Dale McFeatters is chief editorial writer and a columnist for Scripps Howard News Service.
By DALE McFEATTERS
Scripps Howard News Service
Perhaps with an eye on his March 4 presidential election rather than any real military considerations, Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin has announced an ambitious 10-year, $770-billion modernization of the Russian military.
(The U.S., by far the world’s largest defense spender, spent about $700 billion on its military last year.)
Putin outlined an ambitious plan of acquiring more than 400 ICBMs, military satellites, dozens of warships and subs, more than 600 combat aircraft, thousands of armored vehicles and an unspecified “smart” defense system.
The first question is: Can Russia, dependent on commodity revenues in constant flux, afford all of this?
The answer is no, according to former Finance Minister Alexei Kudrin, who said last fall that even a more modest buildup threatened both the budget and the economy as a whole. He was fired for saying so.
The second question is: What threat is Putin arming against?
Putin says it is to deter other nations from trying to seize Russia’s great natural resources. That might make some sense in the Russian Far East where underpopulated but resource-rich Siberia abuts overcrowded and resource-desperate China.
But relations between China and Russia are momentarily good, in part because of a shared mistrust of the U.S. Indeed, the only nation Putin regularly mentions among threats to Russia is the United States, whom Putin repeatedly tells his people is trying to undermine and weaken Russia, and to relegate it to the status of a second-class power.
The idea that the U.S. has designs on Russian resources outside the normal bounds of international commerce is ludicrous and the Kremlin knows it. The U.S. does make a convenient scapegoat the Russian sense that it has lost great power status.
The Russian economy only clings to top-10 status because Spain slipped this year. Its military is dogged by corruption and incompetence. In late December, Russian nuclear sub K84 caught fire in dry dock while fully loaded with nuclear ICBMs that the navy didn’t want to go to the expense and hassle of removing before work began.
A nuclear disaster on the magnitude of Chernobyl was narrowly averted by firefighters who fought the blaze for a day and a half, and only succeeded in putting it out by partially submerging the sub.
Meanwhile, Russia’s population continues to shrink and Putin’s response to that crisis has been limited to urging Russians to have more sex.
Meanwhile, the Muslim populations on Russia’s borders are booming.
Russia has lots of problems, but the U.S. is not one of them.
Dale McFeatters is chief editorial writer and a columnist for Scripps Howard News Service.