Huh? The Cold War is Over?

♠ Posted by Emmanuel in ,, at 5/30/2007 04:54:00 AM
The increasing hostility of Vladimir Putin's Russia to just about everyone else has been widely noted. [WARNING: A lump of coal polonium might end up in your Christmas stocking for trumpeting this observation too loudly.] In any event, Putin is boasting about a new intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) that can overcome the USA's proposed missile defense system, purportedly safeguarding against an Iranian attack. Put it down to another cockamamie military-industrial complex scheme to get more defense spending, but Russia is taking it seriously enough--as if the Cold War never ended. With Russia's massive export receipts from elevated oil prices, it can certainly indulge in such shenanigans. To what end, however, we can all ponder. From the Associated Press:
Russia tested new missiles Tuesday that a Kremlin official boasted could penetrate any defense system, and President Vladimir Putin warned that U.S. plans for an anti-missile shield in Europe would turn the region into a "powder keg."

First Deputy Prime Minister Sergei Ivanov said Russia tested an intercontinental ballistic missile capable of carrying multiple independent warheads, and it also successfully conducted a "preliminary" test of a tactical cruise missile that he said could fly farther than existing, similar weapons.

"As of today, Russia has new tactical and strategic complexes that are capable of overcoming any existing or future missile defense systems," Ivanov said, according to the ITAR-Tass news agency. "So in terms of defense and security, Russians can look calmly to the country's future."

Ivanov is a former defense minister seen as a potential Kremlin favorite to succeed Putin next year. Both he and Putin have said repeatedly that Russia would continue to improve its nuclear arsenals and respond to U.S. plans to deploy a missile defense system in Poland and the Czech Republic _ NATO nations that were in Moscow's front yard during the Cold War as Warsaw Pact members.

Russia has bristled at the plans, dismissing U.S. assertions that the system would be aimed at blocking possible attacks by Iran and saying it would destroy the strategic balance of forces in Europe.

"We consider it harmful and dangerous to turn Europe into a powder keg and to fill it with new kinds of weapons," Putin said at a news conference with visiting Portuguese Prime Minister Jose Socrates.

Russian arms control expert Alexander Pikayev said the new ICBMs appeared to be part of Russia's promised response to the missile defense plans and, more broadly, an effort to "strengthen the strategic nuclear triad _ land-based, sea-based and air-based delivery systems for nuclear weapons _ which suffered significant downsizing" amid financial troubles after the 1991 Soviet collapse.