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Source: The GuardianLuke Harding in Moscow Wednesday April 11, 2007 Russia is preparing its own military response to the US's controversial plans to build a new missile defence system in eastern Europe, according to Kremlin officials, in a move likely to increase fears of a cold war-style arms race. The Kremlin is considering active counter-measures in response to Washington's decision to base interceptor missiles and radar installations in Poland and the Czech Republic, a move Russia says will change "the world's strategic stability".
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The Bush administration says the bases are designed to shoot down rogue missiles fired by Iran or North Korea. Its proposed system would be helpless against Russia's vast nuclear arsenal, it says. But this claim has been greeted with widespread incredulity, not just in Russia but also among some of the US's nervous Nato allies. They include Germany, where the Social Democrat leader, Kurt Beck, warned last month that the US and Russia were on the brink of another arms race "on European soil".
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The threat of a new arms race comes at a time when relations between Russia and the US are at their worst for a decade. In February Mr Putin accused the Bush administration during a speech in Munich of seeking a "world of one master, one sovereign". On Friday Russia's duma, or lower house or parliament, warned that the US's plans could ignite a second cold war. "Such decisions, which are useless in terms of preventing potential or imaginary threats from countries of the middle and far-east, are already bringing about a new split in Europe and unleashing another arms race," the declaration - passed unanimously by Russian MPs - said.
Analysts said there was a common feeling in Russia that the US had reneged on an agreement after the collapse of the Soviet Union to abandon cold war politics. "Cold war thinking has prevailed, especially on the western side," Yevgeny Myasnikov, a senior research scientist at Moscow's Centre for Arms Control, told the Guardian. "Russia has been deeply disappointed by what has happened after 1991. Nato started to expand, and the US started to think it had won the cold war. We had hoped for a partnership. But it didn't happen."Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/russia/article/0,,2054142,00.html
Moscow signals place in new world order Julian Borger, diplomatic editor Wednesday April 11, 2007 The Guardian http://www.guardian.co.uk/russia/article/0,,2054119,00.htmlThe news that an arms race may be underway once more between Washington and Moscow has brought back some unpleasant memories, but it is also a pointer to a more complicated future. The Kremlin's threat to counter US missile defence installations in eastern Europe is a sign that Russia will no longer acquiesce in a Pax Americana.
What seemed in the west like a post cold-war honeymoon in the nineties is remembered more as a rape by Moscow's new leaders. In their eyes Russia was taken advantage of at a moment of economic weakness by Washington, London and a band of unscrupulous Russian oligarchs. A new Russian foreign policy, published by the government in recent days makes it clear that Moscow believes the era of American hegemony is now over. "The myth about the unipolar world fell apart once and for all in Iraq," the review says. "A strong, more self-confident Russia has become an integral part of positive changes in the world."
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Soaring oil and gas prices have transformed the environment. Russia is no longer a debtor nation. A new self-assuredness was on show when the Russians hosted the G8 meeting at St Petersburg in 2006. "Suddenly, they had all the right suits, watches and the right cars," said a western official who was there.
Moscow's relationship with Europe is now defined by its role as the continent's oil and gas supplier. Its tactics have been those of a giant corporation seeking to maximise its market power. Rather than deal with the EU as a whole, Russia has negotiated individual deals with different European countries - agreeing with Germany the construction of the Nord Stream pipeline under the Baltic, and the extension of another gas pipeline to Hungary. Moscow has thus undermined the EU's communal efforts to reduce its dependence on Russia by bringing Caspian gas through Turkey. |
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