The news environment in recent days and items in the foreign media are prompting the idea of the remilitarization of world politics. And this is associated with Russia's actions. It is supposedly shelling defenseless Georgia, and the leading Western countries are already prepared to submit this issue to the UN Security Council. Mass exercises are being held near Chelyabinsk within the framework of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, supposedly aimed at intimidating the West and indicating that the Shanghai Cooperation Organization is turning into a military-political bloc as a counterweight to NATO. Russian bombers, after a lengthy interval, are embarking on patrols and beginning to fly far over the sea areas of the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. Thus Russia is bringing back to politics the military force component, which was pushed into the background after the end of the Cold War.
What one can agree with is that remilitarization really is happening. Only Russia's role in this process is secondary. The demilitarization that did take place, which began in the late 1980s, was first and foremost the result of moves by our country, which disarmed itself in a unilateral process, hardly accompanied at all by measures in response. There was some general reduction in military expenditures, but then everything went back to the way it was before. As of today the United States spends 20 times more on defense than the Russian Federation, and more than all of the next 20 countries, in terms of this indicator, put together. The military appropriations of the NATO member states are 40 times greater than Russia's.
In principle, these figures alone are sufficient to indicate the source of the remilitarization. In recent years, military force has become a perfectly acceptable and usable political instrument. I will leave aside the question of the justification for its use, since this is all too contentious. For so many years, Russia was put down because of Chechnya. But it should be observed that the United States and its allies have waged three major wars: in Yugoslavia, Afghanistan, and Iraq. The last two conflicts are very far from being resolved (Chechnya, compared with them, is an oasis of well-being), and the number of civilian casualties runs to many hundreds of thousands. Meanwhile not a single Russian soldier has fired a single shot anywhere outside our territory.
The demilitarization of international relations was possible largely thanks to the disbandment of the Warsaw Pact Organization. But the NATO bloc continued to live and develop actively. Not so long ago, the 10th anniversary was marked of the Russia-NATO Founding Act, which was signed as a symbol of our country's reluctant and enforced semi-consent to the expansion of the North Atlantic bloc. Back then, 10 years ago, three principles for NATO's approach to new member countries were formulated: "no nukes, no troops, no critical infrastructure" (passage between quotation marks is published in English, followed by a translation into Russian). And what has happened? Thank heavens, they are not deploying nuclear weapons yet. But they are preparing to open new military bases in Bulgaria and Romania.
And no matter how one may define what kind of infrastructure is considered critical, that definition would certainly include the American missile defense components that it is planned to site in Poland and the Czech Republic. In general, the missile defense program is nothing but the Star Wars program, revived on a new technical basis. Missile defense components are being sited in space, and deployed or planned to be deployed not only in Eastern Europe, but also in Alaska, California, Japan, Australia, and Greenland; there is already talk of Romania and the Caucasus. Obviously all of this will provoke Óountermeasures.
Next in line, there are also plans to bring Ukraine and Georgia into NATO, which will clearly be perceived by the Russian leadership as the red line beyond which Moscow is hardly likely to be willing to continue any kind of cooperation with NATO. Russia's steps, in this context, appear extremely moderate. Yes, flights by strategic aviation are being resumed -- by aircraft that have not even been modernized since the flights were broken off in 1992. The United States never even suspended its flights, and according to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), of the 106 US strategic bombers, 72, with nearly 2,000 cruise missiles and bombs with nuclear warheads on board, have been constantly on combat watch and regularly flying around our borders.
The Shanghai Cooperation Organization is not NATO, and is not planning to become a military-political bloc. Still less does it regard itself as a counterweight to anyone, including NATO. What happened at the training ground near Chelyabinsk was limited exercises in a counterterrorist format, and if they were designed to intimidate anyone, it would only be the extremists in Central Asia.But the thing that seriously provokes misgivings is the "missile conflict" with Georgia.
It is hard for me to believe that Russia is behind this incident, I cannot see a single reason why it should want any of this. Nor are there grounds for disbelieving our extremely authoritative military experts, who have come to the conclusion that it was just another provocation by the Georgian side. But the fact that Tbilisi's position has been unconditionally supported by the United States and its allies inspires sad thoughts. Apparently it is a question of a political operation designed to squeeze Russia and its peacekeepers out of the Georgian-Ossetian conflict zone, so as to give (Georgian President) Mikheil Saakashvili the opportunity to achieve his long-standing goal -- to remilitarize the conflict and fight the war against South Ossetia all over again. If that is so, then war in the Caucasus really could become a reality.
It must have been necessary to try very hard in order to make Russia pay attention to the military component of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and resume flights by strategic aviation. But why was it necessary to do this? Or did they really expect to be able to do anything they like with Russia?
