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| Caucasus/Russia/Central Asia |
| Pooty-Poots panties bunch up |
| 2006-05-11 |
| MOSCOW -- President Vladimir Putin warned yesterday that the U.S.-Russian arms race is not over and called for a strengthening of his nation's nuclear and conventional forces so Moscow can better resist foreign pressure. The remarks, in his seventh state of the nation address since taking power in 2000, follow increasingly sharp criticism of Russia's democratic and foreign policy directions from the United States, including a harsh rebuke by Vice President Dick Cheney last week in Lithuania. "It is premature to speak of the end of the arms race," said Mr. Putin, who pointed out in the nationally televised address that U.S. defense spending is 25 times higher than Russia's and said his country needs to catch up. "Their house is their fortress? Well done," he said. "But it means that we must build our house strongly, reliably, because we see what is going on in the world. "We must always be ready to counter any attempts to pressure Russia in order to strengthen positions at our expense," he continued. "The stronger our military is, the less temptation there will be to exert such pressure on us." Mr. Putin said Russia's military would work to strengthen both its nuclear deterrent and its conventional forces but without repeating "the mistakes of the Soviet Union and of the Cold War" by draining the country's resources. Many analysts attribute the collapse of communism in Russia to the Kremlin's inability to keep up with U.S. arms spending during the Reagan administration, particularly its space-based anti-missile initiative known familiarly as "Star Wars." Skyrocketing world energy prices have provided oil-rich Russia with windfall surpluses that could be used to fund at least a modest defense buildup. Russian revenues totaled $41.8 billion compared with expenditures of $25.5 billion in the first two months of this year, the Novosti news agency reported. Mr. Putin said his government would soon commission two nuclear submarines equipped with the first new intercontinental ballistic missiles developed in Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union and that land-based strategic forces soon would get their first unit of mobile Topol-M missiles. He said the new missiles and warheads would be able to change direction in flight, foiling advanced defense systems such as the one being developed by the United States. In the hourlong speech, which focused largely on domestic problems, Mr. Putin also responded to the wave of criticism from the United States, which questioned Moscow's fitness to serve as president of the Group of Eight industrialized nations this year after it cut off gas deliveries to Europe in a midwinter pricing dispute with Ukraine. FBI officials say they have seen a sharp increase in Russian civilian and military intelligence gathering activities in the United States, much of it directed at stealing weapons-related technology. Delusional, but interesting. More at link |
| Posted by:JerseyMike |
| #8 Think someone should give him a copy of Clancy's "The Bear and the Dragon"? |
| Posted by: AlanC 2006-05-11 19:38 |
| #7 On top of all of that, we bankrupted the Soviet Union with the Cold War - they literally fell apart when the low-scale civil unrest started in the Warsaw Pact countries. Russia is going to outdo the Soviet Union? I don't think so. Plus, in about 7 years, they are going to have bigger worries when China decides to pull a Tibet on Siberia and all the natural resources contained within. |
| Posted by: Shieldwolf 2006-05-11 18:22 |
| #6 What about money? How the hell is he planning to pay for all this? Russia has about half of the economic resources available to them before the break up of the soviet union. I think he may be full of shit. |
| Posted by: Spavins Sputle3475 2006-05-11 18:07 |
| #5 The Soviet's brainwashing was pretty thorough. Unfortunately, the Russians don't have time for the current leadership to die off before they figure who are their real enemies. |
| Posted by: ed 2006-05-11 15:30 |
| #4 Ed, have you noticed how Pootie, with his declining population, jumps in bed with the two true enemies adjacent to him, China and the Caliphate, that are ready to grab whatever of Russia they can in order to defend Russia from the superpower on the other side of the globe that has no interest in Russian territory? And the Russian people rally round him for it. |
| Posted by: Nimble Spemble 2006-05-11 14:52 |
| #3 He said the new missiles and warheads would be able to change direction in flight, foiling advanced defense systems such as the one being developed by the United States ......which initiates computer change direction commands that cannot be overriden, and returns the missile to it's silo. |
| Posted by: Besoeker 2006-05-11 14:41 |
| #2 Say Pootie, has the number of Chinese east of the Urals passed the 50% mark? Putin needs to realize the empire is dead. Whether rump Russia survives does not depend on threatening the US, because basically, we don't care one way or the other. I think the best thing the US can do is finance 2 dozen large PWR reactors in Ukraine, Georgia, Baltics, etc and conclude favorable trade agreements (and anticorruption redress mechanisms) with them to expand trade and encourage jobs to locate there. |
| Posted by: ed 2006-05-11 12:56 |
| #1 ...but without repeating "the mistakes of the Soviet Union and of the Cold War" by draining the country's resources. Gee, that was the only thing that kept your country from looking like a run over skunk on a highway during the cold war... |
| Posted by: DarthVader 2006-05-11 12:34 |