Arms Sales Fuel Russia's Military Spending

Arms Sales Fuel Russia's Military Spending

NewsMax.com
Tuesday, Feb. 13, 2001

Russia is spending far more on building its military strength than Moscow’s official estimates of its defense expenditures reveal, a top British defense official says.

Moreover, a rearming Russia either represents a serious threat to U.S. national security, as CIA Director George Tenet says, or represents no threat at all, according to Moscow.

At the heart of the dispute lies Russia’s desperate financial situation and its solution: sales of sophisticated weapons systems to all comers.

After nearly dropping out of sight in the early 1990s, when defense outlays plunged from $130 billion in 1992 to a low point of $42 billion in 1998, spending on the Russian military establishment has now climbed back up to about $50 billion, according to Britain’s Ministry of Defense.

After a prolonged dispute between officials of Russia’s strategic nuclear forces and the heads of the nation’s conventional forces over which arm of the military would get the most funding, President Vladimir Putin decided that the cash-strapped ground forces would be the beneficiaries of increased military spending.

Putin has made clear that he intends to modernize Russia’s crumbling conventional forces and put less emphasis on the nuclear deterrent.

As a result, about two-thirds of military funding went to regular forces last year, with the remainder split between paramilitary organizations such as border guards, internal security troops and the like, and defense ministry employees, according to a briefing by Dr. Christopher Hill of British Ministry of Defense sponsored by Russian and Eurasian Program of Washington’s Center for Strategic & International Studies.

According to Hill, "the tendency, evident in recent years, for the strategic [nuclear] forces to secure a greater proportion of defense resources started to be questioned in 2000 as the continuing challenge of Islamic militants in Chechnya and the near abroad emphasized the requirement for better trained and equipped ground and air forces."

Other details revealed by Hill concerning the thrust of Russia’s defense spending included such details as:

A major shift in the distribution of military funds to personnel items (pay, allowances, pension, food, clothing, accommodation, etc.) where spending has jumped from about 25 percent to over 50 percent.

Hill notes that while this has not prevented military salaries from falling sharply and, in some cases, actually being deferred for long periods, it has also had a "catastrophic impact on the amount of money available for equipment procurement and maintenance. Orders for new weapons dried up and, despite continuing overseas purchases, particularly by China and India, the total value of weapons production had, by the late 1990s, fallen to less than a tenth of what it was at the start of the decade."

In the late 1990s Russia’s defense industries, lacking orders from the government, were in shambles and by the end of the decade "effectively bankrupt.”

This perhaps explains the Putin’s frenzied efforts to sell advanced military equipment to all takers, including sworn enemies of the U.S., a development that led to Tenet’s warning that Russia is one of the major threats to U.S. national security and is a menace to America’s efforts to limit nuclear proliferation.

According to a statement issued by Russia’s Foreign Ministry, however, Tenet is merely waving the bloody shirt to get increased funding from Congress.

"The 'dark revelations' of George Tenet about Russia and our relations with the U.S. could help the hawks in the U.S. Congress and help boost the CIA budget, but they in no way correspond to the true state of affairs," the statement alleged.

"When you consider that the CIA's [status] soared in the Cold War era, it would be difficult to expect a balanced assessment of Russia-US relations from its leadership. But even considering this fact, a series of pronouncements made by George Tenet provoke, to put it mildly, bewilderment."

In testimony before the Senate Intelligence Committee, Tenet expressed concern at Russian President Vladimir Putin's foreign policy views, particularly his efforts to build a closer alliance with China and India, possibly at Washington's expense.

Moreover, Tenet charged that Putin is clamping down on human rights and trying to restore Moscow's Soviet-era sphere of influence.

"There can be little doubt that President Putin wants to restore some aspects of the Soviet past – status as a great power, strong central authority and a stable and predictable society – sometimes at the expense of neighboring states or the civil rights of individual Russians," Tenet told the committee.

Russia, he said, "continues to value arms and technology sales as a major source of funds," and added that Moscow’s sale of some $4 billion worth of armaments last year, is an example of their deliberate proliferation of advanced missile technology.

"I cannot underestimate the catalytic role that [Russian] foreign assistance has played in advancing these missiles and weapons of mass destruction programs, shortening their development times and aiding production," said Tenet.

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