| |
Russia: Proliferation
personified
By Stephen Blank
Wherever one looks, in Asia, the Middle East or
Colombia, the proliferation of both conventional arms
and of dual-use technologies often lies at the heart of
the crisis or is a major facilitator of it. And more
often than not, Russia is either clearly and deeply
involved in this proliferation, or the evidence strongly
points to it.
In North Korea’s case, there have
been repeated reports not only of North Korean efforts
to obtain the services of Russian scientists, but also
of more direct proliferation. And before the current
Korean crisis reached its present stage, reports from
Washington suggested Russian complicity in North Korean
proliferation.
In the mid-1990s, Russia clearly
proliferated weapons technologies to Iraq, while Russian
firms (along with a host of Western ones) were listed as
having broken the United Nations boycott, though here
there is sufficient guilt for virtually everyone.
Russia remains Iran’s largest supplier and there
can be little doubt that Iran is well on the way to
imitating North Korea. Iran is not just the beneficiary
of North Korean proliferation, it probably will obtain
useable nuclear weapons within three to five years.
India's nuclear program, likewise, substantially
benefited from Russia's assistance, which was
particularly visible in its program for building space
launches, and thus missile capability for those weapons.
More recently, India admitted that Russia was helping it
build the Sagarika nuclear submarine.
Repeated
accounts of Sino-Russian military collaboration also
point to Russian help with China’s missile defense and
space launch programs, as well as the sale of nuclear
powered submarines. Since China has recently insisted on
total secrecy with regard to its purchases, it remains
an open and critical question just what it is buying
from Moscow and what kinds of technological interchanges
are occurring between Russian and Chinese scientists.
However, Russian arms salesmen are eagerly
seeking to break out of their "client ghetto" and
diversify arms sales beyond India and China. Even if we
confine ourselves to purely conventional systems,
Russian weapons have a nasty habit of ending up in
strange places. Two years ago, Colombian authorities
discovered a Kilo-class submarine that had been
purchased by one of the drug cartels for the purpose of
covertly transporting narcotics into the United States.
The fact that a middleman with ties to the cartel could
reliably obtain this submarine points to a very high
degree of corruption in the Navy.
Russian arms
salesmen have also been involved in the arms for
diamonds trade in Africa that has become a particularly
vicious blight on that continent's landscape. Likewise,
Russian officials similarly continue to profess their
desire for North Korea to buy conventional systems from
Moscow if a payment mechanism can be worked out. And the
same holds true for states like Libya and Syria.
Evidently, the only obstacle to their joining Moscow’s
client list is their shortage of cash.
There
were also unconfirmed reports in the American press in
2001, clearly based on intelligence leaks, that the
Russians had even sold an encryption machine turned over
by the spy Robert Hanssen to Osama bin Laden!
And beyond these reports, Moscow has also
clearly used middlemen like Belarus and Ukraine to ship
weapons it does not want traced back to it to rogue
states and proliferators like Iraq. The current scandal
over Ukraine's shipment of Kolchuga anti-aircraft radars
to Iraq apparently involved the use of Ukraine as a
cover for Russian factories, despite Kiev's adamant
denials of responsibility for the entire affair. These
denials would carry more weight were it not the case
that already in 2000 the Russian press reported that
Russia’s military-industrial complex output had started
reaching the Iranians via Belarus, which had few
commitments to Washington.
Similarly,
cooperation between Minsk and Baghdad has been
developing rapidly of late. Official statistics confirm
that Belarussian-Iraqi trade turnover in 1999 came to
US$6 million. According to Kommersant's information at
that time, that indicator was understated at least
ten-fold. And since then Belarus and Iraq have steadily
tried to expand military collaboration, as has Kiev. As
Kommersant reported then, Iraq was eagerly pursuing
other avenues for Russian spare parts and dual-use
equipment, like optical equipment, in Belarus since
Belarus made an excellent way station for the transfer
of Russian equipment to Iraq and/or Iran.
In
2000 it was reported that Iraq apparently had obtained
from Russian sources a weapon that jams the global
positioning system (GPS) of US missiles and satellites,
rendering them useless. This product was made by
Chelyabinsk University, a major center of military
research. As the federal government had stopped
financing it, the university helped set up a commercial
firm to market its products, by 1998, including this
system.
Evidently, Russian State Duma Deputy
Speaker Vladimir Zhirinovskii secured a contract for
Mosenergo Montag Company from Saddam Hussein to
reconstruct the Al Najibiyah power station for $65
million, but the company failed to carry out the
contract. To placate Saddam, Zhirinovskii brought two
models of this jamming device with him to Iraq, which he
had obtained from a Moscow commission agency that
marketed many military goods of numerous establishments.
Because that agency was clearly engaged in price gouging
the Iraqis, the professors at the university mobilized
their firm and addressed Iraq and Yugoslavia concerning
sale of these units, and this led Iraq to buy some 40-45
devices, which work effectively only at a range of
150-200 kilometers. While these episodes confirm the
porosity and avarice of the Russian political
establishment, they also show that the use of middlemen,
like Belarus, Ukraine, and very probably Serbia, has
long been established.
A highly dangerous
consequence of this proliferation is not only that rogue
states are continuing to obtain what they want and need,
these sales also encourage them to shop their wares
around or to deploy these systems as generic threats
against other states. This is not just a case of North
Korea selling missiles and nuclear knowhow abroad,
dangerous as that is. Iran has also undertaken to sell
its Shahab-3 missile to buyers, has threatened to extend
deterrence to Hizbullah if Israel retaliates against it,
and is busy supplying the Palestinian Authority with
weapons to extend and expand its campaign of terror.
It bears mention here that many of the weapons
discovered by Israel when it seized the Iranian Karine-A
ship a year ago were of Russian origin, and it defies
understanding that the Russian authorities who sell
these weapons in such quantities are unable to discover
or conceive of Iran’s ulterior motives. Similarly,
Admiral Thomas Wilson, director of America’s Defense
Intelligence Agency from 1999-2002, testified in his
annual report in 2002 that thanks to Russian transfers
of anti-ship missiles to Iran, Tehran now can block the
Persian gulf for brief periods of time to external
shipping. As these shipments are continuing, there is
also good reason to suspect that Iran’s boast that it
can now produce these and other missiles entirely
through its own means may be well founded.
Thus
it does not take excessive imagination to grasp what
kind of threats Moscow is busily abetting despite its
denunciations of terrorism and proclamations of its
opposition to proliferation. Russia proliferates not
merely because its factories need money or because their
officials are just corrupt thieves who have no concern
for the national interest. While undoubtedly these
motives are true at least to some extent, they are
hardly the whole question. Since arms sales bisect
domestic and foreign policy and cut both ways, the
motives for these sales do so too. Indeed, Moscow
appears to use arms sales as an all-purpose foreign
policy tool, as a way to amortize unpayable debt to
other states, or even as a way to pay for the
Trans-Siberian and Trans-Korean railway project, an
offer which Seoul rejected.
One driver of
Moscow’s headlong arms sales resides in its unreformed
and unrepentant defense industry. Since its structures
and leaders remain unreformed, they seek protection from
the global economy and demand special privileges to
remain afloat. Second, their spokesmen consistently
intone the Stalinist mantra that the defense industry
incarnates the most technologically advanced branch or
branches of Russia's economy, draws on the most
qualified personnel, etc and therefore should receive
Moscow's privileges so that it can again become the
locomotive of a general economic recovery.
President Vladimir Putin and many key officials
have explicitly followed this argument. Yet the defense
industry in many cases still cannot adapt to the
requirements of a market economy, as Putin has publicly
complained. Consequently, arms sales and proliferation
of dual-use technologies function as surrogates for
reform of this unreformed sector and officials and the
industry have a vested interest in selling ever more
weapons to perpetuate the dysfunctional policies from
which they benefit.
Not surprisingly, this
industry is both anti-reform and anti-Western in
orientation. Nor is it surprising that the Ministry of
Defense shares this orientation. But apart from domestic
pressures to sell and proliferate weapons and dual-use
technologies and the technologies needed for weapons of
mass destruction, there are also compelling foreign
policy reasons.
Arms sales gain influence for
Moscow in foreign capitals, and a window, if not a
handle on foreign states' military developments. They
certify Moscow' reliability as these governments'
partner, often against both regional and American
policies, and strengthen their strategic capability to
challenge Washington and limit its ability to project
power or act either unilaterally or together with other
states.
Washington must then make payoffs to
Russia and its partners to realize its goals. This
pattern replicates itself with regard to Iran, North
Korea, Iraq and China, although each case's specific
aspects are obviously different.
The foregoing
confirms rather clearly that Moscow, rhetoric aside,
still does not take the threat of proliferation too
seriously. What it does take seriously is the need for
cash, and the unwillingness to reform its structure or
the Soviet mentality of action against America, even if
it has ruinous strategic consequences. Since governments
and states who defy strategic logic ultimately and
reasonably rapidly are hoist on their own petard, can we
argue that Moscow will somehow escape the consequences
of its folly?
If Chechnya, where rebels use
mainly weapons sold to them by brutalized Russian
soldiers, is any guide, probably not. But given the
nature and types of materials being sold by Moscow
abroad in its heedless and irresponsible quest for
profits and unsustainable marginal political gains, all
of us will probably have to pay the price of this
reckless and misconceived policy.
Stephen
Blank is an analyst of international security
affairs residing in Harrisburg, PA.
(©2003
Asia Times Online Co, Ltd. All rights reserved. Please
contact content@atimes.com
for information on our sales and syndication policies,
or to submit a letter to the editor.)
|
| |
|
|
 |
|
