INTL 8/2/09 EU/NATO/CIS/CSTO-SCO/BRIC|Russia-led security group(CSTO) seeks transformation

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Russia-led security group seeks transformation
www.chinaview.cn
2009-08-02 23:26:35

ALMATY, Aug. 2 (Xinhua) -- The Russia-dominated Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) is standing at a crossroads and Moscow is trying to transform the loose security alliance into a fully-fledged group.

The presidents of seven ex-Soviet states ended their second informal summit at a lakeside resort in Kyrgyzstan Friday after concluding discussions on cooperation within the organization, as well as joint combat against extremism and terrorism in the region.

Just as CSTO Secretary General Nikolai Bordyusha put it in April last year, the security grouping was going through a transformation from a military-political group into a multi-functional international organization.



RUSSIA INTENSIFIES MILITARY COOPERATION WITH KYRGYZSTAN

At the summit, Russia won an agreement to station more Russian troops in Kyrgyzstan as the Kremlin seeks more military influence in Central Asia.

The memorandum signed between Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and his Kyrgyz counterpart Kurmanbek Bakiyev said Kyrgyzstan had "approved a proposal by Russia to house an additional Russian military contingent in Kyrgyzstan."

It said the size of the contingent could be up to a battalion.

The two sides also agreed to hammer out details on Nov. 1 on the status of Russian bases in Kyrgyzstan, the memorandum said, adding the deal would last 49 years.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, who travelled to Bishkek with Medvedev, said the new military training facility would be available to all members of the CSTO.

Analysts believe the strengthened military cooperation between Russia and Kyrgyzstan will have an overall impact on the inner interaction of the CSTO and the security situation in the region.



COLLECTIVE SECURITY DOMINATED BY RUSSIA

The CSTO is made up of Armenia, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

The group was founded in October 2002 with the aim of improving their common military security. Signatories are not allowed to join other military alliances while aggression against one signatory would be perceived as an aggression against all the other members.

Russia has newly proposed setting up a rapid reaction force of the CSTO, which would be "just as good as comparable NATO forces."

Bordyusha said the group will also establish a unified intelligence reconnaissance system and work out a unified standard for training military personnel within the group.

The organization is widely considered as a Russia-led group to ward off westernization of its neighboring countries as both the United States and Russia jostle for military influence in the region.

The United States established an air base at the Manas international airport near Bishkek in late 2001 to support military operations in Afghanistan.

To weaken the U.S. influence, Russia granted Kyrgyzstan 2 billion U.S. dollars in loans and 0.15 billion dollars in aid this February. But the United States managed to keep the base, paying significantly higher rent.



URGENT DEMAND FOR TRANSFORMATION

Though Russia dominates the CSTO, it sometimes finds it difficult to resolve the conflicts over territory, resources and ethnic-related issues among the member countries.

In addition, facing NATO's increasing infiltration into the region, the CSTO failed to show a unanimous stance, which called for an urgent need to transform the group from a political-military alliance into a multi-functional international organization.

In 1999, Uzbekistan withdrew from the CSTO and joined the pro-U.S. organization GUAM that was challenging the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) in the region.

Russia did not regain Uzbekistan's trust until May 2005 when it strongly supported Uzbekistan in taking measures to suppress the riots in the country. Later Uzbekistan abandoned the GUAM and returned to the CSTO.

On the eve of the summits of the CSTO and the Eurasian Economic Community this February, President of Tajikistan Emomali Rakhmon had threatened to be absent from the gatherings due to the insufficient support it gained in tackling its energy crisis.

In June, Russia and Belarus had been locked in a so-called "milk war."

Moscow, a major consumer of Minsk's agricultural and industrial goods, banned more than 1,000 dairy products imported from Belarus in early June, dealing a heavy blow to the latter's foreign trade. The ban was later removed.

The short-lived controversial ban was triggered by Minsk's boycott of a summit of the CSTO in Moscow on June 14.

Minsk criticized the CSTO for the existing issues of the political-military security being divorced from the economic security of the member countries.

Actually Russia has noticed that a security cooperation without a economic basis is not solid.

Medvedev, in his two-day visit to Tajikistan before the summit, said the two countries would cooperate in energy and geological exploration to further consolidate the strategic partnership between them.

Analysts said the CSTO could grow and develop steadily on the international stage only when it attaches importance to its member countries' concerns in the social, economic and security sectors, cooperates with other international organizations and gains international reputation in fighting drugs and weapon smuggling, as well as the sharing of security information.

Editor: Mu Xuequan

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Belarus has not taken over security bloc’s presidency, Russian foreign minister says
Оригинальная статья02.08 // 16:05 // English


Belarus has not taken over the rotating presidency of the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO) despite Alyaksandr Lukashenka’s presence at the bloc’s informal summit in Kyrgyzstan last week.

Russia will continue performing the duties of the CSTO presidency “pending the moment when Belarus is ready to assume the full-scale functions of the presidency,” RIA Novosti quoted Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as saying.

The Russian minister said with reference to Mr. Lukashenka that Minsk was considering the matter and “appropriate decisions will be made in good time.”

Belarus had been scheduled to take over the duties at a June 14 CSTO summit in Moscow, but Mr. Lukashenka boycotted the event in protest against Russia’s ban on the import of Belarusian dairy products.

At the summit five of the security bloc’s member states — Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Russia and Tajikistan — signed an agreement establishing a CSTO joint rapid response force, but Minsk described the accord as invalid, citing the lack of consensus among members, and sent an appropriate note to the CSTO secretariat.

Speaking on June 18, Andrei Nesterenko, the Russian foreign ministry’s spokesman, said that Moscow hoped that Belarus would take over the CSTO presidency without delay. //BelaPAN

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Russia to continue chairing CSTO until Belarus takes over

01.08.2009, 12.41

MOSCOW, August 1 (Itar-Tass) - Russia will continue performing the technical functions of the chairman in the CIS Collective Security Treaty Organization /CSTO/ until Belarus gets ready to accept them, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Saturday.

"Russia will continue technical chairmanship in the CSTO until the moment when Belarus is ready to take over the full-fledged functions of this rotating chairmanship," he said.

According to Lavrov, Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko promised at the CSTO summit earlier this week to consider the issue and pass appropriate decisions in due time.

Russian President's aid, Sergei Prikhodko said on the eve of the summit Moscow was ready to pass the rotating functions of chairman over to Belarus.

The Belarusians were expected to accept the chairmanship from Armenia at the organization's summit in Moscow in June but President Lukashenko did not come to Russia then, as a row over Belarussian dairy products was picking pace at the moment, and Russia had to take the technical coordinator’s functions on itself.

"We're ready on our part /to turn the chairmanship over to Belarus/, but that country should tell us about it," Prikhodko said.

"We proceed from the assumption that Minsk will sign the package of documents /including the ones on setting up the CSTO rapid reaction forces/ that were adopted by all the participants in the Moscow summit, because otherwise what is the sense of coming here?" he said.

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Speaking the Truth
Biden on Russia.
by David J. Kramer
08/01/2009 12:00:00 AM


Vice President Biden had just completed a successful visit to Ukraine and Georgia last week when he created a new controversy with dire predictions about Russia. His comments, arguably ill-timed for his boss's efforts to reset relations with Moscow, were not the only ones in the past few days offering a gloomy outlook on Russia. The outgoing European Union Ambassador to Russia Marc Franco similarly warned that Russia would maintain "many characteristics of a Third World economy" unless it established real rule of law.

In an interview with the Wall Street Journal on July 23, Biden described a Russia with a looming demographic crisis, a "withering economy", and a banking sector in trouble. He noted Russia's interest in negotiating further cuts in nuclear weapons because they cannot afford to maintain even current levels. Russia is having difficulty adjusting to "loss of empire," Biden said, adding that it is "clinging to something in the past that is not sustainable."

In a separate interview over the weekend with Reuters, Franco cited Russia's insufficiently developed civil society and lack of freedom of the press. "I do believe," Franco said, "that you cannot have rule of law without the basic elements of democracy, implying free elections and a vibrant civil society supported by a free press."

In their descriptions of current Russia, both Biden and Franco were on the mark. Russia's economic troubles (the World Bank predicts GDP will decline 7.9 percent this year) are compounded by its continued dependence on the export of raw materials (energy, metals), leaving it vulnerable to outside factors beyond its control. Over the past eight years despite the bounty from high oil prices, Russia's leaders failed to diversify the economy or invest in its declining infrastructure and energy sector, production in which has flattened out and likely to decline in the next several years. At the same time, Russian corporate debt is estimated at $500 billion, $130 billion of which is due this year.

Meanwhile, Russia's population has been declining by an average of 700,000 per year and may reach a low, in worst case scenarios, of 100 million by 2050 from roughly 143 million today. This will have enormous implications for Russia's labor force, its military, and its ability to control restive regions like the North Caucasus, one of the few places where the population is on the rise. Corruption remains a huge problem, while civil society activists, journalists, and opponents of the government deal with regular harassment, attacks, and even murder. Russia, in other words, faces a very difficult future.

In an appearance on Sunday's Meet the Press, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton described Russia as a "great power" and reiterated President Obama's hope to see a "strong, peaceful, and prosperous" Russia. White House press secretary Robert Gibbs said in a statement Saturday evening, "The president and vice president believe Russia will work with us not out of weakness but out of national interest."

Alas, that is wishful thinking. Contrary to Biden's description of Russia's leaders as "pretty pragmatic in the end" and likely to cooperate with the U.S. out of national interest on issues such as Iran, the very problems he identified are likely to make Russia a more difficult country with which to engage. We and Russian leaders simply do not share many national interests, to say nothing of common values.

A Russia facing the kinds of problems Biden and Franco described is more apt to deflect its population's attention from the growing number of difficulties at home by projecting onto others like neighboring Georgia or Ukraine. There's nothing like a "threat" from Tbilisi or Kyiv -- or from NATO enlargement -- to drum up popular support and take everyone's minds off the problems at home, at least temporarily. Even on the issue of arms control, Russian leaders have insisted that a final agreement be linked to the U.S. abandonment of missile defense plans in Poland and the Czech Republic. If Russia cannot afford to maintain its current declining levels of nuclear warheads and delivery vehicles anyway, Obama need not cave to Russian demands to link a post-START agreement to missile defense. Russian leaders need an arms control treaty more than we do.

On Iran, Biden said, "I can see Putin sitting in Moscow saying, 'Jesus Christ, Iran gets the nuclear weapon, who goes first?' Moscow, not Washington." This, too, is wishful thinking given that Russian leaders have repeatedly declined to get tougher with Iran over its nuclear weapons aspirations. They would much prefer the United States and its allies play the role of the heavy vis-à-vis Tehran while Russia reaps the benefits of economic, energy, and arms sales ties with Iran.

A Russian leadership facing the kinds of problems Biden and Franco describe is less, not more, likely to work together with us on a whole host of issues. Its leadership is apt to clamp down even more against the slightest possible threats to its control, increasing the dangers to the country's own human rights activists and journalists such as Natalya Estimorova, murdered in Chechnya July 15. Sadly, these are not the characteristics of a "great power" or even a country with a leadership that reflects "pragmatism" or "shared interests" with us. As the Obama administration seeks to reset relations with Moscow, it should do so very much keeping in mind the truth, inconvenient and ill-timed though it may be, spoken by the vice president.

David J. Kramer is a Senior Transatlantic Fellow at the German Marshall Fund of the United States and served as Assistant Secretary of State for Democracy, Human Rights and Labor and a Deputy Assistant Secretary of State responsible for Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Moldova, in the George W. Bush Administration.

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Saturday, Aug. 01, 2009
Russia Moves to Boost its Role in Central Asia
By Ishaan Tharoor

On July 30, Russian president Dmitri Medvedev sat down for talks with the leaders of Afghanistan and Pakistan, two countries that sit in the crosshairs of the U.S.-led war on terror. The meeting with Afghan president Hamid Karzai and his Pakistani counterpart, Asif Zardari, took place in Dushanbe, capital of Tajikistan. Reportedly on the table were plans to beef up trade ties as well as improve cooperation in the fight against Islamist extremism — clear signs, experts say, that Moscow is bolstering its role in the "Af-Pak" theater, a region Russia had largely retreated from after the scarring decade-long Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s.

The Russian-orchestrated meeting comes amid fears that ongoing battles with Taliban militants in Afghanistan and Pakistan are spilling over into Central Asia — particularly Tajikistan, which shares a porous 800-mile-long (1,300 km-long) border with Afghanistan. Over recent months, Tajik security forces have been involved in an extensive campaign to combat local militants and supposed drug gangs operating in its mountainous borderlands, but there are also rumors of the return of Tajik Taliban fighters who have traded one rugged frontier for another. As if on cue, while the premiers were in discussion, a car bomb blast rocked Dushanbe. No deaths were reported, but the bombing has been linked to suspected militant activity. (See pictures of Pakistan's vulnerable North-West passage.)

Few details of the leaders' conversation have been disclosed, though it's believed deals on energy and infrastructure development were authored. Earlier in the week, both Karzai and Zardari had met with Tajik president Emomali Rakhmon to work out a joint strategy on fighting terrorism. Whether this will bear much fruit remains to be seen. "The people of Afghanistan [and] the people of Pakistan are looking up to the leadership of the region to help with problems," said Zardari, alluding to Moscow's significant presence in Central Asia.

Behind the handshakes and platitudes lies a deeper political calculus. Karzai and Zardari began their presidential terms with staunch support from Western capitals — now both have fallen out of favor, faulted for not doing enough to rein in extremists amid accusations of corruption and misrule. A warmer relationship with Russia could be the counterbalance to the West's increasingly frosty and frustrated attitude toward Afghanistan and Pakistan. (See pictures of world leaders.)

Moreover, as the U.S. deepens its ties with Pakistan's historical rival, India, foreign policy experts suggest Islamabad may be trying to expand its relationship with Moscow. Since the Soviet days, India has always been Russia's traditional South Asian ally. Now Pakistani defense officials have mooted possible deals for Russian military hardware, moving away from the tacit understandings of a Cold War past. "Russia is trying to find a foothold in the region," says Brahma Chellaney, a strategic affairs analyst at the New Delhi-based Centre for Policy Research. "There's no reason why it shouldn't start selling arms to Pakistan to gain some influence." (See pictures of Russia celebrating Victory Day.)

All the parties who met in Dushanbe must also deal with the social powder keg that is Central Asia. The recession has badly hit the region, with shrinking job markets in richer nations like Russia and Kazakhstan sending thousands of migrant workers home to poorer ones, such as Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. What promises to be a very bleak year for many Central Asian households has only amplified questions over the stability of the region as a whole.

Some analysts suggest social unrest may mix with the turmoil of Taliban insurgencies further south. In Tajikistan, the fragile status quo that has existed since a civil war between Russian-backed forces and an Islamist opposition ended in 1997 looks to be unraveling. Observers point to a possible influx in recent months of Tajik and Uzbek militants, returning to their homeland after fighting alongside Pakistani and Afghan Taliban. Since May, the Tajik government has locked down the country's Rasht Valley, ostensibly as part of an anti-drugs operation, but also, say experts, in a bid to crack down on local Islamist-leaning warlords. In some parts of Central Asia, the ruling autocratic regimes exercise only a frail reach beyond their capitals. "You get outside Dushanbe," says Eric McGlinchey, a Central Asia specialist at George Mason University in Virginia, "and anything goes."

Medvedev will chair another Central Asian security summit on Saturday in Kyrgyzstan, with delegations from seven other former Soviet republics. An increased American interest in the region — if only as a logistical hub for its war effort in Afghanistan — has driven Moscow to reassert itself in its backyard. After the U.S. secured its lease of an air base in Kyrgyzstan this month, Russia now intends to persuade the Kyrgyz government to allow the building of a second Russian base on its soil. Moscow sees its pervasive influence, both economic and political, in the region as a stabilizing force.

Yet Moscow is also part of the problem, says McGlinchey of George Mason University. The legacy of Soviet rule — from gerrymandered borders and dislocated populations to regimes of censorship and corruption — shapes Central Asia's politics to this day, and lingers in the cozy dealings between Russia's rulers and those ensconced in power throughout the region. Moreover, human rights advocates claim that Central Asian governments often raise the specter of terrorism to mask the abuses of their rule and the legitimate protests of their citizens. (See pictures of the politics of water in Central Asia.)

On July 31, Medvedev attended the opening of a massive Russian-backed hydroelectric plant that will eventually power 12% of Tajikistan. Moscow has promised further aid to Dushanbe and its neighbors, a move that has been privately encouraged by Washington. But good governance is needed to ensure those contributions make a difference. When seeking progress in one of the world's most war-ravaged regions, the symbolism of joint statements can only go so far.

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Aug 1, 2009
China dips its toe in the Black Sea
By M K Bhadrakumar

Like the star gazers who last week watched the longest total solar eclipse of the 21st century, diplomatic observers had a field day watching the penumbra of big power politics involving the United States, Russia and China, which constitutes one of the crucial phenomena of 21st-century world politics.

It all began with United States Vice President Joseph Biden choosing a tour of Ukraine and Georgia on July 20-23 to rebuke the Kremlin publicly for its "19th-century notions of spheres of influence". Biden's tour of Russia's troubled "near abroad" took place within a fortnight of US President Barack Obama's landmark visit to Moscow to "reset" the US's relations with Russia.

Clearly, Biden's jaunt was choreographed as a forceful demonstration of the Barack Obama administration's resolve to keep up the US's strategic engagement of Eurasia - a rolling up of sleeves and gearing up for action after the exchange of customary pleasantries by Obama with his Kremlin counterpart Dmitry Medvedev. Plainly put, Biden's stark message was that the Obama administration intends to robustly challenge Russia's claim as the predominant power in the post-Soviet space.

Biden ruled out any "trade-offs" with the Kremlin or any form of "recognition" of Russia's spheres of influence. He committed the Obama administration to supporting Ukraine's status as an "integral part of Europe" and Ukraine's Euro-Atlantic integration. Furthermore, in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, Biden spoke of Russia's own dim future in stark, existential terms.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov promptly responded in an interview with the Moscow-based Vesti news channel. He said, "I hope the administration of President Obama will proceed from the agreements reached in Moscow. We believe the attempts by some people from within the administration to pull all of us back into the past, the way that Vice President Joe Biden, a well-known politician, did it, are not normative."

Return to Reaganism
Lavrov added, "Biden's interview with the Wall Street Journal seemed to have been copied from the speeches by leading officials of the George W Bush administration." However, it is difficult to be dismissive of Biden as an unauthentic voice. It was Biden who spoke of "resetting" the US's relations with Russia. He did raise expectations in Moscow. And Obama's visit to Moscow early in July has been widely interpreted as the formal commencement of the "reset" process.

Now it transpires that the "reset" might take the US's policy towards Russia back to the 1980s and towards president Ronald Reagan's triumphalist thesis that Russia could not be a match for the US, given its deeply flawed economic structure and demography and, therefore, the grater the pressure on the Russian economy, the more conciliatory Moscow would be towards US pressure.

As Stratfor, a US think-tank with links to the security establishment, summed up, the great game will be to "squeeze the Russians and let nature take its course".

There is already some evidence of this coordinated Western approach toward Russia in the European Union's "Eastern Partnership" project, unveiled in Prague in May, the geographical scope of which consists of Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Moldova, Belarus and Ukraine, and which aims at drawing these post-Soviet states of "strategic importance" towards Brussels through a matrix of economic assistance, liberalized trade and investment and visa regimes that stop short of accession to the EU but effectively encourages them to loosen their ties with Russia. Indeed, the EU thrust has already begun eroding Russia's close ties with Belarus and Armenia.

An immediate challenge lies ahead for Moscow as the parliamentary election results in Moldova have swept Europe's last ruling communist party from power by pro-EU opposition parties. The US and the EU have kept up the pressure tactic of April's abortive "Twitter revolution" in Moldova to force a regime change that puts an end to the leadership of President Vladimir Voronin, who has pro-Moscow leanings. The EU has made generous promises of economic integration to Moldova and Moscow made a counter-offer in June of a US$500 million loan.

However, in a stunning development, China entered the fray this month and signed an agreement to loan $1 billion to Moldova at a highly favorable 3% interest rate over 15 years with a five-year grace period on interest payments. The money will be channeled through Covec, China's construction leviathan, as project exports in fields such as energy modernization, water systems, treatment plants, agriculture and high-tech industries.

Curiously, China has offered that it is prepared to "guarantee financing for all projects considered necessary and justified by the Moldovan side" over and above the $1 billion loan. In effect, Beijing has signaled its willingness to underwrite the entire Moldovan economy which has an estimated gross domestic product of $8 billion and a paltry budget of $1.5 billion.

The Chinese move is undoubtedly a geopolitical positioning. In an interesting tongue-in-cheek commentary recently, the People's Daily noted that "under the [Barack] Obama administration, the meaning and use of 'cyber diplomacy' has changed significantly ... US authorities ... stirred up trouble for Iran through websites such as Twitter ... [Secretary of State Hillary Clinton] said that this is the essence of smart power, adding that this change requires the US to broaden its concept of diplomacy".

Moldova is a country where China has historically been an observer rather than a player. This is Beijing's first leap across Central Asia to the frayed western edges of Eurasia. Why is Moldova becoming so terribly important? Beijing will have calculated the immense geopolitical significance of Moldova's integration by the West. It would then be a matter of time before Moldova was inducted into the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), before the Black Sea became a "NATO lake" and the alliance positioned itself in a virtually unassailable position to march into the Caucasus and right into Central Asia on China's borders.

What we may never quite know is the extent of coordination between Moscow and Beijing. Both capitals have stressed lately of increased Sino-Russian coordination in foreign policy. The joint statement issued after the visit by the Chinese President Hu Jintao to Russia in June specifically expressed Beijing's support for Moscow over the situation in the Caucasus. Clearly, a high degree of coordination is becoming visible across the entire post-Soviet space.

Islamists on the Silk Road
Thus, it is conceivable that Moscow would have sensitized Beijing about its intention to set up a second military base in Osh, Kyrgyzstan, which is located in close proximity to China's Xinjiang, and is a principal transit route for Central Asian Islamist fighters based in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

There are definite signs of a revival of Islamist activities in Central Asia and the North Caucasus. China is carefully watching its fallout on Xinjiang. Though Western commentators take pains to characterize the renewed Islamist thrust into Central Asia as an outcome of the Pakistani military operations along the Pakistan-Afghan border areas which used to be sanctuaries for militant groups, the jury is still out. Chinese experts have pointed out that with the easing of cross-strait tensions in China's equations with Taiwan, the scope for US meddling in China's affairs has drastically reduced and this, in turn, has shifted US attention to China's western regions of Xinjiang and Tibet.

There is much strategic ambiguity as to what is precipitating the fresh upswing of Islamist activities in the broad swathe of land that constitutes the "soft underbelly" of Russia and China. Within 48 hours of the outbreak of violence in Xinjiang earlier this month, Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi telephoned his Russian counterpart and Moscow issued a statement strongly supportive of Beijing.

On July 10, a similar statement by the secretary general of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) followed, endorsing the steps taken by Beijing "within the framework of law" to bring "calm and restore normal life" in Xinjiang following clashes between ethnic Uyghurs and Han Chinese. The SCO statement reiterated the resolve to "further deepen practical cooperation in the filed of fighting against terrorism, separatism, extremism and transnational organized crime for the sake of [safeguarding] regional security and stability".

Again, China has underscored that the regional security of Central Asia and South Asia is closely intertwined. Commenting on the SCO statement, the People's Daily said it "demonstrated that the SCO member states understood well that the situation in Xinjiang bears closely on that of the entire surrounding region ... Some Central Asian countries such as Pakistan and Afghanistan also fell victim to these evil forces ... The evil forces have also crossed the border to spread violence and terrorism by setting up training camps. Links have been discovered between these forces and the recent riot in Urumqi, capital of Xinjiang. The fight against these evil forces will greatly benefit all Central and South Asian countries as evidence has shown that the 'three evil forces' are detrimental not only to Xinjiang but also to the whole region."

Significantly, in another commentary, the People's Daily launched a blistering attack on US policies in fanning unrest in Xinjiang. "To the Chinese people, it is nothing new that the US tacitly or openly fans the winds of resentment against China ... the US indiscriminately embraces all those forces hostile to China ... Perhaps, it is a customary practice for the US to adopt the double-standard when weighing its interests against others. Or, perhaps, it has some ulterior motive behind to ensure its supreme position will not be challenged or altered by splitting to weaken others ... Since the end of the 1980s, the US has never moderated its intention to stoke so-called 'China issues' ... This time, in their efforts to fan feuding between Han and Uighur Chinese by harboring and propping up separatist forces, the US is jumping out again to be the third party that would, for the secret hope, benefit from the tussle."

There is no need, therefore, to second-guess that China supported the Russian initiative to call a quadrilateral regional security summit meeting in Dushanbe, Tajikistan, on Thursday, which was attended by the presidents of Russia, Pakistan, Afghanistan and Tajikistan. The Russian move poses a geopolitical challenge to the US, which has been monopolizing conflict-resolution in Afghanistan; keeping Russia out of the Hindu Kush; attempting to splinter the SCO-driven Sino-Russian convergence over regional security in Central Asia; stepping up diplomatic and political efforts to erode Russia's ties with Central Asian states; and expanding its influence and presence in Pakistan and steadily brining that country into the fold of NATO's partnership program.

The tempo of the regional security summit in Dushanbe was set by Tajik President Imomali Rakhmon when he told his Pakistani counterpart Asif Ali Zardari at a meeting on Wednesday that he expected to work closely with Pakistan to prevent the rise of instability in Central Asia. "We do share similar and close positions on these issues and our countries should have taken coordinated actions aimed against this antagonistic phenomenon," Rakhmon said.

Conceivably, China will also use its influence on Pakistan to nudge it in the direction of regional cooperation rather than passively subserve the US's regional policies. Zardari's initial remarks at Dushanbe, though, have been non-committal. He blandly responded to Rakhmon, "We will stand together against the challenges of this century."

Moscow tabled as an agenda item for the Dushanbe summit a proposal for regional cooperation that involves selling electricity from Tajikistan's Sangtudinskaya hydroelectric power plant (in which Russia has invested $500 million and holds a controlling 75% equity) to Afghanistan and Pakistan. Ironically, the idea was originally an American brainwave aimed at bolstering the US's "Great Central Asia" strategy that hoped to draw the region out of the Russian and Chinese orbit of influence.

Russia draws a Maginot Line
Equally, it is all but certain that while China is not a member of the Russia-led Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), Beijing will draw satisfaction that Moscow is building up the alliance's presence in Central Asia as a counterweight to NATO. After the unrest in Xinjiang, Beijing has a direct interest in the Russian idea of creating an anti-terrorist center in Kyrgyzstan and advancing the CSTO's rapid-reaction force (Collective Operational Reaction Forces) in Central Asia.

No doubt, the outcome of the CSTO summit meeting in the resort town of Cholpon-Ata in Kyrgyzstan this weekend will be keenly watched in Beijing. On the eve of this summit, an aide to the Russian president revealed in Moscow on Wednesday that an agreement had been reached in principle about the opening of a Russian base in Osh under the CSTO banner. A Kremlin source also told the Russian newspaper Gazeta that the summit meeting would discuss the situation in Afghanistan.

Viewed against this backdrop, the joint Russian-Chinese military exercises, dubbed "Peace Mission 2009", held on July 22-26, cannot be regarded as a mere repetition of two such exercises held in 2005 and 2007. True, all three exercises have been held under the framework of the SCO, but this year's has been in actuality a bilateral Russian-Chinese effort with other member states represented as "observers".

Major General Qian Lihua of the Chinese Ministry of Defense claimed that the drills were of "profound significance" when the forces of terrorism, separatism and extremism are "rampant nowadays". He said that apart from strengthening regional security and stability, the exercises also symbolized the "high-level strategic and mutual trust" between China and Russia and became a "powerful move" for the two countries to strengthen "pragmatic cooperation" in the field of defense.

Taking stock of the military-to-military cooperation between China and Russia, Qian said:

First, high-level exchanges have become frequent. It has become a routine for the two nations to arrange an exchange between defense ministers or chiefs of general staff at least once a year. Frequent exchanges between defense departments and high-level military visits have effectively driven the smooth development of bilateral military relations between China and Russia.

Second, strategic consultation has become a routine mechanism. Since 1997, the militaries of China and Russia established a mechanism to hold annual consultations between the two sides' leadership at the level of deputy chief of the general staff. So far, 12 rounds of strategic consultation have been held, which has promoted mutual trust and friendly cooperation.

Third, exchanges between professional groups and teams have become pragmatic. The militaries of China and Russia have conducted pragmatic exchanges and cooperation in many forces and corps including communications, engineering and mapping.

Qian anticipated that with the Peace Mission 2009, the "strategic mutual trust and the pragmatic cooperation between the two militaries will enter a new stage".

China's concern is palpable in the face of the rise in militant Islamist activities in Central Asia. "The terrorists are quietly trying to take cover in Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan ... They've lived in Afghanistan for a long time," as Tajik Interior Minister Abdurakhim Kakhkharov put it recently. The Rasht Valley in the Pamir Mountains where the terrorists are gathering is only "trekking distance" from the Afghan (and Chinese) border.

There are reports of famous Tajik Islamist commander Mullo Abdullo having returned from Afghanistan and Pakistan with his followers after nearly a decade and that he is trying to recruit militants in the Rasht Valley. From various accounts, militant elements from Russia's North Caucasus, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan and Xinjiang are linking up.

To quote the Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev, "The Afghanistan situation is affecting not only Kyrgyzstan but Central Asia as a whole. People have come here to carry out acts of terror." Bakiyev added ominously, "There are still forces out there that we do not know about, who are here and who are ready to indulge in illegal activities. They have one aim: to destabilize Central Asia." Yet, NATO has pleaded helplessness in stopping the movement of the Taliban in the direction of the Tajik border.

Thus, the million-dollar question is whether the current unrest is a mere distant echo or is tantamount to a replay of the US efforts to fund and equip mujahideen fighters and to promote militant Islam as a geopolitical tool in Soviet Central Asia in the 1980s. That is why Biden's remarks harking back to Reaganism will be taken very seriously in Moscow and Beijing - that the Russian economy is a wreck, Russia's geography is ridden with a range of weaknesses that are withering, and the US should not underestimate its hand. China's bold move in Moldova shows that it may have begun regarding the post-Soviet space as its own "near abroad".

End of Chimerica?
The point is, there is a hefty economic angle to the maneuverings. The US's Eurasia energy envoy Richard Morningstar bluntly admitted at a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing two weeks ago that China's success in gaining access to Caspian and Central Asia energy reserves threatened the US's geopolitical interests.

Interestingly, the renewed spurt of unrest in Central Asia (including Xinjiang) - which Russian intelligence has been anticipating since end-2008 - is taking place along the route of the 7,000-kilometer gas pipeline from Turkmenistan via Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan and leading to Xinjiang that is expected to be commissioned by year-end. No doubt, the pipeline signifies a historic turning point in the geopolitics of the entire region.

Well-known economic historian Niall Ferguson has compared "Chinmerica" - the thesis that China and America have effectively fused to become a single economy - to "a marriage on the rocks".

Ferguson anticipates, in the context of the Group of Two "strategic dialogue" between the US and China that took place in Washington this week, that a point will be reached when instead of continuing with the "unhappy marriage", China may decide to "got it alone ... to buy them global power in their own right".

Factors influencing this are US saving rates soaring upwards and US imports from China significantly reducing; the Chinese feeling they have had enough of US government bonds, with the specter of the price of US Treasury bonds falling or the purchasing power of the dollar falling (or both) - either way China stands to lose.

Ferguson sees that China may have already begun doing this and its campaign to buy foreign assets (such as in Moldova), its tentative movement toward a consumer society, its growing embrace of the special drawing rights idea of a basket of currencies to replace the dollar - all these are signs of an impending "Chinmerica divorce". But what does it entail for world politics? Ferguson says:

Imagine a new Cold War but one in which the two superpowers are economically the same size, which was never true in the old Cold War because the USSR was always a lot poorer than the USA.

Or, if you prefer an older analogy, imagine a rerun of the Anglo-German antagonism of the early 1900s, with America in the role of Britain and China in the role of imperial Germany. This is a better analogy because it captures the fact that a high level of economic integration does not necessarily prevent the growth of strategic rivalry and ultimately conflict.

We are a long way from outright warfare, of course. These things build quite slowly. But the geopolitical tectonic plates are moving, and moving fast. The end of Chimerica is causing India and the United States to become more closely aligned. It's creating an opportunity for Moscow to forge closer links to Beijing.

Surely, a major difference will be that while this month's solar eclipse is not expected to be surpassed until June 2132, there are no such certainties in the shifty world of big-power politics, especially the tricky triangular relationship involving the US, Russia and China. But one thing is certain. Like in the case of the solar eclipse that was gazed at from all conceivable corners of the Earth, the shift in the geopolitical tectonic plates and the resultant realignment of the co-relation of forces across Eurasia will be watched with keen interest by countries as diverse as India and Brazil, Iran and North Korea, Venezuela and Cuba, Syria and Sudan.

Ambassador M K Bhadrakumar was a career diplomat in the Indian Foreign Service. His assignments included the Soviet Union, South Korea, Sri Lanka, Germany, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Kuwait and Turkey.

Copyright 2009 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved.

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http://www.realclearworld.com/blog/2009/08/russians_to_biden_thanks_joe_w.html

August 02, 2009
Russia to Biden: Thanks, Joe, We'll Be Fine

Vice President Biden’s recent statement about US-Russia relations struck a raw nerve in Russia. It's one thing to discuss Russia’s internal situation behind closed doors – it’s a whole different matter when such a high profile American political figure throws such facts in your face. And even if a country faces internal difficulties that may threaten its long-term future, being “poked in the eye,” so to speak, by Biden’s statement was far from pleasant. Russian political establishment responded right away, but the country’s cultural elite was not far behind.

Kirill Benediktov is a popular and best-selling author, historian and policy analyst who concentrates on writing about Russia's harsh reality and its uncertain future. His books topped Russia’s best-selling lists, and were being made into popular TV series. As a man who constantly checks the cultural pulse of his country, Biden’s Wall Street Journal description of Russia’s future merited a response. Benediktov focused on Biden's statement that "... they have a shrinking population base, they have a withering economy, they have a banking sector and structure that is not likely to be able to withstand the next 15 years, they're in a situation where the world is changing before them and they're clinging to something in the past that is not sustainable." Benediktov wonders: “But why bury the Russian economy? Perhaps Biden has other sources of information, some insider sources? Otherwise, why would he so confidently predict the death of the Russian banking system? Russia, it must be recalled, is one of the largest U.S. lenders, as Biden certainly knows that very well.”

The following is a direct translation of his op-ed in the daily “Vzglyad” paper:

"... And yes, goddamit we are going extinct. We must have the courage to acknowledge this - Russians are dying as a nation. Maybe for some ethnic groups, which are part of our multi-ethnic state, it is not true, but Russian women give too few births, while Russian men are dying too early - too little and too early for the people to survive. I do think about this "15-year factor” that Biden measures us by. No matter what sources he used - the National Intelligence Council or some other secret institution. But even according to open-source UN projections, in 2025, Russia will live only 116 million people, and by 2050 - no more than 100 million. Now, according to official population estimates, there are 142 million people in Russia. In the United States, by the way, there are now 300 million and by 2050, there will be 400 million people. This means that we will lose 26 million people in 15 years. As if all these years we would have been fighting a grueling, endless war, a war in which we are doomed to defeat in advance.

And if we do not understand this, if we are trying not to think about it, if we prefer to live one day at a time - then we owe U.S. Vice President Joe Biden and should say a great personal “thank you.” Because he honestly said what America expects from Russia. We should not hide behind beautiful words about Russia being a "great power" which has a "strategic partnership" with America. He said the god-honest truth: you may meander for the next 15 years. After that - well, then, sorry. And it does not matter what will happen next - whether smiling black-skinned sergeants will decommission our rusting ballistic missiles; or our last nuclear submarines will be finally decommissioned to serve as a photo-op for housewives from Kentucky; or our education reform will be brought to an end, and today's children playing in the sandbox will take the final exams in high school, choosing the correct color picture of the five proposed; or our difficult-to-understand Russian will be replaced by the Latin alphabet, in order to easier integrate us into the global economy.

But where Biden is wrong - and wrong, in my opinion, globally - it is in his regret that in the face of a changing world, we Russians are clinging to our past. It would be wrong to blame him for this - Biden grew up in a country with a very short historical memory (true, we should note that even with its short history, Americans are actively clinging to their own past).

So, we are advised not to cling to the past and to courageously face the changing world.

- As if the world is changing for the first time.
- As if Russia has never before stood on the edge of death.
- As if its towns and the churches did not burn during the Mongol invasion.
- As if the great Russian land never before lay in smoking, bleeding ruins during the times of the great chaos of the 16th and 17th centuries.
- As if the Russian people were not driven under the German rule during the 18th century.
- As if Napoleon never entered the vaults of the Moscow Kremlin.
- As if our gene pool has never been diminished before by the ruthless and fratricidal Russian Civil War.
- As if Guderian's tanks (WWII panzer divisions commanded by German general Heinz Guderian) did not stand where many Muscovites today go for their weekend barbecues.
- As if during the year that celebrated democracy - 1992 - our engineers and scientists, the pride of the nation, who designed spacecraft, did not go to the clothing market to sell cheap Chinese jeans.

We can also remember the defeat in the first Chechen war, and the financial default of 1998, and humiliation in the Balkans, when the Americans bombed our brothers, the Serbs, for an imaginary genocide of Kosovars, and we were powerless to raise our hands.

This is our past. Some will find shame in it, some - pride. But the main lesson that we can - and should - learn from our past, is that Russia has always survived. No matter what it faced.

And if we do not forget our past, if we do not deny our history, we will survive this time as well - to the great disappointment of the Vice President of the United States."

Posted for fair use....
http://www.defensenews.com/story.php?i=4216233

Faulty Reset on START
Rushed Follow-up Treaty Will Not Benefit U.S.
By DAVID SMITH
Published: 3 August 2009

When U.S. President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed a Joint Understanding on July 6 on a treaty to follow the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START), this first press of Obama's reset button launched U.S. negotiators into a time warp to circa-1969 Cold War-style negotiations against an artificial deadline. The result is unlikely to be in the interest of the United States.

Without START, which expires Dec. 5, the sides would be bound only by the 2002 Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT), which limits each side to 1,700-2,200 operationally deployed strategic nuclear warheads. SORT does not constrain nondeployed warheads, nor does it contain START's verification and elaborate consultation mechanisms.

Consequently, Obama and Medvedev "decided on further reductions and limitations of their nations' strategic offensive arms and on concluding at an early date a new legally binding agreement to replace the current START Treaty."

Their Joint Understanding calls for limits of 1,500-1,675 warheads and 500-1,100 strategic delivery vehicles - intercontinental and submarine-launched missiles and strategic bombers - on each side.

This is bad policy.

Although perhaps not unconstitutional, there is something rancid about a president peremptorily agreeing to terms that would require the advice and consent of the Senate to bind the United States.

As a practical matter, pre-agreed terms and commitment to "an early date" themselves become bargaining tools, more effectively wielded by Russian negotiators who are freer to maneuver in talks than their American counterparts. Facing a deadline to conclude a treaty, Russians are masters at 11th-hour negotiations.

Leaving that aside, it is silly to believe that a worthwhile treaty can be quickly achieved. Negotiators must agree upon exact numbers, counting rules and "provisions on definitions, data exchanges, notifications, eliminations, inspections and verification procedures, as well as confidence-building and transparency measures, as adapted, simplified, and made less costly, as appropriate, in comparison to the START Treaty."

Instead of the fatuous Joint Understanding, Obama and Medve-dev might have inked a simple codicil to START extending its effect until a new treaty enters into force or a date is set, whichever occurs first. Then, U.S. and Russian negotiators could have returned to Geneva to tackle complex issues with the time and attention they require.

The U.S. 2001 Nuclear Posture Review weaned us from tit-for-tat strategic force planning to counter the Soviet Union, later Russia, and adapted strategic planning to a multifaceted and rapidly changing world. Given Russia's belligerent nationalism, China's uncertain future, North Korea's threats to create a "sea of fire," Pakistan's instability and Iran's steady march toward nuclear weaponry, the Obama administration should have thoroughly reviewed likely U.S. requirements before lurching into negotiations with Russia.

Moreover, even on that one-dimensional plane, the Joint Understanding points toward instability. Two generations of arms control professionals labored to spread each side's warheads on as many delivery vehicles as possible to confound first-strike calculations. Now, we are set to cut strategic delivery vehicles because many obsolescent Russian systems soon must be retired anyway.

In a post-Cold War world, Moscow could just eliminate these systems. But Russia yearns for the heady days of arms control negotiations, particularly 1969-1972, when America recognized it as a strategic equal.

Furthermore, Moscow is out to constrain U.S. capabilities with which it cannot compete - missile defense, strategic partnerships in its former empire and overwhelming conventional capabilities. The Joint Understanding opens the door to wrangling on all three.

The Russians understand that the anemic American missile defense system bound for Central Europe has naught to do with them. Their aim is to dampen American ardor for more effective missile defenses and for U.S. strategic cooperation with Poland, the heavyweight in Moscow's erstwhile East European empire.

The Joint Statement continues that the new treaty must also include "a provision on the impact of intercontinental ballistic missiles and submarine-launched ballistic missiles in a non-nuclear configuration on strategic stability." This could undermine U.S. efforts to adapt former strategic weapons to conventional munitions, or to develop the new conventional long-range precision strike weapons that will undergird American power in the 21st century.

To fix the situation, the administration should negotiate an extension to START, despite Russian objections - they need this more than we do. Meanwhile, it should complete its Nuclear Posture Review, now underway. Then, it must give negotiation of a new treaty the time and attention it requires: It took nine years to conclude START. Throughout, the Obama administration should recall that the Constitution establishes the Senate as an equal treaty-making partner. ■

David Smith is a senior fellow at the Potomac Institute for Policy Studies, Arlington, Va. He was U.S. chief negotiator for defense and space from 1989-1991.

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http://businessmirror.com.ph/home/world/14025-china-must-remove-missiles-aimed-at-taiwan-.html


‘China must remove missiles aimed at Taiwan’
Sunday, 02 August 2009 21:55

Ma Yingng- jeou, Taiwan’s president, speaks during an interview at the presidential office in Taipei, Taiwan. Ying- jeou says China must stop targeting the island with hundreds of missiles to extend the deepest thaw in relations in six decades. Bloomberg

Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou said China must stop targeting the island with hundreds of missiles to extend the deepest thaw in relations in six decades.

“People feel uneasy if we go to the negotiating table on security issues while still under the threat of missile attack,” Ma, 59, said in an interview Monday in Taipei. While ties with China are “good and getting better,” missiles are “very much on the mind” of the island’s people, he said.

China’s President Hu Jintao this week sent Ma a congratulatory telegram on his election as chairman of the Kuomintang party, raising the prospect for an unprecedented meeting between the two leaders. Ma said today he’s in “no hurry” to meet with Hu, giving more priority to forging an economic agreement.

“A meeting with Hu isn’t possible as Ma is also under tremendous domestic pressure,” said Andrew Yang, secretary-general of the Taipei-based Chinese Council for Advanced Policy Studies. “The concern is Beijing may geat impatient if Ma doesn’t respond to calls for talks on security or peace issues and there may be consequences.”

A summit with Hu, which would be the first encounter between leaders of the rival factions from China’s civil war six decades ago, is “ultra-sensitive,” said Ma.

Ma has focused on improving relations with China since he took office in May last year, abandoning predecessor Chen Shui-bian’s pro-independence policies. Direct flights have resumed across the Taiwan Strait and the government relaxed laws to allow more Taiwanese investment on the mainland.

“We’re really just beginning,” Ma said, adding that direct flights and other agreements should have been made 10 years ago. Bilateral trade had already reached $130 billion before the flights were introduced.

“That’s simply absurd,” he said.

The government expects a so-called Economic Cooperation Framework, or ECFA, trade pact to create 273,000 jobs and boost exports by between 4.87 percent and 4.99 percent.

Taiwan last month opened up 64 sectors in manufacturing, 25 in services and 11 public infrastructure projects to Chinese companies, giving investors from the mainland access to industries including automobiles, plastics, textiles, personal computers and handset manufacturing.

Gross domestic product shrank an unprecedented 10.24 percent in the first quarter of 2009 from a year earlier. Taiwan’s exports fell for the 10th straight month in June as global demand for electronics tumbled, and the jobless rate climbed to a record.

Mainland Chinese tourists have taken more than 350,000 trips to Taiwan since a travel ban was lifted a year ago, China’s state-run Xinhua News Agency reported in June.

Opening to mainland investment needs to proceed cautiously because of the danger that Taiwan business could be swamped by Chinese money, Ma said. Foundries and the liquid-crystal-display and telecommunications industries remain closed.

The restriction has prevented China Mobile Ltd.’s plan to buy a 12-percent stake in Taiwan’s Far EasTone Telecommunications Co.

Ma said deepening economic ties would be inevitable, even should the opposition Democratic Progressive Party be re-elected.

“This is something that nobody can prevent,” Ma said. “The DPP knows that very well and if they came to power, they would do the same thing,” he said, adding that Taiwanese investment in China tripled from $30 billion under the eight years of a DPP administration.

“If people can make money in the mainland they will go, no matter how hard you try to stop them,” he said.

The United States and other countries welcome the rapprochement because it relieves tension in an area that threatens security in the region more than the potential nuclear crisis in North Korea, Ma said.

“The Taiwan Strait could be the beginning of a bigger conflict that involves the two superpowers of the world, that’s the reason why everybody is happy when we adopted the policy to ease that tension,” Ma said. “I think mainland China also appreciates that very much.”

Taiwan and China have been ruled separately since Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang, or Nationalists, fled to the island after being defeated by Mao Zedong’s Communists in 1949. China regards Taiwan as part of its territory and has threatened to use force to reclaim it.

China must remove its missile threat before any peace deal is possible, Ma said. China continues to increase the number of missiles aimed at Taiwan by about 100 a year, he said.

The United States still feels obliged to provide Taiwan with weapons to give the island a stronger negotiating position, Ma said.

“It’s only when Taiwan is properly armed and defended that we have the confidence to make a deal with the mainland,” Ma said. (Bloomberg)


Last Updated ( Sunday, 02 August 2009 21:59 )

Though related to the on-going North Korean situation, this also has bearing upon the Eurasian security situation overall....Housecarl...

Posted for fair use....
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/eo20090803a1.html

Monday, Aug. 3, 2009

Angst over opposition rule

By ROBERT DUJARRIC
Special to The Japan Times

There is a palpable sense of anxiety in some quarters in Japan at the prospects of a Democratic Party of Japan-led majority emerging from the Aug. 30 Lower House elections.

The fear is that the DPJ will wreck the alliance with the United States. It mirrors the near-panic that gripped official Japan last year when it became clear that Barack Obama would defeat John McCain for the U.S. presidency.

A DPJ administration will not put the Japan-U.S. alliance at risk; in fact, it may even strengthen it.

Several factors militate against dramatic changes in Japan's strategy if the DPJ outs the Liberal Democratic Party. The DPJ is not radically different in its main policy orientations from the LDP. Several of its leaders, such as Ichiro Ozawa, migrated from the governing party. Others are "native-born" DPJ politicians, but in several cases one suspects that these men and women joined the opposition mostly because it offered more opportunities for ambitious young men and women than the LDP, where hereditary privilege is entrenched. There is surely no indication that the DPJ is full of dangerous revolutionaries.

It is true that some in the DPJ trace their roots to socialist parties, and the DPJ candidates will need the cooperation of the small remnants of the Japanese left. But we must also remember that that within the LDP itself there have always been many conservatives whose opposition to the free market positioned them closer to the left than many realize.

Nor is the LDP only populated by hawks in matters of defense, there are quite a few doves in the ruling bloc as well (Komeito and the LDP). Despite North Korea's missile and nuclear tests and growing Chinese military capabilities, the LDP-Komeito coalition has presided over annual cuts in Ministry of Defense spending while failing to implement several clauses of Japan-U.S. military agreements, most notably the Futenma U.S. Marine base relocation plan.

Another factor that will mitigate in favor of continuity is the nature of Japan's security dilemma. Fundamentally, Japan has four choices when it comes to defending the country: (1) Unarmed pacifism. This was popular among the intelligentsia in the 1950s and 1960s but practically no one today believes this would be a rational choice. (2) Switching sides and becoming a junior partner of China could theoretically be an alternative, but such a reversal of alliances has no appeal in Japan. (3) Spending much more on the Self-Defense Forces to build a force that could free Japan from reliance on the U.S. would entail tens of trillions of yen of expenditures to triple or quadruple defense appropriations. This is a nonstarter in Japan. (4) Therefore, by default, the current system of minimal defense spending coupled with the extension of U.S. deterrence ends up being the option that enjoys broad support in mainstream Japanese thinking. It gives Tokyo some influence in Washington, provides the support of the world's strongest military power, and requires hosting only a small number of U.S. service personnel: Outside Okinawa, the American military footprint is minuscule.

Support for the Japan-U.S. Security Treaty in Nagata-cho is reinforced by the evolution of Japanese public opinion in the past two decades. There is an undercurrent of worry about China and North Korea that transcends party lines among Japanese voters. This fear pushes Japan toward closer ties with the U.S. It also discourages politicians from playing the anti-U.S. card since many Japanese see the U.S. as an ally against threats from China and North Korea.

It was noticeable that then Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi did not suffer at the polls from his close association with U.S. President George W. Bush's unpopular Iraq War.

A DPJ victory actually would could bolster the Japan-U.S. Alliance. It will demonstrate that the relationship between Tokyo and Washington is more than just an LDP-U.S. alliance. This would elevate Trans-Pacific ties to the same mature level as NATO, which has thrived despite the frequent changes of political leadership in European capitals.

At the policy level, the DPJ's stated interest in United Nations-mandated activities could benefit the U.S. U.N.-led peacekeeping operations (PKOs) serve U.S. (and Japanese) interests. Therefore, Washington could take advantage of a DPJ administration to encourage much greater Japanese contributions to U.N. PKO missions.

Moreover, after the almost uninterrupted rule of the LDP and its predecessors since the Occupation, the alliance would benefit from new thinking in Japan. In particular, there has been an unfortunate tendency in Tokyo to see American efforts to engage China as detrimental to Japan. Neither Republican nor Democratic administrations have neglected the strengthening of U.S. military capabilities and the Japan-U.S. alliance. Nevertheless, many Japanese aligned with the LDP have mistakenly interpreted efforts to engage China as hostility, or at least malign neglect, of their country.

Hopefully, a new administration in Tokyo will realize that Japan should very much encourage and assist the U.S. as it devotes an enormous amount of effort to attempting to develop a productive relationship with Beijing.

Robert Dujarric heads the Institute of Contemporary Japanese Studies at Temple University, Japan Campus (robertdujarric@gmail.com)

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http://www.weeklystandard.com/Content/Public/Articles/000/000/016/810qdzsj.asp?pg=1

Hu's Paradise
China and North Korea's growing list of worries.
by Reuben F. Johnson
07/31/2009 6:00:00 PM


Personality cults are a traditional fixture of totalitarian communist dictatorships. Generally they become less banal and intrusive on the lives of everyday people as those nations modernize and traverse the onramp to Al Gore's famous Information Superhighway. As it happened in the former USSR and a score of other nations in the last two decades, this modernization process also usually means an end to the communist, one-party regime.

The fact that the two phenomena have gone hand-in-hand in so many places around the world is one of the many worries of the governing elite of the People's Republic of China (PRC). For now, the Middle Kingdom remains kind of a hybrid. China's economic growth and speed of modernization has been nothing less than astounding, but the communist party still has the monopoly on power.

The difference between today's China and that of 30 years ago is that the ideological component of the party's role in society is almost symbolic. China's rulers still maintain the images and monuments of Mao Zedong, but refer to the teachings and sayings of The Great Helmsman as moral and political guidelines for people's everyday lives less and less.

As one would expect, this is largely a generational divide in Chinese society. Making reference to the great Mao's sayings is associated with the old, pre-modern poor PRC, and that being part of the generation of the modern, advanced China generally means ideological agnosticism.

However, China's neighbor North Korea more than makes up for the demise of communist Puritanism in the People's Republic. The god-like status once attributed to Mao Zedong that has long since disappeared in China is alive and well in the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK). The state-mandated worship of the present dictator, Kim Jong-Il, and his deceased father, Kim Il-Sung, puts any of the accolades to Mao to shame.

Not surprisingly, the Orwellian society of North Korea has insured that the country has one of the most failed--and perhaps completely unsalvageable at this point--economies in the world.

If there was ever a case to be made against a one-man, dictatorial state it is the DPRK. While lacking the murderous brutality of Saddam Hussein's Iraq, the mismanagement of the country's economy has been no less deadly to the people of North Korea. As many as three million are thought to have perished in famines that peaked in the 1990s, and the situation has been abated only by massive shipments of food aid each year.

The drop in production of grain, which occurred largely during the years that Kim Jong-Il took over after the death of his father, Kim Il-Sung, is unprecedented: from 92 million tons in the 1990 to less than 33 million in 2000. This anemic agricultural output is so inadequate that the nation has become a perennial beggar, what relief workers in Third World nations refer to as a "food aid junkie." Without this aid there is no way that the country could survive.

What the DPRK has been able to produce is a bumper crop of outrageous legends about Kim Jong-Il's magical--nearly superhuman--capabilities and achievements. He is said to have a photographic memory, and to have piloted jet fighters, composed operas, and directed globally acclaimed movies. Among his other improbable and statistically impossible claimed achievements is the legend that he scored eleven holes-in-one in the first round of golf he ever played.

The problem North Korea presents for the government of Chinese President Hu Jintao is roughly analogous to the potential economic refugee dilemma the United States faces with Mexico. A complete breakdown of the country means that China, which borders the DPRK in the north would (along with South Korea on the DPRK's other border) be faced with what has been described as "the mother of all relief operations."

China, South Korea and others have provided food aid to the DPRK for years because tolerating panhandling by Pyongyang (and ignoring that Kim at the same time squanders what little resources he has on nuclear weapons and ballistic missile programs) is the lesser of all the potential evils. But this unthinkable disaster of the DPRK's collapsing has come closer to reality this month.

Unconfirmed reports that Kim now suffers from pancreatic cancer have struck fear into the hearts of more than one Asian government and have forced Beijing to think about the near-term future of the isolationist state. "If the reports are true then Kim will never live long enough to ensure that he can install Kim Jong Un (his youngest son at age 26) as his successor," said a Beijing-based source, "and who takes over has some significant implications for China." The scenario that is believed to be playing out now is that Kim's multiple provocations of the past few weeks--a second nuclear test, multiple missile launches--are designed to curry favor with the DPRK military in the hope that the generals will still support the younger, 26-year old Kim's ascension to the throne.

Buying into these reports on Kim's health is problematic in that they are leaked from South Korea's intelligence service and "you never know what the agenda for leaking these reports is," said a source based in Beijing. "Traditionally the Japanese have had better information that the South Koreans" on the true situation inside of the DPRK. Japanese intelligence officers are able to collect a fair amount of HUMINT (human-sourced intelligence) from the sizeable colony of pro-North Zainichi Koreans that reside permanently in Japan and travel back and forth to deliver gifts of consumer goods and cash to their relatives.

Recent photos of Kim showing a sizeable loss of weight, a generally gaunt appearance, a limping gait in his walk and the decline of his bouffant hairstyle seem to support the cancer theory. Other analysts dispute it by using the old "who made more visits this year to more collective farms" technique that was one of the few insights into the Soviet leadership's maneuvering in the former USSR.

Yang Moo-jin, a professor at Seoul's University of North Korean Studies, has discounted the cancer rumors on the basis that there has been a spike in the number of what are called "field-guidance" visits by Kim to factories and (of course) collective farms to date this year. From January to June 2009 Kim has reportedly made 77 of these visits while in the first half of 2008 he made only 49 such appearances. An advanced case of cancer, so his theory says, would prohibit Kim from such a busy schedule of personal visits. President Hu and Co. are undoubtedly hoping that Yang's assessment is the correct one.

But, the uncertain DPRK situation and the recent riots in Xinjiang province are only two of an expanding list of problems for Beijing. Not the least of which is the impact of the worldwide economic downturn.

Official government statements are crowing that the PRC is the only nation to experience robust economic growth at 7.9 per cent. The population at large has greeted this "official" news with no small degree of contempt--the Chinese equivalent of people complaining loudly about a "jobless recovery." This is not surprising because anyone familiar with the structure and dynamics of China's economy will tell you that anything less than 9 percent expansion translates into negative growth despite what the government's numbers might say. Moreover, most of the growth seems to have been fueled by massive lending into the local economy by Chinese banks and not due to any major increase in manufacturing output.

There are many Chinese websites that are forums for people to vent their dissent against the party line. The reaction to the economic news had the state security apparatus working overtime last week--breaking into those forums that had bloggers complaining that the government's announcement on the economy amounted to no more than a feeble attempt to put lipstick on a pig. A Chinese colleague in Beijing told me "you cannot believe the deluge of people talking angrily about what a joke this supposed 'economic growth' is on these news sites." The same colleague checked back a few hours later and found all such comments had been deleted.

Beijing can stick its head in the sand all it wants, but it does not detract from the reality that there are palpable levels of discontent in the population. More important is the fact that they may be ignited by ethnic tensions or economic hardship, but at the core there is increasingly hostility all over China towards local and regional government officials and their rising levels of corruption.

The anger is not limited to one part of the country either. Most of the world is aware only of the clashes in Xinjiang province in the capitol city of Urumqi, but more deadly riots between minority Uighurs have also taken place in the last week. Only these occurred 3,000 miles away on the other end of the country in the city of Shaoguan in China's southern Guangdong province.

In a case of pure outrage over corrupt, local party bosses some 50,000 people recently rioted in the city of Shishou in Hubei province. The protests began over what appeared to be a murder covered up by the police, who declared the death of a 24-year old hotel chef a suicide. Thе chef, named Tu Yuangao, was found dead outside the Yonglong hotel where he worked, with all forensic evidence pointing to him having been thrown off a hotel balcony only after he had already been killed.

The local population knew from the beginning that the hotel was a centre of drug trafficking activity--with the mayor, senior police and other local officials all having some degree of ownership in the establishment. The story on the streets was that Tu was killed for threatening to expose the hotel owners' illegal activities over a pay dispute. When the police attempted to remove his body from the morgue for cremation (and destroy the evidence of how he really died in the process) around 50,000 people massed and overturned some six police vehicles in order to block the road to the crematorium. The resulting riots ended up with the hotel--rather than Tu's body--being set on fire and some 200 people injured.

Beijing's answer is to massive protests is--if local authorities and the national Peoples's Armed Police (PAP) cannot cope with them--is to send in the People's Liberation Army (PLA). The PLA is increasingly called on to do just that, even though there was a major expansion in the numbers of the PAP at the end of the 1990s by transferring 14 PLA divisions into their ranks. This internal military force now numbers some 1.5 million and yet it still is proving to be inadequate to deal with rising internal unrest in China.

"The growing extent to which the government is increasingly relying on the military for these internal, crowd-control missions makes you wonder how effectively the PLA would respond to any significant or long-term external threat to the nation," said one American colleague who is based in Beijing.

These headaches, plus rapidly deteriorating environmental conditions around the nation, are only the tip of the iceberg. The other concern is a looming demographic time bomb.

According to Chinese demographers there are now 100 million people aged 60 and older, or less than 10 per cent of the population. This number will more than triple to 334 million by 2050. Today, fewer than 30 per cent of those living in the cities have an adequate pension, virtually no one in the countryside does, and thanks to the "one-child only" policy there will not be enough adult children around to take care of elderly parents. This future health-care crisis makes the current U.S. dilemma seem like a picnic by comparison and could China's by-now famous economic boom into a downward tailspin.

How President Hu and his successors will keep the Worker's Paradise hanging together is a tricky proposition. There are today no ideological underpinnings to fall back on when economic times become difficult. The genie is out of the bottle and trying to revert back is a non-starter. "You cannot have a modernizing, growing economy under a totalitarian state," a Beijing-based colleague reminded me, which is the lesson of the DPRK. "What remains to be seen now is if you can sustain this type of a growing economy in China with this current authoritarian state."

Reuben F. Johnson is a frequent contributor to THE WEEKLY STANDARD Online.

Posted for fair use....
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/rosemary_righter/article6736697.ece

From Times Online
August 3, 2009
China’s future will be hobbled by old age
Its one-child policy has given China a rich country’s problem: a rapidly ageing population
Rosemary Righter

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Beware what you wish for. Birth control was one of the resounding policy successes of the last quarter of the last century. In the early 1970s, women worldwide were bearing an average of 4.3 children; populations in some of the poorest countries were doubling at breakneck speed and demographers were predicting that the world would contain 16 billion or more people before the demographic express hit the buffers of famine and war.

Alarmed, governments threw themselves into family planning — nowhere more strenuously than in China. In 1979 Deng Xiaoping unceremoniously binned Mao’s proclamation, “China’s strength is its countless people”, introducing a coercive “one child” policy buttressed by penalties ranging from heavy fines to compulsory abortions.

The turnaround has been dramatic. In more than 70 countries, birthrates have fallen below replacement level. The demographic timelag — babies born 30 years ago are now raising families — means that the global total continues gently to rise, but within 40 years should level out at a manageable 9 billion.

For the planet, this is good news; but the downside is a different, never before seen, demographic crunch. When people are not only having fewer babies, but living 30 to 40 years longer than they did a century ago, the result is more pensioners — and fewer workers to look after them. By 2050 two billion people — more than one in five — will be over 60. In rich countries, the proportion will be one in three. The implications are dramatic: labour shortages, slower growth, and higher taxes to pay bills for pensions and long-term care. The West’s problems are, however, nothing compared to the social and economic catastrophe shaping in China.

The one-child policy has, in its own harsh terms, worked: reducing births by between 300 and 400 million. But it has induced a premature, and alarmingly rapid, ageing process. China has given itself a rich country’s problem before it has become rich: for all its economic performance, Chinese incomes are still nowhere near as high as those in Western societies at the point when they started to age.

The one-child policy gave China the best of all worlds — a seemingly limitless labour supply and an artificially low dependency ratio. But the labour force will start shrinking a mere six years hence; elderly dependants will outnumber children within 20 years; and by mid-century the labour force will have plunged by 23 per cent. A third of Chinese will then be over 60 — 438 million, outnumbering the entire population of the US. And there will be only 1.6 working age adults per pensioner, compared with seven before 1979.

This means that hundreds of millions of elderly will depend on shrinking families. Beijing is reluctant to divert public investment from physical to social infrastructure; yet failure to do so will render the “harmonious society” unstable. Unpaid pensions are already a potent grievance.

Not only do safety nets barely exist, but the basic social services that communism used to guarantee are long gone. With the shutting or privatisation of state-owned enterprises, the “iron rice bowl” that gave factory workers housing, education, healthcare and pensions cracked two decades back. Rural workers — the majority even now — never had pensions and have now lost free education and healthcare as well.

China has compressed into a single generation transformations that would rock the stability of any society. But the consequences of the one-child policy may prove the toughest of all. Always an affront to human rights, it also portends economic trouble. Abortion rates are officially admitted to be appalling — 13 million a year, a statistic that does not include abortions performed in unregistered clinics or the 10 million one-off abortion pills sold every year. Not only that: in a statistic that has past, present and future heartache written all over it, in China today there are 50 million more males than females — of whom 32.7 million are under 20. A society already short of brothers and sisters is running short of daughters-in-law as well.

The rules have gradually been relaxed. In an effort to curb abortion of female fetuses and infanticide of baby girls, exceptions may be made for rural couples whose first child is female. To ease the burden known as 4-2-1 — only children may be little emperors when young, but end up burdened, under a law passed in 1996, with the obligation to care for two parents and four grandparents — couples from one-child families are allowed two babies. But when Shanghai last month announced that it would encourage “eligible” couples to have a second child, it was attacked in China’s official media for “talking as if Shanghai were an independent republic”.

After 30 years of indoctrination, China probably could not revert to big families even if it wanted to. Urbanisation leads to smaller families, and social mobility has weakened faith in more children as insurance for old age. China has no realistic choice but to grow old gracefully. But the cost of providing for tomorrow’s pensioners is bound to dampen growth even before the workforce starts to decline. This might not be “China’s century” after all.

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http://www.voanews.com/english/2009-08-02-voa21.cfm

China Detains 319 More in Uighur Unrest
By VOA News
02 August 2009

China says it has detained another 319 people in connection with last month's deadly ethnic violence in the Xinjiang Uighur autonomous region of northwestern China.

The state-run Xinhua news agency reported Sunday that the suspects were detained in the regional capital, Urumqi, and other parts of Xinjiang based on information from the public and a police investigation.

It did not specify the charges facing the 319 people, or the more than 1,000 others detained after the July 5 riots.

Nearly 200 people died in clashes between Xinjiang's ethnic Uighurs, Chinese security forces and majority Han civilians.

Beijing blamed the violence on outside forces stirring up separatist sentiments among the mostly Muslim Uighur minority.

But Uighurs blame the police for provoking the violence, which they say was partly a response to what they feel is China's repressive policies.

The leader of an extremist group called the Turkistan Islamic Party is urging Muslims worldwide to attack Chinese interests in retaliation for what he calls the oppression of the Uighurs.

An audio message posted on the Internet Sunday in the name of Abdul Haq al-Turkistani calls for attacks on Chinese embassies, consulates and people inside and outside of the country.

His group, which refers to Xinjiang as East Turkistan, has been blamed for violence in the past.

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http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2009/08/uighur_terrorist_lea.php


Uighur terrorist leader threatens attacks against Chinese interests across the globe
By Bill RoggioAugust 2, 2009 12:22 PM


The leader of the al Qaeda-linked Chinese terror group has threatened to attack Chinese interests around the world to avenge the death of Uighurs in the eastern province of Xianjiang.

Abdul Haq al Turkistani, the leader of the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Party, threatened to attack Chinese embassies worldwide as well as targets within the country. Haq made his threats on a video that was released on an Islamist Internet site.

"(The Chinese) must be targeted both at home and abroad,” Abdul Haq said. “Their embassies, consulates, centers, and gathering places should be targeted. (Chinese) men should be killed and captured to seek the release of our brothers who are jailed in Eastern Turkistan.”

Haq said that it is the “duty” of his followers to “continue to resist without desperation."

Haq’s videotape comes in response to the recent violence in China’s eastern province of Xianjiang. Clashes between Uighurs and security forces broke out after police attempted to break up a protest in the provincial capital of Urumqi on July 5.

The Uighurs were protesting murderous attacks on laborers by ethnic Chinese Hans living in the region. Nearly 200 people were killed and more than 1,600 were wounded, and another 1,000 have been detained. An exiled Uighur leader later claimed that more than 10,000 Uighurs have gone missing.

Background on Abdul Haq and links to al Qaeda

Haq, who is also known as Maimaitiming Maimaiti, became the leader of the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Party in late 2003 after Hassan Mahsum, the group’s previous leader, was killed in Waziristan, Pakistan. Haq was appointed as a member of al Qaeda’s Shura Majlis, or executive leader council, in 2005, according to the US Treasury Department, which designated him as a global terrorist in April 2009. The United Nations also designated Haq as a terrorist leader.

Haq is considered influential enough in al Qaeda's leadership circles that he is dispatched to mediate between rival Taliban groups as well as to represent the Shura Majlis in important military matters. In June, Haq was spotted in Pakistan’s tribal areas attending an important meeting with Baitullah Mehsud, Pakistan’s overall Taliban commander. Haq and a senior delegation of Taliban and al Qaeda leaders traveled to Pakistan’s tribal areas to discuss the Pakistani military's operation in South Waziristan. Among those in attendance were Siraj Haqqani, the military commander of the deadly Haqqani Network; and Abu Yahya al Libi, a senior al Qaeda ideologue and propagandist.

The Treasury Department said Haq has sent operatives abroad to raise funds for attacks against Chinese interests both at home and abroad. He also is involved with the planning and execution of terror attacks, recruiting, and propaganda efforts. In early 2008, Haq openly threatened to conduct attacks at the Olympic Games in Beijing.

Haq ran a training camp for his recruits at al Qaeda’s camp in Tora Bora in Afghanistan’s Nangarhar prior to the US invasion in October 2001 [see LWJ report, The Uighurs in their own words]. He later reestablished camps for the Eastern Turkistan Islamic Party in Pakistan’s lawless, Taliban-controlled tribal areas. The Chinese government has pressured Pakistan to dismantle the camps.

Read more: http://www.longwarjournal.org/archives/2009/08/uighur_terrorist_lea.php#ixzz0N4zmlCSr

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http://www.todayszaman.com/tz-web/news-182548-100-nato-disavows-nukes-deployed-in-member-states.html

NATO disavows nukes deployed in member states

NATO disavows nukes deployed in member states - The North Atlantic Treaty Organization on Thursday disavowed nuclear weapons believed to be deployed in five member states including Turkey, saying the alliance does not have any nuclear weapons of its own.

The North Atlantic Treaty Organization on Thursday disavowed nuclear weapons believed to be deployed in five member states including Turkey, saying the alliance does not have any nuclear weapons of its own.

“NATO does not have any nuclear weapons. Nuclear weapons belong to the member states,” NATO spokesman James Appathurai was quoted as telling a news conference in Brussels by the Anatolia news agency. NATO member Turkey is believed to host up to 90 US thermonuclear B61 nuclear weapons at the southern air base of İncirlik, all deployed during the Cold War as part of the alliance's collective defense policy. Other countries hosting these weapons are Belgium, Germany, Italy and the Netherlands. Until they were withdrawn in July 2008, there were also more than 110 at Lakenheath in the UK.

The US nuclear weapons were deployed in the five NATO countries in line with the alliance's concept of nuclear sharing, which involves basing nuclear weapons in the territories of non-nuclear weapon states. All five countries are recognized as non-nuclear weapon states under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) of 1970. Critics say although the US retains full control of the weapons in peacetime, this quasi-nuclear status of non-nuclear NATO countries violates the objective of the NPT. The US and NATO argue that there is no violation because the US retains control of the weapons.

Belgium and Germany, which also host US nuclear weapons on its soil, debated the withdrawal of those weapons from their territory in their parliaments earlier this year. Those debates raise questions over what Turkey's policy will be on the fate of those weapons deployed in its territory.

Turkish officials have made no public comment on whether they would also favor the withdrawal of US nuclear weapons from Turkish soil, but experts say Ankara appears to be reluctant, based on its assessment of potential threats to its security. Neighboring Iran's possible attempts to acquire nuclear weapons may be one reason that could harden Turkish resolve against the withdrawal of US nuclear weapons from its soil.

Although originally intended to be a deterrent against the now-defunct Soviet Union, NATO rules allow for the possible use of nuclear weapons against targets in Russia or countries in the Middle East such as Syria and Iran, critics say. Appathurai said on Thursday that possession of nuclear weapons is still a part of NATO's strategy of deterrence.

31 July 2009, Friday
TODAY'S ZAMAN WITH WIRES İSTANBUL

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http://www.rferl.org/content/Russias_Nuclear_Missile_Chief_Quits/1791446.html

Russia's Nuclear Missile Chief Fired

Monday, August 03, 2009

MOSCOW (Reuters) -- The veteran commander of Russia's strategic nuclear missile forces, Nikolai Solovtsov, has been fired, the latest in a spate of departures among the military top brass.

A short Kremlin statement said President Dmitry Medvedev issued a decree appointing Lieutenant General Andrei Shvaychenko, 56, as the new commander.

"Under the same decree, General Solovtsov Nikolai Yegenyevich was relieved from the duties of commander of the Strategic Missile Forces and dismissed from military service," it said.

It gave no reason for dismissing Solovtsov and replacing him with Shvaychenko, his first deputy.

Russian media earlier said Solovtsov, who had headed the force since 2001, was asked for his resignation despite the fact Medvedev had allowed him to continue serving after reaching the retirement age of 60 in February.

His departure follows a series of failed test-launches of Bulava, a new-generation strategic missile designed for nuclear submarines. Two weeks ago, the chief designer of Bulava quit.

Solovtsov's firing also coincided with Russia's widespread reform of its military, which has been opposed by many senior ranking officers.

Medvedev has backed a plan by Defense Minister Anatoly Serdyukov to trim Russia's 1.2 million-strong armed forces and change its structure to make it more mobile and effective.

The president says reform was inevitable after Russia's military operation in Georgia last year highlighted gaps in troop training and equipment, as well as problems in the organization of the armed forces.

Several top opponents of the military reform, who say it could ruin the armed forces, have already lost their jobs. The latest firing was in April, when Medvedev dismissed the head of Russia's powerful military intelligence.

Despite a considerable decline in military might since the breakup of the Soviet Union in late 1991, Russia and the United States still rank as the world's biggest nuclear powers.

Moscow and Washington are now in talks on a new treaty that intends to curb the number of strategic warheads in their arsenals, which account for over 95 percent of the world's total nuclear weapon stockpiles.

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http://www.themoscowtimes.com/article/600/42/380105.htm

Lukashenko Holds Out on Joint Task Force
03 August 2009
By Nikolaus von Twickel / The Moscow Times

Belarussian President Alexander Lukashenko refused to sign an agreement Saturday that would create a rapid-reaction security force, casting doubt on Moscow’s plans to form a post-Soviet military alliance and suggesting that a serious rift in relations with Minsk continues.

Lukashenko attended a Collective Security Treaty Organization summit in the Kyrgyz resort of Choplon-Ata with other heads of state from the seven-member body, but he made no public comments. He boycotted the last CSTO summit, held in Moscow in June, where Belarus was supposed to assume its rotating presidency.

In a sign that Minsk was unrepentant for the slight, Moscow said it would continue to act in lieu of Belarus. We will hold “the CSTO’s technical presidency until Belarus is ready to take on this function fully,” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said Saturday, Interfax reported.

On a more positive note for the Kremlin, Kyrgyzstan agreed to let Russia bolster its troops in the country by opening a joint military training center, according to a memorandum published on the Kremlin’s web site.

Kyrgyzstan has said the facility will be located at an abandoned Soviet-era military base near the southern city of Osh, close to the Uzbek border.

The memorandum allows Russia to locate “up to a battalion” of new troops in the country and station them at a training center. By Nov. 1, the sides will sign an agreement on a “united Russian military base” that would include “all Russian military sites in the Republic of Kyrgyzstan, including the Russian air base in Kant.”

Kyrgyzstan had previously denied that it would allow for a second Russian base, which could be seen as disturbing the balance of foreign powers there. The United States operates an air base in Manas, which it won permission to keep in June after promising more money.

Lavrov suggested on Saturday that the terms of the deal — including the number of new Russian troops — could change by November.

“All questions regarding the geographic parameters of the new Russian military presence and the financial details will be discussed. … The overall number will be determined by military specialists depending on the security needs of the region,” he said, Interfax reported.

The Kyrgyz training center was initially envisioned as a part of the CSTO rapid-response force, which was proposed in February to bolster military capability in energy-rich Central Asia, a Muslim region sensitive for Moscow’s security interests. It has also been described as boosting the military dimension of the alliance, which has served primarily as a forum for security consultations.

The CSTO currently has a rapid-reaction force of about 3,000 but without a unified command. Belarus and Uzbekistan have refused to join, leaving remaining members Russia, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan to the task.

Uzbekistan, which experts believe has the strongest military capacity in the area, has veered from the regional tradition of Kremlin-friendly policies after Russia refused in November to side with Uzbekistan in Central Asia’s ongoing debate over water use.

Relations with Belarus, once Russia’s closest ally, have deteriorated significantly in recent months.

Minsk initiated unprecedented steps to achieve better ties with the European Union earlier this year, winning membership in the 27-member bloc’s Eastern Partnership program, which was duly criticized by Moscow.

When Lukashenko snubbed the CSTO summit in June, an angry President Dmitry Medvedev complained that he had not even called to explain why. Lukashenko also skipped an informal Commonwealth of Independent States gathering in Moscow last month.

Lukashenko’s stance is seen as a delicate balancing act between Moscow and the West, as his country is on the verge of bankruptcy. Belarus this year received $1.5 billion loans each from Russia and the International Monetary Fund.

Russia has delayed another $500 million tranche, saying the country could go bankrupt as early as next year — a claim Lukashenko hotly denied.

Alexei Malashenko, an analyst with the Carnegie Moscow Center, said the summit showed that the Belarussian president was just interested in garnering more bargaining power.

“He will sign only if he gets something for it, first and foremost loans. For now, he is just using it as a lever against Russia,” he said.

Malashenko argued that the rapid-reaction force was not worth much without Belarus.

“It is just Russia, some Central Asian republics plus Armenia. That is not Moscow’s vision for this,” he said.

He also warned that if Uzbekistan opted to leave the Collective Security Treaty Organization, it might view the Russian base in Kyrgyzstan in a different light. “This might then be a threat to Uzbekistan’s security,” he said.

Vladimir Zharikhin, deputy director of the Moscow-based CIS Institute, a think tank, said it was understandable that Belarus was not very interested in a rapid-reaction force in Central Asia.

“[Lukashenko] does not see any particular danger for his country, which lies in a totally different area,” he said.

Zharikhin added that the rapid-reaction force, which he described as “a security guarantee against terrorist actions in participating countries,” could probably do just as well without Belarussian participation.

Posted for fair use....
http://www.rferl.org/content/China_EU_Wait_In_The_Wings_For_Access_To_Central_Asia/1790745.html

China, EU Wait In The Wings For Access To Central Asia
August 02, 2009
By Bruce Pannier

Although Russia and the United States are most often mentioned as the contestants of the "new Great Game" that began after the fall of the Soviet Union, other players have also entered the arena.

Central Asia, possessing billions of barrels of recoverable oil and trillions of cubic meters of natural gas, is located fortuitously between Europe and China -- two massive consumers of energy resources. The region also sits on the frontier of the Islamic world, and Beijing and Brussels are among those who see Central Asia as a potential bulwark against potential security threats emanating from Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

Part 1: Shifting Tides Of Influence In Central Asia

China has multiple motives in Central Asia, and has adopted an ingenious policy for dealing with the region, according to James Nixey, manager and research fellow for the Russia and Eurasia program at Chatham House.

"I would assess it as being a considerable degree of genius,” Nixey said. “Chinese foreign policy is very long-term and they're much happier as they were -- just to give an example of Hong Kong -- to sit back and wait for things to come their way, as they know it will."

As for security concerns, Beijing has found success in exerting its influence through a regional alliance.

China, Russia, and four of the Central Asian states -- Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan -- compose the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), formed in 2001 after Uzbekistan joined a grouping known as the Shanghai Five.

Security Threats

Matthew Clements, a country risk analyst for Eurasia at London-based IHS Jane's, says the SCO is China's means of preventing threats from Afghanistan and Pakistan from spilling into Central Asia and into its own Muslim regions.

China is “also in a position where it is able to, to a degree, enable the security of the region, the stability of the region,” Clements said. “China doesn't want any instability in the region, especially as it is very sensitive about the Uyghur separatism in the region."

After riots broke out between Muslim Uyghurs and Han Chinese in China's western Xinjiang Province in July, Beijing's Central Asian partners in the SCO were noticeably silent, even those countries are also home to hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs.

A statement issued by the SCO after the violence simply offered sympathies with the family members of those killed, and said that the SCO's member states regarded the situation in Xinjiang as a Chinese internal affair.

Nixey says China uses the SCO for political leverage in the region, at the expense of fellow member Russia, which also wields influence through the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO). He notes that at the 2008 SCO summit, the grouping rejected Russia's proposal for independence for Georgia’s breakaway regions of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, to Russia's chagrin.

“The SCO is effectively China's method for influence and persuasion and power projection in Central Asia,” Nixey said. “And the Chinese SCO is far more powerful than the Russian-led CSTO, which is essentially the same sort of thing -- Russia's method or instrument of influence in Central Asia. So the Chinese are playing a multilateral, clever, and long-term game."

Energy Strategy

Although security issues often make the headlines, China's main interest is gaining access to its neighbors' energy resources, and there too it enjoys a number of advantages over regional player Russia, and outsiders such as the United States and the European Union.

Central Asian states see neighboring China as a potential consumer of their own exports, and Beijing never seems to be short of money. China also refrains from criticizing the internal politics of Central Asian governments, something that can't be said of the West.

Chinese companies have been active in building the pipelines, roads, and railways needed to carry the resources back to China. Chinese companies, which enjoy a reputation for completing projects on time, train and employ local workers as well as bringing in their own labor.

The approach is bearing fruit, Clements explains. China is “starting to receive oil and gas and also uranium and other minerals, so natural resources are coming from the region," he said.

Russian companies had a near monopoly over the export of Central Asia's energy resources in the 1990s, but much has been done to even the playing field.

China has helped build an oil pipeline from western Kazakhstan that is already in operation, and a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan that is expected to go online at the end of this year.

EU In The Game

The European Union, too, is looking to break Russia's monopoly over Central Asian energy resources.

Europe receives Central Asian oil and gas via Russia, and some in the EU have raised concerns about a heavy reliance on Russia for energy supplies. Incidents such as the suspension of Russian gas supplies at the start of this year, owing to a dispute between Ukraine and Russia, reinforce the view that the EU needs urgently to diversify its energy import sources.

To help offset such fears, the EU is supporting the 3,300-kilometer Nabucco pipeline project to bring gas from Azerbaijan and some Central Asian nations to the heart of Europe.

This year, the EU unveiled its "Southern Corridor-New Silk Route" strategy that aims to greatly develop and enhance road and rail links and pipelines between the Caspian area and Europe.

The EU strategy is having some success, Clements said, but “they're still limited in the progress they've made in terms of trying to engage Turkmenistan into a trans-Caspian pipeline deal. We have seen some progress there. We've seen states that previously turned away from the West, especially Uzbekistan, again maybe altering its course into a sort of middle path between the West and Russia."

The recent signing of an agreement between Nabucco transit countries brings the project closer to realization.

The EU will pay the cost of construction so that the Central Asians have a new export route to one of the most valued energy customers in the world -- the EU.

The EU's strategy also serves to strengthen Central Asia's hand in dealing with Russia.

A pipeline explosion that cut off Turkmenistan's gas exports to Russia in April is one example. Turkmen officials blamed Russia, and Moscow rejected the blame. But the events may have helped lead Turkmenistan to pursue other energy partners.

Turkmenistan has since signed a deal with Germany's RWE for rights to explore a bloc on the Turkmen Caspian shelf. In July, Turkmenistan's foreign minister went to Brussels and Washington for energy talks. The same month, Turkmenistan said it would sell gas to Nabucco.

"If you look at the trends I tend to think there's a bit of ebb and flow,” says Nixey of Chatham House. “At the moment [the EU is] on a bit of a high so they may be feeling quite pleased with themselves.”

“The fact that the Kyrgyz have reversed their decision on Manas air base or that the Uzbeks are making more overtures toward the EU right now is a good thing in so many ways,” he said. “But the fact of the matter is what is given can just as easily be taken away."

__________________________________

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http://www.rferl.org/content/Shifting_Tides_Of_Influence_In_Central_Asia/1790529.html

Shifting Tides Of Influence In Central Asia
August 01, 2009
By Bruce Pannier

Eighteen years after the five former Soviet republics of Central Asia became independent, outsiders continue to jockey for position in the traditional contest for influence in the region.

The great powers -- Russia, the United States, China, and Europe -- follow two main strategies to gain or hold sway in the region: the provision of mutual security, and the use of financial measures and trade incentives in exchange for access to enormous energy reserves.

The five states of Central Asia -- Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan -- are majority Muslim states that mark the northern limits of the Islamic world. To the south are Afghanistan and Iran, countries that outside actors and the Central Asian countries themselves view as potential sources of security problems.

Neighboring Russia and China, meanwhile, see Central Asia as a hotbed of movements linked with opposition elements within their own borders.

Central Asia's vast deposits of oil, natural gas, and uranium are the modern-day lures of a region that has an ancient history as a crossroads for trade between the East and the West. And the five nations are showing an increased readiness to play that role again, but are finding they can now demand security and trade partnerships in exchange.

Russian Influence Waning

Russia has traditionally been the biggest regional player, having controlled Central Asia for more than 100 years, and more than 200 years in some areas.

After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and Uzbekistan became independent republics, but their longstanding ties to Moscow left them bound to Russia throughout the 1990s and into this decade.

But this is changing, as James Nixey, manager and research fellow for the Russia and Eurasia program at Chatham House, points out.

"It's not just Russia as the key player in the region,” Nixey said. “The fact of the matter is this is a contested land, it's a fought-over land, and the other people of interest are, of course: China; India to a lesser extent; the EU to a lesser extent; and the U.S. to a considerable extent, in political, cultural, technological, military and of course energy spheres."

This interest from outsiders suits the Central Asian states, who understand that Russia will always be a key regional factor, but seek leverage to counter Moscow's traditional dominance.

The model of Central Asia's balancing act is Kazakhstan, which has long borders with China and Russia. During President Nursultan Nazarbaev's rule, Kazakhstan has managed to develop strong political and economic ties with both Western and East Asian nations, while maintaining excellent relations with Moscow and Beijing.

Matthew Clements, a country risk analyst for Eurasia at the London-based IHS Jane's analytical group, says that when it comes to gaining economic leverage, the other Central Asian states have learned from Kazakhstan.

"I think that the other states in the region are perhaps taking some notes from [Kazakhstan's foreign policy] and seeing that they also have some things to offer the West and China that can give them economic benefits.... Only having Russia as a customer, only having Russia as a partner, is limiting their ability to get the most from these deals," Clements said.

Security And Oil

A relative newcomer on the scene, the United States was among the first countries to open embassies in all five Central Asian states after the collapse of the Soviet Union, and U.S. companies quickly descended on the region. Chevron, for example, signed a joint partnership in 1993 with Kazakhstan to develop the enormous Tengiz oil field, among the top 10 producing fields in the world.

With a wary eye on fighting in Afghanistan and Pakistan, the Central Asian states have also established new security partnerships, primarily involving the Russia-dominated Collective Treaty Security Organization (CSTO), as well as the United States.

Since the September 2001 terrorist attacks, Washington's primary interest in Central Asia has been cooperation in ridding Afghanistan of the Taliban and extremist groups such as Al-Qaeda.

The Central Asians were eager allies, remembering that Afghanistan's problems spilled into Central Asia several times in the 1990s. The U.S-led coalition was allowed to use bases in Kyrgyzstan (Manas), Tajikistan (Dushanbe), and Uzbekistan (Khanabad).

A weakened Moscow grudgingly accepted the U.S. military presence in what it considered its backyard. But as Russia gained strength, it worked to remove, or at least curtail, U.S. influence in the region.

Playing The Powers

An opportunity arose as some of the states of Central Asia began to test their abilities to play Moscow and Washington, and sometimes Beijing and Brussels, off each other to serve their individual needs.

In 2005, for example, after the U.S. joined Western criticism of the Uzbek government's handling of unrest in the eastern city of Andijon, Uzbek President Islam Karimov called for U.S. forces in Uzbekistan to depart, and quickly received the backing of Russia and China.

After a stalemate, the Uzbek president was invited to attend a 2008 NATO summit. By the end of the meeting Uzbekistan agreed to allow NATO forces to use Uzbekistan's roads to bring nonlethal supplies to Afghanistan, and those shipments started a few weeks ago.

Additionally, a German-run base at the Uzbek border town of Termez was expanded, and U.S. military cargo planes now appear cleared to use the Navoi airport in northern Uzbekistan.

As the Kyrgyz government faced growing discontent over the social and economic situation earlier this year, President Kurmanbek Bakiev announced during a trip to Moscow that U.S. forces had six months to vacate Manas International Airport, a key part of Washington's war effort in Afghanistan.

At the same time, the Kyrgyz president announced that Russia had pledged to provide a $2 billion aid package for cash-strapped Kyrgyzstan.

After months of wrangling, the United States announced in June that it was prolonging its contract for using Manas. Under the new deal, Washington agreed to triple its annual lease payment (to $60 million) and to spend some $100 million more for airport improvements and programs to combat narcotics trafficking and terrorism.

Later that month, the Russian newspaper "RBK Daily" wrote that "despite $2 billion Moscow promised it, Kyrgyzstan never ordered the U.S. Air Force base in Bishkek shut down."

Beyond help with training, however, the United States is not in Central Asia to guarantee security against terrorism or extremism within the states' borders. That remains Russia's role, primarily through the CSTO, to which all the Central Asian states except Turkmenistan belong. Armenia and Belarus are the remaining members.

Russia currently has one military base in Tajikistan and operates an air base in northern Kyrgyzstan, specifically designated for counterterrorism operations. On August 1, Russia signed an agreement to open a new military base in Kyrgyzstan during an informal CSTO summit.

"In essence, this is not a Russian base. These are efforts in line with CSTO plans to set up a joint rapid reaction force," high-ranking Kremlin aide Sergei Prikhodko announced just days ahead of the July 31-August 1 meeting.

The summit has been dubbed informal, apparently due to uncertainty over whether Uzbekistan would attend the meeting. Uzbekistan and Belarus each declined to sign crucial documents on creating a CSTO rapid-reaction force earlier this year.

Tashkent's interest in the CSTO has waned noticeably since last November, when Russia refused to side with Uzbekistan in Central Asia's ongoing debate on regional water use.

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« TECHNICAL PATHWAYS FOR A POWERFUL EUROPE:
THE ORIENTAL PARTNERSHIP, THE GEOPOLITICAL STAKES AND AZERBAIJAN

On May 7th and 8th , the Czech presidency of the European Union was able to reunite the key players of Eastern Europe in the hopes of reestablishing ties between the EU and its ex-Soviet Union neighbors (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldavia and Ukraine) to help reinforce their independence and assure new sources of energy supplies. The EU is trying, on a basis of pragmatic cooperation, to maintain European presence in these countries, which has lead to speculation that it is about to encroach on the sphere of Russian strategical interests. But appearances are deceiving.

To begin, Europe does not have a strategic global vision, and it would be wrong to view the whole new oriental partnership as an attempt to diminish Russian influence. Two factors support this point of view:



- Firstly, the EU is not yet a powerful political/military force and prefers to cooperate with Russia in the handling of crises;

- Secondly, the economic ties between Russia and its immediate neighbors are sufficiently strong, and the latter doesn’t want to risk such a market, which absorbs their industrial and agricultural products as well as millions of migrant workers, for a project whose future is still uncertain.



Although certain elements of the partnership remain promising, it is a long way off from making a useful contribution to the emergence of an economic pole in geopolitical pluralism within the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS). It is more likely destined to promote relations between the EU and its partners and reinforce their integration in different means of cooperation but at the same level of interaction as with Russia. It is more a matter of complementarity of cooperation than of competition and more about reinforced integration than membership. It is for this reason that the affected States of the ex-USSR adopt a more reasonable approach even if Ukraine still hopes for full membership pure and simple. The greatest weakness of this partnership is in fact the lack of means for its goals and above all, its incentives in terms of membership.

Also, the new international context, which is linked to the multilateral approach and to the more pragmatic international policy of the new Obama Administration, tends to put Russia at ease. The new president is fixed on two priorities – Iran and Afghanistan – and is looking, in contrast to his predecessor, to avoid unnecessary provocations by notably abandoning the pursuit of the new version of the containment policy. This policy is aimed at reducing Russian sway by promoting “revolutions of colors”in the ex-Soviet sphere of influence, which were considered to be “natural steps” in the strategic vision of the Kremlin. This approach seems to suit Moscow, as it would be more advantageous for it to adopt a cooperative approach under the condition that it maintains its dominant position in its old guarded domain. Behind this point of view, one can find a point of equilibrium in the relations between Russia and the United States. For example Washington renounced its unilateral initiative of antimissile shields in favor of a common project with Moscow, in which they engage in problematic affairs, such as those found in Iran and Afghanistan. This could allow for a reconfiguration of the power struggle, and it would assure Russia that it remains the major force in that region, allowing everyone a piece of the pie. Indeed, the help that Russia could bring the Iranian question would be enormous and fundamental for regional and international security. Iran seeks to become a regional power, putting itself in competition with NATO member and EU candidate Turkey, in order to, among other things, contain the influence of the UnitedState. The first trip of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad after his reelection took him as invitee to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) Summit in Yekaterinburg in the Ural. This organization was created in 1996 by Russia and China to be an alternative to NATO and in response to US influence in central Asia. Four central Asian countries are members, all the former Soviet republics: Kazakhstan, Kirghistan, Uzbekistan and Tajikistan. Iran holds an observer status. It is important to note, that in October 2007, the Caspian Summit in Teheran, held during the peak of the nuclear crisis, has been a success for Iran as well as for Russia.

This agreeable arrangement with Russia could also contribute to the settlement of the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict between Armenia and Azerbaijan. Indeed, one goal of the Obama Administration is to improve the American image in the Muslim world. In this context, Turkey is an ally not to be ignored in connecting American interests of becoming a regional player in the Middle East and also in the South Caucasus. Hence the American incentives to normalize relations between Turkey and Armenia, that have been broken off in 1993 following the occupation of 20% of the territory of Azerbaijan by Armenian military forces. But this issue pre-requires diplomatic progress in finding a peaceful solution to the Nagorno-Karabakh conflict, which demands a more active role of the United States and Russia. However, the Russian motivations are different: first, by excluding such a possibility for the resolution of the Ossetian and Abkhazian conflict, Moscow continues its efforts to bring the Saakhashvili regime to its knees, again to ensure direct access to Armenia, its stronghold in the South Caucasus; then in the setting of a potential rapprochement between Turkey and Armenia, the Kremlin thinks about balancing its relations with Azerbaijan, while encouraging them to sell the bulk of its natural gas to the Russian gas giant "Gazprom", which aims to challenge the European gas pipeline "Nabucco".

Contrary to what one might think, Azerbaijan has not attempted to use its energy weapon as a means of diplomatic pressure in the process of normalization of relations between Turkey and Armenia. But it suggested to lead the two negotiations in a single process and to push the progress in resolving the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh towards the rapprochement between the two countries. The historical and cultural ties that bind the Turkish people to those of Azerbaijan and the popular reaction that Ankara's policy has sparked in both countries, has made the Turkish government aware that without eliminating the causes that led to the closing of the borders, no action can be taken to remedy the effects. This position has relieved Baku and “dispelled all suspicions" as declared by the President Ilham Aliyev, following the visit of the Turkish Prime Minister on May 13, 2009. Azerbaijan considers its demand legitimate due to the fact that 20% of its territories are still under Armenian occupation. It has called on Turkey and the international community as a whole to adopt a common position and to stand firm in this situation, rather than to consolidate the Armenian position at the round table negotiations demanding open borders between Turkey and Armenia.

Azerbaijan has yet to give in to Russian requests to purchase all of its gas as they are looking to ensure the security of their resource routes by diversifying the pipelines in multiple directions. This is the reason for which, in the past, they postponed the exploitation of the second phase of the Shah Deniz well, expected to produce over 16 billion cubic meters of natural gas per annum. Under the circumstances, Azerbaijan, which already exports gas to Turkey and Greece, was favorable towards the “Nabucco” pipeline project to transport the majority of its gas, although they can no longer infinitely await the Europeans. Furthermore, with its increased gas production, it is in need of markets and competitive prices which only Russia is taking the initiative to offer. During President Medvedev’s visit to Baku on the 29th of June 2009, Gazprom proceeded to sign an agreement of purchase with the Azerbaijanis state petrol company (SOCAR) concerning 500 million cubic meters of gas as of the 1st of January 2010. For Baku, this contract is based on commercial considerations with prices as high as 350 dollars per 1000 cubic meters of gas. For the moment though, the volume in question is too insignificant to be a fatal blow by depriving “Nabucco” of a reliable and vital source. In any case, the danger is not far off if the Europeans do not soon decide the fate of their projects and do not rapidly offer purchasing contracts to Azerbaijan. Wasting time could, in effect, put an end to this project. Even more so as the key actor in the region, which is Azerbaijan, constitutes a strategic transit zone for Central Asia which is among the top suppliers of “Nabucco”. Azerbaijan’s eventual change of course could incite the Central Asian countries, such as Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan, to turn to Asia instead. Let us be reminded that after the recent explosion on the pipeline between Turkmenistan and Russia, Turkmenistan has been made more aware than even of the vulnerability of their dependence on their large neighbor to the north. It is no coincidence that Turkmenistan’s authorities have recently proposed new opportunities to western companies in the exploitation of hydro-carbons. In this colossal game, the realization of “Nabucco” does not depend on Russian opposition with their competing projects such as “South Stream”, but largely on the engagement of European partners. In this relationship, the European Union has two strategic imperatives, the first being an improved level of cooperation with Russia, which is part of Eastern Europe, and the second being the continuation of the adhesion process for Turkey. It is in the strategic, balanced position that the right path can be found to its policies and the defense of its energy interests.


Olivier VEDRINE

President of the Atlantic-Ural College

Paris, FRANCE

Lecturer of the European Commission

(TEAM EUROPE France)



Fazil Zeynalov

Political scientist

Baku, Azerbaijan


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on Monday, August 3 2009 By Olivier Védrine - Permalink

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Russia replaces missile forces chief: Kremlin

(AFP) – 1 hour ago

MOSCOW — President Dmitry Medvedev on Monday replaced the head of Russia's missile forces, the Kremlin said, after a series of embarrassing failed test-firings of a major new weapon.

Medvedev issued a decree ordering the replacement of General Nikolai Solovtsov by General Andrei Shvaichenko as commander of the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces.

"With this decree Nikolai Solovtsov is freed from his duties as head of the missile forces and discharged from military service," the Kremlin said in a statement.

No reason was given for the change. Shvaichenko was until now a deputy commander at the missile forces while Solovtsov had served in his post since April 2001.

The Interfax news agency quoted an informed source as saying that Solovtsov had asked to be discharged from military service as he had now passed the usual military retirement age of 60.

It said he had already received a one-year extension after reaching the age of 60 in January.

But the missile forces have also been embarrassed by a series of failed test-firings of the new submarine-launched Bulava intercontinental missile, which has been touted as the pride of Russia's revamped military.

The latest test-firing on July 16 ended with the missile blowing up in the first phase and the Bulava has now reportedly failed on six of its 11 test-firings.

The Bulava is the standard-bearing project for the Russian military which is seeking to replace old Soviet-era warhorse missiles with more modern models as part of a major military reform.

The problems with Bulava also come amid delicate negotiations between Russia and the United States aiming to renew by the end of the year the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) on reducing nuclear arms.

A declaration signed by Medvedev and US President Barack Obama at their summit last month called for a reduction in the number of nuclear warheads in Russian and US arsenals to between 1,500 and 1,675 within seven years.

Solovtsov said on June 10 he believed it would be wrong to go below 1,500 warheads even though the decision was up "to the country's political leadership."

Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved.

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Not the Best Way to Reset Relations
03 August 2009
By James F. Collins

If there were any doubts as to how fragile relations remain between the United States and Russia, the donnybrook over U.S. Vice President Joe Biden’s interview with The Wall Street Journal last week laid them to rest. When Biden suggested that Russian economic distress would give Washington a way to extract concessions from Moscow, the Russian reaction was as immediate as it was negative. President Dmitry Medvedev’s foreign policy adviser Sergei Prikhodko said, “If some members of [U.S. President Barack] Obama’s team and government … disagree with the policy of their own president, we ought to know it.” Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, meanwhile, interpreted Biden’s words as an attempt to return to the cool — if not tense — relationship during the George W. Bush years and expressed hope that the White House would stand by the commitment to constructive partnership that Medvedev and Obama articulated during the July summit in Moscow.

The response from the Obama administration was also immediate. In an effort at damage control, the White House and State Department denied any suggestion that the administration was changing its carefully crafted approach toward Russia, even as spokesmen for the administration reaffirmed U.S. principles about the independence of Russia’s neighbors. But the incident has demonstrated once again how easily U.S.-Russian relations can be derailed or diverted and how vulnerable they will remain until a firmer base is built for better ties.

Fortunately, the Moscow summit provided the road map to move bilateral relations forward. As Obama and Medvedev agreed in Moscow in early July, the United States and Russia will conduct their future business on a more structured basis. As past examples show, topics on our agenda — including cooperation on public health and climate change, the future of Afghanistan, nuclear nonproliferation and missile defense — are most usefully addressed in a sustained dialogue within a solid institutional framework.

The inability of the Bush and Putin administrations to develop an apparatus to conduct relations in a productive and predictable manner worked to the detriment of both countries. It meant that disagreements festered and potential opportunities for a new U.S.-Russian partnership withered in the absence of sustained dialogue.

The creation of a bilateral commission led by Obama and Medvedev has given the impetus for new machinery to address this problem. The commission will provide a framework for the two governments to carry out routine work effectively and prevent neglect of issues with the potential to cause trouble. As set out in their statements from Moscow, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Lavrov will lead and coordinate the work of the commission’s working groups. Each of the groups is structured to address a major element of U.S.-Russian relations and will permit the governments to develop pragmatic, mutually beneficial programs to deepen and broaden dialogue at both the analytical and political levels. They can further develop mechanisms for ongoing consultation and cooperation — something that has been absent for so long.

The flare-up over Biden’s remarks last week further underscores how far we have to go to realize the reset in relations agreed by the leaders of Russia and the United States.

Both Washington and Moscow must move with determination and persistence to capitalize on the new diplomatic openings produced at the summit, but none of these projects will be self-implementing. Negotiators have little time to complete a new strategic arms agreement to replace START before its expiration in early December, but indications suggest that they are advancing in their work. One can only hope that the urgency will prompt both sides to work actively even through August to deliver results. Similarly, the agreements include extended cooperation on Afghanistan and enhanced military exchanges, something that is highly valued in both capitals.

But arms reduction and control and this limited security agenda are not enough. If we learn anything from previous chapters in the history of U.S.-Russia relations, it is the requirement to give their conduct priority, structure and above all consistent attention. With nearly a month having passed since the summit, both capitals must keep up the pressure for elements of the new presidential commission to begin practical work. Only if both our countries move boldly to deal with the issues the commission is meant to address can we expect the reset to produce the results we so urgently desire.

As White House spokesman Robert Gibbs noted, “The president and vice president believe Russia will work with us not out of weakness but out of national interest.” If both countries can proceed on that basis, there is a high likelihood that we can move beyond relations based on words and symbols to a more stable relationship based on concrete cooperation and tangible results.

James F. Collins, U.S. ambassador to Russia from 1997 to 2001, is director of the Russia and Eurasia Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

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August 03, 2009
Japan opposition says it's ready to stand up to US
Jay Alabaster

Japan's main opposition party said Monday that if it comes to power in this month's elections it will confront the United States on key military and diplomatic issues, but still regard it as the Asian nation's most important ally.

The Democratic Party of Japan is widely tipped to win the Aug. 30 vote and topple the Liberal Democratic Party, which has ruled Japan for virtually all of the last 54 years.

Japan, the world's second-largest economy, largely sets its own course in financial matters but over the decades has followed Washington's lead in broad areas of military and foreign policy. It relies on the U.S. for nuclear deterrence and hosts tens of thousands of American troops, as well as fighter jets and warships.

Katsuya Okada, the secretary general of the Democratic Party of Japan, says it is time for Japan to become more independent and assertive.

Okada, who would likely have a key role in the new government if the opposition party takes power, criticized what he described as Japan's obedience to Washington. Tokyo has largely followed the lead of the U.S. over the last five decades despite sharp policy changes under the 11 different U.S. presidents who have served during that time.

"It's like Japan hasn't had its own diplomacy, or its own opinions," he said at a briefing Monday for a small group of foreign journalists.

He noted how Tokyo stayed aligned with the U.S. after President Barack Obama took power, despite the shift from the previous administration under George W. Bush.

"There were large changes in U.S. policy positions, but it was as if Japan was saying 'either way is fine,'" Okada said.

While repeatedly stressing that a more independent Japan would not undermine the alliance with the U.S. — which he described as Japan's "most important" ally — Okada said he had discussed with visiting U.S. Defense Undersecretary Michele Flournoy last month about changing some long-standing assumptions in the Japan-U.S. military agreement.

Okada on Monday described the American bases on the southern Japanese island of Okinawa as a holdover from the U.S. occupation of that island at the end of World War II. He said the bases should be reconsidered in the context of the countries' relationship over the next 30 to 50 years. He did not provide specifics on how the arrangement could change.

More than 50,000 U.S. troops are stationed throughout Japan, which pays billions of dollars each year to support them. Okinawa is the U.S. military's key Pacific outpost, but many locals want the troops off the island.

In another sign of what the Democrats' more independent posture could mean, last week, party chief Yukio Hatoyama said that a refueling mission in support of U.S.-led military operations in the Indian Ocean — which partially supports U.S. forces in Afghanistan — would not be extended if his party takes power.

The mission, which began in 2001, has in the past been briefly suspended due to political opposition, but legislation was approved last year to continue it through January 2010.

Okada, whose Democrats have promised to cut Japan's carbon emissions by 25 percent from 1990 levels by 2020, also said the party will expect concrete commitments from the U.S. ahead of climate meetings in Denmark at the end of the year to negotiate a successor to the Kyoto Protocol.

Without similar assurances from Washington, Japanese participation would be "difficult," he said.

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Aug 4, 2009
China writes new script for mass protests
By Kent Ewing

HONG KONG - The official script has played out countless times like a poorly written, predictable television drama: spurred by malicious rumor and gossip, a gullible Chinese populace rises up against their well-meaning local leaders. The besieged leaders are the victims of outside agitators - "schemers" is the preferred word - who have manipulated ignorant villagers into believing that their land has been stolen or their water poisoned and the municipal or provincial authorities are to blame.

Pity the honorable victims; smash the pernicious schemers.

Just about everyone has grown tired of this hackneyed, unconvincing plot, and last week even the state-run Xinhua news agency called for a rewrite.

"In recent years, when large-scale [protests] happen, more often than not local governments have not done their job properly and have dealt inappropriately with problems," Xinhua stated in an unusually frank commentary. "Blaming people for not having all the facts is no different from saying they are unable to distinguish right from wrong, and that is simply untrue," it added.

Later in the week, the Southern Metropolitan News reported that Beijing plans to launch a training course to "help grassroots cadre better handle emergencies and avoid lax and worsening management". Zhu Lijia, a professor from the party's administrative school, will host the one-week course.

The professor has left "schemers" and "foreign instigators" off the syllabus. The central government' efforts are an attempt to encourage a more humane, people-oriented management style in the provinces during challenging economic times and two months ahead of the 60th birthday of the People's Republic of China (PRC).

China's top leaders do not want this milestone event - to be marked with fanfare on October 1 - undermined by further reports of mass protests and brutal crackdowns.

In China, protests are officially referred to as "incidents." If more than 100 people are involved, a "mass incident" is declared. There were 80,000 such demonstrations in 2007, the last time state media published a figure for a national affliction the central government would like to see reined in.

It's safe to say that every day, somewhere in China, an aggrieved crowd gathers in anger over a land seizure or industrial accident. It is only the most sensational of these protests that become "news" - and then often only if the country's growing army of netizens spreads the word, forcing the hand of state media.

Optimists now feel that central authorities have been moved to whip corrupt local officials into line.

Then, again, although the Xinhua commentary was extraordinarily blunt, this is hardly the first time Beijing has sounded the call for a cleaner regime at the local level. Yet, by all indications, corruption is getting worse, not better.

This latest call for reform was published after a party chief was sacked for mishandling a large protest in Shishou city in central Hubei province. The commentary also referred specifically to a riot that occurred on July 24 in the industrial city of Tonghua in northeastern Jilin province. The violence was prompted by news that the state-run Tonghua Iron and Steel Group had been taken over by privately owned Jianlong Steel.

Fearing massive layoffs, thousands of workers stormed the office of Jianlong general manager Chen Guojun, beating him to death. About 100 people were injured in the tumult.

Seemingly brushing aside the death and injury in Tonghua, Xinhua asked: "Isn't the Tonghua case about not caring about the interests of the workers during a restructuring? People just want to have a stable life."

Xinhua did not choose to mention the far more lethal riots that broke out last month in Urumqi, capital of the remote autonomous region of Xinjiang. The clashes pitted Muslim Uyghurs, the majority in the region, against Han Chinese migrants, who now dominate the capital and have taken most of the plum jobs. They spanned several days, leaving at least 197 people dead and more than 1,600 injured.

Because these were the worst riots China has witnessed in decades - following the script, local (and central) authorities blamed exiled Uyghur activist Rebiya Kadeer and her World Uyghur Congress for inciting them - they seemed conspicuous by their absence from the Xinhua editorial.

No matter who was responsible for the Urumqi riots and why, surely they sounded an alarm that Beijing needs to rethink its policies toward ethnic minorities; otherwise, more violent clashes can be expected.

Ironically, last Wednesday, the day after the Xinhua commentary was published, another protest began in Hunan province - the tragic tale is still is unfolding.

Following another script that has become all too familiar, six villagers were detained in Zhentou township while staging a demonstration to demand free medical treatment and compensation for their land after a chemical plant poisoned their bodies and their farms with toxic waste.

The next day, 1,000 supporters surrounded the local police station, shouting for their release. Another protest is planned for Tuesday unless villagers are justly compensated. So far, at least two people have died from the poisoning, and hundreds, if not thousands, more have been affected.

The culprit is the Xianghe Chemical Factory, located in Liuyang city. For the last five years, the plant has released toxic waste into the water the villagers drink and the fields they farm. So much cadmium (a toxic metallic element used to make batteries) has been found in soil samples that experts say farms in proximity to the factory will be unsafe for planting for up to 60 years.

For now, villagers are living on food and water delivered to them from uncontaminated areas.

Local authorities, after denying for years that there was anything wrong, finally shut down the plant and, over the weekend, detained its boss. In a token gesture of accountability, both the chief and deputy chief of Liuyang's environmental protection agency have been suspended.

This is not the first instance of cadmium poisoning in Hunan. In 2006, it killed eight people in the city of Zuzhou and made 1,000 others ill. A year later, 100 employees at a plant in Jiangsu province were stricken with cadmium poisoning.

In 2004, Hong Kong's Gold Peak Industries agreed to pay compensation to more than 1,000 of its employees for illnesses that they maintained could be traced to exposure to cadmium at the company's factories in southern China.

The official foot-dragging and perfunctory response to the latest cadmium case in Hunan presents a perfect opportunity for central authorities to put Xinhua's recent tough talk into practice.

Kent Ewing is a Hong Kong-based teacher and writer. He can be reached at kewing@hkis.edu.hk.


Copyright 2009 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved.

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* OPINION
* AUGUST 3, 2009, 8:07 P.M. ET

Why Revive the Cold War?
Russia and the U.S. were reducing their nuclear arsenals without ‘arms control.’

* Article
* Comments

By DOUGLAS J. FEITH AND ABRAM N. SHULSKY

The Cold War ended nearly 20 years ago. Isn’t it time we abandoned policies specifically designed to deal with it? Arms-control talks are a case in point. Why should U.S. officials act as if only a Cold War-style treaty can save the United States and Russia from a destabilizing nuclear arms race?

Despite President Barack Obama’s strange, pre-Moscow summit remark last month in a New York Times interview that the U.S. and Russia are continuing to “grow” their nuclear stockpiles, both countries have in fact reduced their stockpiles drastically since the Soviet Union disintegrated in 1991. Those reductions resulted from unilateral decisions, not from arms-control bargaining.

Thus, on Nov. 13, 2001, President George W. Bush announced that the U.S. would unilaterally reduce its “operationally deployed strategic nuclear warheads to a level between 1,700 and 2,200 over the next decade.” This was far less than the 6,000 limit allowed under the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START). Russian President Vladimir Putin promptly said in December 2001 that Russia would similarly reduce its nuclear forces.

Thus, benefiting from the happy reality that the Cold War was over, each country felt free to cut its arsenal, whether or not the other committed itself to do so. The 2002 Moscow Treaty, which simply made legally binding the reduction pledges each president had already announced, was negotiated as a friendly gesture to Russia. U.S. officials did not see it as a strategic necessity, but Mr. Putin wanted formal acknowledgment that Russia retained nuclear-arms parity with the U.S., though it could no longer be seen as America’s peer overall.

Now, with START set to expire in December, it is Mr. Obama who’s intent on signing a new treaty. He says U.S.-Russian arms reductions will help stem nuclear proliferation.

Mr. Obama here is mixing up pretext and policy. When criticized for pursuing nuclear weapons, proliferators like North Korea and Iran make diplomatic talking points out of the size of the great powers’ arsenals. They try to shift the focus away from themselves by complaining that the Americans and Russians aren’t working hard enough to reach disarmament goals envisioned in the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. But depriving proliferators of such talking points won’t affect their incentives to acquire nuclear weapons—or the world’s incentives to counter the dangers that the North Korean and Iranian nuclear programs pose to international peace.

Nor would cutting the U.S. and Russian arsenals by a few hundred weapons do anything significant to achieve Mr. Obama’s goal of a world without nuclear weapons. The roadblock is the fact of U.S. dependence on nuclear deterrence. So long as the security of the U.S. and of our allies and friends requires such dependence, a non-nuclear world will remain out of reach. Inventing a way to dispense with nuclear deterrence will require a political or technological breakthrough of major magnitude. Retaining our dependence on nuclear weapons even at somewhat lower levels is an admission by the Obama administration that the proposed reductions don’t actually bring us closer to a non-nuclear world.

With Mr. Obama openly eager for a START follow-on treaty, Russian leaders have chosen to play coy and become demanding. So what might the U.S. have to pay for it? The price is likely to be high, as suggested by the “Joint Understanding” the U.S. and Russian presidents announced last month in Moscow.

Point 5 of the Understanding specifies that the new treaty is to contain “a provision on the interrelationship of strategic offensive and strategic defensive arms.” Russia will use this language (which Bush administration officials repeatedly rejected) to try to derail U.S. plans for a Europe-based missile system designed to counter Iranian missile threats. If Russia succeeds here, the new treaty would increase the value to Iran of acquiring nuclear weapons. By making it easier for a nuclear-armed Iran to threaten all of Europe and eventually the U.S., the new treaty would promote rather than discourage nuclear proliferation.

Similarly, according to Point 6, the new treaty is to contain a provision on how non-nuclear, long-range strike weapons may affect strategic stability. Russia wants this to impede U.S. development of such weapons, probably by requiring that they be counted as if they had nuclear warheads. Hence the new treaty could shut down one of the more promising avenues for reducing U.S. dependence on nuclear arms for strategic strike.

All in all, the Obama administration’s nuclear weapons policies appear confused and self-defeating. Mr. Obama seems willing to pay for arms reductions that Russian officials have made clear will occur soon, due to aging or the planned modernization of systems, with or without a new treaty. Moreover, the Obama administration is opposing modernization measures designed to protect against the risk that the aging of U.S. weapons will compromise their safety or reliability.

There is an important connection between proliferation risks and modernization. But the Obama administration seems to have it backwards. If the U.S. fails to ensure the continuing safety and reliability of its arsenal, it could cause the collapse of the U.S. nuclear umbrella. Countries such as Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Australia and others might decide that their security requires them to acquire their own nuclear arsenals, rather than rely indefinitely on the U.S. The world could reach a tipping point, with cascading nuclear proliferation, as the bipartisan Congressional Strategic Posture Commission warned in its May 2009 report.

The Obama administration’s nuclear weapons policies—including its treaty talks with Russia—affect the way America’s friends and potential adversaries view the integrity of the U.S. deterrent. The wrong policies can endanger the U.S. directly. They can also cause other states to lose confidence in the American nuclear umbrella and to seek security in national nuclear capabilities.

If that happens, the dangers of a nuclear war somewhere in the world would go up substantially. It would not be the first time a U.S. government helped bring about the opposite of its intended result—but it might be one of the costliest mistakes ever.

Mr. Feith, a former under secretary of defense for policy (2001-05), is the author of “War and Decision: Inside the Pentagon at the Dawn of the War on Terrorism” (HarperCollins, 2008). Mr. Shulsky is a former Defense Department official who dealt with arms control issues. Both are senior fellows at the Hudson Institute.

8/4/09|Russian troops on high readiness in South Ossetia/Reports of exchanges of fire
Housecarl

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Europe war risk no longer unthinkable post Georgia
Tue Aug 4, 2009 1:03pm EDT

By Peter Apps, Political Risk Correspondent -Analysis

LONDON (Reuters) - Markets might have moved on after their initial shocked reaction to last year's Georgia war, but the legacy of the brief conflict remains that war in Europe is much less unthinkable than it once was.

Russia's stockmarket lost roughly a quarter of its value in August 2008, while the cost of insuring sovereign debt in the credit default swaps market rose as far afield as Poland as investors reappraised regional risk.

The war had such market impact because it was so unexpected. Investors -- and many analysts -- had assumed that conflict risk in emerging Europe was close to zero.

The overnight outbreak of fighting in the disputed South Ossetia region shattered that, forcing an immediate reappraisal of the whole region.

It put in immediate focus on countries such as Ukraine -- with its Russian-speaking Crimea region and base for Moscow's Black Sea Fleet -- as well as other nearby "frozen conflicts" left over from the demise of the Soviet Union.

Such areas include the breakaway region of Transdniestria, a Russian speaking region demanding independence from Moldova, and Armenian-speaking Nagorno-Karabakh, a separatist area within Azerbaijan.

"The war came as a surprise to most people and focused attention on a lot of other potential conflicts," said Control Risks analyst Anna Walker. "It drew attention to countries with significant Russian populations, even Central Asian states such as Kazakhstan. It wasn't that people expected war, but it did make them more uneasy."

When a row erupted last year between Moscow and Ukraine over the Black Sea Fleet days into the war, markets reacted abruptly and Ukrainian CDS rose sharply as politics built on existing economic worries.

But a year later and in the aftermath of a global financial crisis that has hit countries in the region harder than most, markets have again moved on and are now focused on shattered economies rather than geopolitical tensions.

LOOKING ELSEWHERE FOR TROUBLE

When they worry about political risk, it is more likely to be over social unrest, labor disputes or policy risks linked to the wider crisis than conventional conflict.

When arguments broke out again around the Black Sea Fleet last month -- with diplomats expelled and Ukrainian police halting Russian military vehicles -- there were no discernible market movements at all.

"There was a strong initial reaction to the war," said Michael Ganske, head of emerging markets research at Commerzbank in London. "But markets are now looking at other things."

In part, that is because of the magnitude of the economic issues facing many of the countries in the region, which suffered more than most from the financial crisis.

Last month, investors in Ukraine had to contend with the announced restructuring of debts of state oil firm Naftogaz end questions over whether the International Monetary Fund (IMF) would continue funding the now-shattered economy.

Regional equity markets and most currencies remain significantly weaker than pre-Georgia levels, while CDS debt insurance premiums remain significantly higher.

Ukrainian credit default swaps are now quoted at around 1500 basis points, meaning it would cost $1.5 million a year to protect $10 million of five-year debt against restructuring or default -- compared to 400 basis points last year before the war, implying heightened default risk.

Analysts say the sharp market reaction to the conflict was in part fueled by factors well outside the war, from the beginnings of a global emerging markets sell-off sparked by a resurgent dollar to a string of perceived attacks on foreign investors in Russia.

SUMMER WAR RISK REMAINS

Some suggest there was also a knee-jerk overreaction.

"In the immediate aftermath, there were a lot of analysts saying things would escalate and Russia would take similar action in other regions such as Crimea but I think that was too quick an analysis," said Sabine Freizer, head of the Europe program at International Crisis Group. "Russia wants to keep some of these areas unstable but that is not the same thing as intervening militarily."

A new U.S. administration trying to "press the reset button" in relations with Moscow is seen reducing further conflict risk, and the swiftness of the Russian victory is seen putting other former Soviet states off squaring off against their giant neighbor.

That means investors are, for example, likely to be less nervous that any new pro-western government in Moldova might spark a confrontation over Transdniestria.

Most analysts see a Russia weakened by low oil prices, slumping growth and rising unemployment as also reducing the risk -- although some suggest it could also prompt Kremlin leadership to pick foreign fights to provide a distraction.

Certainly, few would now dare rule out any further war, most likely erupting over a summer period when better weather makes fighting ground wars more appealing.

"It is a risk that is always worth watching," said Joanna Gorska, deputy head of Eurasia desk at risk consultancy Exclusive Analysis. "But if we get through to September or October without anything, we are probably safe for another year."

© Thomson Reuters 2009. All rights reserved.

Hummm....
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No Place in BRIC for Russia's Economic Mess

by Anders Aslund, Peterson Institute for International Economics

Op-ed in the Moscow Times
July 29, 2009

© Moscow Times


First-half results are arriving, presenting many countries with shocking declines, but the record is quite varied. Whatever standard we choose, Russia is underperforming.

The country's natural comparison is with the BRIC countries—Brazil, Russia, India, and China. According to JP Morgan's current forecast, this year the gross domestic product of China is expected to grow by 8.4 percent, India by 6.2 percent, while that of Brazil is expected to shrink by 1.0 percent, and Russia by 8.5 percent. During the first half of 2009, China and India have been forging ahead, while Russia's GDP plunged by 10 percent.

Russia's economy remains dominated by oil and gas, and its overall government policies depend heavily on the global oil price. Three standard scenarios were formulated in the official Strategy 2020 program. The favored "innovation scenario" was supposed to generate an annual growth of 6.5 percent. It presupposed far-reaching reforms and investment in human capital, which is not a plausible option with an oil price above $60 per barrel.

The Kremlin's negative "inertia scenario" assumed no significant reforms and forecasted an average growth of 3.9 percent a year. Such an authoritarian petrostate is likely if the oil price is $75 per barrel. In between, the Kremlin put an "energy and raw materials scenario" with 5.3 percent growth, which could be called status quo with an oil price of $60 to $75 per barrel, but such a policy is not likely to generate a high growth rate.

The critical insight is that the higher the oil price is, the lower Russia's long-term economic growth is likely to be, because the ruling elite will thrive on energy rents rather than pursue reforms or invest in human capital. The greater the corruption is, the more repression the rulers need to defend their fraudulent revenues.

Russia's course is difficult to discern because overt economic policy changes every few months with the oil price. During the period from May to July 2008, the inauguration of President Dmitry Medvedev raised hopes that he would initiate economic and political reforms—particularly as it related to his anti-corruption initiatives—but we saw no significant changes.

Instead, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin intimidated Mechel in late July, threatening to send a "doctor" to clean out the company's problems, and the war in Georgia two weeks later augured a period of darkness and reaction. Russia's attempts to accede to the World Trade Organization (WTO) were suspended and a renationalization of leading companies became a priority.

But the devastation caused by the financial crisis and gradual devaluation allowed reformist ideas to surface again. Russia saw a renewed openness from February until May that could almost be labeled a thaw, but again no legislation was passed.

In early June, the oil price surpassed $70 per barrel, and the reactionaries got into action again. In Pikalyovo, Putin declared the not very market-oriented view that private businessmen have to produce for the sake of producing. Numerous governors threatened private enterprise owners with confiscation if they did not rehire workers and keep decrepit factories alive. Several weeks later, Putin suspended Russia's attempted accession to the WTO, and he even went on a personal tour to control sausage prices. Naturally, rumors are ripe of possible new confiscations of large corporations.

This is no way to run economic policy. In effect, Russia is pursuing the status quo or inertia scenario—but without the benefit of stability. With its quarterly swings in declared economic policy, the government destabilizes the business environment and fails to carry out any economic policy. Both the vagaries and passivity are dangerous to the country's economy as is evident from the drastic decline in GDP. Little surprise that not only China and India but also Brazil are much more successful.

Russia's only sensible policy has been its fiscal policy with a persistent budget surplus in the good times from 2000 until 2008, which allowed it to build huge international reserves that, while reduced, remain at roughly $400 billion today. This means that Russia can safeguard itself from some fluctuations of the global financial market.

But it is not doing so. On the contrary, it is causing unnecessary domestic financial problems. The ultimate folly was Russia's gradual devaluation during the period from November to January. Naturally, everybody speculated against the ruble, which meant that the Kremlin instigated a domestic liquidity freeze. It was probably the main reason for the excessively sharp drop in Russia's industrial output. Amazingly, this operation is officially hailed as a success, making evident that the danger of a repetition persists.

The state-dominated banking system remains a morass. The five dominant state banks are in poor shape. The government pours more and more money into them, but it helps little as the banks lose it in short order on politically motivated, nonperforming loans. The state banks pose a threat of nationalizing big Russian companies, while they provide little credit. In effect, the Kremlin maintains a detrimental liquidity squeeze.

Senior officials interfere arbitrarily in big enterprises, asking them to hire more workers, to reduce prices and to expand production under threat of confiscation, further undermining the country's weak property rights. This is the worst possible policy.

Gazprom appears to be the greatest management failure of them all. It is difficult to fathom how it has succeeded in scaring so many customers away in half a year that it has been forced to cut its output by 35 percent. In any other country, save Congo, such a harmful management would be ousted without delay. There is no reason to expect any significant improvement as long as the managers remain the same.

Russia's ultimate shortcoming is its pervasive top-level corruption. Remember that it has failed to extend its road network since 2000. A country that cannot build roads cannot develop much more.

Undoubtedly, Russia will recover somewhat because of higher oil prices, the global recovery and recovering exports, but nothing has been done about the country's profound structural problems, which have only been aggravated during a year of financial crisis. Worse, Russia's economic policy is in such flux that nothing is being done. Gradually, the question is moving from complaints about how Russia is being governed to criticism that it is not being properly managed. No forthcoming disaster is evident, but no country can be ruled so poorly for so long.

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Europe prepares for a Baltic blast

By Gideon Rachman

Published: August 3 2009 20:22 | Last updated: August 3 2009 20:22

A writer who projects emotions on to the weather is guilty of the “pathetic fallacy”. But, at the risk of sounding both pathetic and fallacious, it was entirely appropriate that the sky darkened and the thunder cracked as I approached the office of the Latvian prime minister in Riga last week. The gloomy atmosphere reflected the dark mood in a small, embattled country of 2.2m people. While business headlines in the rest of the world speak of clearing skies and rays of sunshine, the Baltic states are still in the midst of a howling economic gale.

Despite the region’s small size, the intensifying crisis in the Baltics cannot be treated as a freakish local squall of little concern to outsiders. Bank failures or plunging currencies in the three Baltic nations – Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia – could threaten the fragile prospect of recovery in the rest of Europe. These countries also sit on one of the world’s most sensitive political fault-lines. They are the European Union’s frontier states, bordering Russia.

The economic downturns in the region are shocking. Last week, Lithuania announced that its economy had shrunk by 22.4 per cent, at an annual rate, during the second quarter of 2009. Latvia and Estonia are likely to record similar falls when they announce their figures. Dalia Grybauskaite, the Lithuanian president, told me last week that her country might have to apply to the International Monetary Fund for a loan. Latvia has already trodden that path. Last week it agreed its second loan in eight months from the IMF and the EU.

The injection of cash is the good news. The bad news is that, in return for shoring up state finances, the new IMF deal will require the Latvian government to impose yet more pain on its suffering population. Public-sector wages have already been cut by about a third this year. Pensions have been sliced. Now the IMF requires Latvia to cut another 10 per cent from the state budget this autumn.

So far, the population has treated the downturn with remarkable equanimity. There is little sign of extremist political parties making headway. But the government has good reason to fear a winter of discontent. Unemployment benefits last just nine months in Latvia. Many Latvians lost their jobs at the beginning of this year – and will lose their income from the state this autumn. Officially, unemployment is 11 per cent, unofficially it is 16 per cent and rising fast. Heating bills also shoot up in the cold Latvian winter. Cutting police pay by 30 per cent in such circumstances seems slightly foolhardy.

It would be easier if the Latvian government could point to some prospect that things will eventually improve. But the country seems to be locked into a downward spiral. Property prices – which a few years ago made flats in Riga pricier than apartments in much richer western European cities – have collapsed. The banks will not lend. Jobs are going, wages are falling, the government is cutting.

With no hint of a domestic revival, the Balts have to pray for a revival in the world economy. But the Russians and the Germans are not buying. “Our export markets on both sides are closed,” says Ms Grybauskaite.

One way to ease the pressure might be to devalue local currencies and so boost exports. But the Baltic states are all grimly hanging on to their “pegs” – fixed exchange rates with the euro. In Latvia about two-thirds of private loans have been taken out in euros. The government fears that devaluation would bankrupt many citizens. But wage cuts could simply provide an alternative route to bankruptcy.

Latvia’s paymasters – the EU and the IMF – seem divided. The IMF has been open to the idea of scrapping the peg. Brussels is firmly against, fearing that it would trigger currency instability, bank failures and competitive devaluations across the EU.

The Latvian and Lithuanian governments are adamant that they will not devalue. That is what all governments in their position always say – right up until the moment when the dreaded decision is made. Their reluctance is not simply to do with economic risk. The Balts also worry that if they devalue, they might come to look like second-class members of the European club – a dangerous position for countries that were part of the Soviet Union less than a generation ago.

The rest of the EU is already beginning to feel a little further away. The collapse of the main Lithuanian airline earlier this year means that the number of European cities you can fly to from the capital, Vilnius, has halved this year.

I last visited Vilnius in the early 1990s, when the place still felt very Soviet. It is moving and impressive to see how prosperous and cared-for the city now looks – and how many visitors from western Europe are visiting the sights and drinking in the cafés. Riga, too, now looks more like western Europe than Russia.

But, for the first time for a long time, there is a sense that these gains are under threat. The EU authorities in Brussels are well aware of what is at stake and are overseeing Latvia’s recovery efforts with an almost imperial authority. Europe’s fear of the destabilising effects of devaluation is completely understandable. But, in an effort to preserve the impression of stability in the Baltics, the defenders of the peg risk creating the conditions for another almighty economic thunderclap later this year.

Write to gideon.rachman@ft.com
More columns at www.ft.com/gideonrachman
Read and post comments at Gideon Rachman’s blog

Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2009

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The Moscow Times » Issue 4202 » Opinion
A Russian Federation Without Federalism
04 August 2009
By Nikolai Petrov

Last week, a precedent was set in which a governor initiated the process of removing an elected mayor from office. It happened in the Perm region, well known for its active political and civil life. It was there that Governor Oleg Chirkunov called for the removal of Yury Vostrikov, the mayor of the city of Chaikovsky. (Chirkunov was never elected to his post, having been appointed in 2004 to replace his predecessor, Yury Trutnev, who left to become natural resources minister.) An amendment to the federal law on local government proposed by President Dmitry Medvedev and passed in May served as the legal basis for the move.

Chirkunov justified his decision based on the “inactivity” of Vostrikov and his administration in providing for the city’s vital needs. Specifically, local utilities companies did not pay their energy bills, leaving the city without hot water for three straight months.

A majority vote by the City Duma deputies supported the governor’s initiative and ousted the mayor. It should be noted that Vostrikov has served as mayor about as long as Chirkunov has been governor of the region. One interesting aspect of this story is that when Vostrikov was re-elected to his post last fall, he beat out the United Russia candidate. It is also worth noting that regional officials consider the Chaikovsky area to be second only to Perm for its growth potential.

According to journalists, the newly appointed governor of Murmansk, Dmitry Dmitriyenko, wants to follow Chirkunov’s example. Dmitriyenko has differences with Mikhail Antropov, the Communist mayor of one of the region’s key cities, Apatity. Antropov also beat out the United Russia candidate. Criminal charges are already being prepared against Antropov, who has also been accused of making inadequate preparations for the coming winter.

Two mayors had already been removed using the new law — in Suzdal (Vladimir region) and in Ozersk (Chelyabinsk region) — but in both those cases it was City Duma deputies, and not governors, who initiated the process. Interestingly, the Ozersk mayor contested the decision in court and was reinstated, but City Duma deputies are once again working to have him removed.

In direct violation of the article on federalism in the Constitution, the new amendments effectively place elected local governments within the federal power vertical. The new arrangement makes it easier to oust mayors for political motives or simply to carry out a personal vendetta. By invoking this law, the authorities are not so much creating a new trend as strengthening an existing one. According to the Public Chamber, every three days last year a mayor was fired somewhere in Russia or criminal charges were filed against one. Mayors are especially vulnerable during an economic crisis because the budgets of most municipalities are running deep deficits and are dependent on subsidies from the regional budget.

But the main problem is that under the pretext of responding to the crisis and creating a more effective system of government, we are witnessing the dismantling of whatever still remains of the separation of powers. In their place, elements of “emergency rule” and a highly centralized authority have emerged at all levels. This cannot help but have a negative effect on the quality of the decisions made by the country’s leaders at both the federal and regional levels.

Nikolai Petrov is a scholar in residence at the Carnegie Moscow Center.

Two Russian Subs Patrolling Eastern Seaboard (Akula Class)
Echo 5
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CSTO in Crisis as Moscow Secures Second Military Base in Kyrgyzstan
Publication: Eurasia Daily Monitor Volume: 6 Issue: 149
August 4, 2009 10:57 AM Age: 10 hrs
Category: Eurasia Daily Monitor, Home Page, Foreign Policy, Military/Security, Kyrgyzstan, Russia, Featured
By: Roger McDermott

On August 1 the Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and his recently re-elected Kyrgyz counterpart Kurmanbek Bakiyev announced that a new Russian military base will open later this year in Osh in southern Kyrgyzstan. Symbolically important from Moscow's perspective, since Osh once hosted a Soviet airbase, the message appeared to signal throughout Central Asia that Russia is the region's security guarantor. Bakiyev's re-election largely depended on the support of his Kremlin allies, and the recent basing announcement was portrayed in Moscow as a foreign policy success for Medvedev (ITAR-TASS, August 1). However, the agreement confirmed how vulnerable the weak Kyrgyz state has become to Russian diplomatic pressure, mainly as a consequence of the promise to supply $2 billion in loans to prop up its failing economy.

According to the memorandum of understanding (MoU) signed during the informal Collective Security Treaty (CSTO) Summit in Cholpon Ata the final agreement on the status and conditions of both Russian bases in Kyrgyzstan will be reached by November 1. The agreement will expire after 49 years, and can be extended at 25 year intervals thereafter. Unlike U.S. basing rights in relation to Manas, all Russian military personnel will have diplomatic immunity. Currently, Russian military cargo cannot be inspected by the Kyrgyz authorities; which allows the uninhibited transportation of highly sensitive prototype designs to the Russian naval testing facility in Issyk-Kul. In addition to the second base, placed under the aegis of the CSTO, there will also be a Russian-led training center open to military personnel from all CSTO member states. Initially it envisages the deployment of up to one Russian airborne (VDV) battalion, though Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov suggested this might be expanded as the negotiations proceed. The MoU states that these details will be resolved at a bilateral level (RIA Novosti, Interfax, NTV, Xinhua, August 1).

The Russian base in Osh is planned as an element of the new CSTO Collective Operational Reaction Force (CORF), which was first announced in February, and agreed at the Moscow summit on June 14. However, Belarusian President Alyaksandr Lukashenka and his Uzbek counterpart Islam Karimov refused to sign the agreement to establish the new force. Prior to the informal CSTO summit in Cholpon Ata, Russian media speculated that Lukashenka and Karimov might finally agree to become signatories and drop any opposition to a second Russian base in Kyrgyzstan (Kommersant, Nezavisimaya Gazeta, July 29). Nonetheless, neither leader did so -consequently the new basing agreement remains strongly opposed by Tashkent. Indeed, as it emerged that it might prove impossible to secure such objectives these issues were quietly removed from the informal summit's agenda.

Russian National Security Strategy until 2020, approved by Medvedev on May 12, prioritizes the CSTO as "a key mechanism to counter regional military challenges and threats" (www.scrf.gov.ru). In this context, Moscow has intensified its efforts to enhance its military footprint in Central Asia, despite reservations within the CSTO over militarizing the region. Since the Russia-Georgia war in August 2008, Russian pressure has also increased on Dushanbe to permit the opening of an additional base at Ayni (EDM, November 18, 2008). Justification for a second facility in Kyrgyzstan has proven weak, ranging from expressing anxiety over possible local Islamic militant activity to "protecting Kyrgyz sovereignty." Medvedev explained: "We met yesterday and discussed the current situation in the CSTO, reviewed its future prospects, explored what we can do, talked about common problems, common plans and common steps. The CORF exercises will be held soon and we are preparing for them together" (www.kremlin.ru, August 1).

CSTO members have been surprised by the manner in which this latest Russian initiative was conducted. Uzbekistan's objections to the proposed base are rooted in skepticism over its contribution to security and the lack of consensus within the CSTO (EDM, July 28). The new Russian base in Osh will be in close proximity to the Uzbek border, yet remarkably Uzbek diplomats confirmed to Jamestown that Moscow did not consult with Tashkent on the issue. In effect, Russian diplomats merely told their Uzbek counterparts that Russia intends to open a new base. Moreover, with the memory of the Russia-Georgia war still fresh within the region, there are also fears about the precise rules of engagement of these forces. In the event of a crisis in the Ferghana Valley requiring a military response, the risk that Russian forces might pursue militants across the Uzbek border is certainly not allayed by Moscow ignoring the need for Uzbek consent on forming the CORF or opening a base close to its border.

On August 3 the Uzbek foreign ministry confirmed its official opposition to the new Russian base. Tashkent questioned the need for such a facility, and suggested that the initiative might well destabilize the region:

"The implementation of such projects in this rather complex and difficult-to-predict territory, where the borders of three Central Asian republics directly meet, may render an impetus for strengthening the processes in terms of militarization and arousing various nationalistic confrontations, as well as the actions of radical extremist forces that could lead to a serious destabilization of the situation in the greater region" (Uzbek Foreign Ministry Statement, RIA Novosti, August 3).

The Russian vision for the development of the CSTO, its pursuit of an enhanced military footprint in the region combined with its aggressive diplomacy, which pays little respect to protocol or the interests of its allies within the organization, has effectively thrown the whole multilateral project into crisis. Moreover, the speed at which these Russian plans are being implemented in the region partly reflects the belief in Moscow that the first year of Obama's presidency will provide a window of opportunity to recalibrate the regional security dynamics more heavily in its favor. On July 29 a Russian military delegation arrived in Almaty for negotiations on staging the first CORF exercises scheduled for August 19 to October 24 at Kazakhstan's Matybulak training range. CSTO leaders are expected to observe the active phase of the exercise, though it currently lacks any legal basis (Kommersant, July 31; Vremya Novostei, August 3).

Medvedev's plans to use the CSTO to undermine the influence of the U.S. and NATO within Central Asia will now be tested during the next three months, since failure to achieve agreement amongst all member states might precipitate a far deeper crisis.

I missed this a couple of weeks ago, but when it is put into the perspective of what's going on with North Korea and Burma some dots start to get connected....
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China-Bangladesh Relations and Potential for Regional Tensions
Publication: China Brief Volume: 9 Issue: 15
July 23, 2009 02:58 PM Age: 12 days
Category: China Brief, Military/Security, Foreign Policy, China and the Asia-Pacific, Home Page, Featured
By: Vijay Sakhuja

The geographic area encompassing South Asia and its contiguous maritime spaces are of growing strategic importance to China, as reflected in China’s web of partnerships and coalitions with states in the region. The dynamics of these relationships appear on the surface to be based on interdependence, but are actually driven by long-term political, economic and strategic interests. Among the South Asian states, Bangladesh is an important player in Beijing's political-military calculus and provides China with added leverage to check Indian forces. This is evident from the regular political exchanges and enhanced military cooperation between the two countries. According to Munshi Faiz Ahmad, Bangladesh's ambassador to China, Bangladesh and China have enjoyed a "time-tested, all-weather friendship" (China Daily, March 26).

During their meeting on the sidelines of the U.N. Conference on the World Financial and Economic crisis in June 2009, Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi assured his Bangladeshi counterpart Dipu Moni that it was China’s policy to "strengthen and develop the relations of friendship and cooperation with Bangladesh." For her part, Moni said that "Bangladesh sees China as its close friend and cooperation partner" (Xinhua News Agency, June 26).

China and Bangladesh established diplomatic relations in 1975, although Beijing initially did not recognize Bangladesh as a separate state in 1971. Since then, the friendship between the two countries has grown to cover a wide spectrum of bilateral relations. At the onset of official relations, the Chinese leadership has consistently advised Bangladesh to pursue an independent foreign policy and encouraged it to move away from India’s sphere of influence. According to discussions (March 2009) that this author had with some retired Indian army officers, they believe that Chinese leaders may have even given Bangladesh security assurances that Beijing would stand by Dhaka and help it defend its national sovereignty and territorial integrity should it be threatened by India.

Bangladesh maintains a very close relationship with China for its economic and military needs (Daily Star [Dhaka], February 19, 2006). Over the years, the two sides have signed a plethora of bilateral agreements that range from economic engagements, soft loans, social contacts, cultural exchanges, academic interactions, infrastructure development and military sales at "friendship" prices. Top-level state visits, both by the ruling party and the opposition leaders to China have increased markedly [1]. Bangladesh sees China not only as its close friend, but also as a counter-weight when dealing with India. This is notwithstanding the fact that China and Bangladesh have not established a strategic partnership, and according to Bangladeshi analysts, have kept their relationship "unarticulated, flexible and ambiguous" thus allowing Dhaka "to reap the benefits of a strategic partnership with a nuclear power without involving itself in any formal defense arrangement" (Daily Star [Dhaka], February 19, 2006).

Arming the Military

China has emerged as a major supplier of arms to the Bangladeshi armed forces. In 2006, China supplied 65 artillery guns and 114 missiles and related systems (The Assam Tribune, October 9, 2007). Most of the tanks (T-59, T-62, T-69, and T-79), a large number of armoured personnel carriers (APCs), artillery pieces and small arms and personal weapons in the Bangladesh Army are of Chinese origin [2]. There are plans to acquire 155mm PLZ-45/Type-88 (including transfer of technology) and 122mm Type-96 as well MBRLs from China by 2011 (defence.pk/forum, March 19, 2009.

Admiral Zhang Lianzhong, the erstwhile Commander of the PLA Navy, had reportedly assured his Bangladeshi counterpart of cooperation in the sophisticated management of the navy [3]. The Bangladeshi Navy is largely made up of Chinese-origin platforms. These include the 053-H1 Jianghu I class frigates with 4 x HY2 missiles, Huang Feng class missile boats, Type-024 missile boats, Huchuan and P 4 class torpedo boats, Hainan class sub chasers, Shanghai class gun boats and Yuchin class LCUs [4]. The BNS Khalid Bin Walid has been retrofitted with HQ-7 SAM from China. (FM-90 Surface-to-Air Missile System, bdmilitary.com). In 2008, BNS Osman successfully test fired a C-802 ASM in the presence of the Chinese Defense Attaché Senior Colonel Ju Dewu (The Daily Star, May 13, 2008).

China began supplying fighter aircraft to the Bangladesh Air Force in 1977 and, over the years, has delivered F7 and Q5 fighter aircraft and PT 6 Trainers [5]. In 2005, 16 F-7BG were ordered and the deliveries began in 2006 (Bangladesh Biman Bahini, scramble.nl, July 5, 2009).

Although Dhaka has argued that its relations with Beijing are based on mutual understanding and political and economic interests, New Delhi is anxious about Bangladesh’s growing military contacts on several fronts. First, concern arises from India's vulnerability in the Siliguri corridor, often referred to as the ‘chicken neck’. This 200 kilometers (km) long and 40 km wide corridor links mainland India by rail, road and air with its Northeast region, a part of which (90,000 sq km in Arunachal Pradesh) is claimed by China and is a significant source of tension for bilateral relations. At present, there is significant PLA deployment along the borders. To its north is Bhutan, and in the south is Bangladesh. The Siliguri corridor figures prominently in the Sino-Bangladesh friendship and the two sides, according to Indian military experts, have a sophisticated strategy to sever India from the Northeast region. It is also noted that ‘China wants to get Tawang [an administrative district in the state of Arunachal Pradesh] to come closer to the Siliguri corridor’ so that it can link up with Bangladesh from the north (Why Assam Bleeds, sify.com, November 10, 2008).

The corridor also contains elements that can destabilize the region. Illegal migrants from Bangladesh and Indian insurgent groups such as the United Liberation Front of Asom (ULFA), who have safe heavens in Bangladesh, crisscross through porous borders that can act as catalysts for social disorder, unrest and insurgency. According to one analyst, the ULFA leadership has shifted its base to China, and the investigations relating to the March 2004 offloading of a weapons consignment from China at Chittagong seaport revealed the complicity of government agencies (India, Bangladesh: Joint Task Force for Countering Militancy, sspconline.org, May 27, 2009) In that context, then-Bangladeshi Foreign Minister Morshed Khan's warning in 2005 that if India surrounds Bangladesh, Bangladesh also surrounds India, has many implications.

Snooping and Spying

Firstly, there are fears among the Indian military establishment that Dhaka may grant military basing rights to China, thus complicating India’s security in the Northeast. This could result in the monitoring of Indian military movements, particularly of the Indian Army that is deployed in the region. There are several strategic Indian Air Force bases such as Bagdogra (with MiG-21 fighter jet deployed), Hashimara (with MiG-27 fighter jet deployed), and Tezpur (with Su-30 fighter jet deployed). These bases and military aircraft could easily come under a Bangladesh-China electronic and radar surveillance network during a crisis or impending hostilities.

Second, there are concerns that Bangladesh may offer Chittagong port for development to China, ostensibly for commercial purposes, but which could also be used for staging Chinese naval assets. This is to be expected and can be reasonably tied to the Chinese development of Gwadar port in Pakistan and Hambantota port in Sri Lanka. Third, China will be able to monitor Indian missile testing conducted at Chandipur-at-sea near Balasore, Orissa, and also naval activity in the Andaman and Nicobar Islands in the Bay of Bengal.

China’s Bay of Bengal Energy Triangle

At another level, China has cultivated its relations with Bangladesh and has emerged as a mediator in the latter’s international disputes. In November 2008, Bangladesh and Myanmar (Burma) deployed their navies in a standoff in the Bay of Bengal over Myanmar’s decision to issue licenses to oil companies to undertake survey activity in disputed waters. Among the several oil companies engaged in offshore exploration in Myanmar’s waters, China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) was awarded a block that falls into those belonging to Bangladesh. Dhaka requested Beijing, their common friend, to mediate, and after his meeting with Zheng Qingdian, the Chinese ambassador in Dhaka, Bangladesh’s foreign minister, Iftekhar Ahmed Chowdhury, noted “I have explained our peaceful intentions to our Chinese friends and hope that Myanmar stops activities on the disputed waters” (Reuters, November 5, 2008). The standoff ended after Bangladesh and Myanmar agreed to resolve the issue through negotiations.

Both Bangladesh, which has a reserve of 15.51 trillion cubic feet (tcf) and Myanmar, which has a reserve of 81.03 tcf, have the potential to satisfy the increasing energy requirements of Asia—particularly, China and India [6]. Chinese oil and gas companies are aggressively engaged in the Bay of Bengal in exploration and production activities to push the gas through pipelines linking offshore platforms in Myanmar to Kunming in China and also to feed the new refinery in Chongqing municipality. According to the China Securities Journal, work on two new pipelines will commence in September 2009 (Reuters, June 17). The 2,806 km long natural gas pipeline with a capacity of 12 billion cubic meters annually to Kunming will be ready by 2012. The second 1,100 km pipeline for oil with a capacity of 400,000 barrels per day (bpd) would run between Kyaukphyu in Myanmar to Kunming and would be extended to Guizhou and Chongqing municipality.

Likewise, China is also interested in a Malaysian pipeline and refinery project estimated to cost about $14.3 billion. This 320 km west-east pipeline has the capacity to transfer 800,000 (bpd) and the refinery’s capacity to process 200,000 bpd would help China overcome the oft-mentioned Malacca Dilemma.

Besides the oil and gas pipelines, China and Bangladesh, along with Myanmar, have decided to build the 900 km Kunming Highway linking Chittagong with Kunming through Myanmar to facilitate greater trade [7]. This would not only overcome the long sea passage from the east coast of China through Singapore (for trans-shipment) to Bangladesh, but would also lower transport costs and add to the economy of Yunnan province. This also fits well in their joint initiative of improving Chittagong port infrastructure that can now be put to dual use for merchant vessels and also for the navies of the two countries.

Challenging India

The Chinese approach of systematically nurturing and promoting diplomatic linkages with Bangladesh provides it with a number of strategic advantages against India. Likewise, there are also several related strategic fallouts for Bangladesh. As far as China is concerned, it will be in a position to link its electronic listening systems at Coco Island in Myanmar and the staging/listening systems in Bangladesh and monitor Indian naval and missile activity. Given the wide disparities in the India-Bangladesh naval order of battle, Bangladesh would be under pressure to open its facilities to the PLA Navy as a countervailing force against the Indian Navy. The prospect of Chinese ships and submarines operating in the North Andaman Sea would have serious repercussions for India's projection capabilities. This is sure to result in some aggressive counter-maneuvering by the Indian Navy, and the Indian naval response would be to execute a blockade and entanglement of Chinese naval assets in Chittagong.

China’s quest to establish a regional power profile is based on sustained and dedicated engagements with India’s neighbors for access and basing. It has adeptly reinforced its alliances with these countries through political-military support and challenging India in its backyard. China-Bangladesh military cooperation has the potential to exacerbate regional tensions along the Himalayas and result in high-intensity competition. The Chinese are quite clear that they have a peer competitor and a rival who they must contend with to enhance their influence in South Asia.

Notes

1. Sreeradha Datta, “Bangladesh’s Relations with China and India: A Comparative Study”, Strategic Analysis, Volume 32, No.5, September 2008, p.761.
2. The Military Balance 2007, International Institute of Strategic Studies, London.
3. R. Chakrabarti, “China and Bangladesh”, China Report, Volume 30, No. 2, 1994, p.155.
4. Jane’s Fighting Ships 2008-09, pp.46-55.
5. All the World’s Aircraft 2008-09, pp.94-95.
6. Sudhir T. Devare, (ed), A New Energy Frontier: The Bay of Bengal, (Singapore: ISEAS,2008).
7. Sharif M. Hossain and Ishtiaque Selim, “Sino – Bangladesh Economic Relations: Prospects and Challenges”, BIISS Journal, Volume 27, No 4, October 2006, pp.354-355.

Posted for fair use....
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/0,1518,640252,00.html


08/03/2009 12:00 AM
THE KREMLIN'S POWDERKEG
Moscow's Troubles in the Caucasus

By Uwe Klussmann and Matthias Schepp

The ongoing ethnic and political tensions between the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea are becoming a threat to the leadership in Moscow. Although the Kremlin garnered respect as a result of its war with Georgia one year ago, the situation remains explosive in other parts of the Caucasus.

The old man has tea served to his guests. A hot wind blows off the Caspian Sea into his apartment above Makhachkala, the capital of the Republic of Dagestan. To the south lie the slopes of the Caucasus, the mountain range between the Caspian Sea and the Black Sea, a region hotly contested by major powers for centuries. Ali Aliyev, not wanting his guests to feel uncomfortable, closes the window and turns on the air conditioner.

The 77-year-old is better known by his artist's and war name Adallo. In one of the wistful poems for which he is known, he writes: "Alone in the festival of life, I smile at everything that touches my heart." The poet has a long beard, as white as the shirt he is wearing, and the seam of his gray trousers rests on his bare feet.

"I can only laugh when I hear that some call me the bin Laden of the Caucasus," he says, as he digs for an international list of wanted terrorists, which includes both his name and that of the founder of the al-Qaida terrorist network, who is currently in hiding. "I can't even read Arabic." In Moscow, he is considered the chief ideologue of radical Islam within Russian terroritory -- a dangerous troublemaker.

In the 1990s, Adallo joined Chechen leader Shamil Basayev's underground movement in the nearby mountains. Basayev was so ruthless he would even take hostages in hospitals, just as his collaborators would later take children hostage at a school in Beslan. Adallo has been under house arrest since he returned to Dagestan from exile in Turkey. His views are apparently unchanged: He still believes that an act of terror like the one that was committed in Beslan in 2004 -- in which, in addition to the 31 terrorists, 334 schoolchildren, parents, teachers and soldiers died -- is justified. "The Russians have killed far more innocent people in their war against Chechnya," he says.

The Dream of an Islamic Caucasus

Adallo is considered the intellectual father of the men who dream of an Islamic Caucasus, of a caliphate under the rule of Sharia law that would stretch across the region's current borders. Underground fighters in the region are now killing representatives of the government on a daily basis, while Moscow fights back just as brutally.

These are the incidents that occurred last week alone: On Sunday, a suicide bomber killed himself and six others in front of a concert hall in the Chechen capital Grozny; the next day, police shot eight suspected terrorists in a forest near Makhachkala; on Tuesday, four rebels died in a battle in the southern Chechen mountains, and that evening a bomb exploded near the house of the mayor of Magas, the capital of the Republic of Ingushetia.

In the first five months of this year, the Caucasus has already seen more than 300 attacks, in which 75 police officers and 48 civilians died. The authorities, for their part, have "liquidated 112 bandits," as Russian President Dmitry Medvedev announced.

The region is "one of the Kremlin's biggest problems," Alexei Malashenko, a security expert with the Moscow Carnegie Center warned lasted Wednesday. On the same day Gennady Saizev, the former head of the Alpha Group counterterrorism unit, said that violence is "increasingly threatening the entire nation."

From Adallo's perspective, when someone armed with a submachine gun forces his way into your apartment, you should be allowed to defend yourself with an ax. The apartment, in his metaphor, is the Caucasus, and Russia the intruder. He mentions former French President Charles de Gaulle, who he says was his favorite Western politician, because he gave Algeria its independence, but only after his country had waged a brutal colonial war. "Here in the Caucasus, the train has also left the station for the Russians."

A Tinderbox in the EU's Backyard

It has been a year since Moscow waged a war in the region -- against Georgia. The conflict focused the world's attention on the volatile Caucasus region once again. It was a war over South Ossetia, a small separatist republic that declared its independence in 1991 and over which Tbilisi was attempting to regain control. Russia crushed the Georgian army in the five-day war. But what does the victory mean for the rest of the region?



Caption: Sau
For Russia, it has meant dealing with pressure coming from two sides. In Russia's Caucasus republics of Dagestan, Ingushetia and Chechnya, Moscow is now under more pressure than ever to prove itself as a peacekeeping power that can guarantee security, create prosperity and rein in Islamists. But it must also increase its attractiveness for the countries south of the Caucasus range, so that Armenia, currently its most loyal ally in the region, and oil-rich Azerbaijan, which has managed to walk a fine line between Moscow and Washington, do not follow in Georgia's footsteps and fall under American influence.

Nowhere in the world are so many conflicts raging in such a small region than in the Caucasus, where roughly 40 ethnic groups speaking 50 different languages come together in an area about the size of Sweden. The region is home to only 26 million people, and yet they are separated by a total of 3,500 kilometers (2,180 miles) of borders, some of them contested.

Six wars have raged in the Caucasus since the collapse of the Soviet Union, making it the most dangerous region in proximity to the European Union.

It is precisely through the Caucasus that gas coming from Central Asia and Azerbaijan is expected to flow to Europe one day, bypassing Russia. The pipeline is less than 100 kilometers from the border of South Ossetia, the bone of contention in the most recent war, in a region where Moscow's tanks are now stationed.

All of these factors contribute to a general sense of nervousness among the major powers when it comes to the Caucasus. Russian President Medvedev had hardly finished meeting with US President Barack Obama in Moscow in early July before he demonstratively hurried off to South Ossetia. A short time later, US Vice President Joe Biden met with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili in Tbilisi to assure him of Washington's support. At the same time, the United States sent the USS Stout, a destroyer, to the Georgian coast, while Russia amassed 8,500 troops for a military exercise dubbed "Caucasus 2009."

"No One Can Sleep Soundly Here Anymore"

This raises the question of who will control the Caucasus in the future. The West? The Russians? Islam?

With its speedy victory over Georgia last year, Moscow garnered respect in the region, where strength is seen as the highest virtue, and where in fact it has almost cult-like status. Russia has gained two protectorates, the breakaway Georgian provinces of South Ossetia and Abkhazia, and yet its actions elsewhere in the region have created a credibility problem. Even though the Kremlin has recognized South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states, it continues to suppress similar separatist movements at home. In the case of Chechnya, Moscow's ventures have come at the cost of two wars and more than 100,000 presumed dead.

"Just take a look around in Dagestan and in the Caucasus," says Adallo, the poet, in Makhachkala. "No one can sleep soundly here anymore, neither the people nor those in the government."

Eight weeks ago, a sniper shot Dagestan's interior minister in the heart while he was attending a wedding. He was reputed to have participated directly in the torture of underground fighters, and after he was killed Moscow praised him as a "Russian hero." The mayor of Makhachkala, also a man with a dubious reputation, has survived 15 attempts on his life, and he now runs the lively coastal city from a wheelchair.

A new concrete road runs from Makhachkala into the mountains southwest of the city, enabling Russian tanks and Dagestani police patrols to move more quickly as they hunt down insurgents. There are an estimated 1,000 rebels in this region alone, men who have been unable to find jobs in the Caucasus and, while looking for work in neighboring Russia, are consistently referred to as "black asses," or second-class citizens. Such discrimination only fuels the spirit of resistance among the combative people of the mountains.

Russia's Poorhouse

Troops from the Russian Interior Ministry and the FSB, Russia's domestic intelligence agency, have surrounded the village of Gubden, and checkpoints dot nearby roads. Indignant local residents produce photos of the bodies of two men that show the signs of horrific torture. Meanwhile, the evening news on the government-run television station reports that the two were underground fighters killed in a gun battle with police.

The killings may have been an act of revenge for an incident that happened a few days earlier, when police were ambushed and shot to death. It is difficult to differentiate between victims and perpetrators in the Caucasus. Some underground fighters behave like common criminals when they demand protection money from local residents. The police and intelligence agents, on the other hand, have not shied away from killing innocent people so that they can report successes to Moscow in the hunt for terrorists.

A Heavy Burden on the Kremlin's Budget

On the surface Achulgo, a mountain stronghold perched at 2,100 meters (6,890 feet) above sea level, seems peaceful enough. An elderly woman is selling postcards depicting a likeness of Imam Shamil, who is still revered as a hero by the mountain peoples today. Shamil resisted the Russian army in the 19th century, when Moscow subjugated the Caucasus. In 1855, the war of conquest consumed one-sixth of the budget of czarist Russia, costing Moscow more than it cost the British to subjugate India.

The region still places a heavy burden on the Kremlin's budget today. Moscow has established a garrison for 3,000 soldiers in the town of Botlikh, in a valley near the border with Chechnya and Georgia. In the town square, the face of Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin is displayed on a poster that promises gas and electricity to local residents. Both services have in fact been provided, and yet the town's 11,000 residents are still unhappy. The garrison takes up pastureland they need for their cows and, worse yet, the Russians threaten traditional customs. One of the town elders complains bitterly about the wives of Russian officers, who do their shopping in the local market "wearing short skirts or men's clothing." By men's clothing he means trousers.

The affluence local residents had anticipated, on the other hand, has yet to materialize. During the Soviet era, Botlikh was known for its apricots. Today, however, the town's small juice factory is shuttered, its business ruined by the high cost of shipping products to Russian cities. The Kremlin spends billions in aid on the Caucasus, and Moscow covers 80 percent of Dagestan's national budget. The Caucasus is Russia's poorhouse.

It is a 1,300-kilometer journey from Dagestan to Abkhazia, on the western flank of the mountain chain, along the M29 transit road. The cities along the way illustrate the waning influence of the central government in Moscow. Ramzan Kadyrov, the Chechen dictator installed by Putin, has built the largest mosque in the Caucasus in the capital Grozny. His word is law, and he rules the republic as if Chechnya were an independent country. It was in Chechnya that activist Natalya Estemirova sought to expose the human rights violations of the Kadyrov regime -- until she was murdered last month.

The "Côte d'Azur of the Soviet Union"

Ingushetian President Yunus-Bek Yevkurov was severely injured in a bomb attack in June near the capital Magas. The Russian security forces there have barricaded themselves behind a 10-meter fence meant to protect against rebel grenade attacks. Farther along the road, near Vladikavkaz, the capital of North Ossetia, is Beslan, the site of the 2004 hostage crisis. The only city in the region with an air of hope about it is the Black Sea resort Sochi, the future site of the 2014 Winter Olympics.

It is a three-hour drive from Sochi to Sukhumi, the capital of Abkhazia, which Moscow now treats as an independent country, but only to irritate Tbilisi. In the government building, a white Stalin-era structure surrounded by palm trees and renovated hotels, a stocky man with a high forehead says that he feels wedged "between the little empire of Georgia and the big empire of Russia." Stanislav Lakoba is the coordinator of security services in the Abkhazian government. A historian, he is viewed with suspicion in Moscow for having written several books in which he refutes the Russian version of history, according to which Abkhazia joined the czardom "voluntarily" in 1810.

Lakoba has long been considered a mastermind of the Abkhazian independence movement. Unlike the bitterly poor South Ossetians, who want to be united with North Ossetia on the Russian side of the border, the idea of real independence appeals to many of Abkhazia's 200,000 residents. A critical press there finds fault with Moscow's dominant role in the 220-kilometer coastal strip, which, as the "Côte d'Azur of the Soviet Union," once attracted 2 million tourists a year.

Since Lakoba's boss, Abkhazian President Sergei Bagapsh, announced his support for a plan to allow foreigners to buy local real estate, the threat of a fire sale to Russians has been the main topic of conversation in the city's cafés. "We could soon end up like the Indians, who sold Manhattan for cheap necklaces," warns the editor-in-chief of a local daily newspaper.

In his book "The History of Abkhazia," Lakoba describes how his homeland was afflicted by forced displacement, punitive expeditions and bloody ethnic cleansing, sometimes initiated by Moscow and sometimes by Tbilisi. One of the victims was Lakoba's great-uncle Nestor. He was the leader of the Abkhaz Autonomous Republic when Georgian Communist leader Lavrentiy Beria poisoned him in Tbilisi in 1936, simultaneously poisoning the relationship between Abkhazians and Georgians.

Lakoba sums up the policies of the Bolsheviks' predecessors when he writes: "Czarism needed Abkhazia without Abkhazians." But which Abkhazia needs Putinism today? Russia's strongman, who wants to prevent NATO barracks on Georgian soil from encroaching on his summer home in Sochi, treats Abkhazia and South Ossetia as his pawn against foreign influence. Lakoba, on the other hand, envisions Abkhazia as a "small, neutral and cosmopolitan state."

Vestiges of a Civil War

The road to the impoverished provincial city of Gali, 70 kilometers south of Sukhumi, is lined with burned-out houses, vestiges of the 1990s civil war. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, Georgian national guard and paramilitary units attacked Abkhazia, which was seeking independence and was supported in its effort by Moscow. The conflict claimed the lives of 8,000 soldiers and civilians on both sides and forced 240,000 people to flee Abkhazia.

Because of that civil war, not even the smallest political faction can imagine reintegration into Georgia today. The "territorial integrity of Georgia" demanded by Americans and Europeans is currently nothing but an empty phrase.

A road dotted with deep potholes, with more oxen on it than people, leads from Gali to the border between Abkhazia and Georgia. At the border checkpoint, uniformed Abkhazians serve in rusty metal huts, reinforced by Russian FSB border guards living in gray tents surrounded by a barbed-wire fence.

German prisoners of war built the bridge spanning the Inguri River into Georgia proper after World War II. The murky water flows between the warring Caucasus republics. Georgian villages on the opposite bank shimmer, mirage-like, in the sweltering early afternoon heat.

A hunched-over, 80-year-old woman wearing oversized rubber boots is trudging toward the bridge. She lives in a village on the Abkhazian side and is returning from a hospital stay in the nearby Georgian city of Zugdidi. The woman is too poor to pay the fare of one Lari, or about 42 cents, to cross the bridge on a horse-drawn cart. But then help arrives, as a convoy of four white, armor-clad jeeps flying the blue flag of the European Union slowly approaches the bridge. An officer from Lithuania gets out of one of the jeeps, speaks to the woman and gives her the Lari.

Since a Russian veto in the United Nations Security Council barred UN troops from patrolling in Abkhazia, and since the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), yielding to pressure from the Russians, abandoned its missions in Georgia proper, Abkhazia and Ossetia, the EU has been providing the only international observers in the crisis-stricken region. The EU contingent patrolling the 170-kilometer Georgian border with Abkhazia consists of 69 men from 13 nations, including 22 Germans.

Carsten Frommann, a blonde senior police detective from the eastern German city of Dessau who has already served in Sudan, gives the order for the convoy to continue along its route. "In case of frontal attack, all vehicles are to drive in reverse, in case of an attack at the center, the vehicles at the front should move forward and the ones at the back should move backward," he recommends, before the group reaches the "dirty triangle," a few square kilometers along the border zone where smugglers have been causing trouble lately.

Since June, the EU observers have referred to the area as the "bloody triangle." In one incident, a mine exploded, killing the driver of the mission's ambulance. But everything is going smoothly today, with the exception of a small incident in Paluri, a village of 1,000 inhabitants, where an angry crowd forces the convoy to come to a standstill. The villagers have been without electricity for one-and-a-half months. "There are those here who would like us to be in charge," says Wolfram Hoffmann, a retired colonel in the German military, the Bundeswehr.

What Has Russia Gained from the War?

Just past the Georgian border crossing, along the Inguri River, there is a large billboard depicting a likeness of Georgian President Saakashvili, wearing a pinstriped suit and a red tie, and the slogan: "We are Uniting Georgia." Saakashvili, who came to power in Georgia's Rose Revolution in 2003, has reinvigorated the Georgian economy through privatization and with the help of foreign aid money.

He has built roads, curbed police corruption and ensured a relatively reliable supply of power, water and gas. But none of this counts at the moment. Since his attempt to reintegrate South Ossetia by force failed, his opponents have taken to calling him "Mikheil the Destroyer." Nevertheless, his decline in popularity has not brought him down yet -- despite Moscow's fervent hopes that it would -- because the West continues to support him and the opposition is deeply divided.

What has Russia gained from the 2008 war in Georgia? It has secured control over two small pieces of territory in the southern Caucasus, with a combined land area slightly larger than Jamaica and recognized only by Nicaragua. Much of the remaining southern Caucasus, with its natural resources and energy corridors, is choosing its own path, while lawlessness in the northern Caucasus becomes more and more pervasive by the day. "The Kremlin hasn't the slightest idea what to do next in this region," says Moscow political scientist Malashenko.

It is only on the Armenian border with Turkey, in the village of Lusarat at the foot of snow-covered Mt. Ararat, that the farmers appreciate the Russians, referring to them as "brothers who protect us." Moscow's troops are protecting the Armenian border, and Russia is training Armenian officers and supplying the country with almost all of the natural gas it needs. It owns the pipelines in Armenia, most of the country's power plants, the largest mobile network operator and even the government-run savings banks.

But 80 percent of Armenia's exports pass through Georgia. Because of the Russian-Georgian war, the government in Yerevan has recognized how economically isolated the mountainous country is, prompting it to cautiously approach reconciliation with archenemy Turkey. It has also moved forward with plans to reopen the border with Azerbaijan, closed since the 1993 war between the two countries. If that happens, a new bridge could be built across the river that forms the border at Lusarat, opening up a new point of entry for tourists and trade.

A village resident sits at a table in the shade of an apple tree. Whenever he receives a call on his mobile phone, he hears a curt voice, instead of the standard ring tone, that says: "Comrade, pick up the phone. Stalin wants to talk to you." The humble outpost of Lusarat is all that is left, on the border with a NATO country, to bear witness to the empire of the former Soviet dictator, a native Georgian. Every year, on a day set aside to honor the border troops, the villagers embrace the Russian soldiers and bring them apricots and apples.

If Moscow had its way, every village in the Caucasus would be like Lusarat. But not even at the Kremlin does anyone believe that the past can repeat itself.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan.

Posted for fair use....
http://www.rferl.org/content/Russia_May_Buy_French_Helicopter_Carrier/1792111.html

Russia May Buy French Helicopter Carrier
August 04, 2009

MOSCOW (Reuters) -- Russia wants to buy a French helicopter carrier and talks are already under way for what would be Moscow's first major foreign military purchase, Interfax news agency has reported.

Russia is trying to reequip its outdated Soviet-era military as part of a broader defense reform but has until now focused on buying hardware from its own arms industry, which remains one of the country's key export sectors.

Interfax, quoting unnamed sources in the Russian Navy headquarters on August 4, confirmed earlier reports in the French media about Moscow's interest in buying a multipurpose carrier.

"The possibility of buying a Mistral-class helicopter carrier was discussed at the naval show held in St. Petersburg in June," Interfax quoted a naval headquarters source as saying.

A decision on such a large foreign purchase might be two to three years away and no budget funds are currently available, the source was quoted as saying.

The "Kommersant" newspaper quoted unnamed sources as saying such a deal was extremely likely.

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Stratfor: Ten Years of Vladimir Putin
Housecarl

Russia confirms nuclear submarine patrols near US
Sully
___________________
http://www.moscowtimes.ru/article/1016/42/380114.htm

Wednesday, August 05, 2009
Updated at 05 August 2009 1:39 Moscow Time.
The Moscow Times » Issue 4202 » Opinion

Kremlin Burning Bridges With Every Neighbor
04 August 2009
By Vladimir Ryzhkov


Russia’s foreign policy failures are snowballing at such a rate that they threaten a second geopolitical collapse on a par with the disintegration of the Soviet Union 20 years ago.

What makes this tragedy so comic is that our leaders are essentially running backward into the future and calling it progress. At the same time, they shake their fists and foam at the mouth as they rant about Russia’s greatness, claim that it is “getting up from its knees” and endlessly repeat myths about its “new successes” and “historical initiatives.” By running backward, Russia inevitably stumbles and falls, while its clumsy foreign policy initiatives become the laughing stock of the world.

The Kremlin was not able to exploit its huge reserves that it accumulated after eight years of an oil boom by turning its economic power into political clout in the global arena. On the contrary, Russia’s global standing has worsened across the board.

Russia’s leaders have managed to alienate even its strongest allies. The alliance with Belarus is crumbling before our eyes as Kremlin leaders attempt to punish Minsk for years of foot-dragging over the sale of Belarus’ largest enterprises to Russia’s inefficient and nontransparent monopolies, for delaying plans to introduce a unified currency and establish other political and economic institutions intended to strengthen ties between the two states. Russia reacted with “milk and meat wars,” and Minsk responded in kind by refusing to attend a Collective Security Treaty Organization summit even while it was supposed to hold the rotating chairmanship of the organization — an embarrassing, if not humiliating, snub to President Dmitry Medvedev. What’s more, Belarus has joined the Eastern Partnership offered by the European Union and has actively diversified its foreign policy.

Armenia, which is hemmed in on all sides by closed borders with Azerbaijan and Turkey, suffered greatly during the days of the Russia-Georgia war last August. This quickly drove Yerevan to intensify its dialogue with Turkey over prospects for opening their common border that has been closed for decades, and, like Belarus, to join the EU’s Eastern Partnership.

Russia has also burned bridges with Turkmenistan. Throughout the recent economic boom years, Turkmenistan pumped gas to Russia to compensate for its growing deficiency, thereby helping to save the reputation of Gazprom — and thus Russia — as a reliable supplier of gas to Europe. But Moscow’s gas war with Kiev forced the EU to cut back sharply on purchases of Russian gas. This led to a drop in gas prices, and once that happened Moscow unceremoniously reneged on its contractual obligations to purchase gas from Turkmenistan. In early April, Russia shut the valve on the pipeline that imported Turkmen gas. This was the alleged cause of a major explosion in Turkmenistan — and a major explosion in Russian-Turkmen relations as well. The result is that Turkmenistan is now searching for more reliable commodity markets, has offered to join the Nabucco project as a gas supplier, is ready to discuss the Trans-Caspian pipeline project and has already given the Chinese access to its gas fields. A gas pipeline to China is also under construction.

Moscow was entirely alone in its decision to recognize the independence of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Besides Nicaragua, not a single country followed Russia’s example. Russia has even managed to sever ties with Georgia — a country with a Russian Orthodox population that has always enjoyed warm relations with Moscow — for the highly questionable goal of wanting to maintain two microscopic puppet-satellite states in one of the most explosive regions of the world. If the Kremlin’s goals were to achieve international isolation and disdain and to increase the threat of a military conflict in the Caucasus, it was very successful.

Russia’s unnecessarily antagonistic actions toward Ukraine have turned the otherwise “brotherly relationship” into a hostile one. In the 1990s, when Ukraine also had trouble paying for its imports of Russian gas, the shortfall was simply added to its external debt, which it later paid back. Today, Moscow’s actions have helped consolidate Ukrainian society around an anti-Russia platform, prompting Kiev to seek membership in the EU and NATO. It also pushed Ukraine toward formulating a new national idea that is based on a rejection of the historical fraternity between our two nations.

The EU also drew its conclusions about Russia’s unreliability after the latest battle in January of the endless succession of gas wars, which resulted in more than 20 European countries being left without heat in bitterly cold temperatures after Russia cut off gas shipments that had already been purchased. Consequently, the EU reduced its purchases of Russian gas, made headway on developing the Nabucco pipeline, including allocating increased funding for the project, and stepped up the development of projects to import gas from Africa and the Middle East. The EU also invited Ukraine to join an alliance for purchasing gas from countries other than Russia. Both South Stream and Nord Stream have experienced setbacks that may complicate the future development of these pipeline projects. In short, this is the lowest point in the 16 years of EU-Russian relations.

Meanwhile, Russia’s relationship with NATO is also becoming increasingly adversarial. Azerbaijan is distancing itself from Russia and aligning itself more with the West. Moscow gave financial aid to Kyrgyzstan to push Bishkek to close the U.S. military base at Manas. But in the end, the Americans were allowed to stay after they increased the rental payments and renamed the base as a “transit center.” Despite U.S. President Barack Obama’s visit to Moscow for the July summit, no “reset” in U.S.-Russian relations has taken place. In fact, they remain unchanged, as is evidenced by Vice President Joe Biden’s recent visits to Kiev and Tbilisi and by the sharp comments toward Russian that he made in his interview with The Wall Street Journal a week ago.

Prime Minister Vladimir Putin’s attempt to restore Russia’s influence over the former Soviet republics has failed miserably. Moscow’s standing in the region is weaker now than it was even eight years ago, when Putin took over the presidency from Boris Yeltsin. This is a direct result of Putin’s failed policies during his two terms as president — the inability to modernize the economy, the systemic destruction of the country’s democracy, the sharp rise in corruption and the increase in the monopoly control of key industries under his state capitalism model. If you add to all of this a countless string of inept foreign policy disasters, it is easy to understand why Russia’s neighbors have turned their backs on Moscow and are looking to Western military, economic and political institutions for support and cooperation.

Vladimir Ryzhkov, a State Duma deputy from 1993 to 2007, hosts a political talk show on Ekho Moskvy.

Well this isn't a good sign....reminds me how the A. Khan Pakistan proliferation mess started out...
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Posted for fair use....
http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iywgDuOVtVC3yBJzkE9FoEsQcA3w

China probes top nuclear chief for wrongdoing: report

(AFP) – 15 hours ago

BEIJING — A top official in charge of China's civilian and military nuclear programmes has been placed under investigation, state media said Wednesday, in what appeared to be another case of high-level graft.

Kang Rixin, party secretary and general manager of state-owned China National Nuclear Corporation, is being probed for possible involvement in "grave violations of discipline", the Xinhua news agency said.

The term "discipline violations" often means acts of corruption in the language of Chinese officialdom.

Kang, born in August 1953 in the northern province of Shanxi, was appointed to his current position in 2003, the Caijing magazine said Wednesday on its website.

He was elected a member of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection of the Communist Party, China's top anti-corruption body, in 2002, Caijing added.

The China National Nuclear Corporation is responsible for both civilian and military nuclear activities, such as nuclear weapons production, power generation and waste disposal.

It has a significant research and development capability and is also responsible for uranium mining in China.

Graft is a source of immense public anger in China, and the government frequently makes examples of ranking officials caught red-handed to signal that it is addressing the problem.

Last month, Chen Tonghai, 60, the former head of state-owned oil giant Sinopec, was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve for graft amounting to nearly 30 million dollars.

Copyright © 2009 AFP. All rights reserved.

8/5/09|U.S. Could Pull Back Europe-Based Nukes, State Dept./Speed up START talks
Housecarl

Posted for fair use....
http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/08/05/fear_of_a_weak_russia

Fear of a Weak Russia
If Moscow's failures continue, the world may soon become a much more dangerous place.
BY DONALD K. BANDLER , JAKUB KULHANEK | AUGUST 5, 2009

The reaction from the American defense establishment to news that Russian submarines have been operating off the U.S. coast has been fairly nonchalant, bordering on smug. The submarine operation is widely seen as a rather feeble show of strength by the Russian military after a series of embarrassments over botched missile tests and undistinguished conduct during last year's war with Georgia.

Russia's weakness -- military, political, and economic -- is fast becoming conventional wisdom in Washington. In a recent interview with the Wall Street Journal before his trip to Georgia and Ukraine, U.S. Vice President Joseph Biden even suggested that a weakened Russia might work to the advantage of the United States. His words, of course, were primarily meant to reassure the skittish leaders in Tblisi and Kiev, who fear that a thaw in U.S.-Russia relations might lead Washington to abandon them. Whether he was speaking for President Barack Obama or not, Biden also sent an unequivocal signal to the Kremlin that it should not take any "reset" for granted and that the White House will not be intimidated by Russian aggression.

But before the new administration gets too comfortable, it's worth examining whether a weakened Russia is really in anyone's interest. In fact, an unstable Russia might prove far more dangerous. For the sake of argument, we present the following not-so-unlikely scenario in which Russia undergoes a series of political and economic upheavals. Consider it less a prediction than a worst-case course of events for how Russian weakness could mean trouble.

***

It is 2011. The ongoing global financial crisis has proven far more damaging to the Russian economy than predicted, and the Russian ruling elite's once unshakeable optimism for a quick recovery is long gone. Russian companies are going bankrupt in droves, and there are massive layoffs. As a result, a rising number of protests are reported all over the country. Due to unpaid salaries and massive unemployment, ordinary people lose their inhibitions and openly challenge the government. Public outrage is mostly directed at President Dmitry Medvedev and liberal members of the government. In a desperate attempt to quell riots, troops are deployed to regions with the most unrest.

Things quickly get out of hand. In the city of Omsk, troops open fire on unarmed rioters, killing nine. The Omsk incident deals a decisive blow to Medvedev, who is forced out of office by powerful Kremlin clans that fear the imminent collapse of the Russian state. Appearing emotionally shaken, the president delivers a terse resignation speech in a televised address on Dec. 15, 2011.

Once again assuming the presidency, Vladimir Putin declares a national revitalization program involving a wide range of measures intended to prop up the ailing economy. Thanks to a massive spending spree, the state is able to generate new jobs and the welfare safety net is given a significant boost. Putin manages to temporarily placate the impoverished segments of the population. Yet, the state's coffers soon run dry, and it is widely assumed that the recent improvement in the Russian economy will be short-lived.

Meanwhile, civil wars rage in the North Caucasus republics of Dagestan and Ingushetia. A military buildup in the region does not resolve the situation, and attacks on government buildings and federal troops occur daily. In an attempt to rally people behind the regime and take their minds off the worsening economic malaise, a desperate Putin stokes aggressive nationalism, accusing unspecified foreign governments of instigating violence in the North Caucasus in order to dismember Russia. The Georgian government, still under the rule of President Mikheil Saakashvili, is accused of providing a staging ground for terrorists en route to the North Caucasus. Saakashvili vehemently rejects such accusations and blames massive social distress in Russia for the rising tide of violence.

In 2012, Putin faces reelection. Press freedoms are curtailed even further, and the right to protest is suspended temporarily. The Communist Party, until now the only significant opposition in the Russian parliament, is banned, and a number of opposition figures end up in prison. By now, the Kremlin and its spin doctors have managed to eradicate any semblance of free competition in the country, and the presidential elections are seen internationally as a farce. Putin faces two virtually unknown and uninspiring local politicians and is reelected by a landslide.

In early 2014, hostilities between Russia and Georgia reach a tipping point. A string of bombings at Russian military bases, including those in Abkhazia and South Ossetia, are attributed to the Georgian secret service by the Russian media. In a speech to the U.N. Security Council, the Russian foreign minister issues a 24-hour ultimatum for Saakashvili to leave the country and allow Russian peacekeepers to enter Georgia. The Georgian government refuses, prompting a full-scale Russian invasion of Georgia. Although Russian forces eventually prevail, the Western-trained and equipped Georgian army inflicts massive causalities on the invaders. Saakashvili flees to Turkey.

In response to the Russian invasion, Washington imposes partial economic sanctions on Moscow. Azerbaijan and Finland demand quick admission to NATO. At the same time, the United States and Poland deploy troops to the Baltic countries to face an increasingly belligerent Russia.

After an accident over Estonia in which a Russian fighter jet -- violating that country's airspace -- collides with a Polish F-16, NATO and Russia accept that it is time to negotiate -- or risk massive bloodshed. Knowing full well that its obsolete army is no match for NATO's conventional forces, Moscow is forced to sue for peace. With the promise of hefty economic aid from the European Union, the Kremlin decides to withdraw from Georgia.

The political fallout from the Georgian fiasco has tremendous political repercussions at home. The military and security forces, as well as Putin himself, are widely discredited. Russian business elites, including the oligarchs who not long ago stood firmly behind Putin, push for change.

In 2018, Putin decides not to run again. A rather dull technocrat, bankrolled by a group of powerful oligarchs, succeeds him. Nevertheless, the Russian economy is still reeling from its long roller-coaster ride. The central government has been shaken to its core and exercises little control over vast swaths of Russian territory, where personal fiefdoms have sprung up. The volatile situation in the violent Northern Caucasus, which remains a ticking time bomb, threatens the territorial integrity of the Russian state itself. There is no hope of an effective reset button, and the future for Russia remains anything but bright.

Russia's weakness has proved to be the world's crisis.

Donald K. Bandler had a 28-year career in the State Department, serving as special assistant to President Bill Clinton, senior director for Europe in the National Security Council, counselor for the 1999 NATO Summit, and U.S. ambassador to the Republic of Cyprus. Jakub Kulhanek is currently a graduate student with the Center for Eurasian, Russian, and Eastern European Studies at Georgetown University.

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http://www.forbes.com/2009/08/04/tr...remlin-opinions-contributors-obama-putin.html

Commentary
The Evil Empire Strikes Back
Dmitry Sidorov, 08.05.09, 9:00 AM ET

The Russian proverb "trust but verify" gave Ronald Reagan some of his most memorable moments. He produced it repeatedly in interactions with the Soviets, including the 1978 ceremony to sign the INF (Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces) treaty in Moscow. There, he said it first in English, and then in Russian, incurring the displeasure of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev.

In July 2009 President Obama signed a number of documents in Moscow, and according to sources in the Russian capital and Washington, he received the Kremlin's assurance that Russian troops will not invade Georgia again. But Mr. Obama, following the practice of his recent predecessors, shied away from publicly stressing the importance of verification, and emphasized instead the value of trust.

But this doesn't work with the Russians. No matter which leader occupies the throne in the Kremlin, Moscow has no plans to waive its proclaimed spheres of influence in most, if not all, the former republics of the USSR.

Last Saturday the Russian Ministry of Defense accused Georgia of shooting at Russian troops stationed in the breakaway Republic of South Ossetia, which Moscow occupied after its August 2008 war with Georgia. "In case of further provocations threatening the republic's population and the Russian military contingent deployed in South Ossetia, the ministry retains the right to use all available means and forces to defend the nationals of South Ossetia and Russian servicemen," the Russian statement read, as distributed by government wire agency RIA-Novosti.

The German invasion of Poland in September 1939 started with an organized provocation at the border in which Berlin blamed Polish troops for shooting at German soldiers. Hitler's concern for "the well-being of the German population" residing in Czechoslovakia was the pretext for his occupation of that country in 1938 and 1939.

We can probably assume that U.S. officials made numerous calls to Moscow asking for an explanation of the latest Russian statement on Georgia. The Kremlin's statement was partially for U.S. consumption as well. It came soon after Vice President Biden left Georgia and the Wall Street Journal published an interview with him on U.S.-Russia relations.

The Kremlin was offended by Biden's assertion that Russia is weak, and thus willing to cooperate with the U.S. Despite assurances to Moscow by White House spokesman Robert Gibbs, and later by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, Moscow responded in tones that indicate the Russian leadership will not hesitate to attack Georgia again if it considers it necessary. This breach of the promises made to Obama during his visit to Moscow is the consequence of U.S. and European forgiveness of the Kremlin war against Georgia in 2008.

The Kremlin wasn't just reacting to Biden. Vladimir Putin may be easily offended, but the vice president's words differed only slightly from the many op-eds and stories about Russia that appear every day in international media.

The Russian statement showed that the Kremlin remains bent on regime change in Georgia, either by military force or political coercion. Economics, more than the personal distaste Vladimir Putin has for Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, explains the Russians' oblivious behavior.

The Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan oil pipeline, and the increasingly real-looking plans for the Nabucco gas pipeline, endangers Moscow's European gas supply monopoly. It will also significantly diminish the Kremlin's capability to dictate its policy to the European countries.

Russian tactics are similar in Ukraine, another country Biden visited last month. Military force is a less likely option there. Instead, the Kremlin relies on a policy of political coercion, regular promises to a number of Ukrainian politicians of a bright financial future and energy (gas transit) wars of the sort we saw in 2007 and 2008. Thanks to the soft response of the U.S. and Europeans, the outcome of the battle for Ukraine is largely unknown, as is the situation in Belarus, Europe's last dictatorship, which is now trying to put its best face forward to the West.

Central Asia is another battleground for the Kremlin, and Turkmenistan is now on the front lines. Turkmenistan's recent decision to join the Nabucco gas pipeline project, even as it constructs another pipeline to China, left Moscow with a bitter aftertaste.

Gazprom, the state-controlled Russian company that lays golden eggs for the Kremlin, has largely refrained from investing in the development of new gas fields in Russia during a period of high oil and gas prices. Instead, the Russian gas monopolist relied on exclusive contracts with Turkmenistan, purchasing gas there and re-selling it to Ukraine and other European countries.

The Kremlin is working hard to "bring back home" the countries of the former Soviet Union. Moscow doesn't care whether it extends its influence to relatively democratic or authoritarian states. As soon as these countries are seen as vital to Russian political and economic interests, they're on the list.

When Ronald Reagan described the USSR as an "evil empire" in March 1983, he was absolutely right. More than a quarter-century later the same words apply to the current regime in Moscow.

Like their communist predecessors, the present leadership of Russia has failed to employ diversification to strengthen the country's economy, implement an effective democratic system with checks and balances plus basic freedoms and create trust within and beyond Russia's borders.

The Obama administration should be on constant alert when dealing with Russia's weak, aggressive and untrustworthy leadership. "Every step they take, and every move they make" should be weighed, watched and countered in the manner of a competent parole officer. Otherwise, it will be hard for the current administration to shirk responsibility for letting the Kremlin spread its poisonous influence where its predecessor once held sway.

Dmitry Sidorov is the bureau chief for Kommersant Publishing in Washington, D.C.

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http://blogs.reuters.com/india/2009...-a-measure-of-each-other-at-border-row-talks/

17:05 August 5th, 2009
India, China take a measure of each other at border row talks
Posted by: Sanjeev Miglani
Tags: 1, Arunachal, border, China, Himalayan, India, manmohan singh, trade, Wen Jiabao

Comments 7

China and India are sitting down for another round of talks this week on their unsettled border, a nearly 50-year festering row that in recent months seems to have gotten worse.

China’s Vice Foreign Minister Dai Bingguo and India’s National Security Adviser M.K. Narayanan are unlikely to announce any agreement on the 3,500 km border, even a small one, but their talks this week may well signal how they intend to move forward on a relationship marked by a deep, deep “trust deficit”, as former Indian intelligence chief B. Raman puts it.

While the entire Himalayan border is disputed, including the Aksai Chin area, it is the row over large parts of India’s Arunachal Pradesh in the eastern stretch of the mountains that has strained ties in recent months.

The Chinese, says Raman, are demanding that at least the Tawang tract of Arunachal Pradesh, if not the whole of it, should be transferred to it. They are apparently adamant that if that doesn’t happen, there won’t be any border settlement, he says.

India’s position is that there can’t be a transfer of populated areas in any border settlement. Tawang is a populated area, its citizens are Indians, New Delhi says.

So firmly have the Chinese dug their heels in, that they refused to endorse an Asian Development Bank irrigation project in Arunachal Pradesh in June on grounds that it was its territory. Last month, India’s Foreign Minister S. M. Krishna confirmed to parliament in a question-answer session media reports about the Chinese objection to the project which appeared to have stung India.

So where do they go from here ? India’s decision to deploy additional troops along the border in Arunachal Pradesh and beef up its air defences in the region have deepened the sense of unease, more so by making a public announcement of the military moves. It might be concerned about Chinese buildup in the area and of growing border violations, but to talk openly of the Chinese threat and moves to counter it hardly inspires confidence.

There is a history to this: in the months leading up to the 1962 war between the two countries, India, according to some people at least, took fairly strident positions in public against China, only to be humiliated in the brief conflict.

There are some signs of a calmer, more measured stance in New Delhi and Beijing ahead of this week’s meeting in the Indian capital. There was no need to “demonise” China as a potential threat, India’s top level cabinet committee on security headed by the prime minister concluded last weekend at a preparatory meeting, acording to a report in the Indian Express. But New Delhi will be watching China closely, it said.

Beijing for its part said the two countries must exercise the “greatest political wisdom” to arrive at border settlement. The People’s Daily quoted China’s ambassador to India Zhang Yan as saying: notwithstanding the “twists and turns” in ties, the two countries had the same responsibilities of developing their economies and improving people’s lives.

Bilateral trade, as the People’s Daily in a separate article notes, has flourished despite the strained political relationship. “China has become one of India’s largest trade partners, and India is now one of the most vital investment and overseas project contracting markets for China,” it says.

So is trade going to be the glue holding the world’s two most populous nations together?

(Photographs of India’s Manmohan Singh and China’s Wen Jiabao and Nathu-La on the border between India and China)