Nah... the armed forces paper is Kraznaya Zvezda (Red Star).
I founf this piece interesting because it's by Mikhail Delyagin, who is a lefty economist. He's pushing for Keynesianiam here more than anything else (something that in my opinion Russia could certainly benefit from). Putin's consistent liberalism is better than Yeltsin's inconsistent liberalism/communist fusion and rampant looting under the auspices of the state, but it's never going to get better than functioning liberalism. (I hope I expressed that clearly, I'm tired.)
I do see a possible arms race in the future, assuming the Russian economy continues to boom and the bureaucracy -- which is 60 percent larger today than it was in the USSR -- gets trimmed down, so the money goes where ir's supposed to and not into bureaucrats pockets (hey, paying bureaucrats enough to live on might go a long way in this direction). The Russian government doesn't know whether to laugh out loud or cry, maybe both, about Bush's suggestion that the US not scrap its nukes, just put them in storage. Most Russians think this means that, since Russia is the only country that many nukes could possibly be used against, the US still thinks Russia is the enemy.
Maybe it's time to carry out Purin's threat to recommission those Topol-M ICBMs and slap multiple nukes on 'em!
Chris Doss The Russia Journal ------------------
Date: Sat, 9 Feb 2002 00:59:16 +0200 From: "Hakki Alacakaptan" <nucleus at superonline.com> Subject: RE: Russian take on Bush's State of the Union blather
|| -----Original Message-----
|| From: Chris Doss
||
|| Delyagin: State Of Union Speech Contains Much That Is 'Instructive' for
|| Russia
||
|| Rossiyskaya Gazeta
This is the armed forces paper, right? So I take it this represents the opinion of the top brass? - ------------------------------
|| (...) By attracting capital
|| for accelerated development as a result of the "export of instability,"
|| the United States is not simply isolating itself from this
|| instability by
|| means of the [National] Missile Defense system but is beginning to
|| destroy everything that, in its opinion, does not correspond to its
|| interests, without bothering about the consequences of its actions for
|| other countries and peoples.
|| This is precisely why George Bush's message is aggressive in an
|| unprecedented way. No compromise -- only the designation of
|| countries as
|| "bad." No negotiations -- only war. No looking for and eradicating
|| motives -- only combating the consequences, terror. "Who is
|| not with us is a terrorist."
|| Combating terror is becoming the same instrument for ensuring U.S.
|| supremacy as combating Communism was before.
|| It is comforting that the United States understands force. - ------------------------------ That sounds to me like Stalinism minus the M-L window dressing. No wasting time over socialist rhetoric or bourgie values like democracy, civil rights, justice, legality, etc.; just the naked material facts, IOW the relations of forces. US agression isn't condemned, it's just seen as one possible course of action, one which the US opted for, and which Russia should study the outcome of. - ------------------------------ (...)
|| Russia has to learn to live in this reality -- to gradually become
|| stronger without losing its independence (1998 showed that the
|| other way leads to catastrophe) and without attracting attention until we
|| become sufficiently strong. (...) - ------------------------------ Great, there goes any hope for future SALT treaties. I guess this means when the Russian economy gets into high gear, it's the arms race all over again, with China joining in the fun as well. - ------------------------------ (...)
|| Bush is showing an awareness of the key role played by active state
|| regulation in improving even such a developed economy as that of the
|| United States. We have to learn from the United States (...) - ------------------------------ So Shrubya has not only succeeded in confirming the Russian's worst suspicions about US imperial designs, he's also proved, with his pork-barrel Keynesianism, that state control of the economy is essential.
Hakki