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How significant are Russia's war
games?
By Jeremy
Bransten
PRAGUE - Russian President Vladimir
Putin has spent the past 24 hours submerged under the
Barents Sea, on board a nuclear submarine. Overhead,
bombers fire cruise missiles while battleships prepare
to launch intercontinental ballistic rockets. Amid much
fanfare, Russia has begun widescale military exercises
that the Defense Ministry says are aimed at increasing
the efficiency of Moscow's nuclear deterrent and the
ability to penetrate enemy missile defenses.
The
war games, which are expected to last several weeks,
will include the test-launch of several ballistic
missiles from submarines and ground silos at sites
across Russia. TU-95 strategic bombers also will
reportedly fly over Russia's Arctic regions and
test-fire missiles at targets near the Caspian Sea.
Although the Russian military has been tight-lipped
about further details, satellite launches from the
Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan and the Plesetsk
launch pad in northern Russia - which Putin is due to
visit - are also expected.
Billed as the largest
war games since the fall of the Soviet Union, the
exercise takes place against a backdrop of growing
political tensions with the United States and the North
Atlantic Treaty Organization, prompting some to wonder
about the significance of its timing.
RFE/RL
asked Moscow-based defense analyst Pavel Felgenhauer,
who closely monitors Russian military developments,
whether the West should be alarmed. The answer, he
believes, is "no". Felgenhauer says the war games do not
signify a change in Moscow's military posture. Rather,
they reflect a need to test aging missiles and bombers -
something Russia has done regularly since the end of the
Cold War
"There is a need to test old missiles,
old strategic planes, to fire old cruise missiles,
because all of this equipment has been there in service
since Soviet times, and there have been no replacements,
or very limited replacements in the last years,"
Felgenhauer said.
And if old equipment needs to
be tested, Felgenhauer says, one might as well package
the exercise as a major strategic undertaking. It boosts
the military's standing in the eyes of the nation and
gets noticed internationally.
"Beginning in the
early 1990s, the Russian General Staff and Defense
Ministry decided that since they have to make these
tests anyway, [they would] build strategic military
exercises around them, to write a scenario and play out
a military game," Felgenhauer said.
British-based defense expert Duncan Lennox,
editor of Jane's Strategic Weapons Systems, agrees. Some
of Russia's missiles are more than 25 years old, and
regular testing is a way to prolong their shelf lives.
"They don't want to develop new missiles if they can
keep old ones going for a longer period," he says. "And
that's what they're doing, which is a more economic
approach."
This being an election year, the
exercises are garnering more attention than usual - but
that may be what Putin intended. Just as US President
George W Bush sought to boost his popularity ratings
last May by donning a flight suit and landing on an
aircraft carrier, so, too, may the Russian leader
believe his image could benefit from a photo opportunity
below decks. The symbolism of Putin visiting a submarine
in the Barents Sea, where the Kursk sank in August 2000
with its entire crew on board, will not be lost on the
Russian public.
But symbolic value may be all
there is to it. As Felgenhauer points out, in a genuine
conflict, a submarine at sea is just about the last
place a commander in chief should find himself.
"For a commander in chief to go out on a
submarine during a simulation of a nuclear war is
totally senseless because he has to be in command. And a
nuclear submarine in a simulation of a nuclear war
should not communicate," Lennox said.
The craft
should, in fact, remain silent and undetectable. But
that would play far less well on the evening news.
What also does not play well on Russian TV these
days is the ongoing war in Chechnya. The battlefield
body count and regular terror attacks in Russia's cities
are grim reminders that the country's military seems
ill-equipped to tackle what many perceive as a far more
real threat than any nuclear attack.
"The real
state of the Russian military is reflected by its rather
unsuccessful campaign in the northern Caucasian republic
of Chechnya, although our strategic bombers can still
fly - at least some of them - and our missiles can also
fly. But Russia right now is not facing any kind of real
military problems that can be resolved by strategic
nuclear forces. Our problems are happening in fighting
Muslim radical rebels in the Northern Caucasus, and
these kinds of exercises do not really help or prepare
for the enemies that Russia does really have," Lennox
said.
Putin, who came to power four years ago on
a promise to resolve the Chechen conflict, may be hoping
voters will prefer instead to focus on what does work in
the Russian military.
Copyright (c) 2004,
RFE/RL Inc. Reprinted with the permission of Radio
Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 1201 Connecticut
Ave NW, Washington DC 20036
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