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  Just Like Old Times: A New Arms Race Between US and Russia?

Just Like Old Times A New Arms Race Between US and Russia?

By Siegesmund von Ilsemann, Uwe Klussmann, Georg Mascolo and Christian Neef

Part 2: Part 2: "Washington is losing touch with reality"

Although the Russian defense budget has almost quadrupled to its current level of $31 billion in the last six years, Russia uses its military spending "very ineffectively" when it comes to upgrading its equipment, says arms expert Ruslan Puchov. According to a study by GRU, the Russian military intelligence agency, about one-third of the country's military budget ends up lining the pockets of high-ranking officers.

US military spending is in a different league altogether. Since taking office in January 2001, US President George W. Bush has almost doubled the Pentagon budget -- to a planned level of $620 billion for the coming financial year, a figure that includes war costs. "This is the highest military spending since the height of the Korean War," says Steven Kosiak, an expert at the independent Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments in Washington. Even the new US defense secretary, Robert Gates, calls his agency's budget "breathtaking."

Russian Defense Minister Sergey Ivanov complains that the US defense budget is "25 times as large as Russia's." To at least partially close this gap, he presented an ambitious modernization program to the lower house of the Russian parliament last week. Under the plan, Russia would build 50 new strategic bombers, eight nuclear submarines, dozens of new missile silos, more than 50 mobile Topol-M missiles and four military satellites by 2015.

The land-based Topol-M missiles and the Bulava ("cudgel") submarine-mounted missiles are currently the most advanced missiles in Russia's arsenal. However, a number of tests of the Bulava, the country's supposed miracle weapon, failed last year. And only about 50 of the 200 Topol missiles which Russia had planned to build are operational to date.

It seems highly unlikely that Moscow could someday catch up with the United States technologically. Instead, the purpose of the planned modernization effort is to polish the image of the Russian state and its decrepit military, not just domestically but also among allies in the Middle East and the Third World. The message Putin and his military planners clearly want to convey is that America's rival is back in business.

This explains the enthusiastic response to Putin's appearance in Munich among Russian politicians loyal to the Kremlin. Leonid Ivashov, the vice president of the Russian Academy of Geopolitical Affairs, calls Putin's speech at Munich's Bayerischer Hof hotel a "turning point internationally, comparable to Churchill's 1946 Fulton speech, which launched the Cold War." The difference, says Ivashov, is that Putin's aim was the opposite of Churchill's, namely to condemn the unilateral approach in world politics.

Vladimir Ryzhkov, a member of the opposition in Russia's parliament, the Duma, disagrees. He believes that Moscow simply lacks the financial means to effectively challenge the Americans. "Russia's gross domestic product is only one-thirteenth of that of the United States," says Ryzhkov, who interprets Putin's speech as an effort to woo Russian voters leading up to December's parliamentary elections.

Political motives notwithstanding, two military concerns are especially high on Moscow's agenda: the growing proliferation of intermediate-range missiles worldwide and America's new missile defense system. While both the Russians and the Americans, under the terms of the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, are barred from deploying intermediate-range missiles, North Korea, China, India, Pakistan, Iran and Israel all produce such weapons today. These countries' intermediate-range missiles may not be capable of reaching Central or Western Europe, and certainly not the United States -- "but they can reach us," says Ivanov.

To counter the threat, the Russians revived an old proposal in Munich, namely to join forces with the Americans in building a missile defense system. What was the purpose, they asked, of Washington now unilaterally establishing such a system in Eastern Europe?

The Americans plan to expand their global missile defense system by adding up to 10 ground-based interceptors in Poland and an early warning system in the Czech Republic. Bush has assured Putin that the purpose of the missile shield is to defend against "irresponsible states" and the "growing threat from the Middle East" -- and that it is not directed against the Russians.

But the Russians, convinced that the missiles based in Poland could shoot down their missiles in the event of a conflict, are vigorously opposed to the US's "encircling" strategy. "We cannot accept Poland's and the Czech Republic's statements on this issue," Russian Defense Minister Ivanov told DER SPIEGEL in an interview in Munich. The Czech foreign minister, Karl Schwarzenberg, vigorously rejects Russia's objections.

Washington's actions show signs that the US is "partially losing touch with reality," writes Germany's Süddeutsche Zeitung: No one in the West had enough imagination to realize Putin might actually interpret the missile shield on his borders as a provocation.

In Washington, on the other hand, Putin's Munich speech is more likely to bolster the arguments of those who have long warned against a new threat coming from Russia. Sources say that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has never trusted Putin, a former KGB agent, and influential Senator John McCain has been calling for a tougher stance on Russia for years. Indeed, when the Russian president launched into his verbal attacks at the Munich conference, McCain, who was seated only a few meters away from Putin, became visibly enraged.

From the standpoint of the White House, the self-confident Russian's list of sins is gradually becoming intolerably long, not because of fears of a direct Russian military threat but because Moscow is seeking allies among the US's enemies. Russia's delivery of advanced surface-to-air missile defense systems to Iran is seen as an especially serious offence.

And hardliners in Washington see themselves vindicated by Putin's offer this week to help the Saudi royal family develop a nuclear program -- proof, they say, that a new conflict between the former arch-rivals is unavoidable.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan