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Edited by David Johnson
| ISSUE #58 | July 23, 1999 |
| ISSUE #58 | July 23, 1999 |
#1 New video documentary from the Center for Defense Information: Can America Work With Russia? Examines impact of war in Yugoslavia on US-Russian relations. Kosovo is but one of many flashpoints for deadly conflict that lie close to the border of the former Soviet Union. Yet U.S. efforts to work with Russia to avoid conflicts have been generally bungled. Are there advantages to a new, more cooperative relationship with Russia? Will be shown in Washington DC area on Sunday July 25 Channel 32 WHUT 12:30pm Featured experts: Jonas Bernstein--Jamestown Foundation/Moscow Times Fritz Ermarth--former chairman, National Intelligence Council Dale Herspring--former naval officer and State Department official Michael McFaul--Stanford/Carnegie Endowment Alexander Pikayev--Carnegie Moscow Center Brent Scowcroft--former national security advisor to President Bush VHS tapes of half-hour program can be ordered from CDI for $29: 1-800-CDI-3334 Or send email to Moon Callison: mcalliso@cdi.org Transcripts of program and interviews plus information about other videos on Russia will be available at: http://www.cdi.org/adm/1246/ These are the best up-to-moment videos on Russia and US-Russia relations and are ideal for educational uses.
#4 Russian Arms Exports Reach Record High MOSCOW, Jul 22, 1999 -- (AFP) Russian weapons exports hit an all-time high for the first half of the year, and revenues were expected to climb higher with the opening of new markets in the Middle East, Interfax reported Wednesday. Russia's official arms exporter Rosvooruzheniye has already seen profits reach 1.3 billion dollars, a figure nearly triple all previous highs that could climb to 2.5 billion dollars by the end of the year, defense experts said. Arms traders Promexport and Antei were likewise expecting record annual profits, which could bring the sector's total export revenues to 3.2 billion dollars, said Konstantin Makiyenko, head of the nongovernmental Center for Strategic and Technological Analysis. He said the Russian defense industry "is very close to opening two new markets -- Syria, and, following the long-awaited lifting of sanctions over Tripoli, Libya." Russian arms dealers might also renew ties with Iran should that country's relations with the US improve, he said, adding Moscow would for the meantime "stick to its commitment not to sign new arms contracts (with Tehran)." Earlier this month Syrian President Hafez al-Assad concluded his first visit to Moscow since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Reports that the visit had revived the Russian-Syrian arms trade met with strong disapproval from the US. Washington maintains tough sanctions against both Syria and Iran by threatening to withhold aid from countries that contribute to weapons build-ups in a blacklist of countries deemed to sponsor terrorism. Russia complains the policy has deprived its lagging defense sector of possibly lucrative markets.
#5 Moscow Times July 22, 1999 DEFENSE DOSSIER: Balkan Conflict Infects East By Pavel Felgenhauer The war over Kosovo has ended, but the ramifications of the U.S.-led aggression are beginning to spread worldwide, provoking new conflicts, potentially much more serious than the Balkan drama. The first casualty of the post-Kosovo destabilization of international law and order was the "one China" policy, which was officially ditched by Taiwan last week when Taiwanese President Lee Teng-hui reaffirmed his contention that Taiwan and China are two separate states. The "one China" principal has kept the peace in the Asia-Pacific region for several decades. But today Lee Teng-hui obviously figured that if the United States flouted its obligations under the UN Charter and the Helsinki Final Act to support a separatist movement in an obscure corner of the Balkans, it will in the end surely support his bid for equal status with Beijing. Most Americans knew nothing about Kosovo and even today, after the war, care little about it, whereas Taiwan has a well-established lobby in the United States and defiance of Beijing is supported by the Republican majority in Congress. Extremely bad relations between Beijing and Washington after the bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade may also have prompted Lee Teng-hui to move. But there is one more fundamental reason for Taipei's current recklessness - the relative military weakness of mainland China. The Chinese defense forces are great in numbers, but their conventional equipment is in most cases more primitive than that of the Yugoslavs. The backbone fighter of China's air force is the J-6, a clone of the Soviet MiG-19 - Russia's first supersonic fighter built in the early '50s. If today the United States sent its Navy and Air Force to support Taiwan in a war of independence, it would be a military walkover. Of course, China has nuclear weapons, but will hardly use them against the United States in a local conventional air-sea engagement. China's defense doctrine does not envisage first use of nukes because this would mean only self-destruction. Today China has less than 10 intercontinental ballistic missiles that can reach the U.S. mainland. China cannot destroy the United States, but the United States can obliterate China. The risk of a conflict over Taiwan going nuclear is insignificant, and decision-makers in Washington know that. In 1996, the last period of high tension in the region, the United States moved two aircraft carrier battle groups into the Taiwan Straits that separate the island from the mainland. Then U.S. Defense Secretary Bill Perry personally and very firmly told the Chinese that the United States would meet force with force. As a result, Beijing was forced to calm down. The renewed conflict over Taiwan can also end only in a humiliating climb-down by China. Of course, the Chinese military has the resources to attack and capture a string of small islands controlled by the Taiwanese, some of which are only a couple of kilometers away from China's shores. But even such a purely symbolic endeavor may provoke a major air-sea battle that China will surely lose. For two decades the Beijing authorities were doing their best to maintain China's unity and bring Hong Kong and Taiwan into the fold by patient negotiations. But today, after the Kosovo war, there is no incentive left for the Taiwanese to check their desire for secession. What China badly needs today is rapid modernization of its air-sea capabilities to match the U.S. and Taiwanese forces in the straits. The stage is set for a major regional arms race. Since 1992, China has been slowly enhancing its military capabilities by buying Russian arms and military technologies to the tune of about $1 billion a year. China has purchased up to 70 Su-27 long-range fighters and a license to build 200 more, four Kilo submarines and some S-300 SA rockets. But these armaments are insufficient to meet a possible joint U.S.-Taiwanese force in battle. To cope with the Taiwan problem - if an armed conflict is indeed imminent - China must increase its arms purchases from Russia five-fold. China will need more modern fighters, long-range bombers, anti-ship missiles, cruise missile interceptors, SAMs, "intelligent" sea mines to block Taiwan's shipping lanes, and so on. China has the money to go on an arms shopping spree. The Russian military has an abundance of such weapons and will be glad to sell them to Beijing for use against the Americans. In the early '90s, many Russian generals sincerely saw China as a potential enemy and the United States as a strategic partner. Today, after Kosovo, the opposite is true.
#6 Moscow Intends 'To Broaden' Ties With US in All Areas MOSCOW. July 20 (Interfax) - The Russian Foreign Ministry's spokesman Vladimir Rakhmanin said at a briefing in Moscow on Tuesday that relations with the United States are of great importance for Russia which intends to broaden them in all areas. He said that the talks held by the Russian and American presidents in Cologne helped overcome "the alienation [in bilateral relations] that appeared during the Kosovo crisis." Regarding the upcoming talks between Russian Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin and U.S. Vice President Albert Gore who co-chair the Russian-American intergovernmental commission for economic cooperation, he said that Moscow "has always viewed this mechanism as an important factor of promoting Russian-American partnership." Rakhmanin also said that "in dealings with Washington Moscow has never violated any of its commitments." "The freezing of relations with NATO after the beginning of air strikes on Yugoslavia does not refer to bilateral relations with the Alliance's member-countries," he said. He said that the Kosovo settlement had finally been put on a peaceful track largely due to Russia's and the United States' diplomatic efforts."
#7 IVANOV: NO WINNERS OR LOSERS IN KOSOVO MOSCOW (July 20) XINHUA - Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov said Tuesday that there were no winners or losers in the Kosovo conflict. "The whole of the Balkan operation is a series of blunders, including political, international, military and information ones, " Ivanov said in an interview with the Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper. "A lot of miscalculations were made during the analysis of the situation in Yugoslavia and its possible consequences," the minister said. Moscow has been against NATO's military solution to the Kosovo crisis from the very beginning and suspected its ties with the transatlantic alliance when it started a 78-day air campaign against Yugoslavia on March 24. It resumed limited contacts with NATO last month, mainly in the area of cooperation in peacekeeping operations in the Yugoslav province. Ivanov said the reason for the whipping up of tension around Yugoslavia was "to put to trial the resolutions, drawn up by NATO during the past several months," including the use of force without a mandate from the U.N. Security Council and outside NATO' s sphere of responsibility. "This goes beyond the sphere of the Balkan problem," Ivanov said, "In fact, this means the struggle for the future world setup. " He sees the deployment of massive international peacekeeping troops in Kosovo as "an inevitable measure, but it is not at all the best way to maintain peace and stability in the area. Russia, which will eventually have 3,600 peacekeepers in Kosovo, will try "not to allow the situation to become permanent," Ivanov said.
#8 Izvestia July 20, 1999 Black Sea Servicemen Will Learn to Shoot Down Tomahawks The idea of conducting the naval exercise of the Black Sea Fleet according to the scenario of the recent events in Yugoslavia had been suggested by President Boris Yeltsin, writes IZVESTIA. It has not been disclosed when the exercise will take place and what forces will take part in it, but a source in the General Staff of the Russian navy told the paper that it will be a corrected version of a regular exercise with a stress on using naval and ground air defense systems, on hitting air and sea targets and also using the means of radio-electronic jamming. The Black Sea Fleet has partly fulfilled this program during the West-99 exercise. Probably, to meet the President's demand the Black Sea Fleet will have to demonstrate, according to an extended program, its capability to conduct battles with an enemy armada delivering strikes at Russia from the air and from the sea. Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin has instructed the naval leadership to conduct the exercise in accordance with the Yugoslavian scenario and practice countering all aggressive actions conducted by the NATO forces in the Balkans. So, the exercise will obviously be of an anti-NATO character. This may prevent the Ukrainian naval force to actively join Russia's military exercise. The point is that Ukraine and the U.S. plan to conduct a joint naval exercise in the Mediterranean in the framework of NATO's Partnership for Peace program. It is safe to suppose that Ukraine will prefer the NATO version to that of Russia. Perhaps it is not always reasonable to publicize the political implications of such military exercises, the paper writes in conclusion. Vladimir Yermolin
#9 Date: Tue, 20 Jul 1999 From: Tomas Valasek Subject: CDI Georgia Study The Center for Defense Information announces the release of a research report entitled, "The Armed Forces in Georgia." Georgia, a former Soviet Republic located between the Caspian and Black Seas and to the south of Russia, plays an important role in efforts to export oil from the Caspian Sea to the West. The new study offers a detailed description and analysis of Georgia's security situation, including the status of Abkhazia and South Ossetia, two territories that waged a war for secession in the early 1990s. Decision-makers, the media, and the academic and business worlds will benefit from the study's survey of the paramilitary groups operating on the territory of Georgia. Copies of the study are available by calling the Center for Defense Information at (202) 332-0600 or e-mailing Tomas Valasek. For more information, visit us on the web at: http://www.cdi.org/issues/europe/gastudy.html
#10 Shevardnadze Says Russia, US 'Doomed' To Cooperation TBILISI. July 19 (Interfax) -- Georgian President Eduard Shevardnadze expressed confidence on Monday that Russia and the United States would continue to deepen their cooperation in the future "because there is no other way." Russia and the United States "are doomed" to cooperation, Shevardnadze told a news conference in Tbilisi. "Russia needs it" and it is also in the United States' interest to "build a normal relationship with that great state." The Georgian president did not think that the planned project to build a transport artery to follow the route of the Great Silk Road and pass through the South Caucasus and Central Asia would cause friction between Moscow and Washington. "Russia can join the project at any time," he said. But Russia's participation would make sense only if Georgia settles its conflict with its breakaway Abkhazia region, Shevardnadze argued. This would allow a large stream of goods to flow from north to south, he said. Answering a question, Shevardnadze said that behind an exile Georgian opposition movement in Russia were "powerful" forces that "are fighting against democracy in Russia itself." But "the political struggle in Russia will not grow into another putsch," he added.
#11 St. Petersburg Times July 20, 1999 Kennedy Legend Thrived In Russia By Brian Whitmore STAFF WRITER The latest Kennedy tragedy has evoked nostalgia in Russia for the president who is still seen by many here as the ideal romantic American leader. While little is known in Russia about John F. Kennedy Jr., his father and namesake, the 35th president of the United States, enjoyed a certain cult status here in the 1960s. President John F. Kennedy "was everything that our leaders were not - charismatic, young and glamorous," said Moscow-based political analyst Andrei Piontkovsky. "There was a kind of Kennedy-mania in the Soviet Union in the 1960s," Piontkovsky said. "He was young, energetic, and there was a romantic aura about him. I think we loved him even more than the Americans loved him." Piontkovsky added that the only Western leader to rival Kennedy in the Russian imagination was former British prime minister Margaret Thatcher. For Russians of Piontkovsky's generation, the lasting image of the younger John Kennedy is the Nov. 25, 1963 photo of the famous first son - on his third birthday - saluting the coffin of his slain father. The image was shown repeatedly on Russian television over the weekend. "It is as if an evil fate follows this family," said Yevgeny Kiselyov, host of NTV's popular weekly current affairs program Itogi. News of Kennedy Jr.'s apparent death this weekend - in a plane crash that is presumed to have also claimed the lives of his wife and sister-in-law - led Itogi's broadcast on Sunday night. Despite Cold War tensions, the Ken nedy mystique managed to penetrate the Iron Curtain. The attraction is particularly strong with the generation of Russians known as the shestidesyatniki who came of age in the 1960s. These people, now in their 50s, approached adulthood during Kennedy's presidency - which coincided in the Soviet Union with a brief liberalization, known as the "thaw," under Soviet leader Nikita Krushchev. "I liked President Kennedy very much and I wasn't alone. Most of my generation adored him," said St. Petersburg poet Viktor Krivulin, 55. "He was the first American president that we saw as a good and humanitarian person. In fact, many of us sympathized with Ken nedy a lot more than with Krushchev." "When Kennedy was killed, I realized that history will not tolerate a political leader with a human face," added Krivulin, who was a teenager when Kennedy was assassinated. ''The first thing I thought when I heard the news Saturday" - of Kennedy Jr.'s disappearance - "was, my God, that poor family. I am certain they are cursed." The Russian fascination with the elder Kennedy even extends to the Kremlin. At the G-8 summit meeting in Cologne, Germany last month, President Boris Yeltsin - trying to mend the troubled Russian-American relationship - handed U.S. President Bill Clinton a strange and unexpected peace offering: the Soviet KGB's formerly secret files on the Kennedy assassination. The thick stack of KGB files, containing some 80 documents, included surveillance information about alleged Kennedy assassin Lee Harvey Oswald - who lived in the Soviet Union from 1959 until 1962 - and details about Moscow's reaction to Kennedy's assassination in Dallas on Nov. 22, 1963. In his memoirs, Yeltsin even ventured his own theory about the assassination, suggesting, on the basis of a report from an officer with the KGB secret police to the Soviet Communist Party Central Committee, that Ken nedy was assassinated by a conspiracy of Texas oil magnates. The Kennedy cult also lived on even among those who were too young to remember the slain president. "For people of my generation, Kennedy was a romantic hero," said Tatyana Korebanova, 39, a language teacher. "The absolute best compliment a girl could give a boy was to tell him that he looked like John F. Kennedy."
#12 Russia: Washington State Officials Prepare To Welcome Stepashin By Bruce Keppel Bellingham, Washington, 21 July 1999 (RFE/RL) -- Officials in the U.S. Pacific coast state of Washington are planning an elaborate welcome Sunday for Russian Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin, who will make an overnight stop in Seattle en route to Washington, D.C., for a meeting Tuesday with U.S. Vice President Al Gore. Stepashin will be the guest of honor at a dinner to be jointly hosted by Washington Governor Gary Locke, Washington Secretary of State Ralph Monro, and Washington's two U.S. senators, Democrat Patty Murray and Republican Slade Gorton. Stepashin is expected to speak on regional economic cooperation before an audience heavily weighted toward Pacific Northwest business and trade leaders. Carol Vipperman, president of the private Foundation for Russian American Economic Cooperation, is helping to coordinate the prime minister's agenda. She told RFE/RL that Stepashin is expected to arrive in Seattle around midday Sunday after a series of meetings in the Russian Far East. Vipperman says Stepashin is to meet with executives of Boeing, the world's largest airplane maker and aerospace concern. Boeing is involved with Russia in such major continuing projects as the International Space Station and Sea Launch, the oceangoing satellite-launching enterprise based in California. She says Stepashin is also to meet with executives of Microsoft, the world's leading computer-software company. Both Microsoft and Boeing have their headquarters in the Seattle area. Washington state is a leading American trade partner of Russia. It has continued to maintain trade relations despite Russia's financial collapse last August. In announcing Stepashin's visit, Secretary of State Monro recalled the early days of the state's initiatives toward the Russian Far East and China. He said "we were establishing relationships while others were laughing at us for being in Russia and China." Washington state maintains its own trade offices in both countries, largely due to the efforts of Monro. President Boris Yeltsin last year honored Monro for his efforts by bestowing on him the Russian Order of Friendship, Russia's highest honor for non-citizens. In announcing Stepashin's visit, Governor Gary Locke portrayed the preparations as underscoring the state's long-standing trade and cultural ties with the Russian Far East. Locke noted that Stepashin is the highest-ranking Russian leader to come to Washington state since Yeltsin's historic visit to the Seattle area five years ago. It also will mark Stepashin's first visit to the United States since being appointed prime minister last May. Governor Locke said he is "delighted that Prime Minister Stepashin has chosen Seattle as a destination on his trip to the United States." He said, "We look forward to showing him the best that Washington has to offer, and we hope to discuss our trade and investment relationships with the Russian Far East." Vipperman says Stepashin also will be briefed on the efforts of a special bilateral working group that concentrates on fostering increased trade and investment between the U.S. West Coast and the Russian Far East. Vipperman's staff at the Foundation for Russian American Economic Cooperation provides the secretariat for this group, which now is known as the U.S. West Coast-Russian Far East Ad Hoc Working Group. The group has undertaken a number of programs to improve trade relations between the two regions. These include streamlining customs procedures and developing a new trade route from the U.S. West Coast to China through the Russian Far East. Vipperman says the Russians have expressed interest in duplicating this regional model in linking up other parts of the federation with other parts of the United States. One such linking, she says, could be the St. Petersburg area with the New England states on the U.S. East Coast. The West Coast regional group operates under the umbrella of the U.S.-Russian Joint Commission on Economic and Technological Cooperation. This is the bi-national body originally co-chaired by Vice President Al Gore and then-Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, and now by Stepashin. Stepashin will be accompanied by a delegation that is expected to include a number of cabinet ministers, governors from the Russian Far East, and Russian journalists.
#13 Jamestown Foundation Monitor July 22, 1999 DEFENSE MINISTRY WANTS NEW WEAPONRY. A sharpening of tensions between the Russian military leadership and the government over the country's defense procurement budget appears to have surfaced in recent days. According to a July 20 newspaper report, Defense Ministry officials are now openly accusing the Finance Ministry of neglecting to allocate funds for the purchase of weapons and other military equipment. The report says that the Defense Ministry has received funding for only 20 percent of the planned procurement budget for the first half of this year. Colonel General Anatoly Sitnov, director of the Defense Ministry's weapons department, was quoted as saying that the Finance Ministry has indicated that it will allocate the rest of the funding no earlier than the last week of this year's fourth quarter. The Defense Ministry's arrears to weapons producers already total some 20 billion rubles, however, and, according to Sitnov, the weapons makers are unwilling to extend the military additional credit (Vremya MN, July 20). At the heart of the current dispute appears to be a Defense Ministry plan--revealed last week by Sitnov--to purchase a considerable amount of new military hardware. Sitnov told reporters that the Defense Ministry intended this year to procure ten Topol-M intercontinental ballistic missiles for the Strategic Missile Forces, a new Tu-160 strategic bomber for the Air Force, radar stations for the country's air defense forces, a nuclear submarine and several warships for the navy, and 100 BTR-80A armed personnel carriers, thirty T-90 tanks and twenty-four self-propelled artillery launchers for Russia's conventional forces. Defense Ministry officials reportedly presented the purchase plan as a modest one. Sitnov in turn suggested its approval would demonstrate the president's and the government's concern for Russia's armed forces and the country's national security (Russian agencies, July 17; Vremya MN, July 20). The fly in the ointment, however, was that Sitnov's remarks came as Deputy Prime Minister Ilya Klebanov was telling a Russian newspaper that the Russian army is too broke to consider buying any new weaponry. Klebanov, who oversees Russia's defense industrial sector, said that the Russian army would have to rely instead on upgrading its current arsenal. "It is possible to modernize military hardware of the previous generation, investing only about 30 percent of the price of a new weapon, and to bring it to the state-of-the-art level," he was quoted as saying. He also said that the army would be permitted to buy only "what cannot be modernized." He admitted that the government's policy on this issue would not please defense plant managers (AP, Itar-Tass, July 16). The tensions between the government and the military leadership over arms procurement are nothing new, and reflect the diminutive military budgets that have been a reality for the Defense Ministry over the past decade or so. But the fact that Sitnov went public on this occasion with a specific laundry list of proposed defense purchases--and accused the Finance Ministry of neglecting the armed forces--appears to be something of a departure (at least with respect to the period of time that current Russian Defense Minister Igor Sergeev, a Yeltsin-loyalist has been at his post). The Defense Ministry's more open advocacy of its wants in this instance is probably a consequence in part of the recent conflict in the Balkans. Military leaders insist that the NATO air campaign in Yugoslavia has forced Moscow to upgrade its own defenses. Yeltsin has acceded to this point rhetorically and joined the more general jingoism that engulfed Russia during the Balkans conflict. Military leaders now appear to be demanding that he meet his earlier commitment.
#14 The Russia Journal July 19-25, 1999 For some soldiers, it pays to volunteer Moral as high as the pay for Russians in Kosovo Igor Frolov/The Russia Journal While most nations' troops sent to Kosovo for peacekeeping duty may complain of being away from home, Russian airborne forces sent there are "full of patriotism" and in the highest of spirits, according to their commander, Colonel General Georgy Shpak. "The troops ? have a high esprit de corps [and] a willingness to do their best. The soldiers and officers are prepared to face any situation, including combat action," Shpak said recently. Why the high spirits? One explanation may be wages received by the soldiers, all volunteers for the duty. The $1,070 in monthly wages is an enormous sum by Russian standards. Defense Ministry analysts say the "wage factor" has been among the main attractions inspiring Russian soldiers and officers to volunteer for KFOR. The number of volunteers has exceeded the number of positions in the contingent, and a contest helped select the best soldiers and officers. At the same time, the Balkan campaign is a luxury for crisis-ridden Russia. Geopolitical considerations have prevailed over economic ones. Some question what the country is doing in the Balkans when it has not managed to set things straight at home, specifically in the North Caucasus. Although Russia's leaders appear to be trying not to think about domestic problems, soldiers and officers in the Russian contingent in Kosovo will hardly be able to refrain from drawing parallels. After all, Chechnya and Kosovo have much in common. Both are Muslim enclaves seeking independence and, in both cases, force was applied to push a political solution. At the same time, Russia and NATO pursue different goals in Kosovo. The KLA views NATO as an ally and Russia as an enemy. A danger exists that the Albanian separatists might take action against Russian peacekeepers to oust them from Kosovo. So far, it appears Russia's contingent in Kosovo is prepared for possible KLA provocation. Shpak said that Russian peacekeepers in Kosovo are equipped with powerful weapons and will take the Chechen war experience into account. Each Russian battalion in Kosovo has an artillery and mortar support unit, and battle helicopters are ready to come to help in an emergency. Russian peacekeepers also can count on assistance from peacekeeping contingents of other countries. Most important, according to Shpak, is that unlike in the Chechen campaign, Russia's KFOR contingent has a high esprit de corps. The Russian force sent to fight against Chechen militants in December 1994 was not a volunteer contingent. Five hundred and forty generals and officers refused to participate in the federal intervention and all of them, with very few exceptions, were dismissed from the Russian Armed Forces. Among reasons for refusing to fight against Chechen rebels, Russian officers most often cite social problems, specifically poor housing conditions and low wages. The Russian public did not support the Chechen campaign, and many troops felt themselves hostage to the ambitions of politicians. Furthermore, the system of morale training and education in the Russian military had degraded by that time. The federal government lost the "propaganda war" with Chechnya. For the first time since its debacle in Chechnya, the armed forces' high command is now optimistic due to its role in Kosovo.
#15 Stratfor commentary www.stratfor.com NATO Remains at Core of Russian Foreign and Domestic Power Struggles July 19, 1999 On July 15, a highly placed official in the Russian Defense Ministry reportedly told Russia’s Interfax news agency that Russian Col. Gen. Viktor Zavarzin had no intention of meeting with NATO officials during a recent visit to Brussels, and was there only to coordinate Russian peacekeeping activities. The official said that Zavarzin had no plans to "thaw" relations with the alliance and said that such a situation would not occur "at least until the autumn." Russia severed all contacts with NATO at the start of the Yugoslav air campaign on March 24. In a press conference July 19, however, Russian Foreign Minister Igor Ivanov contradicted General Zavarzin’s reported statements, saying talks could possibly begin this week between NATO and Russian officials in Brussels. Ivanov said that contacts were being prepared and that while they were to focus primarily on the Kosovo peacekeeping situation, he did not rule out preliminary contact on a broader scale. While Russia’s Foreign Ministry appears to be overruling the Defense Ministry’s reluctance to normalize relations with NATO, Prime Minister Sergei Stepashin appeared to fall in on the military’s side over the weekend. During a visit to the Ukrainian port of Sevastopol July 17, Stepashin ordered the Russian Black Sea Fleet to prepare for an exercise to "simulate a war over Yugoslavia." Stepashin said Ukrainian government officials had approved the exercises, but he did not specify a date or other details about the exercises. Stepashin said that the exercises had been ordered by Russian President Boris Yeltsin and were designed to counter the specific countermeasures used by NATO during the Yugoslav air campaign. Clearly Russia’s relations with NATO remain at the heated core of Russian politics, and are the subject of an apparent power struggle between Russia’s ministries, but who is on what side, and why? The seeming contradiction in this case stems from the fact that the NATO issue is being used two distinct ways in two distinct situations. First, the direct contradiction by Foreign Minister Ivanov of General Zavarzin Russia’s representative to NATO and the head of the Russian contingent that took the Slatina airport in Kosovo reflects an ongoing struggle by Russia’s civilian foreign policy apparatus to rein in the military and regain control over Russia’s international agenda. The power struggle that erupted when the Russian military moved into Kosovo without informing Ivanov is evidently still raging. Slatina was a blow to the credibility of the Russian diplomatic corps, and Ivanov is desperately trying to pull the Defense Ministry under control to avoid any further embarrassments. That it has taken this long is evidence of just how tired Russia’s military and political hardliners are of Russia’s constant retreat. Stepashin’s comments, on the other hand, also deal with the aftermath of the Slatina incident specifically to Ukraine’s behavior in the hours after the incident. Ukraine temporarily closed its airspace to Russian attempts to re-supply and reinforce its troops at Slatina, a momentary pro-NATO initiative which Moscow has still not forgiven. Russia has launched an all out campaign to coax and badger Ukraine back into Russia’s sphere of influence. Ukraine has responded by declaring both neutrality and "strategic partnership" with Russia. It is unclear how Ukraine can be both neutral and Russia’s strategic partner, and Moscow is attempting to goad Ukraine into a closer relationship. Stepashin’s statement was pointed directly at defining exactly where Ukraine stands: You are either with us, or against us. If the exercises, directly aimed at NATO, are ultimately carried out on a joint level with Ukrainian and Russian forces, Ukraine will be signaling its capitulation to Russia over military relations with the West.
#16 Christian Science Monitor July 22, 1999 A red-hot race for the cold war moon By Robert C. Cowen Every journalist deserves at least one epic story. For James Schefter - and this reviewer - it has been humanity's outreach to interplanetary space. Metaphorically speaking, our species has only waded along the edge of the cosmic ocean. But this hesitant excursion has been a transforming experience. Journalists who covered the story sensed this. Even the skeptics were caught up in the adventure. It's doubtful that any of us can give a truly objective retrospective account of those epochal events. This is especially true of Schefter for whom the unfoldment of human space flight through the Apollo moon landings was a full-time assignment. Because he could live with the Houston-based program and because of special access granted a Time-Life magazine correspondent, he had an intimate view. That's the perspective from which he reviews the 1960s moon race. It was indeed a race. Never mind that Soviet space prowess later proved to be largely smoke and mirrors, as Schefter explains. Russian program leader Sergie Korolev's clever use of slender resources produced a series of spectacular "firsts." Lofting the first artificial satellites and orbiting Yuri Gagarin wowed the world. The equally spectacular, and often multiple, failures were kept secret. Meanwhile, the United States embarrassed itself with well publicized bloopers. This spurred the Kennedy administration to reach for the ultimate "first" - human lunar exploration. Schefter's take on that oft-told tale is a mixture of historical research and gleanings from his notebooks. Access to once secret Russian and American documents aided the research. Extensive interviews with many of the surviving Russian and American moon racers has fleshed out his notes and memories. Unlike the reporting at the time, this warts-and-all narrative does not gloss over the human frailties of its heroic figures. With the exception of John Glenn, the Mercury Seven astronauts were womanizers and heavy drinkers - character flaws that took a toll on their families. The earthy language of these vignettes gives readers a feeling for the high-pressure lives the moon racers led. This is a privileged reporter's personal retrospective, not scholarly history. Nevertheless, it corroborates several historically important points: *In spite of their denials, the Russians were secretly trying to mount a lunar landing effort. Its failure was due to lack of resources and bureaucratic problems. *Both the US and the old Soviet Union were victims of their paranoia. There was no need for Americans to panic over Soviet space successes. US determination and industrial strength soon established parity and sewed up the moon race. The Soviet government's passion for secrecy and fear of internal dissent handicapped its civilian space program. It didn't help cosmonauts' morale to know that their ships carried explosives that mission control could trigger should they head for "enemy" territory. *The US won the moon race and wondered what to do next. The Russians lost the race and pursued a permanently inhabited space station with spectacular success. *Forget the transient politics. The American and Russian space programs of the 1950s and '60s were, to use Schefter's phrase, "the grandest adventure of the twentieth century." No amount of objective history could convince Schefter - or me - otherwise. *Robert C. Cowen writes on science for the Monitor.
#17 Kosovo Results Applied To Future Wars Nezavisimoye Voyennoye Obozreniye, No. 25 July 2-8, 1999 [translation for personal use only] Article by Vadim Solovyev: "RF Ministry of Defense Analyzes Results of Balkan War, Russian Exercise" The Academy of Military Sciences Predicts the Character of Armed Struggle in the 21st Century. NATO's limited half-war against Yugoslavia and the full-scale strategic command-staff exercise conducted in Russia for the first time in the last 15 years shook up the defense consciousness of the country, which has been dozing up until now. An assembly of the RF Academy of Military Sciences [AVN] on the fifth year of its founding was turned into an essentially working seminar on interpreting the two sign post military campaigns both in the Balkans and in the western Russian theater of military operations. How meaningful this assembly of military scholars turned out to be can be judged by the ranks of those present: Minister of Defense Igor Sergeyev, Chief of General Staff Anatoliy Kvashnin, Ministry of Defense State Secretary Nikolay Mikhaylov, representatives of the apparatus of the chairman of the government, and commanders in chiefs of the branches of the Armed Forces. In a word, the defense establishment of the state. In addition, all of them are members of the Academy of Military Sciences, headed by Army General Makhmut Gareyev. Such a newly formed situation is neither conjunctural nor chance. As Marshall Sergeyev recognized, a substantial gap has appeared in the scientific approaches to operational-strategic and military-technical problems. In his opinion, new ideas are poorly introduced and it is essential not to allow thoughtless copying of what would seem to be effective methods and means of conducting war in certain situations. The recent SKShU [strategic command-staff exercises] showed that the quality of operational foresight leaves much to be desired. This reproach is not directed so much on the head of the military as on the style of work of staffs and various subunits. The organic combination of scientific and practical activity from now on will become one of the main criteria in evaluating the performance of commanders and chiefs at all levels. The thesis resounded throughout that the existing classification of troops is in need of a fundamental reexamination, for the events of recent months have proven that shifts have taken place in strategic priorities as well as in the priorities in the types of troops caused by, along with political factors in world development, substantial changes in the technical bases for conducting armed struggle. First of all, this is in regard to precision weapons, reconnaissance equipment, weapons based on new physical principles (particularly laser and non-lethal), and also to methods for reducing the observability of combat equipment. Enormous prospects are found in space equipment for navigation and target indication. In particular, the most important condition for success in future wars will be the seizure and retention of information superiority over the enemy, moreover, not only on the field of battle, but in a wider context; that is, over the system of political leadership of a country or an alliance. Confrontation will be unfurled in this front long before the beginning of the war, in peace time. It is not ruled out that information operations will become a new form of combat actions which will unfold in all spheres and at all levels of armed struggle: acquisition of information, keeping the enemy from obtaining it, information strikes, maneuvers, and defense of one's troops. All of these are optimal methods for increasing the relative advantage over the enemy. Consequently, one should expect changes in direct strategic missions and in methods and means for using various types of weapons, which means in the branches and types of troops. The development of military operations is seen in the following manner: Before they begin, the enemy will try to conduct a wide complex of measures to conceal the character of the operations, particularly preparations for an attack. First of all, these will be disinformation operations. Probably, the war will begin not on land, but with strikes on groupings of air-space forces aimed at destroying troops and weapons control systems, then the unleashing of electronic warfare and destruction of enemy antimissile and air defense forces will follow. At the same time, the massive, deep employment of precision weapons will begin, which will give the impetus for intensifying the air campaign. The goal of the first and consequent air operations will consist in suppressing military-state control systems, winning air superiority, undermining the morale of the defenders, and seizing the strategic initiative. In any case, one should expect the application of precision weapons on chemical and nuclear facilities and the emergence of an ecologically dangerous situation. As a result, the level of the defenders' resistance will be substantially reduced which opens up the opportunity for the successful conducting of ground forces and naval operations. The operations of the attacker will have a highly maneuverable character without a sharply delimited front line. The attack will be planned on separate sectors where the enemy's defenses have been suppressed to the greatest degree. Assault troops will be widely used deep in the defenders' territory--autonomous raiding detachments and various vehicle formations. In a word, operations in the next century will have a widescale, earth-space character in which strikes will be delivered by terrestrial, air, and space resources to the complete depth of the enemy's territory. It is necessary to combine all this with multiple landings of air and sea assault forces, attacking not only from the front and flanks, but from various directions, including in the rear. Stand-off fire strikes outside of the range of the enemy's retaliation zone will be widely used, which will become a decisive operational-strategic factor. And one more feature of a war in the 21st century will consist in the fact the entire country will be turned into a battlefield, including its industrial facilities, transportation infrastructure, and much else. Consequently, the role of civil defense will grow. So now where do we get the money for the necessary preparation of Russia for a possible military encounter in the 21st century? The generals, who know how to organize the state's defense do not have an answer to this question at their disposal and address it to the government with this remark: "Defense costs as much as you value your sovereignty."