Category Archives: United States

Europe, Government, Military, National Security, NATO, Russia, Society, United States

Russia announces its intention of bolstering its nuclear arsenal in 2015…

AN EMERGING NEW COLD WAR

The Russian President, Vladimir Putin, has pledged to add more than 40 new intercontinental ballistic missiles to Russia’s nuclear arsenal in 2015, sending a clear warning message to NATO amid escalating tensions with the West.

Mr Putin made the announcement during his opening address at the Army-2015 Expo, an international military forum based near Moscow.

Mr Putin said that ‘more than 40 new intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) able to overcome even the most technically advanced anti-missile defence systems’ would be added to Russia’s nuclear arsenal this year.

The Army-2015 fair is held to show off and parade the latest developments in Russian military hardware, and Mr Putin promised his generals an array of other new weapons – including the advanced Armata tanks that were shown off at a Red Square ceremony last month.

The president also announced that the military was beginning testing a new system of long-range early warning radar ‘to monitor in the western direction’.

Few countries in the world are known to possess land-based missiles capable of crossing continents. The US operates 450 Minuteman missiles across three bases, while Russia’s existing arsenal is believed to be slightly greater. Russia’s pending upgrade will alarm the West as stipulations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) are specifically aimed at reducing arsenals.

ICBMs are needed to deliver nuclear warheads over long distances, and some are capable of delivering more than one. Though Russia is less than open about its military stockpiles, it is thought to possess more than 8,000 warheads in total.

Mr Putin’s announcement, which included a general pledge to continue Russia’s ‘massive’ military rearmament programme, comes amid the worst tensions between the West and Russia in decades.

Russian defence ministry official General Yuri Yakubov has said that US proposals to bolster an allied army on Polish soil would be ‘the most aggressive step by the Pentagon and NATO since the Cold War’.

He said: ‘Russia will have no option but to build up its forces and resources on the Western strategic front.’

18 June, 2015

Russian President Vladimir Putin has said that Russia would have to defend itself if threatened, adding that NATO is ‘coming to its borders’.

At a meeting outside of Moscow with Sauli Niinisto, his Finnish counterpart, Mr Putin said: ‘If someone puts some of our territories under threat that means we will have to direct our armed forces and modern strike power at those territories, from where the threat emanates.’

After being asked about Moscow and NATO both boosting their firepower in the region, Mr Putin said: ‘As soon as some threat comes from an adjoining state, Russia must react appropriately and carry out its defence policy in such a way as to neutralise a threat against it… It’s NATO that is coming to our borders and not us moving somewhere.’

But he added that observers should not ‘blow anything out of proportion’ with regard to the perceived threat from NATO.’

‘Of course we will analyse everything, follow this carefully. So far I don’t see anything that would force us to worry especially.’

The earlier announcement by Mr Putin that Russia will boost its nuclear arsenal by more than 40 intercontinental missiles this year was slammed by NATO as ‘sabre-rattling’.

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Foreign Affairs, Syria, United Nations, United States

Syria gas attacks are continuing…

SYRIA & CHEMICAL WEAPONS

Intro: Despite Syria agreeing to dismantle its chemical weapons programme, Bashar Assad is using chlorine against his people

IN 2013 Washington went back on its pledge to strike at the heart of Bashar al-Assad’s regime for having used sarin nerve gas against Syrians in Damascus that summer. Brokered by Russia, the Syrian regime agreed to dismantle its chemical weapons programme.

Theoretically, the deal has been a success: to date, 98% of the country’s banned substances have been eliminated and destroyed, and Syria has joined the treaty against their use. Yet, as is his convoluted way, Assad still appears to be making a mockery of the agreement.

Since 2014 there have been increasingly frequently reports of chlorine gas attacks against towns and villages held by the rebels, most recently in three separate incidents on May 7th. Chlorine is not a banned substance since it has industrial and commercial uses, but it is strictly prohibited when used as a weapon. Inhalation causes a burning sensation, and fluid can accumulate in the lungs resulting in suffocation.

Then, on May 8th, reports surfaced from the Organisation for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons (OPWC) that unexplained traces of sarin and VX nerve agent had been found at a research centre in Damascus. Suspicions that Syria had failed to declare all its facilities first arose in 2014 when the regime suddenly added four new sites to the list it handed over in 2013.

Few believe the regime’s claims that the rebels are responsible for the chemical attacks, including the one in the summer of 2013 that left hundreds dead. The physical evidence points the other way, too. Chlorine is usually delivered in barrel bombs dropped by helicopters, which only the regime possesses. All have been targeted at rebel-held areas. More recently, the attacks have been concentrated on Idleb, the north-western province where the regime is losing ground.

The international community is deeply troubled. Some members broke down at a recent UN Security Council session when they were shown graphic video images of the aftermath of one attack and heard testimony from doctors who were at the scene. On March 6th the Council passed a resolution expressing ‘extreme concern’ about the attacks and authorising the UN to use chapter VII (military action or sanctions to enforce its decisions) against anyone found responsible.

The UN is now setting up a commission to determine who is carrying out the attacks rather than just whether they actually happened, as has been the case in past investigations. The OPCW and Human Rights Watch are satisfied that chlorine was used in at least three of the several reported instances. Diplomats from America, Britain and France are convinced that the Syrian leader is still using chemicals as a weapon. Assad’s regime is the only government in the world to do so since 1988 when Saddam Hussein gassed the Kurds in Halabja in northern Iraq.

However, there is unlikely to be much more than public censure. It is probable that Russia would veto any chapter VII action, and the appetite by Western countries’ for ousting Assad has greatly diminished since the emergence of Islamic State.

Throughout this long and protracted civil war the regime has carefully calibrated its actions to deliberately avoid triggering western intervention – the sarin attack in 2013 is reckoned to have been far bigger than the regime planned, and only a handful of people have died in the recent chlorine attacks. Using an alternative to conventional weapons also suggests a calculated choreography. Bashar al-Assad is getting away with saying one thing whilst clearly doing another.

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China, Europe, Politics, Russia, United States

The strengthening partnership between Russia and China?

GEOPOLITICS

Intro: Relations between China and Russia have been growing closer since the end of the cold war. But while the crisis in Ukraine has drawn Russia closer to China, the relationship is far from equal

The commemorations in Moscow to celebrate the capitulation of Nazi Germany 70 years ago speak volumes about today’s geopolitics. On May 9th, Western leaders stayed away in protest against Russia’s aggression in Ukraine, an important proclamation as this was the first annexation of sovereign territory in Europe since the second world war. China’s president, Xi Jinping, was the guest of honour of his friend, Vladimir Putin. Western sanctions over Ukraine, and what looks set to be a long-term chilling of relations with America and Europe, has given Russia no other option than to embrace China as tightly as it can.

In the coming days, in a further symbol of the growing strategic partnership between the two countries, up to four Chinese and six Russian naval vessels will rendezvous to conduct live-firing drills in the eastern Mediterranean. The exercise, which follows several similar ones in 2013, is aimed at sending a clear message to America and its allies. For Russia the manoeuvres send a strong signal that it has a powerful friend and a bonding military relationship with a country that has growing geographic reach and influence. For China, such an exercise of this kind speaks of increasing global ambition that is line with Mr Xi’s slogan about a ‘Chinese dream’, one which he says includes a ‘dream of a strong armed-forces’. In taking part, China is sending its ships from anti-piracy duty in the Gulf of Aden.

But this also provides an opportunity for China to display its Type 054A guided-missile frigate, which it would like to sell to the Russians. It also brings with it operational experience in an unstable region in which it has an expanding economic presence. In 2011, China organised the evacuation of more than 38,000 Chinese from Libya during that country’s upheaval. And just last month its navy disembarked several hundred of its citizens out of Yemen, which is being torn apart by civil war. There are believed to be at least 40,000 Chinese working in Algeria and more than 1m across Africa.

Relations between China and Russia have been growing closer since the end of the cold war. For different reasons both countries resent America’s ‘hegemony’ and share a desire for a more multipolar world order. Russia, for all its bravado, is a declining great power, and is looking for ways to recover at least some of its lost status; whereas China, a rising power on the world stage, bridles at what it perceives as American attempts to constrain it. As fellow permanent members of the UN Security Council, both with autocratic governments, Russia and China find common cause in expressing grievance at Western liberal interventionism. The two countries settled all of their long-standing border disputes in 2008, just prior to the Russian-choreographed war in Georgia. This provided the onset for Russia in concentrating more of its military forces in the west as a deterrent against the further expansion of NATO.

Despite the strengthening partnership there have been the occasional tensions. For example, Russia played a key role during the 1990s in helping China to reform and modernise its military forces. Russia was able to preserve a defence-industrial base that would otherwise have withered from lack of domestic orders. But since the middle of the last decade, irked by China’s pilferage of its military technology and its consequent emergence as a rival in the arms market, Russia’s weapons sales to its neighbour have slowed.

Moscow’s wariness of becoming little more than a supplier of natural resources to China’s industrial machine speaks volumes of Russia’s humiliating position that until recently saw China as backward. As long as Russia could sell to Europe all the gas required to keep the Russian economy growing, it could arbitrarily put deals with China on hold. These included plans for two gas pipelines from Siberia into China that were announced in 2006 and then quietly dropped as the two sides argued and bickered over prices.

All that has changed. The continuing crisis in Ukraine has forced Russia to ‘pivot’ its economy towards Asia in an effort to lessen the impact of Western sanctions by finding alternative markets and new sources of capital. For China it is a golden opportunity to gain greater access to Russia’s natural resources, at favourable prices, as well as being in a better position to secure access to big infrastructure contracts that might have gone to Western competitors and to provide financing for projects that will directly benefit Chinese firms.

Russia’s incursions into Ukraine and its seizure of Crimea violated two of China’s most consistently held foreign-policy tenets: non-interference in other states and separatism of any kind. Yet, while China abstained from voting on the UN Security Council resolutions condemning Russia (with the Chinese media giving Russia strong support) it has quietly welcomed a new cold war in Europe that might distract America from its declared ‘rebalancing’ towards Asia.

Additional and striking new evidence of the new closeness between China and Russia was a $400 billion gas deal signed in May last year under which Russia will supply China with 38 billion cubic metres (bcm) of gas annually from 2018 for 30 years. China has insisted that the gas comes from new fields in eastern Siberia by passing through as yet an unbuilt pipeline, a plan that will ensure supplies are not diverted elsewhere. Other deals have followed too. The biggest was a preliminary agreement signed in November for Russia to sell an additional 30 bcm a year through a proposed pipeline from Western Siberia. In every such new instance it is probable that China was able to drive a hard bargain on price.

Other clear signs of Russia’s weakness have also become clear. Its recent decision to resume high-tech arms exports to China most noticeable. In April it agreed to sell China an air-defence system, the S-400, for around $3 billion. This will help give China air dominance over Taiwan and the Senkaku islands (Diaoyu to the Chinese), who dispute Japan’s claim to them. In November, too, Russia said it was prepared to sell China its latest Sukhoi-35S combat aircraft. Initially it had refused to sell any fewer than 48, in order to make up for losses it suffered as a result of China’s purloining of the designs. Now it has agreed to sell only 24.

Looking ahead problems seem discernibly clear. One is that both countries are competing for influence in Central Asia, once Russia’s backyard. Mr Putin wants to establish his Eurasian Economic Union partly to counter growing economic power in Central Asia, through which China wants to develop what it calls a Silk Road Economic Belt. China is using the Shanghai Co-operation Organisation (SCO), of which Russia and Central Asian nations are also members, to boost its security ties in the region as well. Another difficulty is Russia’s military and energy links with countries such as India and Vietnam, both of which are rivals of China. But the biggest problem of all seems likely to be Russia’s irritation with being forced into an increasingly subservient role in its relations with China.

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