The New Arms Race

 
Despite disagreement over NATO’s bombardment of Libya, Russia and NATO are set to resume joint military drills in 2012.  
 
“The alliance and Russia have decided to return to cooperation which has a good history, including theater missile defense cooperation,” said Robert Pszczel, new head of the NATO Information Office in Moscow.
 

Russia and India yesterday (Dec 21) signed a pact worth up to $30 billion on the development of a fifth-generation fighter aircraft and agreed to pursue a deal to build two Russian nuclear reactors.
The agreements surrounded talks in New Delhi between visiting Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Indian Premier Manmohan Singh, during which both sides set a target of doubling bilateral trade to $20 billion by 2015.

RAF fighters were scrambled to intercept Russian nuclear bombers near British airspace twice in the last week, it has emerged. The alarm was raised after the  Tupolev Tu95 'Bears' were spotted on Monday and Tuesday, flying in a Nato-policed zone close to the UK.
 
Tornados from RAF Leuchars in Fife were despatched to identify and escort the bombers back to international air space.
 
 

This week, CF-18 fighters from CFB Bagotville, in Quebec, were scrambled to intercept Russian bombers apparently about to enter Canadian airspace.
 
The aircraft were identified as TU-95s, but the incident marks a significant deviation from normal activity. Russian aircraft typically approach Canada from the west, whereas in this latest incident they came in from the east.
 

The thorny issue of the missile defence shield is still live, and deployments of US patriot missile systems in former Soviet states close to the Russian border are starting to rankle with the Kremlin. Moscow will, of course, be aware of the policy of “encirclement” that it pursued during the Cold War, and the unsettling effect that it had on the west. Indeed, the policy brought the world to the brink of nuclear war when Russian missiles were deployed in Cuba in 1962.

The meeting summed up the results of the Defence Ministry’s work in 2009 and clarified its objectives for 2010.
 

Pravda must be the most inappropriately named news agency in the world, and its output sometimes needs to be taken with a dose of salt. However, it has just reported that Russia has now become the largest supplier of military equipment to Latin American countries, overtaking USA between 2008 and 2009.
 

On February 5th, President Medvedev approved Russia's new military doctrine at a meeting of the permanent Security Council. Taking part in the meeting were Prime Minister Vladimir Putin, Federation Council Speaker Sergei Mironov, State Duma Speaker Boris Gryzlov, Chief of Staff of the Presidential Executive Office Sergei Naryshkin, Secretary of the Security Council Nikolai Patrushev, Deputy Prime Mini

In Moscow's strongest public statement yet on the issue, Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said on Friday that an agreement would be reached soon on a landmark nuclear arms reduction treaty with the United States."The remaining questions, I hope, will be resolved rather promptly when the negotiations resume, and they will resume before the beginning of February, I think," Lavrov has told reporters. His words suggest that an agreement is imminent between the two powers on a successor to the 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START I).
 

The United States is absolutely right to reject Vladimir Putin's criticism of the proposed missile defence shield. Talk of "maintaining the balance" is misleading: Putin simply does not want his country to lose the one playable card it holds.