Russia's Rearming

I did not write any part of this article, but I have removed some parts. Great article, a must read.

"The Russian-military machine is back in business.

On Friday President Vladimir Putin caused consternation by announcing the resumption of regular, long-range nuclear bomber patrols, but there is more to come; Russia is planning to double combat aircraft production by 2025 with more nuclear missiles, aircraft carriers and tanks at the top of Moscow's shopping list.

Intelligence sources say Washington and London have been taken aback by just how seriously Russia has viewed the perceived slight and admit that in concentrating so heavily on Iraq and al-Qaeda, they took their eyes off the ball.

"They were slow to see that these people are still players," said a former White House staffer, who served both Ronald Reagan and George Bush. "My great fear is that I wake up one day soon to discover that we lost the Cold War, or rather that like everything else, we won the war and then lost the peace."

A source close to the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, who cut her teeth in government as a Kremlinologist in the Eighties, said that Middle East issues had diverted her attention from a more rigorous engagement with Moscow.

"She wants to spend more time on Russia but that hasn't always been possible. She said to me that she regrets the fact that she has not done enough on what is, after all, her major area of expertise."

While Russia's submariners have managed to upset even the mild-mannered Norwegians and Canadians by planting a flag under the Arctic ice, its long range TU-95 Bear bombers have rattled America's cage by buzzing its US naval base on the island of Guam in the western Pacific. The Georgians are furious after a Russian missile landed on the outskirts of a village near Tbilisi and a series of war games in Russia's southern Ural Mountains featuring some 6,500 troops from Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan sparked Western concern over the emergence of a new Warsaw Pact.

The alarm may have sounded too late, however, according to Matthew Clements, Eurasia editor of Jane's Country Risk. "I think what has not been seen is the way Russia perceives itself as a new, great power, and how it feels it has not been taken as seriously as it should be," he said.

Russian defence spending rose by 22 per cent and 27 per cent in the past two years and could be up as much as 30 per cent this year. In February, Sergei Ivanov, then defence secretary and now one of the front-runners to replace Mr Putin next year, announced a £100 billion programme of expenditure. According to Jane's Sentinel Country Risk Assessments, the Russian shopping list includes two new submarine-launched nuclear ballistic missiles, the Bulava and the Sineva, both with a 5,000 mile range and capable of carrying 10 nuclear warheads, and a new anti-aircraft missile, the S-400, which the Russian ministry of defence claims is effective against incoming missiles.It also plans to spend heavily on the new TU-160 strategic bomber, which can launch cruise missiles, the SU-34 "Fullback" fighter-bomber capable of all-weather attacks on heavily defended targets and a new fifth-generation fighter, the Sukhoi T-50, which is expected to come into service in 2008 as Russia's main lightweight front-line fighter. The expanded Russian fleet will include six new nuclear powered aircraft carriers, it has just one at present, and eight ballistic missile submarines." (article)