentions exactly?
Woof!
Business Beagle
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