Foreign Policy-> Must Reads->NewsWeek->The Realist Resurgence -> http://www.newsweek.com/id/163577/page/3
High over the Bering Sea where the black Arctic sky bends toward Alaska, Russian Tu-95 Bear bombers moved in for the kill last week. In rapid succession, cruise missiles dropped from beneath them like deadly spawn, fanning out toward their targets. Eleven thousand kilometers away in the warm waters south of Florida, a Russian naval squadron approached, carrying more megatons of nuclear weapons than the Cubans ever dreamed of during the missile crisis that brought the world to the edge of annihilation in October 1962. The Russians’ goal: to link up with the military forces of Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, who has cast himself as the successor to Fidel Castro in leading hemispheric hostility to the United States of America.
Geopolitical thriller writer Tom Clancy could set this scene. Flashbacks would provide the context: Moscow’s punitive invasion of little Georgia last summer; its tanks and missiles parading in Red Square last May; its coffers filled with hundreds of billions of dollars paid by Western Europeans addicted to Russian gas and oil; and the vows of former KGB operative, former president and now Prime Minister Vladimir Putin to use this war chest for an ever more powerful military machine. Clancy could make it all sound like, well, the eve of World War III. But State Department spokesman Sean McCormack last month made the latest Russian operations above the Arctic and in the Caribbean, dubbed “Stability 2008,” sound more like a joke. Sneering at the weakness of Russia’s fleet en route to Venezuela, McCormack said, “We’ll see if they actually make it there. Somebody told me they had a tugboat accompanying them in case they break down along the way.”
The Russian military has been portrayed as a force to be reckoned with by the mass media in the past couple of years. With the recent military action in Georgia this has only been reinforced by the media. This however, is untrue. The conventional forces of Russia are at a level of readiness that is extremely low. Its troops are living in horrible conditions and their equipment is falling apart. A Russian Lieutenant who was sick of the degrading facilities and conditions put up a video on youtube.com, which followed the tunes of an Eminem video, showing how horrible the conditions are. He was quickly reassigned to a Siberian outpost. Russia’s once proud military force of the Soviet Era is decaying, and a good portion of it is at the point of crumbling.
“The Russian military is still a lot more bark than bite,” says Alexander Kliment, an analyst at the consultancy Eurasia Group.
The country has a single aircraft carrier, compared with a dozen in the American fleet. Russian troop strength at 1.2 million is about a quarter of what it was in 1986 and morale is low.
The money that has once been used to maintain the conventional military of Russia has been shifted to maintain its nuclear arsenal. What the United States once did after World War Two, fronting nuclear strength to compensate for a smaller less capable conventional force, Russia is now currently doing. Russia’s conventional military is dwindling, but that doesn’t mean it still doesn’t have a bite. Russia still has its arsenal of 5000 or so and nuclear weapons and still is a regional power, but as Kliment said it has more bark than bite. The public wanted strong action taken against Russia for the Georgian incident. NATO and the USA did not take any military action. This was not because of Russia’s military strength, but because it was the pragmatic thing to do. No one wants a shooting war. NATO and the USA have much stronger conventional abilities than Russia. Inaction regarding Georgia is just an opportunity the Kremlin has taken to flaunt Russian power and the press has ran with it. In reality this has just been some loud barking by an old dog, or in this case a bear.
The Russian fleet is currently enroute to *EDIT* Caucasus meet up with the Venezuelan Navy on a military exercise, along with an emergency crutch…
So the fleet led by the Kirov-class guided missile cruiser Pyotr Veliky (Peter the Great) continued toward Caracas. And so, by last report, did the tugboat.
Aren’t the Caucasus mountains? If the Russian Fleet is en route to the mountains, I’m not too worried. But seriously, what may be most worrisome about Russia is how vulnerable it seems to be in the current financial crisis. If a resurgent Russia is unsettling, a shaken Russia is a frightening prospect.
Haha fixed it =). Russia could do another oil power play if it starts to feel really threatened, as seen in the Belarus oil Line crises a while back. I don’t really think that it will escalate to a major shooting conflict between the major powers. It just wouldn’t benefit anyone. Maybe I am naive, but I couldn’t imagine a WW3 breaking out.