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Nasty rumbles from Russia's stomach
BMD Rumblings from Russia
The bear threatens and growls
As America's European allies become more enthusiastic about ballistic missile defense, a Russian general has issued an ominous warning. In a May 25 column in BMD Focus, we warned that the Russian reaction to the embrace of ballistic missile defense by NATO member nations in Europe, especially former Soviet satellites during the Cold War, "could raise tensions in Europe to a level they have not reached since the last great showdown in the Cold War a quarter of a century ago."

An article published in the Moscow newspaper Izvestiya on Tuesday, and written by a senior Russian general, adds weight to this concern.

According to a report of the article carried by Mosnews Wednesday, Yevgeny Buzhinsky, the head of the Russian Defense Ministry's international military cooperation department, wrote that Russia would interpret the deployment of U.S. anti-ballistic missile units "near the Russian borders" as "a real threat to our deterrent forces," the Russian Strategic Rocket Forces.
Rusty Russian Rockets in danger of more rust?
Russian leaders would "view the planned deployment of U.S. missile defense components in Eastern and Central Europe as a security threat and take retaliatory measures," Buzhinsky wrote.
What sort of retaliatory measures? Restore Stalinism or the KGB-Putin World view?
"We would view that as an unfriendly gesture on behalf of the United States, some eastern European nations and NATO as a whole," he wrote. "Such actions would require taking adequate retaliatory measures of military and political character."

So would it be OK to put them in Russia pointed at the muslim world, mr KGB?


Ironically, Buzhinsky's article appeared only three days after the Russian Defense Ministry announced Saturday that Russia would participate in a joint missile defense exercise in the second half of October with NATO.

According to a report carried Saturday by China's official Xinhua news agency, the exercise was scheduled to start on Monday, Oct. 16 and continue for nine days until Oct. 25.

The exercise was intended to boost "joint planning and coordination procedures for Russia and NATO air defense and anti-missile command structures," the ministry was quoted by the Itar-Tass news agency as saying. It was scheduled to take place at the Fourth Central Research Institute.

The current exercise is the third of its kind. According to the Russian Defense Ministry, they "have made it possible to practice planning, organizing and conducting concerted and coordinated combat actions to respond to non-strategic ballistic missile attacks in designated areas of responsibility," according to the Xinhua report.

The exercises are clearly intended to boost transparency and maintain trust between NATO and Russia. But Gen. Buzhinsky's article sends another, more alarming message: Russian policymakers are becoming increasingly distrustful of the United States, and they appear increasingly willing to contemplate a major offensive nuclear arms build up of their own to counter the growing deployment of U.S.-built and operated BMD forces in Central Europe.

Thanks to continued very high global oil and gas prices, the Russian government has enjoyed soaring revenues and, as we have noted in BMD Focus and our sister BMD Watch columns, it has been using some of this wealth to upgrade its Strategic Rocket Forces on a scale not seen in more than 20 years.

Also, Gen. Buzhinsky's article appeared almost a month after Marshall S. Billingslea, NATO's assistant secretary-general for defense investment, announced on Sept. 18 that the 26-nation alliance had approved the construction of a $90 million BMD command and control system over the next six years, as well as an integrated test bed for the security of all its member countries.

As we noted in these columns on Sept. 21, "The sum of $90 million, or 75 million euros, is peanuts in the multi-billion dollar world of BMD acquisition and development. But the event was nonetheless a highly significant one. It followed a series of NATO feasibility studies that reported to alliance headquarters in Brussels that a BMD system to defend the alliance's European members was both desirable and feasible."

"The Active Layered Theater Ballistic Missile Defense program will put in place an inter-operable and integrated command/control center that provides individual member country's missile defense assets to be used for the common protection of NATO and her territory," the Italian AKI news agency reported at the time.

Gen. Buzhinsky's blunt warnings in his article should be seen as an initial Russian response to the NATO announcement.

As we noted in our May 25 BMD Focus column, "The development of Iran's nuclear and ballistic missile programs has prompted at least two major European nations to sign on more enthusiastically than ever before to the U.S. BMD program."

The Bush administration hopes to deploy at least 10 ground-based anti-ballistic missile interceptors at a base in Eastern Europe by 2010 to defend European nations from an attack by a so-called "rogue nation."

The enthusiasm of European nations, especially Poland and the Czech Republic, for BMD has soared over the past six weeks, since the successful test of a Ground-Based Midcourse Interceptor launched from Alaska in destroying a target rocket fired from California on Sept. 1.

Gen. Buzhinksy's article should be seen as an initial Russian response to that development too. But it was far from the first warning of its kind. Back in May, four star Army Gen. Yuri Baluyevsky, the Russian chief of staff, warned that Russia could react in far-reaching and damaging ways against Poland if it agreed to deploy U.S. BMD systems on its territory.

"Go ahead and build that shield. You have to think, though, what will fall on your heads afterwards," Baluyevsky said. And he pointedly added, "It is understandable that countries that are part of such a shield increase their risk."

Sir Isaac Newton's Second Law of Motion teaches that every action causes an equal and opposite reaction. The zeal and success with which the Bush administration is pushing BMD deployment in Europe is setting off a Russian reaction to it that may prove to be a lot more than "equal."
Posted by: 3dc 2006-10-21
http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=169268