Russia reintroduces warship patrols in Arctic

AP, July 14

Russia announced Monday that it is sending warships to patrol Arctic waters for the first time since the breakup of the Soviet Union -- the latest move to increase the country's global military presence.

Patrols by the Northern Fleet's Severomorsk submarine destroyer and Marshal Ustinov missile cruiser will begin Thursday, Navy spokesman Igor Dygalo said.

Russia began sending aircraft carriers to the Mediterranean Sea in December and resumed long-range bomber patrols last August.

"We have been talking for a long time about widening our activity in the Arctic," Dygalo said. "There is nothing aggressive in it -- it is in the interests of security."

Jul 16, 2008
By F William Engdahl

The Caucasus Republic of Georgia, as nations go, is not apparently a major global player. Yet Washington has invested huge sums and organized to put its own despot, Mikhail Saakashvili, in the presidency in order to close a nuclear North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) iron ring around Russia.

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice visited the capital Tbilisi and made sharp statements against Moscow for supporting the separatist Georgian states of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, in essence blaming Moscow for an imminent war Washington has incited in order to bring Georgia into NATO by the December NATO summit.

Western media have either tended to ignore the growing tensions in the strategic Caucasus region or to suggest, as Rice does, that
the entire conflict is being caused by Moscow's support of the "breakaway" republics of Abkhazia and South Ossetia. In reality, a quite different chess game is being played in the region, one which has the potential to detonate a major escalation of tensions between Moscow and NATO.

The underlying issue is the fact that since the dissolution of the Warsaw Pact in 1991, one after the other former members as well as former states of the USSR have been coaxed and in many cases bribed with false promises by Washington into joining the counter organization, NATO.

Rather than initiate discussions after the 1991 dissolution of the Warsaw Pact about a systematic dissolution of NATO, Washington has systematically converted NATO into what can only be called the military vehicle of an American global imperial rule, linked by a network of military bases from Kosovo to Poland to Turkey to Iraq and Afghanistan.

In 1999, former Warsaw Pact members Hungary, Poland and the Czech Republic joined NATO. Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Romania and Slovakia followed in March 2004. Now Washington is putting immense pressure on the European Union members of NATO, especially Germany and France, that they vote in December to admit Georgia and Ukraine.

more at Asia Times

Russia's energy drive leaves US reeling
By M K Bhadrakumar

Last week, the gloves finally came off the Dmitry Medvedev presidency in Russia. It had to happen sooner or later, but few would have expected this soon. It was crystal clear US President George W Bush administered a diplomatic snub to Medvedev on the sidelines of the Group of Eight (G-8) summit meeting at Hokkaido, Japan.

Bush characterized him patronizingly as a "sharp guy" soon after they met in Hokkaido on July 9, but that was after making sure Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice proceeded to Prague and signed a deal just the previous day to install a US radar system as part of its missile defense system in Central Europe.

If Medvedev's core mission in Hokkaido was to underscore Russia's growing role in the world arena as a power with which the West has to contend, Bush acted as if he couldn't care. The US was also plainly dismissive of Medvedev's proposal at the G-8 for a pan-European security system that would include Russia. Medvedev expressed his "dismay" on hearing about the Prague deal. As if to rub in the snub, Rice proceeded from Prague to Bulgaria, where the US has for the first time established a military base, and then on to Georgia to discuss its plans of joining the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).

While in Tbilisi, she called for international mediation to stop violence spilling over in Georgia's beakaway regions of South Ossetia and Abhkazia, which have been sources of rising tensions, with Georgia accusing Russia of trying to annex the regions. To carry matters further, the US began a joint military exercise with Georgia codenamed Immediate Response 2008, near Tbilisi, which will continue through the month of July.

The exercise, financed by the Pentagon and planned by the US Armed Forces Eastern Command, is intended as a warning to Russia that Georgia is America's project and Washington wouldn't hesitate to do some heavy lifting to safeguard the "Rose Revolution".

On the face of it, such hubris is illogical and unnecessary since the West should have every reason not to embarrass Medvedev. The West has been propagating in recent months that the youthful Russian president is a potential independent decision-maker in the Kremlin with whom it could do business - unlike his predecessor, Vladimir Putin.

Reflecting US thinking, Carnegie Moscow Center scholar Dmitri Trenin wrote recently that the West noted "Medvedev's quick-wittedness, his calm style of conducting talks, and his clear desire to show that he is the one who is the real master of Russian diplomacy ... There are much greater grounds for expecting that Dmitry Medvedev ... will slowly but steadily concentrate powers in his own hands."

Clearly, what has been going on for the past few months on the East-West stage is one of those pantomimes that the West and Russia are equally adept at playing. But the US seems to have concluded that all the Western flattery about him hasn't really gone to Medvedev's head and he has merely been demonstrating his own skill in dramatics. Actually, nothing much has changed in Russia. The polls show Putin, now premier, is still seen by Russians as their "supreme leader", with a popularity rating coasting above 70% - with Medvedev stuck at 47% - and the truth might be somewhere near what a Moscow commentator recently sized up, namely, that Medvedev is a co-pilot in the cockpit in which Putin remains the captain.

Besides, Medvedev would know that even if he wished to be the European modernizer and G-8 club member that the West wanted him to be, he would find himself hopelessly at odds with his country. According to a poll last week by a Russian television network, the symbol of renewal of present-day Russia turns out to be none other than Josef Stalin. By a substantial margin, Stalin left behind two colorful Vladimirs - the singer Vladimir Vysotsky and the revolutionary Vladimir Lenin - and a host of other perennial Russian heroes like Ivan the Terrible and Alexander Pushkin.

Indeed, when Medvedev signed last Saturday a new foreign policy strategy for Russia, it came to light that for the first time the prime minister has been put in the driving seat to implement foreign policy measures - hitherto a presidential prerogative - which also shows that the Kremlin will pursue the line set by Putin in his eight-year presidency. The vague and somewhat incomprehensible expectations that there might be of some kind of "liberalization" in Medvedev's foreign policy have proved to be unfounded.

But Moscow hasn't taken lightly the US snub. In an address to Russian envoys in Moscow on Tuesday, Medvedev unambiguously stated his intention to continue Putin's foreign policy course, criticizing the US moves on missile defense deployment, the West's failure to ratify the revised Treaty on Conventional Armed Forces in Europe, Kosovo's independence, etc. He said, "We strongly affirm that the deployment of elements of the global missile defense in Eastern Europe only exacerbates the situation ... we will be forced to respond to it in kind ...

"This is linked to Russian-American agreements on strategic stability. Obviously, this common heritage will not be able to survive if one party is permitted to selectively destroy individual elements of this strategic regime. We cannot agree to that."

According to the noted German expert on Russia, Alexander Rahr, last week's Russian veto on the United Nations Security Council draft resolution on Zimbabwe was also a response to the US move on missile defense. "China's opposition is easy to understand as it has many economic interests in Zimbabwe. Russia has none. Russia's veto is a response to the missile shield, to Abkhazia and to many other things ... Russia is trying to show that America cannot decide everything," Rahr said.

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Related thread: US Missile Defense Deals

Jul 21, 2008, 15:34 GMT

Warsaw - Poland and the United States made progress in talks Monday on US plans to set up a missile defence system in Eastern Europe, both sides said.

Polish Foreign Minister Radek Sikorski met US Assistance Secretary of State Daniel Fried in Warsaw to discuss the proposal to place 10 long-range missile interceptors in Poland, which the Poles want Washington to sweeten with military aid.

'It was a good discussion,' Sikorski told reporters, 'which moved Poland's and the United States' viewpoints closer on the missile shield.'

Details of the talks were not immediately known. Foreign Ministry spokesman Piotr Paszkowski said the meeting was proof that both sides want to continue talks, the Polish Press Agency reported.

more at M&C

Russian military "considering stationing bombers on Cuba"

Chavez Goes Weapons Shopping in Russia Amid Arms Race

Russia may consider deploying strategic bombers or station tactical missiles in its close ally Belarus as a counter-measure to a planned U.S. missile shield in Europe, Moscow's envoy to Minsk said on Wednesday.

The United States have unnerved Moscow by its plans to install elements of its missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic, a measure Washington believes is needed to avert possible missile strikes from Iran.

Moscow says U.S. plans pose a threat to Russia's national security.

"Once Poland has signed an agreement with the American side on deployment of elements of the missile defense there, we will be able to discuss some additional aspects of our military and technical cooperation with Belarus," Russia's ambassador in Belarus, Alexander Surikov, told a news conference.

"The (Russian) military are talking of strategic bombers and Iskander systems," he said. "Probably, some actions will be taken, albeit without Belarus regaining its nuclear status.

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