#9 - RW 284
RIA Novosti
November 25, 2003
RUSSIA NEEDS MILITARY BASES ABROAD

MOSCOW, November 21 (Andrei Kislyakov, RIA Novosti political analyst)

Why does Russia need military bases abroad? President Vladimir Putin answered this question at the November 18 annual session of the nation's military command, where he said we should be prepared to repel "tomorrow's" threats rather than wars of the past century.

Terrorism, with its ramified network and tested tactic of delivering weapons, has today become a global threat that can develop into a full-scale war tomorrow. It is not always possible to prevent terrorist attacks from the territory of the USA, Britain or Russia. In other words, military facilities abroad allow the mother country to project its might to the territories that pose the greatest threat today.

What is the US view of the matter? Despite the desperate entreaties of the German government, the US command has firmly decided to eliminate the bulk of its permanent bases there, using the withdrawing troops and equipment to create mobile units armed with light weaponry but greatly reinforced with aviation. They are to be dispatched to Mediterranean Africa, Eastern Europe and Central Asia in order to promptly influence Middle Eastern - above all Arabian and Afghan - territory.

Consequently, we should welcome the official opening of the Russian air force base at Kant, Kyrgyzstan, on October 23 as a step in the same direction.

However, the bulk of modern hostilities, including large-scale anti-terrorist operations of multinational forces, cannot be waged without naval support, modern navigation support and fresh intelligence. Ruslan Pukhov, director of the Strategies and Technologies Analysis Centre, had reason to say in his late October interview with Mayak radio that Russia should restore its base in Yemen, in part, by playing on the fact that Yemen is becoming a major buyer of the latest modification of the MiG-29 fighters. This base could benefit the world community by providing electronic reconnaissance of that drug-dealing region.

On the other hand, Russia may do without the base in the Gulf of Aden if it had a sufficient group of spacecraft. The hope was engendered by the words of Deputy Defence Minister Alexei Moskovsky, who said in February 2003 that the Russian Space Command would have nine new spacecraft and as many boosters by the end of the year.

So far, there is ample reason for establishing bases abroad, but not as an element of prestige or in a demonstration of Russia's flag, especially in regions where Russian troops will be deployed side by side with their American colleagues. In Kyrgyzstan, the Russian (Kant) and US (Manas) bases are located only thirty or so kilometres away from each other. The Russian base cannot be viewed as a counterbalance to the US one, because Russia's capabilities are not sufficient for this.

"The list of aviation technology to be based there (six Su-25 assault planes, six Su-27 interceptors, one An-26 transport plane, and several obsolete Czech-made L-29 trainers) prompts the conclusion that the base has no purely military significance," says Pukhov. "Purely military" in this case means as a counterbalance to the US base. But the logic is completely different.

The economic factor has a major role to play in the establishment of military facilities abroad. We should seriously study the US experience of creating units designed for service abroad. In the past, the USA built whole military settlements abroad. Today it is creating small mobile units to be used by rotation. This will greatly reduce spending on civilian infrastructure of such settlements, which are viewed not as a closed area but as a temporary facility designed to tackle modern-day tasks.

The creation of military facilities in foreign countries calls for close collaboration between many state structures, a goal to be achieved as part of the administrative reform in Russia. This co-operation entails co-ordinated work between the intelligence agencies, the economic development, foreign and defence ministries, and other structures. In this case, each military facility and each serviceman will carry out not only narrow departmental but also broad national tasks.