Russia to temporarily withdraw from Treaty on Conventional Forces in Europe

[Ecthy]

http://www.spiegel.de/politik/ausland/0,1518,479623,00.html

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6594379.stm

Russia may stop implementing a key defence treaty because of concerns over US plans for a missile shield in Europe, President Vladimir Putin said.

The Russian president accused Nato countries of failing to respect the 1990 Conventional Forces in Europe Treaty (CFE), which limits military deployments across the continent.

[Ecthy]

To illiterates in IR: this 1990 treaty formed the basis for the reunification of Germany and the other European powers' agreement. All European powers agreed to limit the amount of their conventional forces (plus heavy equipment in 1993) to a certain degree as stated in the treaty. The biggest potential players Russia and Germany thus keep rather limited conventional forces in Europe.

This is not a real exit, Putin states he will quit the treaty though if the issue of the announced US missile shield to be put up in Central Euorpe is not raised tomorrow in the next session of the council of NATO and Russia.

IMO, this should be intepreted not as silly sabre-rattling but as a final warning to take Russian objections to the US missile shield serious.

The missile shield, why officially directed against nuclearly-armed 'rogue states' to protect Europe, is seen to carry more strategic importance than admitted. Some see its position as more advantaeous to the US than to Poland and the Czech republic (to do with the ballistic curve of a missile). Others state that it does disturb MAD because A) the system might be improved later on so as to be more effective against a potential Russian strike and B) it might be effective against Russia's second strike capacity.

Discuss.

[Saras]

this is for domestic consumption

[Ecthy]

To put it less harshly, shouldn't people from the Baltics be more sensitive to this?

[Saras]

http://russianforces.org/blog/2005/10/moscow_abm_interceptor_sites.shtml

ZOMFG, missile shield zomfg!!!

[Solver]

Meh. If anything, Russia is showing it still isn't ready to act as a civilized 21st century country. If they must consider themselves the prime target of any such system, that's their problem.

It's not the Cold War anymore. No one in the US wants to attack Russia. Russia, though, still clearly sees the US as the enemy and positions itself as a strongly anti-Western country.

It's silly, really. I don't think that the UK and France, both nuclear powers, even consider a nuclear strike of the other to be possible. About time Russia also understood it doesn't need to nuke the West and isn't about to get nuked either.

[Ecthy]

Are you aware Solver that "Cold War"/"No Cold War" is not a trigger that was switched once in 1989/91 and will never be touched again but rather the product of International Politics? I find it so stupid when people answer to a precise political issue with an empty phrase like "it's not the Cold War anymore".

Great Power conflict and armament races have nothing to do with ideologies or their labels for economic systems or political models. They result from a logic substantially superior to that.

[Arrian]

Russian politicians find it politically useful to "sees the US as the enemy and positions itself as a strongly anti-Western country" rather.

I don't think Putin believes for a second that the USA is an actual threat to Russia at this point. It may be a threat to Russian goals in central Asia, depending on exactly what those are, I can't say.

-Arrian

[Saras]

Originally posted by Solver
Meh. If anything, Russia is showing it still isn't ready to act as a civilized 21st century country.

It's hard to act civilised when you are not, takes a lot of effort.

[Ecthy]

Solver, are you aware that the CFE treaty

1) has nothing to do with nukes so this is about Russia's conventional armament, which threatens YOUR and MY country?

2) is from 1990 and represents not the order of the Cold War but manifests the order of the time after, of now?

Furthermore, no matter how silly you think this is, it will turn into facts tomorrow.

[Saras]

So what will Russia do? Deploy their ONLY new 90 tanks from transurals to Pskov? OOO, scary.

[Ecthy]

They might actually build more stuff in the future. Have you noticed how gas and oil have been increasing in price? What do you think will he do with the surplus? Build a welfare state?

[Ecthy]

We're talking conventional forces here, not nukes. How much power is the USA willing to project in Europe nowadays?

[Saras]

Originally posted by Ecthy
They might actually build more stuff in the future. Have you noticed how gas and oil have been increasing in price? What do you think will he do with the surplus? Build a welfare state?

Their GDP is maybe 10% bigger than that of the Netherlands, I think. No one takes their military threat too seriously.

[Saras]

Originally posted by Ecthy
Build a welfare state?

Hell yeah. I dread at searching reports about Russian health & social services situation. Billions of money. Billions.