>Clearly one likely consequence of NATO's war against
>Yugoslavia has been the strengthening of Russia's nationalists.
>Ljunggren's piece suggests that fears that Russia may start
>rearming are exaggerated because of strong fiscal
>constraints. However, may not rearmanent provide a way
>out of Russia's economic crisis, not unlike the way rearming
>helped Germany out of the Great Depression in the 1930s and
>the way that the outbreak of WW II pulled the US out of the
>Depression?
Yeah, that's occurred to me too.They've already defaulted, and aren't likely to get much in the way of private loans or investments now. The IMF isn't offering Russia any cash at this point - just new credits against old loans. The only thing the Russian elite has to lose at this point is their connection to Western elites, but that isn't looking in the pink of health right now. Yeltsin's been making lots of noise about the importance of Russian nuclear forces, and NATO's war against Yugoslavia can easily be seen as a proxy war against Russia.
Doug