Cold War Mk2?

[mrsquirrel]

Russia sparks Cold War scramble

The Tu-95 pilots exchanged smiles with their US counterparts

Russian bombers have flown to the US Pacific island of Guam in a manoeuvre reminiscent of the Cold War era. Two Tu-95 turboprops flew this week to Guam, home to a big US military base, Russian Maj Gen Pavel Androsov said, a story confirmed by the US.
They "exchanged smiles" with US pilots who scrambled to track them, he added.
The sorties, believed to be the first since the Cold War ended, come as Russia stresses a more assertive foreign policy, correspondents say.
The flight is part of a pattern of more expansive Russian military operations in recent weeks, says BBC diplomatic correspondent Jonathan Marcus.
Old practice
Gen Androsov said the strategic bombers had flown 13 hours from their base in the Russian Far East during the exercise.
We prepared to intercept the bombers but they did not come close enough


Pentagon spokesman

"It has always been the tradition of our long-range aviation to fly far into the ocean, to meet [US] aircraft carriers and greet [US pilots] visually," he said at a news conference.
"Yesterday [Wednesday] we revived this tradition, and two of our young crews paid a visit to the area of the base of Guam," he said.
"I think the result was good. We met our colleagues - fighter jet pilots from [US] aircraft carriers. We exchanged smiles and returned home," he added.
A spokesman for the Pentagon confirmed that the Tu-95s were spotted heading to Guam, adding that US fighter readied themselves to repel them.
"We prepared to intercept the bombers but they did not come close enough to a US Navy ship or to the island of Guam to warrant an air-to-air intercept," the spokesman said.
During the Cold War, Soviet bombers regularly flew long-haul missions to areas patrolled by Nato and the US.
The bombers have the capability of launching a nuclear strike with the missiles they carry.

BBC NEWS | Europe | Russia sparks Cold War scramble

The West and a grumpy Russia
Cutting arms cuts

Jul 19th 2007
From The Economist print edition
Russia threatens treaties in Europe


RUSSIA'S western borders were never more peaceful. So why is Vladimir Putin threatening to suspend or pull out of two treaties—one governing the movement of troops, tanks and the like, the other banning America and Russia from having intermediate-range nuclear missiles—that have brought predictability and security to Europe for two decades? Three weeks ago at their “lobster summit” in Maine, Mr Putin was offering to co-operate with George Bush over missile defences that could help protect America, Russia and Europe against possible future threats from the likes of Iran. Now it is back to fist-banging.
APPutin ponders the eject button
Mr Putin has given 150 days' notice that Russia will suspend its involvement in the 1990 Conventional Forces in Europe (CFE) treaty governing which troops, tanks, artillery and aircraft can go where, from the Atlantic to the Urals. Russia was not “shutting the door to dialogue”, purred a deputy foreign minister. The suspension could therefore still be suspended. But Russia first wants others to ratify amendments to CFE, agreed in 1999, as Russia has done. The new version took account of the end of the Soviet Union, and relaxed some of the restrictions on deployment of Russian forces in its restive southern republics, but no NATO government has ratified it.
As NATO officials point out, that is because Russia has not yet withdrawn all its soldiers, as it promised, from Georgia (where they are camped in a breakaway chunk called Abkhazia) and Moldova (where they lend succour to Transdniestria, a rebellious and lawless strip). At an emergency conference of CFE parties called earlier this year, at Russia's request, after Mr Putin first threatened to stop observing the treaty, NATO proposed multinational peacekeeping contingents, that could include Russian troops, to finesse the problem. More talks are in prospect.

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Russia has other beefs. It frets that despite earlier promises America is building bases—they are limited training sites, say American officials—in two new NATO recruits, Bulgaria and Romania. Russia now says it reserves the right to deploy more of its own heavy weapons to its western and southern borders, should NATO send forces there.
Ironically, Mr Putin has taken umbrage just as America has been thinning out its troops in Europe, moving them to deal with today's more global threats. He may feel free to play fast and loose with CFE precisely because he has no fear of military retaliation.
Tearing up the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty—as Russian military officials have repeatedly suggested to the Bush administration—could prove more damaging. Back in the days of confrontation in Europe, Soviet deployment of SS-20 missiles in then East Germany and Czechoslovakia, and America's counter-deployment of Pershing and cruise missiles in Europe, heated the cold war to one of its periodic simmers.
The INF treaty subsequently banned both superpowers from building or deploying land-based missiles with ranges from 500-5,500km (300-3,400 miles). This was the first agreement to cut nuclear arms, rather than just set ceilings on them, and the first to allow intrusive on-site inspection. Were Russia (and Ukraine, a former Soviet republic) to start building such missiles again, there could be a new missile crisis in Europe.
Earlier this year Mr Putin said the treaty no longer served Russia's interests: others (read China, but also Iran and others) are free to build such missiles. In reality, Russia has plenty of other nuclear weapons to deter these threats. And while Mr Putin never directly connected his offer to co-operate over missile defences to the problem of Iran, Iranian officials took Russia to task.
So what is Mr Putin really up to? Russian officials have a long list of slights: some imagined (such as NATO getting more threatening to Russia), some real (such as the American Congress's lamentable failure to repeal the Jackson-Vanik amendment that linked trade with the Soviet Union to the rights of Soviet citizens to emigrate). What Russia wants, most observers agree, is respect for the petro-dollar-fuelled power it has become: treaties signed when it was weaker are targets.
Mr Putin also seems to want to drive a wedge between Europe and America. He no doubt misses his matiness with France's former president, Jacques Chirac, and Germany's Gerhard Schröder in their opposition to the war in Iraq.
But, well disguised by his sometimes outrageous rhetoric, Mr Putin also has genuine military concerns. America and Russia may not be the enemies they once were, but the Bush administration still looks askance at binding agreements to limit the two sides' strategic nuclear arsenals after the current Moscow treaty governing them expires in 2012. Meanwhile the counting rules being used (which date from the earlier Start-1 treaty) will lapse in December 2009.
Neither side wants to continue all the cumbersome Start-1 rules. Russia is keener on simpler but detailed inspections of the things the two sides can agree to count than some of Mr Bush's officials are. Congress and America's intelligence community would like to see proper transparency over future arms cuts too, says Rose Gottemoeller, head of the Moscow office of the Carnegie Endowment, a think-tank. But diehards on both sides, just like Mr Putin's fist-banging, aren't helping.

http://www.economist.com/displayStor...ory_id=9518685

Russia sends warning to the West

By Jonathan Marcus
BBC diplomatic correspondent


President Putin wants Russia to be treated as an equal by the US

President Vladimir Putin's decision to suspend Russia's participation in the Conventional Forces in Europe, or CFE, treaty is a potent political signal.
It is yet another sign of the worsening relationship between Moscow and the West.
It shows that this relationship was not improved in any substantial way by the informal meeting at the start of this month between the US and Russian presidents at the Bush family's holiday home at Kennebunkport in Maine.
It is another diplomatic warning shot from Mr Putin across the bows of the Bush administration.
And with crucial issues like Iran's nuclear programme and the political future of Kosovo looming at the United Nations, it raises a new set of questions about how far Russia might go to block initiatives backed by Washington and its key allies.
President Putin's move will be taken as yet another sign of a more assertive foreign policy - a policy buoyed up by Moscow's rising income from oil and natural gas



The Russians have been threatening to suspend their participation in the CFE treaty for several months.
An emergency meeting in mid-June to discuss the issue made little if any progress.
The CFE treaty of 1990 was one of the most significant arms control agreements of the Cold War years.
It set strict limits on the number of offensive weapons - tanks, aircraft, artillery and so on - that the members of the Warsaw Pact and Nato could deploy in a broadly-defined Europe, stretching from the Atlantic to the Urals.
In the wake of the collapse of communism, the treaty was revised in 1999, in part to address Russian concerns.
The most recent round of talks on the treaty failed

This revised treaty has never been ratified by the Nato countries who first want Russia to withdraw all of its forces from the former Soviet Republics of Georgia and Moldova. Now Russia's patience has run out.
President Putin's decree to suspend application of the treaty is not the same as a full-scale withdrawal - that would require a formal notification of the other parties.
This suspension is a unilateral Russian measure and its practical impact will be limited.
Various routine inspections, exchanges of data, and so on will presumably be halted.

Irrelevant?
In many ways the CFE treaty is not hugely relevant today.
The Cold War is over and whatever new tensions there may be between Russia and the West, nobody envisages a return to an armed stand-off on the European continent.
Nonetheless Mr Putin's decision matters.
It is clearly nonsense to speak of a new Cold War



For a start it raises questions about yet one more arms control treaty at a time when disarmament experts fear that the whole network of arms control treaties established during the Cold War years is increasingly under strain.
The United States pulled out of another key agreement, the Anti-Ballistic Missile treaty, in December 2001.
In a sense Mr Putin is just demonstrating that what the Americans can do in the name of their vital interests, so Russia can also threaten in the name of its national interest.
President Putin's move will be taken as yet another sign of a more assertive foreign policy - a policy buoyed up by Moscow's rising income from oil and natural gas.
But analysts wonder if this is really a sign of strength.
For all its energy revenues, Russia remains a shadow of the former Soviet Union in the superpower stakes.
Russian experts argue that Mr Putin realises this.
But in certain key areas, not least missile defence, he wants to be treated by Washington as an equal.
THE CFE TREATY
Cornerstone of European security
Limits amount of key military equipment in designated area
Negotiated by Nato and ex-Warsaw Pact member states
Signed in 1990
Came into force in 1992
Revised 1999 version never ratified by Nato



Russia's new foreign policy


Russian opposition to US plans to deploy limited missile defence in Poland and the Czech Republic is at the heart of their current disagreements.
But Russia's ever more muscular noises that it might block a proposed United Nations deal on the political future of Kosovo adds a worrying dimension to what up to now has been largely a rhetorical row.
Add in "local difficulties" like the dispute between London and Moscow over the murder of a former Russian agent living in Britain and there is real danger that relations between Russia and the West could be heading back to the freezer.
It is clearly nonsense to speak of a new Cold War.
But several Russian foreign policy experts have expressed concern that relations could deteriorate significantly.
Mr Putin's position, they say, is more sophisticated and perhaps more nuanced than some Russian spokesmen's pronouncements might indicate.
Mr Putin has gone some way, for example, in acknowledging that Iran does represent a potential missile threat. But Mr Putin is drawing on a strong well of anti-Americanism in Russia's military and foreign policy establishment.
That is why Mr Putin's whole approach risks sounding, and indeed becoming, blunter and more dogmatic than even he probably wants.

BBC NEWS | Europe | Russia sends warning to the West

They have the largest reserves of natural gas and oil now. They can increase the defences against Iran if they want to.

Are they going to hold the rest of the world to ransom for their resources or are we on the way the the next cold war. Star Wars II is being developed.

[Boon Mee]

^
Patton was right...we should have kept on going...

[kingwilly]

no war in the world i can see US going to war wiv Russia, i can see teh soviets flexing some muscles

[mrsquirrel]

Going to be interesting.

With the US pissing of the Arabs, Venezualans and potentially the Russians all it really leaves is those African nations and they will never hand over their black gold.

[Boon Mee]

Yeah, but America has MOAB!

[barbaro]

I think Putin and his cabinet is just sending a message.

A counter to the U.S. in the world is good, but honestly Russia isn't much of one militarily, but Russia's lies in:

Power.

Power that is supples to Eastern Europe. Even Germany gets a large percentage of it's power from Russia.

Rising oil prices are allowing Russia to buy more arms.

Nothing but a little jousting. Symbolism.


And Boon, I just read an interesting book about Patton and the British 3rd Army during WWII

When Pattons' first army and British General Montgomery's third army were chasing the disorganized and hobbled Germans east they ran out of gasoline.

Patton had to wait to be re-supplied. Montgomery moved east a little, but the German were able to re-organize and get re-equipped.

This also allowed the Soviet Red Army to continue heading West.


Gasoline.

To fight a war, you need oil.

For jet fuel, trucks, shipping, tank machinery and so on.


The power of oil.