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Issue #119 | September 15, 2000 | ||||
Edited by David Johnson The CDI Russia Weekly is a weekly e-mail newsletter that carries news and analysis on all aspects of today's Russia, including political, economic, social, military, and foreign policy issues. With funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, CDI Russia Weekly is a project of the Washington-based Center for Defense Information (CDI), a nonprofit research and education organization. To receive a free subscription, e-mail David Johnson at djohnson@cdi.org Contents CDI Russia Weekly-#119 15 September 2000 Edited by David Johnson Center for Defense Information 1779 Massachusetts Ave. NW Washington DC 20036 phone: 202-332-0600; fax:202-462-4559 djohnson@cdi.org The CDI Russia Weekly is an e-mail newsletter that carries news and analysis on all aspects of today's Russia, including political, economic, social, military, and foreign policy issues. With funding from the Carnegie Corporation of New York, CDI Russia Weekly is a project of the Washington-based Center for Defense Information (CDI), a nonprofit research and education organization. CDI Russia Weekly web page (with archive): http://www.cdi.org/russia/ Visit CDI's web site: http://www.cdi.org Contents: 1. Jamestown Foundation Monitor: RUSSIAN ARMED FORCES FACE MAJOR REDUCTIONS. 2. Itar-Tass: RUSSIAN FOREIGN MINISTER SUMS UP TWO YEARS IN OFFICE. 3. St. Petersburg Times: Alexander Bratersky, Spying's Murky World Gets Own Internet Portal. 4. gazeta.ru: Deputies Predict Disaster For Russia In 2003. 5. The Globe and Mail (Canada): Geoffrey Yori, Russian activist wins legal marathon. Ecologist free in 'treason' saga. (Nikitin) 6. UPI: Martin Sieff, Analysis: China's Li seeking stronger ties with Russia. 7. Nezavisimaya Gazeta: STRATEGY OF "GLOBALISATION LEADERSHIP" FOR RUSSIA. On Priority Indirect Strategic Actions to Ensure National Security. By Alexander IGNATOV, Director General, Information Analytical Agency under the Presidential Business Management Department. ****** #1 Jamestown Foundation Monitor September 14, 2000 RUSSIAN ARMED FORCES FACE MAJOR REDUCTIONS. In an indication that the Kremlin may finally be getting serious about military restructuring, Russian Defense Minister Igor Sergeev announced last week that the size of Russia's armed forces would fall by some 350,000 over the next three years, dropping the total manpower level from 1.2 million to about 850,000. The Russian ground forces will absorb the brunt of the reductions, loosing about 180,000 troops. The Navy is to be cut by 50,000 and the air force by about 40,000. Russia's Strategic Missile Troops (SMT) are also to be reduced and, as earlier reports had indicated, will eventually be folded into the Air Force. Troops currently subordinated to Russia's various other security structures also face reductions. The forces of the Interior Ministry will reportedly lose 20,000 men, the border guards 5,000 and the railroad troops 10,000. Sergeev's announcement came during an appearance before troops from the elite Kantemirov tank division outside Moscow on September 8. His remarks confirmed unofficial reports which had been circulating in the Russian press over the preceding several days. It is unclear exactly when the decision for a radical reduction in troop strength was made. On August 11 military leaders met with President Vladimir Putin under the auspices of the country's powerful Security Council. Military reform was the key topic addressed at that meeting, but the fragmentary reports which followed were vague on the question of troop reductions and related issues. It seems at least plausible that it was the sinking of the Russian submarine Kursk a day later, and the Navy's inept efforts to mount a rescue mission, which confirmed the political leadership in its determination to take more decisive steps regarding military restructuring. Indeed, reports published after the August 11 meeting had focused on whether Sergeev or his rival, General Staff chief Anatoly Kvashnin, had emerged victorious from the discussions. Kvashnin did appear to reap some gains in terms both of the ultimate liquidation of the Strategic Missile Troops as an independent service and in a decision to shift some defense funding from the SMT to Russia's conventional forces; both were measures Kvashnin had advocated. If the Kremlin follows through on last week's announcement, however, then it would seem to be more accurate to say that both Kvashnin and Sergeev emerged as losers from the Security Council meeting. Russian military leaders were dragged kicking and screaming as the Russian armed forces were gradually reduced following the demise of the Soviet Union from some 5 million men to the current 1.2 million. Over the past several years military leaders have repeatedly resisted calls to cut the country's military forces still further, and it is hard to believe that either Sergeev or Kvashnin is accepting the current force reduction plan with a great deal of enthusiasm. That it has become policy suggests that the Kremlin and the civilian defense officials sitting on Russia's Security Council have decided to push their own vision of military reform over the competing plans submitted by the two generals (Reuters, UPI, September 7; BBC, Washington Post, Segodnya, Vedomosti, September 8; The Guardian, Kommersant daily, September 9; AFP, September 11). But a reduction in the size of Russia's armed forces, while a crucial first step, in no sense guarantees that Moscow will emerge several years down the road with a more compact and effective military machine, as Putin vowed to build following the sinking of the Kursk. Defense experts in Russia and the West have repeatedly pointed out that military reform in Russia is not merely a numbers game. Among other things, military and political leaders must also recast their entire assessment of the threats which confront Russia--an exercise that could (or should) precipitate some changes in Russia's only recently approved security and defense doctrines. Those documents, and other policy statements, reflect a Soviet-style view of the world which would necessitate a military machine the current Russian government is incapable of financing. In that regard, one has only to look back over the past eighteen months or so--a period in which a politically emboldened Russian military leadership conducted exercises aimed at repulsing a large-scale NATO attack, threatened to rebuild its strategic forces to counter U.S. missile defense plans, and called for a strengthening of its conventional troops to better deal with more localized conflicts like the one in Chechnya. Putin's rhetoric stoked this sort of great power bombast, but it is clear that the Russian economy lacks the financial wherewithal to sustain such a defense posture. Instead, Moscow must move to restructure its armed forces in accordance with a more realistic--and restrained--view of the threats it is likely to encounter. The Russian armed forces face a number of other challenges as well. Military leaders have made little progress in resolving problems related to the country's conscript army. Those problems include barracks violence and often abysmal living conditions, related high rates of draft evasion, and the difficulties inherent in teaching increasingly complex military skills to 18-year-old draftees. The demoralized officer corps has fared little better, having grown top-heavy with the retention of more senior officers, who are often resistant to change, while failing to retain the services of many of the army's more promising younger officers. Equally important has been the army's inability to develop a reliable corps of noncommissioned officers. The recruitment of contract volunteers was initiated in the early 1990s in part to remedy this shortcoming, as well as to fill key combat support slots, but by most accounts the effort has been a total failure in both respects. Indeed, one of the key choices the Kremlin will face as it moves to reshape the Russian army is whether it will try to improve and broaden the recruitment of contract volunteers--and thus increase the "professionalization" of the armed forces--or whether it will turn away from this practice and rely instead on a mainly conscript force. Funding, meanwhile, will remain a difficulty. Putin appears to be aiming at the creation of a smaller force, one which will be less of an economic burden on Moscow. Yet numerous Russian experts have argued that the process of reducing the army will initially be more expensive--in part because of the benefits which must be paid out to those who are demobilized--so the government can likely expect to see no immediate savings from the force reductions it is pursuing. In addition, the Russian state budget remains so small that even a relatively higher rate of defense spending--as Putin has reportedly proposed--will probably make little impact either in improved living standards for the troops or in providing them with better equipment. Difficulties such as these underline the fact that military reform in Russia, even if diligently and intelligently pursued, will be a long-term effort with few immediate results. Indeed, the move to reduce the size of the armed forces is likely to create considerable disgruntlement within the army itself, and may be politically controversial as well. ****** #2 RUSSIAN FOREIGN MINISTER SUMS UP TWO YEARS IN OFFICE ITAR-TASS United Nations, 14th September: One can say with confidence that the "Russia is entering the 21st century as one of the main players in the world arena and whose voice is attentively heeded by the world", Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov, who is attending the 55th session of the UN General Assembly, told ITAR-TASS on Thursday [14th September]. Two years ago, on 13t September 1998, Igor Ivanov came into office as the Russian foreign minister. Asked what he feels after two years in the post of foreign minister, Ivanov told ITAR-TASS that these years had been so rich in events, meetings and negotiations that it seems "it has seemed more like two days than two years". Summing up the results of his two years in office, Ivanov said that the period was not easy from a professional point of view - another crisis in the Persian Gulf, NATO aggression against Yugoslavia, the continuing unstable situation in the Caucasus and other "problem areas" of the CIS, and finally, US plans to create its own anti-nuclear missile defence systems, Ivanov said. In other words, life itself has made Russian diplomats concentrate their efforts and their everyday work as far as possible on defending Russia's national interests, Ivanov said. "It is of principle importance that during this time we have managed to find clear and concrete guidelines in our foreign policy which were embodied in the concept of the Russian foreign politics endorsed by President [Vladimir] Putin," the foreign minister said. "In future, we shall be persistently seeking to establish a just and multipolar world order which would ensure equal security and a worthy place in society for every country. The goal which we are firmly pursuing is that of strengthening strategic stability on global and regional levels," Ivanov said. He underlined that "the settlement of tasks in Russia's internal development will be an absolute priority in Russia's foreign policy". ****** #3 St. Petersburg Times September 15, 2000 Spying's Murky World Gets Own Internet Portal By Alexander Bratersky Even spies need a who's who guide. While the secrets of the Russian secret services aren't likely to be made available to the general public anytime soon, a curious person can now turn to a new Internet portal, www.agentura.ru, to make basic inroads into the murky world of spies. "We're counting on the big existing interest in this topic and we want to fill in the information vacuum," said Andrei Soldatov, a political journalist with the influential Izvestia daily, who together with his father - Alexei Soldatov, president of the Relcom Internet provider - started the portal. The younger Soldatov, who covers the Russian intelligence-services beat, said the idea for the portal came to him after he started to receive calls from readers who wanted to get access to some of his older articles. He then decided to place his stories on the Internet and asked fellow journalists from other newspapers to collaborate. Soldatov said he has already received an agreement from Versiya - a semi-sensational tabloid published in Moscow in cooperation with the New York Daily News - to add their stories to the portal. While all the stories are related to the activities of the secret service - from the expulsion of diplomats accused of espionage to the restoration of the monument to KGB founder Felix Dzerzhinsky - Soldatov said his portal would not be in the business of publishing kompromat, or compromising information. Among the newspaper stories featured on Agentura - the Russian word for a spy network - are background pieces on foreign intelligence services and even a dab of culture in the form of reviews of spy-related books and movies. While the new portal is aimed to inform the average Internet user about Russia's current intelligence services and their infamous predecessor, the KGB, it is also meant to act as a strike against the security services' efforts to control public life. "It's not a secret that secret services are able to control all of us," the site's home page reads. "They have SORM" - a government program to monitor e-mails and other electronic or Internet communications - "and the most sophisticated listening devices and power. But they are always able to preserve their own anonymity. We want to use their methods. They are collecting files on us, but we are trying to collect files on them." But while agentura.ru offers well-researched information on the structure and history of Russian and foreign intelligence services, the site has nothing truly secret to reveal. "All the information which is published on the site has already been published, so there is no reason to prosecute us," said Soldatov, adding that the portal's broad coverage of Russia's existing intelligence services, from the FSB [Federal Security Service] to the SVR [Foreign Intelligence Service] - makes it possible to remain independent. "Because there are a lot of [services], it's hard for the portal to be controlled," he said. Asked if any of the secret services are aware of the existence of the new site, Soldatov said jokingly, "We haven't received any calls so far, but of course they know about it - they're intelligence services." Even if they don't, they may have no reason to worry. "I don't think private providers know more than the secret services themselves," said an FSB spokeswoman. But despite the site's dearth of top-secret dish, the new portal is still likely to attract plenty of fans. In a country with an almost romantic nostalgia for Soviet-era spies and a former KGB officer as president, agentura.ru won't have to look far to find its audience. "Secret services have already become a part of our culture and the image of the spy is part of it," Soldatov said. ****** #4 gazeta.ru September 14, 2000 Deputies Predict Disaster For Russia In 2003 Following a discussion of the draft budget for 2001, Vladimir Putin invited the leaders of the Duma factions assembled in the Kremlin to raise any important issues. It transpired that they and the president agreed that 2003 has the potential to be a particularly disasterous year Russia and that immediate measures are required to avoid catastrophe. Wednesday meeting held by the Russian president Vladimir Putin with the state’s parliamentary leaders could to some extent be described as the round table. Formally, the issue for discussion was the next year’s budget, recently submitted to the lower house for consideration by Mikhail Kasyanov’s government. But Putin encouraged faction leaders to raise the issues they consider most burning. The meeting lasted four hours. The formal purpose of Putin’s meeting with the leaders of the parliamentary factions was to discuss the 2001 budget bill. However, once the differences over the draft’s content had been aired and clarified, president Putin invited his interlocutors to raise issues which they consider especially important. The meeting lasted for four hours The president and the deputies discussed a range of issues from press freedom and ownership of the press, to ways of averting multiple disasters expected to befall Russia. So it seems that the Kursk nuclear sub disaster and the Ostankino TV tower fire have prompted the politicians to formulate a plan to avert future catastrophes. As a further reminder of disasters waiting to happen, last weekend power shortage at the Beloyarskaya Power Station in Western Siberia forced the plant’s controllers to shut down the nuclear reactors. Some experts have alleged a major nuclear crisis was only narrowly avoided. The president and the Duma leaders concluded that in year 2003, hell could break loose in Russia and thus agreed to initiate a program to prevent such a scenario. Strange as it may seem Russian politicians are predicting that 2003 will be the most problematic year yet in Russia’s modern history. Three major problems form the bases of their gloomy prognosis. Firstly, there is the huge debt bill to be settled. In 2003 Russia is due to pat back a colossal $17 billion worth of foreign loans. However, there is a chance that the debt may be restructured… Secondly, they believe that the state of the country’s ageing and cash-stripped infrastructure is likely to cause disasters, especially in three year’s time. It was not clarified why an old nuclear reactor would wait until 2003 before blowing up… The aging population was named as the third catalyst for disaster. The ageing population will require pensions, but the active taxpaying population is set to decreasing. After the meeting the leader of the pro-Kremlin Unity faction Boris Gryzlov said the problems had already been discussed with the cabinet and that the parliamentarians agreed with Putin that a special commission should be set up to tackle the issue of impending disaster. “The issue was discussed at length and the president approved of our initiative and said he would dispatch representatives of his administration to the working group,” Gryzlov said after the meeting in the Kremlin. He said the new commission could start work as early as Monday and suggested the government could alleviate impending financial crisis by using budget windfalls, such as extra revenue from higher world oil prices, to immediately pay off debts maturing in 2003. During the meeting the president also dwelt on the issue of the death penalty. On Wednesday Gennady Raikov of the People’s Deputy group addressed the head of state with a proposal to lift the temporary death penalty ban introduced in 1996. The president said he was astounded to learn that, according to statistics provided by deputies, 85% of Russians wanted capital punishment restored. But he failed to say anything else on the matter. He promised to think it over. Another issue raised by the deputies was press freedom in Russia. The deputies were indignant at the fact that the freedom of the press in Russia is quite relative, and demanded the president to comment on the matter. The head of the state admitted that freedom of the press is of vital importance for the country. However, this freedom “should be firmly based on law”, the president said. Boris Nemtsov wanted to know Putin’s view on the fate of the NTV private network. Putin assured the SPS leader that NTV would not be nationalized. Putin also promised to examine the situation concerning two leading cellular operators, MTS and Vimpelcom. Both companies have received orders from the Communications Ministry to partly free up some frequency channels they currently use. ***** #5 The Globe and Mail (Canada) September 14, 2000 Russian activist wins legal marathon Ecologist free in 'treason' saga GEOFFREY YORK MOSCOW BUREAU Russian ecologist Alexander Nikitin, facing the newly resurgent power of the former Soviet KGB, has won a court victory that finally frees him from his marathon five-year struggle against treason charges. Russia's highest court, the presidium of the supreme court, rejected yesterday a government appeal that sought to imprison Mr. Nikitin on treason and espionage charges to punish him for his research on nuclear waste from Russian submarines. It was the 13th time that the retired submarine captain has faced a court proceeding on the treason charges. He spent 10 months in jail after he was arrested in 1996, and Russian authorities continued to pursue the charges after his release, even though every court has ruled in his favour. Canada has taken a strong interest in the Nikitin case because the ecologist was interrogated and searched by Russian police after he had obtained permission to visit Canada in 1995. His wife has immigrated to Canada, and Canadian officials have closely monitored the charges against Mr. Nikitin. Prime Minister Jean Chrétien was one of the first foreign leaders to protest against the charges. If the FSB, new name for the former Soviet secret police, had won the latest court appeal, it would have tightened the military secrecy that cloaks the issue of Russia's nuclear submarines and their dangerous waste. This secrecy was dramatically illustrated last month when the Russian navy tried to conceal the full scale of the disaster of the Kursk nuclear submarine, which sank to the bottom of the Barents Sea, killing the crew of 118. The FSB has been flexing its muscles and expanding its powers under the new administration of President Vladimir Putin, a retired KGB agent and former director of the new entity. The court appeal against Mr. Nikitin is the latest example of how the FSB is targeting environmentalists by accusing them of spying. The FSB was unwilling to accept the earlier court rulings in favour of the nuclear researcher, including a supreme court ruling this spring. But the decision yesterday, which cannot be appealed, is a major setback for the FSB campaign. "This is the end," Mr. Nikitin told reporters yesterday at the supreme court building in Moscow after the ruling. "We finally have the process finished. I'm extremely happy. It took five years, but I'm happy that law and justice won." The court victory is a crucial precedent for other environmentalists and human-rights activists who still face jail or investigation by the FSB on similar charges, Mr. Nikitin said. "It's another small step toward a law-abiding state. There are forces in this country who would like to remain in the past and want all of us to live in the past. They resisted until the end. Some people very close to the President had wanted another ruling. They didn't want us to tell the truth about the environment." Environmentalists say this latest supreme court ruling is a crucial step toward safeguarding the independence of the Russian judicial system, despite heavy pressure from the Kremlin and the FSB. ***** #6 Analysis: China's Li seeking stronger ties with Russia By MARTIN SIEFF, UPI senior news analyst [for personal use only] WASHINGTON, Sept. 14 (UPI) -- Virtually ignored in the U.S. domestic media, one of the four most powerful men in China and a possible future leader of that most populous nation on Earth, Li Peng is spending nine days in Russia discussing further strategic cooperation against the United States. Li, who as premier oversaw the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre of hundreds of pro-democracy students, has spearheaded the strong and growing opposition in recent years to current premier Zhu Rongji's increasingly embattled policy of free-market expansion, international trade and engagement with the wider world. Li came to Russia in response to an invitation from the Federation Council, the upper chamber of the Russian parliament. As Chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress, he is China's top legislator. Li was scheduled to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin, Prime Minister Mikhail Kasyanov and his opposite numbers as leaders of the two houses of the Russian parliament, State Duma Speaker Gennady Seleznyov and Federation Council Speaker Yegor Stroyev. On his arrival in Moscow Monday, Li said in a prepared speech that strategic partnership between the two giant nations of Eurasia that was launched in 1996 had now reached a new level, China's official Xinhua news agency reported. He said the continued deepening of the Sino-Russian strategic partnership was of immense importance to maintain global peace and security. That same day, Li gave an interview to the semi-official Russian Itar-Tass news agency. "Relations of strategic partnership and interaction between China and Russia are a historical choice made by the two countries on the basis of the experience and lessons of the past, taking due account of changes in the international situation after the end of the Cold War," he said. That statement was filled with code words. By "historical choice," Li appeared to be reassuring the Russians that China remained committed to the partnership and saw it as a long-term one, comparable to the 20 years-long strategic relationship with the United States against the Soviet Union that started in 1972. And by "taking due account of changes in the international situation since the end of the Cold War," he was clearly referring to the continued global dominance of the United States as the world's one remaining superpower. Li told Itar-Tass his country saw the development of anti-ballistic missile programs -- both tactical and strategic -- to defend the continental United States and overseas deployments of U.S. forces as a dangerous development that could threaten world peace. Li "believes that the United States -- by pursuing the National Missile Defense system or the system of missile theater defense of military actions -- pursues the aim to ensure its own absolute security and the "freedom of hands" to, seeking to create a mono-polar world and head it," Itar-Tass said. President Clinton has deferred any decision to build an Alaska-based system of 50 to 100 ground-based ABM interceptor missiles in Alaska to protect the continental United States from attack by nuclear-armed missiles fired by rogue states. Republican Presidential candidate George W. Bush has pledged to revise and expand that program. In their recent joint statements, Russian and Chinese leaders have repeatedly referred to what they regard as moves to establish and enforce U.S. global hegemony as crating a "uni-polar" or "multi-polar" world. By contrast, they describe their own opposition to such developments as seeking to maintain a "multi-polar world" in which no one major nation can enforce its will on the others or seeks to do so. The U.S. moves to establish effective ABM systems, "would destroy a global and regional strategic balance and stability," Li Peng told Itar-Tass. He warned that this would, in turn, lead to the breakdown of international arms control and non-proliferation agreements and thereby set off "a new spiral in the armaments race on a global scale," which would "create a threat to security of all the countries in the world," Itar-Tass reported. The timing of Li's visit, starting as it did only three days after the end of the huge Millennium Summit at the United Nations in New York City, appeared to be no coincidence. At that summit, U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan pushed for world leaders to adopt his so-called "Kofi Doctrine" that would allow large U.N. peacekeeping forces, perhaps 20,000 or 30,000 strong, to rapidly deploy and operate within nations to end civil wars or ethnic strife and massacres. He won enthusiastic support from the leaders of the United States, Germany and Britain. This development greatly alarms the leaders of Russia and China who fear it could -- and probably would -- be used by the United States as a justification to weaken or dismember their giant nations, respectively the largest and most populous in the world. Russia is still fighting a fierce guerrilla insurgency in Chechnya, and scores of thousands are believed to have died in that conflict in past year alone. China is extremely nervous about U.S. support for the Dalai Lama as challenging their half-century long occupation of Tibet, which they regard as a historic part of the Middle Kingdom. Both China and --especially -- Russia were angered and alarmed by the U.S.-led NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in early 1999 to end the Yugoslav army's ethnic cleansing campaign in Kosovo province. At the time, Russian senior diplomats openly and repeatedly accused the United States and NATO of breaking the 1949 Washington Treaty, which founded NATO and committed to be a defensive organization pledged to operate in defense of the national boundaries of its nations. The Russians also warned that they saw the U.S.-led military intervention in Kosovo as an epochal and dangerous departure from the international diplomatic system that had kept global peace since the founding of the United Nations at the end of World War II. They believed the Clinton administration had shattered that system by approving the U.S.-led bombing campaign against Yugoslavia without the authorization of the U.N. Security Council. Russia and China both enjoy veto powers on the 15-nation Security Council as two of its permanent members. The others are the United States, Britain and France. The system has been widely criticized as usually frustrating effective U.N. initiatives to end conflicts around the world. But it has played an often-overlooked but absolutely crucial role in maintaining world peace as it reassures the major powers with the most formidable capacities to wage war that they can prevent UN-sanctioned initiatives and military deployments which they believe threaten their interests by simply exercising their veto powers. Li's visit to Moscow indicates that Russia and China continue to oppose current U.S. global preeminence and (what they regard as) interventionist policies, and that both nations have made common cause and top priority in cooperating to block them. ***** #7 Nezavisimaya Gazeta September 7, 2000 [translation from RIA Novosti for personal use only] STRATEGY OF "GLOBALISATION LEADERSHIP" FOR RUSSIA On Priority Indirect Strategic Actions to Ensure National Security By Alexander IGNATOV, Director General, Information Analytical Agency under the Presidential Business Management Department Even a skin-deep analysis shows that globalisation is the most important processes in the past 500 years of humankind's history. I. This phenomenon should be regarded from several interdependent angles, the most important of which are: 1. "Mental," or cultural-ideological, globalisation is a comprehensive process which began very long ago and concerns traditions, religion, culture and ideology. 2. Territorial globalisation is a process of enlargement of state and supra-state formations. In addition to economy, state development and the creation of military-political unions most forcefully demonstrate the essence of globalisation. The concentration of financial, labour and other resources in a limited city space - urbanisation - can also serve as a good example of territorial globalisation. 3. Economic globalisation is a sum total of two processes: the globalisation of markets (the markets of capital, labour, commodities and services) and the globalisation of economic forms, which is understood as the enlargement of organisational structures of the economy, from the guilds of the Middle Ages to modern global super-corporations. 4. Information-communications globalisation is the most graphic example of integration processes and includes the following elements: - the development of communication possibilities and the use of outer space for beaming information; - the appearance and quick growth of global information networks; - computerisation of many aspects of humankind's life. 5. Ethnic globalisation consists of two main processes: the overall growth of the planet's population and mutual assimilation of different ethnic groups. 6. The key factor that influences modern globalisation processes is the operation of the World Government. It should be said that this supra-state structure is quite effectively operating as the headquarters of "The New World Order." However, its operation is influenced by the interests of a small elite group united by an ethnic relationship and the initiation of destructive actions. This circumstance - the usurpation of power in the World Government by a Hasidic/para-Masonic group - must be remedied without delay. II. Let's try to outline the basic trends of world development in the 21st century. 1. The common religion, for which the best minds of the planet called, will originate no sooner than in the second half of the 21st century. Integration process in the sphere of cultural globalisation is less inert, and hence we can expect the development of a global super-culture in the next 10-15 years. 2. Territorial globalisation will develop in the following directions: a/ the strengthening of traditional-type states in Latin America, South East Asia and in the former Soviet countries; b/ the development of unions and associations of states in Europe, North America and the Islamic world; c/ the appearance of continental territorial structures (North American, South American, European, Far Eastern/Pacific and Islamic); d/ the enlargement of continental territorial structures to three (American, European-Islamic and Far Eastern) or even two (Atlantic and Pacific). A common civilisation, without any division into national states or other territorial formations, will appear in a more distant future. It appears that this situation will become possible only at a stage when ethnic and cultural differences will be glossed over to a considerable degree, a process that can last at least 200-250 years. This will serve as the background for the mounting replacement of traditional states with super-corporations. In the next 10-15 years, we can expect the appearance of private companies that will have the formal elements of sovereign states, namely: - ex-territoriality; - the existence of their own legitimate armed forces; - participation in international organisations that stipulate membership only for sovereign members. Consequently, the processes of territorial globalisation, the globalisation of economic forms and urbanisation are already now merging into the process of the globalisation of management. 3. Economic globalisation is better outlined now, and its features will not change in the future. They are: a/ the leading role of large companies; b/ the operation of global "virtual" markets (financial, currency and stock markets); c/ the creation and operation of global trade and economic associations and unions; d/ the transition of all national and international financial and currency transactions, as well as insurance and trade services, to the global network. 4. The main directions of information-communication globalisation will be: a/ the development of global space communications systems; b/ the development of systems of personal communications and global positioning; c/ the creation of global systems for the management of business, industrial processes and households based on information-communication complexes; d/ computerisation and robotisation of an ever growing number of processes of human life. 5. Ethnic globalisation will be noted for the continued growth of the planet's population. The processes of the globalisation of management will create a situation by the year 2020-25, when the production of basic commodities and services will objectively satisfy the demands of not only the "golden billion" of the Rome Club, but a much larger number of people (two to three billion). The appearance of a common "planetary" ethnos in 200-250 years will logically crown all assimilation processes in the ethnic sphere. III. The history of Russia constitutes a set of interchanging cycles of support for globalisation and isolationism. The mean duration of each support cycle is 50 years. The first such cycle began in the early 18th century with the coming to power of Peter the Great and ended with his death. The second cycle began in the last third of the 18th century (Catherine II) and ended with Russia's victory in the 1812 war. The third cycle is limited to a period from the 1860s to 1917. Russia is not in the fourth cycle of support for globalisation, which formally began in 1991. The first cycle of self-isolation preceded Tsar Peter's reforms. The second began in the post-Peter period of the 18th century, and the third cycle coincided with the reactionary period during the reign of Nicholas I in the 19th century. The fourth period of isolationism was the longest (1917-91). Here is the general conclusion that can be drawn from the analysis of the current situation in the country: Russia as a historical entity and a state is objectively taking part in the processes of globalisation, but is subjectively not ready for them, which prevents it from taking a befitting place among the leaders. The counter-constructive stand of the World Government is one of the barriers hindering the advance of Russia into the ranks of the leaders of globalisation. By advancing the idea of "the golden billion," the World Government artificially limited the number of people and countries that have the right to take a leading part in globalisation processes. The Hasidic/para-Masonic group believes that Russia must not be one of such leaders and should be regarded exclusively as the source of raw materials for "The New World Order." Russia can go any one of the following three ways: 1. It can try once again to move beyond the globalisation processes of the modern world, but in this case it will cease to exist as a state, a nation and a cultural entity within 25 years. Its elite will become extinct together with it. 2. If Russia simply follows globalisation processes, it risks becoming a raw-materials element of "The New World Order." 3. The third possibility is for Russia to become one of the leaders of "The New World Order," thus ensuring its people and elite a befitting place in the subsequent history of humankind. As they say, if you can't fight them, join them. IV. The author of this article will not aspire to cover each and every aspect of this subject. His task is only to outline the strategy of "globalisation leadership." The role and place of Russia in the future planetary structure will depend above all on four "critical" resources - the "mental" sphere, the demographic situation, the level of management globalisation, and the "power" block. 1. Russia can and must become the first state to apply the policy of integration of world religions. It should legally formalise the notion of "state religion," with Christianity and Islam as its parts, as soon as possible. All other religions should be granted the status of religions "supported by the state." It is especially important to recognise the equal significance for Russia of Christianity and Islam as religious systems of the common Slavic-Turkic ethnic community. This will enable the state to develop relations with the Islamic world at a fundamentally new level, ensuring both investments from the Islamic Bank and the termination of support for the Chechen bandit groups. The attainment of goals in the ideological sphere calls for the creation of the Ministry of Ideology and Propaganda in Russia. This is not an attempt to revive the Ideological Department of the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee or the Nazi Ministry of Propaganda, but some experience accumulated by such organisations could be used for the implementation of the strategy of "globalisation leadership." 2. When tackling the following tasks in the sphere of demographic policy, one should clearly see the goal, which is to ensure such population growth rates that would again make Russia the world's third largest country in terms of population (after China and India) in the 21st century: a/ to improve the health of the people, in particular, reduce the number of alcoholics and drug addicts; b/ to raise the birth rate of the indigenous population of Russia, especially in high-income families; c/ to facilitate the processes of ethnic assimilation by encouraging interethnic marriages and programmes of resettlement of ethnic groups; d/ to limit the emigration of qualified specialists and persons in the childbearing age by introducing an exit tax. Another, separate, task is to attract foreign labour resources for the development of the Eastern regions of Russia. The basic sources of such resources are India and Korea, whose citizens are not ethnic conquerors. Taken together with the attraction of Japanese capital handled by Japanese managers and technical specialists, the use of Hindus and Koreans at new enterprises in the Eastern regions of Russia will allow us to mend the territorial imbalance without threatening the territorial integrity of the country. 3. One of the basic tasks of the globalisation of management is to create Russian super-corporations in the fuel and energy complex, in the gold and diamond, aerospace and defence industries. This list coincides with the structure of branch ministries of the former Soviet Union, which provokes certain thoughts. To begin with, the globalisation of economic forms in the Soviet Union reached a higher level as compared to the situation in the Russian Federation. Second, the conclusion about the "harm" of monopolies in the economy should be disputed; the struggle against monopolies is in fact a camouflaged process of resistance to the processes of globalisation. Both forms of de-globalisation of the Russian economy - privatisation and anti-trust - should be regarded as nothing other that the work of the Fifth Column of the World Government. Gazprom, RAO UES Rossii and the Ministry of Atomic Energy should become the core of the Russian fuel and energy super-corporation. The alliance or union with oil-and-gas and power engineering companies of the Islamic world (especially Iranian ones) should become an effective mechanism of further globalisation of such super-corporation. Russia should also create a gold-and-diamond super-corporation on the basis of Alros, on the condition that all gold and silver mines of Russia and the CIS countries join it. Such gold-and-diamond super-corporation should also embrace the platinum divisions of Norilsky Nickel. These steps will create conditions in the next three to five years for successfully competing with the De Beers - Anglo-American Corporation - Minorco triumvirate, which is very nearly a super-corporation. De Beers has long been acting as an ex-territorial global company. The integration of all Russia aviation and space enterprises should be followed by the integration of the Russian aerospace complex and the European consortium into a single super- corporation. Russia would be responsible for the space industry and military helicopter-building, its European partners would tackle civilian aircraft-building, and military aircraft-building would be the sphere of joint operation. Only in this case will we successfully compete with American aerospace concerns, which show readiness to integrate into a global super-corporation. The military-industrial super-corporation should integrate all Russian state-owned and privatised enterprises concerned with the creation, production and trade in weapons and military hardware. The task of this super-corporation would be the implementation of a common policy in the sphere of the creation and use of high technologies (from R&D to patent protection and use of licenses). Another, separate, sphere of operation of such super-corporation should be the export of programme codes. The model of state management should be overhauled, too. Issues of economic policy should be divided between the state and the super-corporations, with the state responsible for the budgetary and tax policy designed to finance state programmes. To preclude distortions in the economic policy of super-corporations, the Russian state should both have a share in the capital and take part in the management boards of the super-corporations (with the managerial share of 30-60%). The structure of the state budget should stipulate for financing the following items: - national defences and security; - the operation of the state apparatus; - fundamental sciences; - general education; - ideology and propaganda; - the encouragement of the birth rate. Other expenses are to be financed directly by the super-corporations and citizens. The state apparatus must be slashed to seven ministries: - ministry of defence; - foreign ministry; - security ministry; - interior ministry; - ministry of ideology and propaganda; - ministry of state finance; - ministry of emergencies. 4. The following strategy appears as the best possible variant of the foreign policy doctrine: Russia shall not be a member of any territorial bloc but shall be a critical factor of support for the leader of each such bloc. The policy of Russia should stipulate close cooperation with Germany in Europe, Japan in the Pacific, and Iran in the Islamic world. Without Russia's support, the leadership of these countries in the corresponding blocs could be questioned by other members. It would be expedient to reorient the Far Eastern aspect of Russia's foreign policy towards Japan, with which it does not have economic or ethnic confrontations. 5. When I spoke about the need to change the situation concerning the position of the World Government, I meant the following: The Russian elite should join the World Government and its structures in order to substantially amend the goals and methods of globalisation. All and any forms of achieving this goal will do, in particular: a/ Russian representatives should hold posts in as many international organisations as possible at the level of their executive agencies (apparatus), and not only at the level of their representative structures; b/ the Russian business elite should raise the question of creating a UN-type organisation in the sphere of super-corporate relations, where Russians should play an active part. Another important and delicate task is to introduce Russian representatives in the numerous secret organisations, which constitute the invisible basis of power of the World Government, meaning the Masonic and para-Masonic lodges, "secret" orders and other such organisations. Russia must have the possibility to influence decisions made by the secret international structures of power. V. Let's try to answer the following question: How should Russia's military doctrine look in view of the implementation of the strategy of "globalisation leadership"? In case of implementation of this strategy, the military threat to Russia will change as compared to the current situation: a/ threats posed by individual states of the traditional type; b/ threats posed by global super-corporations; c/ threats posed by territorial blocs; d/ threats posed by informal groups (including terrorist organisations and organised criminal communities). Today the potential opponents of Russia are the traditional "post-industrial" countries. In the next 25-30 years, we can expect the "American state" threat to become transformed into an "American super-corporate" threat, while Russia's potential state-type opponents will be the countries of Latin America and South East Asia. The processes of the development of territorial blocs will be inevitably linked with the striving to involve Russia as a member of such blocs, while the pursuit of a "non-alignment" policy by Russia could provoke aggressive plans on the part of such blocs. The basic form of threat on the part of the current developed "post-industrial" countries will be the use of regular armies equipped with high-tech weapons. The basic targets will be the armed forces, the infrastructure of state management and the military-industrial complex of Russia. With the appearance of super-corporations, the basic form of threat to Russia will come from the use of small mobile armed groups equipped with high-tech weapons. The super-corporations' targets will be the security systems and industrial capacities of the Russian super-corporations, as well as the information-communications infrastructure and individual leaders of Russian business. The absence of high-tech weapons in the newly industrialised countries will be compensated by the growth of their armed forces, the more so that these countries have no problems with the birth rate now, and will not have them in the future. The targets of such opponents on the Russian territory will be above all the population and defence enterprises. We can also expect a limited use of mass destruction weapons at the stage of the formation of global territorial blocs. The main reason for the use of mass destruction weapons can be the striving of individual states, who would seek regional leadership, to "correct" the number of population and the economic potential of their rivals. We should expect the division of terrorism as a phenomenon into two elements in the near future, namely into "traditional" and "subversive" terrorism. The former group will embrace nationalistic, ethnic, religious and political terrorism. In the case of "subversive" terrorism, the motive force will be the economic and territorial interests of states and super-corporations, while terrorist acts will be carried out by special task forces. To be able to repel the aggression of "post-industrial" states, Russia should have comparable amounts of mass destruction weapons and adequate highly technological weapons. To resist the newly industrialised countries, Russia should have conventional weapons capable of liquidating large amounts of personnel of the armed forces of the aggressor states. To resist "subversive" terrorism and to effectively protect the interests of Russian super-corporations abroad, Russia should have powerful special task forces united into territorial groups and maintained by the Russian super-corporations. Other defensive measures should include, in particular: a/ the maintenance of Russia's strategic nuclear forces at a level sufficient for overcoming any NMD or THAAD systems and ensuring a guaranteed liquidation of at least 50% of the economic potential or at least 30% of the population of any state; b/ global development of NMD, THAAD and air defence systems with the purpose of protecting the whole territory of Russia and its allies against an aerospace attack; c/ the development of the space-based group to a level where it would be able to ensure the operation of the space-based segment of the NMD and THAAD systems, as well as to collect intelligence information from the entire territory of the earth; d/ the allocation of the special task forces into an independent service of the armed forces under single command; e/ the implementation of the concept of real-time information backing of all sectors of command of the armed forces, from strategic to tactical ones. * * * The implementation of all aforementioned measures will enable Russia to become one of the leaders of The New World Order within 10-15 years and thus to comprehensively ensure its national security in the 21st century. ****** |
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