Results of the Year: Fatalists in the Kremlin
By Aleksandr Golts
January 2, 2013
Yezhednevny Zhurnal

The foreign policy of the first year of the third term of President Vladimir Putin was characterized by several common tendencies. First: a belief in realpolitik. But this is not the civilized realpolitik of Henry Kissinger. It is the simple – if not primitive – realpolitik of the 19th century. Different states, those egotistical animals, barter back and forth in an effort to further their own national interests. To that end, they create unions aimed at weakening the other main players. This bartering takes place during secret diplomatic conferences, when secret agreements are developed. Holding talks on democracy and human rights during such conferences is simply a joke. Putin sees these talks as propagandistic tools to weaken Russia. He is certain that he understands the rules of the game.

If one had to define the most important tendency within Russian politics on the international stage in 2012, it would be increased alienation from the outside world and less of a connection to reality. In the 21st century, there is less and less realism in the Kremlin’s professed 19th-century realpolitik. Putin’s single foreign policy goal is to prevent Russia from having a “colored revolution.” Our head of state genuinely believes that protests are the result of conspiracies between other powers, particularly the US, whose goal is to weaken our Fatherland, strenuously rising up from its knees.

Therefore, the main blow has to be against our enemies. And the State Duma, intoxicated by its own impunity, has stamped one monstrous law after another. Non-governmental organizations that risk telling the truth about the state of political freedoms, human rights, and corruption are synonymous with “foreign agents.” And if someone with American citizenship works at an NGO, that organization will be closed. And any citizen who talks to a foreigner can be charged with treason – here, it is enough for the security services to suspect a foreigner of belonging to an organization that wishes to harm Russian security. God knows how this chimes with the professed need for intellectual exchange with the surrounding world. Most likely, it does not chime at all. It is obvious that the essence of Putin’s international policy is maximally isolating the country from its insidious external surroundings.

The further it goes, the more this policy is going to harm Russian citizens instead of any cursed foreigners. The most striking example is the response to the Magnitsky Act, the American law banning corrupt Russian officials (most of all, the ones from the so-called law enforcement agencies) from indulging in the joys of the American state. More precisely: from going to the States, keeping money there, or buying property there. The response was definitely asymmetrical: for attempting to punish corrupt Russian officials, Russian children are going to foot the bill.

Our national diplomacy also works according to this same logic in discussions of one of the main conflicts of this past year – the one in Syria. It was announced a hundred times that Moscow is not holding out for Assad – and indeed, why hold out for a regime that will inevitably fall within the next few months (or even weeks). However, Russia has spoken out “decisively” against foreign meddling in its domestic affairs. And Russia has provided Assad with “entirely legal” services, giving weapons to a regime in the throes of death. If Moscow actually followed realpolitik, it could have just built up a relationship with the Syrian rebels in order to save its military contrasts and base in Tartus. Instead, Moscow has supported Assad in his insane war against his own people. Because, in reality, countering colored revolutions actually means countering the will of people who are sick to death of leaders who have taken it upon themselves to rule forever.

As a result, Russia today is the main international warrior not for the people, but for authoritarian and totalitarian rulers – in Syria, North Korea, and Iran. Russian diplomats scared to death at the prospect of winding up on the Magnitsky Act list threaten the US with a break in diplomatic relations. And Putin’s year-end press conference, full of absurd anti-American rhetoric, demonstrated that our national leader is entirely full of genuine indignation towards the United States. Washington, for some reason, is not playing by the rules. At least, not by the rules that Vladimir Putin thought up for himself. And that, I suppose, is the main problem in Russian foreign policy – its strategy exists in a separate world. A separate one from that of their partners. To put it bluntly, they are playing chess, but they think they are playing checkers.

And it is precisely here, I suppose, that the new trait of Putin’s foreign policy manifests itself: fatalism. Two years ago during his annual television show, Putin agreed that he was lucky. It appears that he indeed believes in his own incredible luck, helping him slip out of any situation.

Just like the Politburo elders in the Kremlin at the end of the 1970s, Putin is certain that oil prices are never going to fall. All leading states will be doomed to purchase oil and gas from Russia, regardless of how good their relations are with the Kremlin. If the market climate is good, these tools will allow Putin to implement his grand idea to reintegrate the former Soviet republics. I would like to note that these plans also fit nicely into the creation of unions as part of the realpolitik of the century before last. That is the case even if these projects, such as the Customs Union, for example, have an obviously harmful effect on Russia’s economy. Under these circumstances, the country’s leadership falls under the illusion that it can act on the international stage without any boundaries. The future is unpredictable, says the Kremlin. We cannot rule out that, as a result of forthcoming cataclysms, Russia’s place on the international stage could fundamentally improve. Moreover, the economic crisis engendered the illusion among Kremlin strategists that some kind of “new world order” could allow Russia to start from a blank slate and become a superpower once again. This is exactly what the head of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs was talking about in his speech before the Council on Foreign and Defense Policy: “A majority of factors testify to the fact that a new historical milestone is beginning… Given such a radical ‘do-over,’ there’s a lot, probably, that can start from a clean slate, and far from all of the rules that define the international hierarchy today are going to apply in the future. There’s no ruling out that what’s going to be significant is not the place where this or that technology is created, but the ability to use it best. In this sense, Russia, with her intelligent and audacious population and vast resources enjoys obvious advantages.” The logic is stunning: because of forthcoming changes, Russia will be able to use the achievements of others on account of “audacity.” At the same time, there is no hint of how the country will mystically be able to solve its demographic problems or what these vast resources are that can be harnessed. This is not the logic of an analyst – it is the logic of a gambler in a casino.

In effect, the Russian government is admitting that it has no rational plan on how to “raise the country up.” All its bets are hedged on the idea that, when people standing in a line turn around 180 degrees, the last person becomes the first. These policies, obviously, will lead to nowhere. Which is to say: to international isolation.

Monday, May 9 marked Russia’s 66th annual celebration of the defeat of Nazi Germany. Victory Day is Russia’s most widely celebrated national holiday, with people across the country flooding the streets to join in public gatherings, ceremonies and memorials. For a country that lost upwards of 20 million people in World War II, such a large celebration is only natural.

The main event during Victory Day celebrations, however, is an elaborate military parade in Moscow. While such parades are a longstanding tradition in the country, it was only in 2008 that Russia reintroduced an element of military hardware not seen since the fall of the Soviet Union. Along with thousands of soldiers, the parade now includes tanks, armored trucks, nuclear missiles, and a noisy aircraft flyover.

But why the sudden decision to showcase all this equipment, especially considering that nearly all of it is decades old? With that question in mind, journalist and military expert Aleksandr Golts remarks upon the social and political undertones of this year’s Victory Day parade.

Victory Day or a Holiday of Militarism?
May 6, 2011
Aleksandr Golts
Yezhednevny Zhurnal

All these past years, I have not ceased to be amazed at how ineptly our government has used the unique opportunities presented to them by Victory Day – the only real holiday in contemporary Russia. A holiday that can, at least for a day, unite Russia’s fragmented, isolated society. Only on Victory Day do thousands of the country’s people come out into the streets not by order from above but because they want to feel like part of a single whole – the people who in fact rescued modern civilization.

But instead of finding words, symbols or ideas to strengthen this extraordinarily positive feeling of unity, the Russian leaders rattle their rusty iron – the main part of the holiday is the military parade, which a larger number of soldiers take part in every year (this year it’s more than 20,000 soldiers and officers). It is assumed that citizens will get this feeling of unity by contemplating the parading files of soldiers striding the Prussian goose step. And citizens like the Odessan from the Soviet film Intervention are flooded with tears of emotion: “A standing army – now that’s something special.”

In practice, the exact opposite happens. The rehearsals for the parade, which bring about the collapse of transportation in the city, are a powerful tool to force Muscovites to leave the capital.

It’s doubtful that a contemporary Russian citizen is seriously inspired by seeing military equipment that was developed twenty years ago and is currently produced in paltry numbers. At least take the new, as the parade organizers assert, S-400 anti-aircraft system. There will be eight units in the parade. Which is to say exactly one fourth of all existing S-400 units, the production of which began way back in 2007. About the same can also be said of simpler models of military equipment proclaimed to be new – the Iskander ballistic missiles, the strategic Topol-M. And the chief commander of the army, Aleksandr Postnikov, recently correctly said that the T-90 tank was the result of the seventeenth upgrade of the old T-72. So the only real innovation in the parade is the demonstration of the new berets, which from now on will be worn not only by paratroopers and marines, but also by soldiers from other branches of the Armed Forces.

Why are the authorities so hung up on the parade? In privatizing Victory, like all other Russian values, the leaders approach the holiday in a strictly utilitarian manner: as an opportunity for self-promotion. In 2005, Moscow turned into a besieged fortress, essentially banning residents of the capital from reaching the center of the city. All only so that Vladimir Putin had the opportunity to strike a pose while receiving world leaders.

This time, the anniversary is not a key one, but an ordinary one, so to speak. There will be no foreign guests. And facing Putin and Medvedev’s political strategists is the question of what backdrop to use to show off the leaders. Old veterans who cannot speak well and are less than well-groomed are not well suited for this. For them, it’s enough to have perfunctory statements like “nobody is forgotten and nothing is forgotten,” wretched holiday food baskets, and routine promises to provide them with housing sixty-six years after Victory. And where is it nicer for the top Russian leaders to pose with rockets and dashing soldiers than next to veterans?

It was not by accident that everyone pretended that there hadn’t been an announcement last year by Presidential Affairs Office Chief Vladimir Kozhin that there wasn’t going to be a parade in 2011 because of proposed renovations to Red Square. Cancelling the parade in an election year would be impossible. As a result, the Victory holiday will become a holiday of militarism.

Translation by theotherrussia.org.

A milk war is brewing.  After Russia banned the import of milk products from Belarus on June 6th, relations between the two countries have become increasingly strained.  The situation escalated when Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko withdrew from attending a meeting of the Collective Security Treaty Organization on Sunday, a group idealized by Russia as a counterweight to NATO.

Defense expert Aleksandr Golts examines the conflict, delving into its roots and questioning Russia’s intentions and need for a regional alliance like the CSTO.  The article first ran in the Yezhednevny Zhurnal online newspaper.

A Meat and Milk Defense
Aleksandr Golts
June 15, 2009
Yezhednevny Zhurnal

Do you remember the old joke, how in the Red Square, after the intercontinental rockets, a column of people with deer-skin hats and briefcases in their hands march out, walking in step.  “And here are the Gosplan workers,” the announcer triumphantly declares, “our most destructive weapon.”  As recent events show, now, after the rockets, people in white lab coats with technical regulations tucked into their arms –our health inspectors—should be sent in the parade.  Even before now, I knew that [Chief Sanitary Inspectors] Gennady Onishchenko was an incredibly influential, and most importantly, independent civil servant.  Fighting for the health of people under his jurisdiction, he prohibited the import of Moldovan wine and Georgian Borzhomi [mineral water] without compromise.  And to the fact that these bouts of fighting for the nation’s health only made an appearance when Vladimir Putin was taking offense at the Moldovan and Georgian president– well, this was certainly just a random coincidence.

And now Gennady Grigoryevich’s commitment to health threatens to do more than just complicate Russia’s relations with its neighbors.  With one stroke of his pen, Onishchenko put the existence of the Collective Security Treaty Organization [CSTO] at risk –one of the Kremlin’s most important diplomatic projects.  Not long ago, everything was just marvelous: Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan were improving their collective security day and night.  Establishing a Collective Rapid Reaction Force (CRRF) was on the agenda.  “Just as good as NATO,” as [Russian President] Dmitri Medvedev announced at the last summit.  And the fact that Belarus was supposed to chair the CSTO merely raised hopes of an improvement of military integration of the seven states.  Alexander Grigoryevich Lukashenko directly promised this a month ago: “In the period of the Belarus presidency, the work of the CSTO has always been stepped up.  We would wish for this revitalization to continue the next time Belarus chairs the organization.”

And all this would be wonderful, if not for the overly-principled Gennady Onishchenko.  After Lukashenko called for his ministers to stop sucking up to Russia and promised to reorient [the country] towards markets in other countries, the head of Rospotrebnadzor [Federal Service for Supervision in Consumer Rights Protection and Human Welfare] (by a random coincidence) banned the importation of all milk products from Belarus.  And this accounts for more than 90 percent of Belarusian milk exports.  What started then in Minsk was what Dmitri Medvedev later called “milk and meat hysterics.”

Lukashenko refused to come to Moscow and “step up” the work of the CSTO.  The Belarusian Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MID) announced: “The reason for our non-participation in the current session of the CSTO is Belarus’ categorial disagreement over adopting CSTO decisions aimed at reinforcing military and political security, under conditions and while the economic security of one of the Organization’s members is openly undermined.  In this case – the Republic of Belarus.”

And when, despite the absence of a Belarusian delegation and an objection from Uzbekistan, five governments signed documents defining the system of how the CRRF would function, be formed and implemented, Minsk clearly and explicitly declared, that the adopted resolutions were illegitimate, since they were adopted without consensus, contrary to the [CSTO] charter.

In reality, this is a condemnation of the CSTO.  Minsk, in a state of extreme aggravation, somehow managed to say the bare truth: the ability to receive money from Russia is much more important to Belarus then any collective work to repel some mythical military threat.

Two types of security organizations exist.  On the one hand, there is a military alliance.  The necessary condition is a common military threat to all participants, whose presence smoothes out internal conflicts.  NATO was created on these principles, and as soon as the USSR fell apart, the North-Atlantic alliance faced an identity crisis.  Members of the CSTO have different threats. Armenia has Azerbaijan.  The Central Asian governments have the expansion of radical islam from Afghanistan.  As well as the internal instability of weak authoritarian regimes.  And whatever resolutions about rapid response forces may be adopted, it is still impossible to imagine Kazakh commandos fighting on Armenia’s side against Azerbaijan, or Belarusian paratroopers deploying into Uzbekistan.

The second option is an agreement between countries that are suspicious of each other’s intentions.  The OSCE can serve as an example of such an alliance.  In this case, the participants should agree on common rules of conduct, measures of mutual trust.  It must be said, that the mutual relations of the CSTO member-states are far from perfect.  Literally a week before the summit, Uzbekistan began to raise seven-meter-tall [23 foot] walls and digging a trench on its border with Kyrgyzstan.  And in earlier times, Uzbekistan mined all of its borders with Tajikistan.  Nevertheless, the question of measures of mutual trust has never been put before the CSTO -it isn’t customary for allies to openly speak about their mistrust for each other.  As result, the CSTO is not too useful for repelling an external threat and pointless for supporting domestic security.

In actual fact, the CSTO is a reflection of the hang-ups that Russian leaders have.  Those cursed “Yankees” have scores of allies—anyone wants to form an alliance with Washington.  But Moscow has no one, and consequently needs to force the former Republics of the USSR to enter into an allied relationship with Russia.  The presence of actual threats is not important, and neither is geographic location.  As result, states that are thousands of kilometers apart have ended up in the CSTO.  Setting up military interaction with them is physically impossible.  The CSTO in essence represents a set of two-sided agreements between individual countries and Moscow.  Fundamentally, these agreements are not at all about security threats.  They simply show the readiness of these states to play out a ritual gesture of homage to the Kremlin leadership in exchange for Russian money.

Alexander Lukashenko worked out what was in his mind the ideal system of relations with Russia.  He regularly declared a readiness to reinforce joint defense against NATO, receiving billions from Russia in return.  Concurrently, the money went to subsidize Belarusian industry, which then sold to the same Russia at artificially lowered prices.

The crisis, however, somewhat changed the situation.  Russia had less, much less money.  And Moscow tried to at least somewhat control the billions of dollars being sent to Minsk.  As result it received milk and meat hysterics.  In truth, Lukashenko was honestly keeping his end of the bargain, reciting his intention to resist the non-existent NATO threat.  And the Kremlin didn’t wish to pay for it.  And “batka” [a slang word for Lukashenko, lit. father] immediately showed that milk and meat relations were far more important for him than all of this rubbish about joint defense.  Read once more into the Belarusian statement: It is pointless to adopt resolutions about reinforcing military and political security, while Belarusian economic interests are suffering.  I haven’t read such an honest political statement in a long time.

Equally egoistic is the approach of Uzbekistan, which refused to sign the CRRF agreement.  Tashkent is very concerned that these agreements will open the doors for interference in Uzbekistan’s internal affairs, where as is plainly evident, a social implosion is imminent.  And the possibility of such interference, frankly speaking, is Russia’s only rational interest in the realm of security.  Internal conflicts in Central Asia can result in an enormous amount of refugees, and at the same time a sharp growth in the illegal trade of narcotics and arms, as well as armed gangs entering onto Russian territory.  To answer these real threats, Russia would do well to negotiate articulate, mutually binding two-sided agreements with the problem states.

And as for the CSTO, then as an extremely artificial construction, it will live only as long as Russia can pay its partners without demanding money in return.  I suspect that in the near future, Onishchenko will have plenty of occasions to demonstrate his world-famous commitment to principles.

translation by theotherrussia.org

A Very Convenient Conspiracy
May 6, 2009.
Aleksandr Golts
Yezhednevny Zhurnal

Mutiny, as is well known (thanks to [poet] John Harington in the [Samuil] Marshak translation), can never succeed.  Otherwise it’s no longer called a mutiny*.  If the poet was right, then a conclusion can be drawn from this axiom: any description of a failed revolt reads like the script of a mediocre operetta.  Georgian officials are offering up precisely such a story.

And so, on May 5th, Georgia’s Ministry of Internal Affairs (MIA) uncovered a military plot.  Under watch of the surveillance cameras and microphones of Georgian intelligence, its organizers cheerfully reported that first of all, the participants of the plot were all relatives (son-in-laws, cousins, and such), and secondly, that Russia would support them at any moment.  Five thousand soldiers would be sent, to help take Tbilisi and eliminate several well-known Georgian politicians.  Several former and active military officers were arrested for taking part in the conspiracy.  An hour after they were exposed, a tank battalion mutinied (the only separate armored unit in the Georgian army, it seems) at a base 30 kilometers from the capital.  Its commander, Vice-Colonel Mamuka Gorgishvili, circulated a statement to local media where he underscored that he was refusing command orders, since it was “impossible to calmly watch the collapse of the country and the continuing political confrontation.”  In short, the vice-colonel immediately warned that the battalion would take “no aggressive actions…We are in our barracks and we are not going to leave them.” Well, clearly they’re just like the Decembrists at the Senate square.

The way things developed next was obvious for those who know something of history.  If the conspirators refuse to take initiative, the authorities necessarily take it over.  Just three hours later, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili (not earlier noted for his rash courage) appears before the mutinied tank crews, who then calm down, turn in their weapons and surrender to the Georgian court, the fairest court in the world.

In a remarkable manner, this caricature of an abandoned conspiracy works in the interests of all the conflicting parties.  Saakashvili has the chance to connect the growing opposition protests with Russian subversion.  And in such a way show his political opponents as agents of the enemy.  It is no coincidence that the Georgian opposition, sensing the threat, immediately demanded an international investigation.  And one of its leaders, Nino Burjanadze openly said: “I can unequivocally say that I preclude the notion that Georgian armed forces took part in a Russian plan, like the MIA asserts.  These, by the way, are the same soldiers who fought heroically in the Tskhinvali region when their commander-in-chief was running away.”

Aside from discrediting the opposition, Saakashvili gains an excellent opportunity to discredit Russia, which has fought against NATO exercises that are completely unimportant in scale, with an insistence better suited for another cause.  As result, Georgian officials released a peculiar version of events: the tank forces took part in the plot (that is, an egregious crime against the state), in order to derail the NATO maneuvers, which start today.

Aside from that, Saakashvili gains a wonderful chance to cleanse the armed forces, which, to put it mildly, aren’t at all enraptured in a Supreme Commander-in-chief who forced them to take part in blatant military adventurism.

At the same time, this parody of a military conspiracy serves the purposes of Russian foreign policy, root and branch.  According to Moscow’s version of events, Saakashvili’s criminal regime is already running into serious military opposition.  Consequently, his end will come any day now.  Concurrently, our national analysts act as if they don’t understand that Saakashvili’s opponents are just as “anti-Russian” as he is.

And so, what actually happened?  Most likely, the natural irritation of Georgia’s officers with their not-too-competent and not-too-brave commander-in-chief became the focus of interest of Georgia’s intelligence agencies.  And those created yet another clone of “Operation Trest”, that is, a fake anti-government organization.  That’s the only way to explain the video recordings from the Georgian MIA.  I don’t exclude that Russia’s intelligence agencies may have fallen for this provocation (just like the “Intelligence service” once fell for the OGPU [Joint State Political Directorate] provocation).  As result, in the eyes of Georgians, they probably managed to discredit the opposition.  Furthermore, I don’t exclude that Saakashvili managed to prove to his western partners: his country is just a step away from Russian intervention.  Yet this victory is fairly dubious: no one can believe in the stability of a regime protested by its own military.

—

*Harington’s 17th century poem reads:
“Treason doth never prosper: what’s the reason?
For if it prosper, none dare call it treason.”

translation by theotherrussia.org

—

A Leopard Named Seal
Aleksandr Golts
November 10, 2008
Yezhednevny Zhurnal

If it were up to me, I would strictly forbid Russian commanders from making statements about the constantly growing might of our armed forces. Remember, all it took was for Vladimir Putin to call a Security Council and declare the coming ascent of our defense capabilities, when the Kursk submarine sank. Afterwards, speaking with his subordinate public in 2006, Putin boasted that a new class of missile carrying submarines would be introduced in the near future. Then it became clear that there were no missiles for them. Yet another test of the Bulava rocket ended in failure. And now it appears that that this increased “foresight” gets passed on with the Kremlin Cabinet.

Already we see Dmitri Medvedev declaring in his Address to the Federal Assembly: “Regarding the re-equipment of the army and navy with new, modern equipment, I have already taken the relevant decisions.” And two days later, [Russia’s] “newest” atomic submarine, the Nerpa [(Russian for seal)], has an accident during its sea trials resulting in the deaths of twenty people. To all appearances, the fire-extinguishing system turned on my mistake. In this case, all compartments are closed off, and all the space is filled with inert gas. Those located in the compartments were doomed to death.

Representatives of the naval forces rushed to assert that the boat had not been handed over to the navy, and that its crew was from the factory. The subtext is very simple – nothing can be blamed on the Admirals, all the more so since most of those killed were civilians. However, the fact that the military officers dodged the bullet extremely dexterously (they have a wealth of experience –they explained that the Kursk was sunk by the Americans, and that the Bulava had an “electrical discharge”) does not provide an explanation for the accident.

In truth, the tragedy illuminates all the problems of re-equipping our armed forces. It just so happens that I saw this atomic submarine eight years ago, in October 2000. Though truth be told, it was named the Bars [(Russian for leopard)] then. And it was the most dangerous unfinished construction project in the Russian Federation. Fifteen submarines of this class were built in the USSR. The Bars was pledged either in 1991 or 1993 at the Amur shipbuilding facility. And construction middled along until the mid-90s, as long as stockpiles of components built during Soviet times still remained (it was assumed that armaments must be built even during atomic warfare). Afterwards, both money and components dried up.

I caught the factory’s management at a practically catch-22 situation. The ship was built to 85 percent –but nobody wanted it. Moreover, the submarine was already equipped with an atomic reactor. As result, the small amount of money sent to the plant from the [federal] budget was spent on maintaining the necessary temperature in the docks. And since it had become dangerous, getting rid of it was anything but simple. “Salvaging it is more expensive than finishing it,” the factory’s general director, Nikolai Povzyk, had asserted then. “To cut out the reactor, the ship must be hauled by sea to Bolshoi Kamen, to the plant where Pacific fleet submarines are reclaimed. And that’s more than a hundred kilometers. Besides, then the ship would need to be hauled back. Their plant isn’t designed to take apart such gigantic ships.”

The whole city was full of rumors that the ship would be sold at any moment, or would be leased to India. Ten years later, the rumors started to match with reality. Stories appeared in both Russian and Indian newspapers that the sub had been leased to India.

But by all accounts, the ship was not completed with Indian money. Some good fortune happened. Not with the Amur shipbuilding facility. With the whole country. Oil prices rose. The government had enough money to complete the Bars, now renamed the Nerpa. Roughly the same thing happened with all the other weapons systems, which have now been declared “ultramodern.” [The authorities] decided to produce them. However, the Topol-M rocket, the Su-34 and Su-35 aircraft, the tanks and mechanized infantry vehicles were all developed in the 80s. That is to say 20 years ago. This military hardware can only be called modern because up until now, no one manufactured it. There is even less basis to consider military hardware like the Nerpa, which was built painfully and at great lengths over 15 years, to be up-to-date. Only God knows what happened to the submarine’s equipment, as it sat in the slip dock for several years. Even more questions come up regarding who worked on completing it and how they did it. The Nerpa is the only submarine from the Amur factory to be launched in fifteen years. During this time, the work crews changed more than once. Those who built atomic submarines one after another in the 70s and 80s have either quit or gone into retirement. The average age of workers in Russia’s defense establishment is nearing 60. And that’s on average, in all branches, including those with reasonably good wages. What can one say about those working at the factory, who scraped by on bread and water for more than ten years.

Does this mean that any attempt to re-equip the Russian army is doomed to failure? Not in the least. We simply need to cease competing with the US, define the priorities of military construction and concentrate on them. Then, we will have the means to resolve and debug any element of military hardware in a quality way before we start using it.

translation by theotherrussia.org

Ministry of Foreign Affairs Authorized to Frighten
Aleksandr Golts
Yezhednevny Zhurnal
July 9, 2008

An anticipated and downright unpleasant event has taken place. At the very moment when Dmitry Medvedev, a “smart guy” (according to George Bush), acknowledged that certain disagreements remained between Russia and the USA, the US Secretary of State signed an agreement in Prague on the placement of radar for the American strategic missile defense system in the Czech Republic. Our own Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) immediately reacted with an extremely callous announcement [rus][eng].

First of all, the MFA asserts “that the setting of elements of the US strategic arsenal in place close to the Russian territory could be used to weaken the potential of our deterrent.” And secondly, it threatens, that “if a U.S. strategic anti-missile shield is deployed near our borders, we will be forced to react not in a diplomatic fashion but with military methods… It is understandable that the Russian side will take adequate measures in such circumstances to compensate for the emerging potential of threats to its national security.”

I have to acknowledge, that both assertions in no way correspond with reality. American anti-ballistic missile defense (ABM) cannot weaken Russia’s deterrent potential. For that simple reason, that the ten interceptor missiles, which could be deployed in Poland (if Washington comes to an agreement with Warsaw), in the best case scenario would be able to intercept a single one of the 1700-2200 nuclear warheads, which Moscow will command in 2012 (at present, there are around three thousand warheads). I will refer those who doubt the technical competency of yours truly to a text (RUS) by Vladimir Zinovyevich Dvorkin, a retired major-general, former commander of the 4th Research and Development Establishment in the Ministry of Defense, and one of the few real military experts in our country.

Even more curious is the promise to respond with “military methods.” Strictly speaking, there could be two such responses. The first – updating the means of overcoming the ABM. An exercise that is completely pointless and at the same time sure-fire, since the Americans are clearly not preparing their system to stand up to Russia. In addition, our domestic commanders have stated many times that we already have miraculous warheads at our disposal, capable of surmounting any ABM system. One can pay no attention to such trivial matters, that, according to media reports, these warheads begin to maneuver during the final stage of their flight (which seems to make their interception impossible), and as they approach their target, while the Americans plan to perform the interception in space. The Kremlin propagandists will tell the people about asymmetrical but effective measures, and the Americans will prudently say nothing. Anything to keep things quiet.

It’s a completely different story, if Moscow decides to respond by creating an additional threat to the USA or those countries where elements of the American ABM system will be positioned. “Dealing with” the Americans themselves will be rather difficult. In the last six years, Moscow has fiercely strived for renewed talks on nuclear armament with Washington. And now, after the speech by John McCain in Denver, which his Democratic rival Barack Obama is fated to respond to, hope has emerged that such talks can begin during the next administration. Trying to gain a military-strategic advantage over the USA in this situation (among all the illusiveness of success) – amounts to destroying every foundation for the negotiations.

A threat remains, which Russia’s generals have repeatedly put forward. Step out of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, increase the range of the Iskander rockets, site them in the Kaliningrad oblast and aim them at the Czech Republic, where interceptors will also be stationed. I am certain, that such gibberish will never become reality.

It is appropriate to remember, that in the 1970s, the USSR tried to gain an advantage over NATO, by aiming intermediate-range missiles at Western Europe. However, when the Americans unveiled their “Pershings” and the “Tomahawks,” those in the Kremlin understood that Soviet rockets could destroy Brussels and London, but not Washington. But the American “Tomahawks” would reach Moscow in five minutes. As result it became necessary to sign the INF Treaty, whereby the USSR destroyed far more rockets that the USA. Then, the Soviet Union spent from 40 to 80 percent of GDP on military expenses. Now, Russia officially spends 2.7 percent of GDP on defense (some experts believe the spending reaches 4 percent). One way or another, this means that Russia is absolutely not ready for a new arms race. Besides, up to now only one division of “Iskanders” has been put into commission, and that with difficulty.

All this means that our Ministry of Foreign Affairs is blowing hot air. And nothing more. Furthermore, I’m sure you’ll agree that it’s curious what the person writing “Russia’s stances” feels, understanding that what he’s writing is, how to put this mildly, downright rubbish.

translated by theotherrussia.org

One major point of contention in the conflict is the destruction of a Georgian unmanned spy drone in late April. While Russia claims to have no connection to the event, a report by the UN found that a Russian fighter plane was responsible, backing Georgian assertions that a ceasefire accord had been broken. Aleksandr Golts examines this incident in an editorial in the Yezhednevny Zhurnal online newspaper (below).

Since the article was published on May 28th, Russia has announced that it will move more troops into Abkhazia, for “humanitarian aid” purposes. Georgia’s deputy foreign minister, meanwhile, called the move “an aggressive act, which is aimed against Georgia’s territorial integrity.”

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On the art of choosing ones enemies
Aleksandr Golts
Yezhednevny Zhurnal
May 28, 2008.

When a mission of UN observers in Georgia presented their report, asserting that it was exactly a Russian fighter jet that shot down an unmanned Georgian drone, I immediately felt pity for the most intelligent and kind Vitaly Churkin, who currently serves as Russia’s representative to the UN. I immediately imagined him in the place of Soviet representative Valerian Zorin, who fiercely denied the presence of rockets in Cuba at a [UN] Security Council session forty-five years ago. At a certain moment, State Department employees brought in boards with glued-on photographs of Soviet rockets. And this allowed the American representative, Adlai Stevenson to run Zorin in to a corner: “Do you, Ambassador Zorin, deny that the U.S.S.R. has placed and is placing medium- and intermediate-range missiles and sites in Cuba? Yes or no—don’t wait for the translation—yes or no?” To which the the ambassador of a superpower found nothing better to say than: “I am not in an American courtroom, Mr. Stevenson.”

I’m not even referring to the fact that Moscow was caught telling blatant lies. In 1962, at least the opponent was worthy. But today, the representative of tiny Georgia will drag us face-down along the table. It must be said that both now and forty-five years ago, Moscow was let down by a colossal underestimation of the opponent’s political will and technical capabilities. In 1962, after the Americans didn’t use force to topple the Berlin Wall, Khrushchev counted them incapable of adequately responding to the deployment of rockets. And even the military promised to safely hide the rockets from reconnaissance aircraft. Today, [Moscow] clearly misjudged Georgia’s readiness for political conflict, and most importantly—its technical capacity to substantiate its charges in detail.

The UN mission’s report gives the impression of an extremely tested and painstaking work. Before anything else, the UN writers underscore the qualifications of the specialists, [who they] draw upon for expertise (specialists on radar and unmanned aircraft and aerial photography, as well as fighter pilots). The authors of the report meticulously explain why they regard the Georgian video as authentic. Here you have a both a clear matching of on-the-ground features and terrain, completely corresponding to the radar data and witness testimonies (including those presented by the headquarters of the [Russian] peacekeeping forces). Furthermore, it is underscored that the video recording does not have any changes of color rendition or skipping in the image, which could point to a falsification.

The same can be said regarding the Poti [, Georgia] radar data. [The authors] meticulously explain to us why falsification is impossible in this case. It turns out that the recording of the flight paths of both the drone and the fighter jet are replete with slight changes of course. And an attempt to make a forgery would necessarily show up as an unswerving straight line. We are even told why the fighter flew so close to the drone, as to allow itself to be caught on film. It turns out that this air battle was started practically inside an air corridor constantly flown by civil aircraft. Thus, the fighter pilot had to see his target, so as to, God forbid, avoid hitting a passenger liner.

In order to refute all this, firm statements from representatives of the [Russian] air force that on April 20th, our war planes didn’t fly near the Russian-Georgian border won’t quite suffice. Disputing the Georgian data can only be done by presenting our own data – and I hope that our air defense radar watches this region. After all, information can be obtained from the civil dispatchers, who were guiding planes through the above-mentioned corridor.

Instead of this, [the authorities] have decided, it seems, to once again stigmatize Georgia, as America was stigmatized in 1962. Then, after the embarrassment in the Security Council, the Soviet newspapers wrote that “V. A. Zorin exposed the assertions of US State Department employees, pulled from a heap of all sorts of of rubbish, about the so called “establishment of Soviet rocket bases” in Cuba.” Now, the Foreign Ministry has put on a semblance that the naïve UN investigators have been fooled by the cunning Georgians: “The point at issue is not to cast doubt on the competency of the UN Mission’s specialists. Rather, the question is in the biased and unobjective materials, on which this investigation was built –the video recording and the readings of certain radars. This video tape, which has long been discussed, and which the Georgian side has broadcast on television, but had not risked showing the UN or giving to the Russian side, raises serious doubts, as we have already noted. And the radar data, used by the UN Observer Mission in Georgia, does not correspond with [the data] we have.” It follows, that they have decided to play dumb in Moscow. To pretend that there is in fact a report, but at the same time to consider that the arguments it raises do not exist at all. “Let them slander, the bastards.”

As if the UN authors didn’t dedicate nearly their whole report to explaining how they came to such distasteful conclusions for Russia.

All that happened in distant 1962 was of course humiliating for the Soviet representatives – it’s not very pleasant, when the government whose interests you represent is caught red handed. But then one could write everything off to the stand-off of two systems, to the uncompromising confrontation, by way of which the fate of the country was decided.

Now, when Georgia has managed to incriminate us in lies, Russia stands not only in a humiliating, but in a downright laughable position. And the inability to give any credible explanations at all makes it doubly so.

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Week in Review. Interregnum.
Aleksandr Golts
Yezhednevny Zhurnal
March 14, 2008

The authority-filled city of Moscow has submerged into terrified consternation. No-one (with the exception of Medvedev and Putin) is sure of their own future. Everyone is straining to decipher the sounds coming from under the Kremlin rug. But nothing can be made out: maybe it’s moans of affection, and maybe deathbed wheezes. Why did Vladimir Vladimirovich [Putin] all of a sudden turn and jump on his best jester, Vladimir Volfovich [Zhirinovsky], such that the poor guy was driven to the hospital? Maybe the clown got boring, or maybe the president decided to show everyone who the real boss of the house was. And why was Grigory Yavlinsky granted an audience with “the man himself” all of a sudden? Maybe for no particular reason, or maybe they want to assign him some office? And what about this suggestion, which sounded from the highest lips, that corrupt officials should have their hands chopped off. Is this a joke, or a demonstration of a wish to drastically change the command team?

The most amusing thing to do in this situation is to keep an eye on those who impudently call themselves political analysts. For eight years, these guys have worked as the president’s interpreters, clearing up the brilliance of every decision V. V. Putin made for us mere mortals. Even recently, they reasoned on every television channel on how important and healthy it was that the active president named a successor and remained as his overseer. But ask any of them how the two-horned vertical [power] will function, or which bureaucrats –those from the presidential administration or from the Government –are now stronger, and they’ll just make a helpless gesture.

But why, why have our administrators stopped climbing the Mausoleum during holidays? Why have the newspapers long stopped publishing panoramic photographs of party plenary assemblies, with their 200-person general committees. If Soviet traditions had been preserved, then the “politologists” would have at least some factual basis for analysis. Using a magnifying glass, one could have determined the place of a specific bureaucrat in the existing hierarchy. But now one can only read fortunes from spent coffee grounds.

A very illustrative example is the regular meeting of the Izvestia [newspaper] “Politclub.” Most of the participants had nothing substantial to say, and torturously tried to squeeze out something pseudo-scientific. The quintessential brainwork of these same political analysts were the conclusions reached by Sergei Markov: “Regarding a diarchy, it’s most appropriate to speak of a two-fold center of power. And as to how the situation inside this two-fold center of power will develop, that’s still an open question. Will Dmitri Medvedev become the leader? This depends on two principal factors. First – on Dmitri Medvedev. Second – on Vladimir Putin… It depends on Vladimir Putin in the sense that no one knows, what he has decided on for himself.” Vasisuali Lohankin, [a character from a well-known Russian satirical comedy novel, the Golden Calf] is weeping.

Meanwhile, the present interregnum period is extremely interesting and important for the country’s future. The authors of the Constitution apparently had the American model in mind when they wrote that the president must assume office two months after the election. So, it was assumed, civil servants of the outgoing administration would transfer their affairs to the authorized representatives of the new president. Simultaneously, consultations on the formation of the future Government, as well as discussions on programs and concepts, should be taking shape in the State Duma. With the intent to confirm the premier, after some debate.

The beauty of the current situation is that the newly selected president doesn’t even stutter about the transfer of business (which is completely understandable – he wants very much to live at least to see the inauguration). As for Medvedev’s team – here there is only gossip. And it’s ridiculous to even speak about the consultations of the future premier with the Duma “vegetables.” Let them say thank you, that he listened to them recently and only soured on Zhirik ([Zhirinovsky]).

Now Putin and Medvedev are busy with a far more interesting and important affair – they are themselves trying to figure out just what they’ve created. They’re thinking of how to divide the powers so that the “old” [leader] isn’t jealous, and at the same time the “new” one doesn’t look completely like a marionette. After all, it goes without saying that Putin has been diligently creating a system of power that is impossible to divide for eight years now. In this system of “manual operation” of the country, the president exercises [constant] authority, making dozens of managerial decisions on a daily basis. If you grant someone else the right to make them, it means that you lose authority.

Here’s the simplest question: How will the system of job assignments look for the defense and law enforcement agencies? Clearly, Medvedev will put his signature under the order. But where will the decision be made? If it’s in the new administration, then it means there will a a serious level of influence there over the siloviki [(members of the government with a background in the military and security organs)]. Is Putin ready to trade-off this influence? If not, he needs to arrange the matter in such a way that the papers come through his people, so that he can somehow track them. And this, I’ll repeat, is the simplest, most routine question of the Kremlin’s daily operations.

One can imagine what kind of confusion will occur. It is now being reported that Igor Shuvalov, one of Putin’s aides, is speaking of a proposal on the division of powers. I suspect, however, that Shuvalov’s own authority for this important matter will come a little short.

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