The Cold War is back

The new arms race is deadly because Russia is so fragile

Wednesday, 11th July 2007

Fraser Nelson says that Putin’s bellicose strategy — spending his oil millions on a deadly new arsenal — is more dangerous than the actions of his Cold War predecessors because Russia is so vulnerable to economic and social collapse

Yet for all this, Russia knows it can never again become a true superpower for reasons that no ballistic missile will ever be able to reverse. Its rampant drug abuse, alcoholism, rate of HIV infection and other problems add up to a demographic picture worse than that of any non-African country. Russia’s population is expected to keep falling by 730,000 a year until at least 2015. Its defence budget is less than 5 per cent of America’s — for all the damage its missiles would cause, it would end up second-best in any nuclear war. A country dependent on oil money for a third of its budget is also hugely vulnerable to a drop in oil price.

Yet it is precisely this fragility that makes Russia so dangerous at the moment. It is North Korea’s weakness that has led it to militarise so heavily, and instruct its army to prepare for war with America. Mr Putin may be stepping down, but he is clearly trying to set Russia on a clear, aggressively military and nationalist trajectory. As Britain sets its defence policy in 2007, it must ask what kind of Kremlin will emerge in ten years’ time. And the trends are not encouraging. The more desperate Russia becomes, the less predictable it will be.

The military is not waiting around. In January, Russia’s military chiefs met to discuss security and deliver keynote speeches. One after the other, they asked for the governing military doctrine of their nation to be redrafted, explicitly naming America and Nato as the primary enemy. In March, the Russian Security Council duly announced that it no longer considered terrorism to be the greatest threat, and instead unveiled a new strategy based upon ‘geopolitical realities’ — namely that rival military alliances were becoming stronger, ‘especially Nato’.

Six years ago, when George W. Bush first hosted Mr Putin at his ranch in Texas, he famously claimed to have seen into his soul. At the time he phrased it slightly differently to an adviser, unaware that his microphone was still live and his remarks were being broadcast over the speaker system in the next room. ‘I’ve got him eating out of my hand,’ the President whispered. ‘You give these Russkies some cake and they’ll give you their souls.’

How things have changed. In Mr Putin’s trip to Maine last week, it was Mr Bush who was doing the back-pedalling, agreeing to ditch the Pentagon’s plans for the missile interceptors in Poland. They joked, shared a speedboat, ate lobster and played fetch with their dogs. But it is now time for realpolitik. The free market has perished in Russia, and a petro-economy has taken its place. Russia is no longer a junior partner for the West, but a growing adversary. Mr Putin will smile — but rearm Russia as he smiles. And the new arms race continues apace.