Missile defense strains U.S.-Russia ties

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WASHINGTON - Two rounds of talks on a Russian proposal for missile defense cooperation with the U.S. have failed to narrow differences that have strained relations, officials from both countries say.

The U.S. hopes technical experts who plan to visit a Russian-operated radar in Azerbaijan on Tuesday can help jump-start the talks with new ideas for cooperation.

Russia's president, Vladimir Putin, has suggested the countries could share the mammoth installation and a second radar under construction in southern Russia as part of U.S. efforts to defend against the potential threat from Iranian missiles.

Putin surprised the U.S. with the proposal in June. It followed months of criticism of U.S. negotiations to install 10 missile interceptors in Poland and a radar in the Czech Republic, both former Soviet satellites.

The disagreement over missile defense has become a high-priority issue raised repeatedly in direct talks between Putin and President Bush.

The United States says the European system is intended to counter Iranian missiles that could be aimed at Europe or U.S. territory. Russia contends the system also could be used against Russian missiles and threatens its nuclear deterrence.

To explore ways of resolving the differences, Bush and Putin agreed to a series of talks led by Assistant Secretary of State John Rood and Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergei Kislyak. The two sides met in Washington in July and again in Paris last week.

The talks have made little progress.

The U.S. says it hopes Russia will contribute to U.S. plans to build a missile shield in Europe that would include the Czech and Polish bases. Russia says it will not help the U.S. counter an Iranian threat unless the European plans are canceled.

Following the Paris talks, Rood said the U.S. had offered proposals on how the two sides could work together. Those ideas, however, did not deal with the disagreement over the terms of cooperation, said a U.S. official who works on missile defense issues and spoke on condition of anonymity.

"I think we are both in the same place as we were before," said the official, who was not authorized to speak for attribution.

A Russian official, who also requested anonymity because he was not authorized to speak to the press, agreed that the two sides were far apart.

"Nothing has changed in the U.S. position during the talks," said the official. "There is still a completely different understanding of the substance of President Putin's proposal."

The U.S. hopes Tuesday's meeting at the Azerbaijan radar site will spark ideas for a third round of talks to be held in Moscow next month.

The Bush administration is interested in the radars that Putin has offered, but as an additional asset for the system planned for Central Europe, not as a substitute. The radar in Gabala, Azerbaijan, is of a type that could not perform the same function as the one planned for the Czech Republic.

The U.S.-built radar would track a missile after it had been detected by other means. The missile defense system also would need other radars to detect missile launches. While the U.S. has some of those capabilities, the Gabala facility's proximity to Iran could help the system identify missile trajectories earlier.

"What the Gabala radar would help you do is acquire targets," said Theodore Postol, a physicist at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Putin has proposed a different idea: using the radars as a way of monitoring the development of Iran's missile program. While the U.S. estimates Iran could become capable of launching an intercontinental missile by about 2015, Russia believes Iran is decades away.

According to Glen Howard, president of the Jamestown Foundation, a national security policy institute in Washington, the Gabala facility has eavesdropping capabilities beyond its massive radar.

"The radar is Russia's eyes and ears in the Middle East," he said.

But the U.S. says it will not consider delaying its European plans while the two sides monitor what the administration consider a clear threat from Iran.

"The United States is saying `Sure, we will talk to you, but we are going to continue building while we talk,'" said retired Army Lt. Gen. Robert Gard, a military fellow at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation. "That is not a position that will lead to much progress."

This is an editorial from Russian News and Information Agency:

Russian army prepares for nuclear onslaught
14:44 | 29/ 01/ 2008

MOSCOW. (RIA Novosti political commentator Andrei Kislyakov) - Barely a month into the new year, the military have already attracted a lot of attention. Following a mild verbal skirmish over ABM components after the holidays, Russian and foreign generals have decided to talk in the open.

In a move that mirrors recent discussion amongst Russia's own top brass, NATO's April summit in Bucharest is widely expected to discuss a report on a potential pre-emptive nuclear strike.

According to The Daily Telegraph, the authors of the report are convinced there is a real risk that terrorists could lay their hands on weapons of mass destruction in the near or immediate future. To counter this, the alliance may consider suppressing the enemy with nuclear weapons.

Though the report is likely to cause controversy in NATO countries, the authors appear to be merely echoing an idea originally broached by Russian Chief of General Staff Yury Baluyevsky. Speaking at a meeting of the Academy of Military Sciences on January 19, Gen. Baluyevsky declared that force should be used not only in the course of hostilities, but also to demonstrate the readiness of leaders to uphold their national interests. "We are not going to attack anyone," he reassured his audience, "but we want all our partners to realize that Russia will use armed force to defend its own and its allies' sovereignty and territorial integrity. It may resort to a pre-emptive nuclear strike in cases specified by its doctrine."

It is strange that many esteemed domestic military experts consider this statement simply a repetition of Russia's old military doctrine, which allowed it to use nuclear weapons first. Under the 2000 doctrine, Russia is ready to use nuclear weapons not only in retaliation against a nuclear attack, as was previously the case, but in response to "a large-scale conventional aggression in a situation critical for the national security of the Russian Federation and its allies." This certainly broadens the rules of engagement, but still does not envisage a pre-emptive nuclear strike without hostilities.

Gen. Balulevsky's announcement appears to change this, in which case Russia will need a new military doctrine. This is not a new task. In early March last year, the Security Council press service released a statement saying that the Security Council would revise the 2000 military doctrine to account for new realities. The statement added that the new doctrine would be drafted by the Security Council in conjunction with interested government bodies and a number of scientific institutions.

Baluyevsky thus made his recent statement at an organization which is quite suitable for the drafting of the new doctrine.

If the new doctrine endorses the General Staff's nuclear ideas, we will have new armed forces, with all the ensuing consequences.

First, these forces will become strictly offensive because of the very nature of a pre-emptive strike. This will require totally different mobilization plans and a new approach to recruiting for the Army and Navy. Considering the number and geography of military-political conflicts in which Russia is in some way involved, this will require the deployment of mobilized troops on a territory stretching from the Baltic Sea to the Pacific.

It is not difficult to predict the economic consequences Russia would face in this case. But let's come back to the Armed Forces. Permanent readiness to resolve tasks militarily - by offensive operations in an indefinitely vast number of directions - implies the permanent enhanced combat readiness of all units, without exception. Otherwise the very idea of a pre-emptive strike will not work. For such a policy to be effective, Russia should be ready to deal this strike from a broad diversity of geographical locations on its own territory, neutral air space, and the world's oceans.

If Baluyevsky's words are heeded, Russia will have to equip all services of the Armed Forces with permanently combat-ready nuclear weapons. Nobody can guess who will use them first.

This only concerns tactical, rather than strategic, nuclear weapons. It is clearly impossible to counter terrorist threats in the South-East direction, or neutralize U.S. ABM deployment in Europe with intercontinental ballistic missiles or their submarine counterparts.

In other words, Russia will need a very broad range of non-strategic nuclear weapons. Such weapons are designed to destroy battlefield-targets, rather than entire cities, and could take the form of medium and shorter-range missiles launched from air, land or sea, as well as artillery ammunition and nuclear demolition charges.

Considering that Russia has a huge advantage over the United States in tactical warheads, bilateral relations could become quite complicated if we start deploying our weapons on the ground, in the air and at sea.

It would be natural to ask why Russia is choosing the offensive option, and whether there are alternatives to it. But that is a subject for another discussion.

The opinions expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.

quote:

Originally posted by KoRnAdvocate:
To hell with Russia. Or Putin. Maybe he wont fix the next election, the bastard.

Venezuela trying to build some pact against the US is, in my opinion, a threat, and damn near an act of war.

How is that a threat of war? A diplomatic pact to contain aggression is an act of diplomacy, not war. We've formed our own diplomatic pacts against certain groups in the past.

quote:

Originally posted by BeeKay56:
I have to agree with you bru...I've mentioned this before...read the book "The China Threat" by Bill Gertz. In this book, Gertz lays out how the Chinese are adhering to Mao Zedong's famous maxim: "Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun." And he shows how the barrel is pointed at the United States.

I'd like to read that, because it's very much at odds with every logical analysis of China I've seen in recent years. In return, I'd recommend that you read Power Shift by Shambaugh.

Russia, U.S. fail to agree on missile shield

MOSCOW (Reuters) - Russia and the United States failed on Tuesday to find common ground over U.S. plans to deploy parts of a missile defence shield in eastern Europe.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he had agreed with U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice after six hours of talks in Moscow to study further U.S. proposals aimed at allaying Russian concerns about the shield.

The U.S. plan has plunged relations between the two countries to a post-Cold War low and negotiations on the proposals have already been running for almost six months.

Positive Remarks from President Putin on Missile Defense from Sochi
"In March at the 2-plus-2 meeting, and earlier today in my conversation with President Bush, we have been offered a set of confidence-building and transparency measures in the field of missile defense, and we can feel that the President of the United States takes a very serious approach here and is sincerely willing to resolve this problem.


We do support this approach, and certainly, in principle, adequate measures of confidence-building and transparency can be found. They can be important and useful in addressing these kind of issues. Thus, we now have room for cooperation, we're ready for such interaction. As far as the concrete substance of the U.S. proposals, it is too early to speak about it at this point. It is up to the experts to discuss the technical details of these proposals, and it is up to them to make any final conclusions. And the alternative that we offered last year is still relevant. We hope that it will be an issue for discussion in the future."

--- President Vladimir Putin, April 6, 2008

I wouldn't be suprise if we were attacked by Venz. Russia is still a very big threat. There might be another WWIII for all we know. It'll be battling over OIL.

Russia's missile defense systems: past, present and future

RIA Novosti | May 19, 2008

MOSCOW: Thirty years ago, on May 15, 1978, a missile defense system was placed on combat duty to protect Moscow as the capital city of the Soviet Union.

Russia has been developing missile defense systems since the early 1960s.

On March 1, 1961, the Soviet Air-Defense Force conducted the first hit-to-kill test when a V-1000 missile interceptor developed by the Fakel (Torch) design bureau under the supervision of Pyotr Grushin, a member of the Soviet Academy of Sciences, successfully destroyed the warhead of an R-12 inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM) launched from the Kapustin Yar space center in the Volga Region.

Several R-5 medium-range ballistic missiles were destroyed during subsequent tests.

The United States was able to conduct similar tests only 23 years later.

In 1961-1971, Soviet experts developed the experimental A-35 missile-defense system around Moscow. The system became operational in June 1971 and protected the Soviet capital and surrounding industrial areas.

At that time, the United States, which lacked similar systems, was compelled to negotiate with the Soviet Union. In 1972, Moscow and Washington signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty that served as the main element of mutual nuclear parity for several decades.

Under the treaty both sides agreed that each could only have two ABM deployment areas that were heavily regulated and placed so that they could not provide a nationwide ABM defense or become the basis for developing one. Each country thus left unchallenged the penetrating capability of the other's retaliatory missile forces. Both parties agreed to limit the quantitative improvement of their ABM technology.

In 1974, both countries signed a protocol to the treaty which entered into force in 1976 and reduced the number of ABM deployment areas to one, either around either side's national capital area, or as a single ICBM deployment area.

The United States elected not to deploy an ABM system and in 1976 deactivated its ineffective site at Grand Forks, North Dakota, around a Minuteman ICBM launch area.

Although the 1971 Soviet ABM system became obsolete even before it was commissioned, the ABM Treaty allowed Moscow to upgrade it. On May 15, 1978, the more advanced A-35M system was placed on active duty around Moscow.

However, the United States subsequently embarked on an ambitious multiple independent reentry vehicle (MIRV) program which nullified the Soviet system's capabilities.

Russia's A-135 ABM system capable of coping with MIRVed ICBMs was developed and commissioned in 1995 and 1996, respectively. The system hinged on the Don-2N multi-role radar and a command computer inside a truncated tetrahedral pyramid. Silo-based missile interceptors were deployed along the A-108 highway, also known as the Greater Moscow Belt Highway, in the Moscow, Kaluga and Yaroslavl Regions.

The missile-defense system around Moscow had to be constantly upgraded in order to deal with new threats. Unfortunately, federal allocations were not enough to ensure its combat readiness.

The situation became particularly serious in the late 1990s when ABM allocations accounted for just 1% of those made in the 1980s.

Moscow feared that it might lose the scientific and technical ABM potential accumulated since the late 1950s. The situation improved only in recent years. Under the national rearmament program until 2010, approved by former President Vladimir Putin, minimal R&D levels in this sphere will be reinstated.

The Russian rearmament program was adopted in response to new U.S. missile-defense plans stipulating the deployment of space-based attack weapons. Washington may decide to return to the Brilliant Pebbles project, a non-nuclear system of satellite-based, watermelon-sized mini-missiles designed to use a high-velocity kinetic warhead under the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) program.

At any rate, Washington rejects all Russian and Chinese initiatives aimed at preventing the militarization of outer space.

It would be appropriate to recall that the Reagan Administration spent $3.4 billion a year on ABM defenses; such allocations totaled over $5 billion under George H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton; President George W. Bush persuaded Congress to allocate $8 billion per year.

Many military analysts believe that both sides should agree on specific parameters for assessing the mutual strategic nuclear and missile-defense balance. Increases in one area will require reductions in others. However, Washington will never agree with this fair approach because it runs counter to its military doctrine aimed at ensuring undisputed U.S. military-technical superiority.

Nor should Russia become involved in another ABM race because it cannot afford to develop and deploy a national missile-defense system reliably protecting a huge territory of our country at present or in the foreseeable future.

Instead, Moscow should opt for an asymmetrical response and develop weapons capable of breaching missile defense systems.

Yury Zaitsev is an academic adviser at the Russian Academy of Engineering Sciences.

Russia is trying to be a big part of the UN, they wanna get rid of there "bad" name.. there president won man of the year. The last thing he wants is a war...

no war for America and Russia

Russia warns over US-Czech shield

LINK

Russia has said it will be forced to react with military means if the US and Czech Republic go ahead with plans for a missile shield.

The statement came hours after the US signed an initial deal to base part of Washington's controversial missile defence system in the Czech Republic.

Moscow says siting the system near its borders could weaken its own defences.

It has previously threatened to aim its own missiles at any eventual base in Poland or the Czech Republic.

The deal, signed by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Prague on Tuesday, allows a tracking radar base to be set up on Czech territory.

The Pentagon says the shield is designed to counter a threat from the Middle East, not Russia.

'Not our choice'

The Russian foreign ministry statement said: "If a US strategic anti-missile shield starts to be deployed near our borders, we will be forced to react not in a diplomatic fashion but with military-technical means."

Russian Warships to Again Patrol Arctic

LINK

July 14, 2008
Associated Press

MOSCOW - Russia announced Monday that it is sending warships to patrol Arctic waters for the first time since the breakup of the Soviet Union - the latest move to increase the country's global military presence.

Patrols by the Northern Fleet's Severomorsk submarine destroyer and Marshal Ustinov missile cruiser will begin Thursday, Navy spokesman Igor Dygalo said.

Russia began sending aircraft carriers to the Mediterranean Sea in December and resumed long-range bomber patrols in August.

"We have been talking for a long time about widening our activity in the Arctic," Dygalo said. "There is nothing aggressive in it - it is in the interests of security."

Former President Vladimir Putin expanded Russian military patrols and Dmitry Medvedev, who succeeded Putin in May, appears to be maintaining that course.

Moscow-based military analyst Pavel Felgenhauer said security was not Russia's primary motivation in sending the Navy ships to the Arctic.

"This is flag-waving and that's basically it," Felgenhauer said. "Sending a couple of patrol boats to the Arctic won't change anything."

Russia has also been moving to stake its claim to resources that are increasingly accessible as global warming melts Arctic ice.

Moscow recently sent an expedition to plant a Russian flag on the seabed under the North Pole and said research indicates a massive underwater mountain range in the area, which is believed to contain huge oil and gas reserves, is part of Russia's continental shelf.

And Russia hopes it can increase access for fishermen who are blocked from seas around the island of Spitsbergen, where Norway claims exclusive rights. Russia does not recognize the 200-mile economic zone delineated by a 1982 U.N. treaty.

Dygalo said protecting Russian fisherman was one of the aims of the new Arctic patrols.

Russia considering bomber base in Cuba

LINK

July 23, 2008
AFX News

WASHINGTON - Russia would cross "a red line for the United States of America" if it were to base nuclear-capable bombers in Cuba, the nominee for Air Force chief of staff has warned.

"If they did I think we should stand strong and indicate that is something that crosses a threshold, crosses a red line for the United States of America," said Gen. Norton Schwartz.

He was referring to a Russian news report that said the military is thinking of flying long-range bombers to Cuba, and possibly establishing a base there.

The Russian news report comes only a day after Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, in Moscow to pursue weapons and energy deals, called for a strategic alliance with Russia to protect his country from the United States.

<---I have my own fanboi club!!!



No Cold War, but Big Chill Over Georgia

August 16, 2008
By STEVEN LEE MYERS

CRAWFORD, Tex. — “The cold war is over,” President Bush declared Friday, but a new era of enmity between the United States and Russia has emerged nevertheless. It may not be as tense as the nuclear standoff with the Soviet Union, for now, but it could become as strained.

Russia’s military offensive into Georgia has shattered, perhaps irrevocably, the strategy of three successive presidential administrations to coax Russia into alliance with the West and integration into its institutions.

From Russia’s point of view, those efforts were never truly sincere or respectful of its own legitimate political and security interests. Those interests, it is now clear, are at odds with those of Europe and the United States.

As much as Mr. Bush has argued that the old characterizations of the cold war are no longer germane, he drew a new line at the White House on Friday morning between countries free and not free, and bluntly put Russia on the other side of it.

“With its actions in recent days Russia has damaged its credibility and its relations with the nations of the free world,” Mr. Bush said in his fourth stern statement on the conflict in five days, and the strongest to date. “Bullying and intimidation are not acceptable ways to conduct foreign policy in the 21st century.”

Tensions are manifest already, and both sides have done their part to inflame them. The flare-up over an obscure territorial dispute in the Caucasus, one barely known to most Americans, has set off a series of tectonic shifts.

The United Nations Security Council has reverted to a cold-war-like stalemate, with American and Russian vetoes blocking meaningful action over Georgia and other issues. While the United States and Russia will continue to negotiate out of necessity, as the old superpowers did, cooperation and collaboration — however limited in the past few years — now appear even more remote over such issues as Iran’s nuclear program.

The Russian offensive — the first outside its territory since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 — has crystallized a realignment already taking place in Central and Eastern Europe, where the new members of NATO and the European Union have warned of the threat posed by a resurgent Russia. And it is already forcing a reassessment of American strategy toward Russia, as Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates said on Thursday.

The United States and Poland, which spent months negotiating the basing of American antimissile interceptors on its territory, quickly completed the deal in the wake of Russia’s offensive. The administration dropped its opposition to sending Patriot missiles, which would defend the Polish site in case of any attack — presumably from Russia.

A senior Russian general promptly gave credence to Poland’s worst fears by saying Friday that the country had just made itself a target of Russia’s nuclear arsenal.

These repercussions have prompted some to question the wisdom of Mr. Bush’s aggressive response to the Russian incursion into Georgia.

“What worries me about this episode is the United States is jeopardizing Russian cooperation on a number of issues over a dispute that at most involves limited American interests,” said Ted Galen Carpenter, vice president for defense and foreign policy at the Cato Institute in Washington.

It may seem outdated to speak of blocs in Europe, but they are emerging just as clearly, if less ideologically, as those that existed on either side of the Iron Curtain.

The Georgians, Mr. Bush declared Friday, have “held free elections, opened up their economy and built the foundations of a successful democracy” from the Soviet ruins. The Russians, by implication, have not.

“The people of Georgia have cast their lot with the free world,” he said, appearing outside the Oval Office, “and we will not cast them aside.”

Mr. Bush’s remarks reflect a far more hawkish view toward Russia than the “looked into his eyes” partnership Mr. Bush tried for nearly eight years to foster with Vladimir V. Putin, then and clearly still Russia’s ruler.

This tougher view is shared by some within his administration including, by all accounts, Vice President Dick Cheney and by the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Senator John McCain.

Among those who have watched Mr. Putin’s Russia far more suspiciously, the “told you so” tone is palpable.

Tellingly, Mr. Bush referred Friday to efforts to resolve the conflict not with the Group of 8 industrial nations, which includes Russia, but with the G-7, using the designation of the group before Russia joined. Ousting Russia from the G-8 has been a keystone of Mr. McCain’s foreign policy for years.

“There will be a time and a place to deal with the consequences and the repercussions of Russia’s actions,” a White House spokesman, Gordon D. Johndroe, said on Friday, declining to rule in or out a punitive move against Russia’s seat in the G-8.

In fact, the alienation between the United States and Russia has rarely, if ever, been deeper.

The war in Iraq troubled the Russians as an example of unchecked American unilateralism. But the Bush administration’s relentless pursuit of missile defenses in Europe, the expansion of NATO to Russia’s borders and the support of Kosovo’s independence from Serbia have simply infuriated them.

Russia has used its oil and natural gas to fill its coffers and rebuild its military after the disarray of the 1990’s.

While the United States and Russia are not likely to return to hair-trigger military confrontation, Russia has resumed flexing its military might with long-range bomber and surveillance flights testing American and NATO airspace.

The question of NATO membership for Georgia and Ukraine — which the alliance in April pledged would one day happen, while declining to start the process — appears to have hardened Mr. Putin’s resolve over Georgia’s separatist regions.

No matter how much the Americans argue that NATO is now focused on other threats, for Russia, it remains an enemy force. And no matter how often the Americans say missile defense is aimed at Iran and other so-called rogue nations, it remains an existential threat to Russia’s aging and shrinking nuclear capacity. Both are part of what Russia views as remnants of American cold war policy.

The same is true of Kosovo’s independence from Serbia, a close Russian ally. Russian officials now cite Kosovo as precedent for the independence or annexation of Abkhazia and South Ossetia.

“It’s clear the policies we have pursued regarding missile defense and installations in Europe, regarding further expansion of NATO have created difficulties with Russia,” said James F. Collins, the last American ambassador to the Soviet Union and now a director at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. “It takes two to tango.”

On the matter of Georgia, though, Mr. Bush has put an end to the dance. He made it clear that his push for democracy trumps his relationship with Mr. Putin and Russia as a whole, describing the matter as a stark choice of a new era.

“Only Russia can decide whether it will now put itself back on the path of responsible nations,” he said, “or continue to purse a policy that promises only confrontation and isolation.”


>>LINK<<

quote:

LINK

Putin again warned Poland and the Czech Republic against hosting the U.S. missile shield --

"Our targeting of these countries will happen as soon as these missiles are brought," Putin said.

"Please do not instigate an arms race in Europe. It is not needed. What should we do? Sit pretty while they deploy missiles?"

And what should we do Mr. Putin while you continue to give nuclear technology and technical assistance to a rogue state like Iran, sit by pretty???

Chairman JCS Encouraged by Talks with Russian Counterpart

(Source: U.S Department of Defense; issued June 26, 2009)

WASHINGTON --- The chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said he was pleased with what he described as frank discussions with his Russian counterpart on regional and international security during his first visit to Moscow.

The talks come after the two countries’ recent efforts to repair their relations, which were strained by the Russia-Georgia war last year and NATO’s expansion eastward.

“I’m very encouraged by our meetings and also by our mutual commitment to continue to address these issues and to strengthen our military-to-military relationship,” Navy Adm. Mike Mullen said today. “We have many common challenges … whether it’s Afghanistan, or the challenges in missile defense, or Iran, or particularly for security in Europe.

“I can’t emphasize enough my belief that we need to work these very, very hard challenges to improve security, not just in Europe, but also globally so that the world can actually move forward in a more stable way,” he added.

Mullen’s counterpart, Russian Gen. Nikolai Makarov, stated after a 90-minute meeting that the two countries will sign a military cooperation agreement for this year and beyond, but Mullen offered no confirmation. He said only that he was looking forward to the outcome of the summit between President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev in two weeks.

Obama is scheduled to travel to Moscow to discuss an agenda that includes U.S. plans to set up an anti-missile defense system in Europe.


---------------



Chairman Sees Opportunity in Struggles Shared with Russia

(Source: U.S Department of Defense; issued June 27, 2009)

WASHINGTON --- The United States and Russia’s shared struggles offer great opportunities, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff said today during an address at Russia’s Military Academy of the General Staff in Moscow.

“We must seize these opportunities and learn from each other,” Navy Adm. Mike Mullen said. “Instead of merely settling for a relationship defined by differences, we have the opportunity to forge one based on mutual respect and the realization that our joint leadership must continue to be a cornerstone of security and stability for the world.”

Today, the two countries’ shared history and challenges bring them closer together, he said. But there are more significant challenges ahead.

The spreading extremist insurgency in and around Afghanistan requires a regional approach. Nuclear proliferation in North Korea, the prospect of nuclear arms in Iran, and a global terrorist threat requires international efforts to overcome, he added.

“Today we live in a time of extraordinary change,” Mullen said. “Our rapidly changing battlefields range from cyberspace to wherever terrorists might strike next.

“As globalization, energy needs and economics shape our shared future, we as military leaders, must likewise adapt,” he added

But even military leaders look to their warriors to make their visions reality. The two best warriors the United States and Russia have were not recently discovered on the battlefield, but written about decades ago.

“In his classic work “War and Peace,” Tolstoy wrote that the strongest of all warriors are these two, time and patience,” Mullen said. “What Tolstoy knew then as our current struggle against violent extremism teaches us now that only our most deliberate and persistent efforts will take hold and root.”

The two countries have emerged from more than 40 years of Cold War with a new opportunity for increased and unprecedented cooperation on the challenges they face, he said. The United States and Russia share more than common dangers, however.

Members of each country’s military share the traditions of selfless service to a greater good, a boundless love for their countries and the desire to create better lives and a brighter world for their families, he said.

“In this very room sit the future military leaders who will see this way ahead,” Mullen said. “Now is the time. Here is the place for the armed forces of Russia and the United States to commit themselves to a new and better relationship, a relationship forged in trust and founded on our common desire to secure our citizens from harm.

“It is a new world out there, a new era. We need to rise to meet it,” he said. “Let us pledge to each other that, though we may not always see this world in quite the same way, we will nevertheless see our way clear to dialogue and discussion and debate.”

It is from these things that understanding and cooperation come, he said.

“It encourages me to know that my counterpart, General of the Army [Nikolai] Makarov, shares my belief in the power of our present opportunity,” Mullen said.

Mullen, who left for Russia on June 24, will round out his weeklong trip with a stop in Poland for talks with his counterpart there. He’ll also stop in Stuttgart, Germany, where he and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates will preside over the European Command’s change of command ceremony. Army Gen. John Craddock will turn over EUCOM’s reins to Navy Adm. James G. Stavridis at Husky Field on Patch Barracks on June 30. (ends)

Obama, Medvedev agree to pursue nuclear reduction

Associated Press
20 mins ago - July 6, 2009

MOSCOW – President Barack Obama and Russian President Dmitry Medvedev signed a preliminary agreement Monday to reduce the world's two largest nuclear stockpiles by as much as a third, to the lowest levels of any U.S.-Russia accord, and counter what Obama called "a sense of drift" in the countries' relations.

"We must lead by example, and that's what we are doing here today," Obama declared in Kremlin hall glittering in gold. "We resolve to reset U.S.-Russian relations so that we can cooperate more effectively in areas of common interest."

The document signed by the two leaders at a Moscow summit, Obama's first in Russia, is meant as a guide for negotiators as the nations work toward a replacement pact for the START arms control agreement that expires in December. The joint understanding also commits the updated treaty to lower longer-range missiles for delivering nuclear bombs to between 500 and 1,100. The limit for warheads would be in a range of 1,500 to 1,675 each. However, there are disagreements on what to count.

Medvedev called Monday's agreement a "reasonable compromise."

Between them, the two countries possess more than 90 percent of the world's nuclear weapons. Under current treaties, each country is allowed a maximum of 2,200 warheads and 1,600 launch vehicles.

A White House statement said the new treaty "will include effective verification measures" and Obama said definitively the new treaty would be completed by the end of the year.

The 1991 Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, or START, led each country to cut its nuclear warheads by at least one-quarter, to about 6,000. The 2002 Treaty of Moscow called for further cuts to between 1,700 and 2,200 operationally deployed warheads by 2012.

But Moscow and Washington have long argued over what weapons should be subject to cuts.

Russia wants to limit missiles, bombers and submarines along with nuclear warheads, just as the original START treaty did. The 2002 agreement applied only to warheads. Also, the United States has been prepared to count only the warheads ready for launch, while Russia wants to count those in storage as well.

The two leaders appeared together at a news conference in a gilded and columned Kremlin hall, where they and other officials from both countries signed and exchanged documents with great flourish and much handshaking.

Among the side deals meant to sweeten Obama's two days of talks here and show progress toward improving badly damaged U.S.-Russian relations was permission from Moscow for the United States to transport arms across its land and airspace into Afghanistan for the war there. The White House says the deal will save the U.S. $133 million a year, by waiving transit fees and shortening flying time.

They outlined other areas in which they said their countries would work together to help stabilize Afghanistan, including increasing assistance to the Afghan army and police, and training counternarcotics personnel. A joint statement said that they welcomed increased international support for upcoming Afghan elections and that they were prepared to help Afghanistan and Pakistan work together against the "common threats of terrorism, extremism and drug trafficking."

Among other agreements was the resumption of military cooperation, suspended after Russia invaded neighboring Georgia last August and sent relations into a nosedive.

The White House announced that the two nations plan 20 exchanges and meetings this year. For example, Russian military cadets will come to the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. The two countries also plan a joint exercise concerning responses to possible plane hijackings.

They also promised fresh cooperation on public health issues and revived a joint commission to try to account for missing service members of both countries dating back to World War II. The commission was first created by the first President Bush and President Boris Yeltsin in the early 1990s, but the Russians later downgraded their participation. The U.S. hope is that the Russians will now open some of their more sensitive archives to U.S. researchers seeking details about missing American servicemen.

Yet, the two sides remain stalemated over the U.S. pursuit of a missile-defense system in Europe, pushed hard by Bush and still under review by Obama's 7-month-old administration. Both sides hardened their positions ahead of the summit, and Obama gave a lengthy rationale in defense of the system at Medvedev's side.

Obama suggested the United States will not back away from the view that it has a right to pursue defensive systems separate from the offensive weapons that are the subject of most arms control negotiations. Obama repeated the U.S. position that the planned missile and radar system is aimed at intercepting missiles from Iran or North Korea and has nothing to do with countering" a mighty Russian arsenal," as many in Russia suspect.

Medvedev called the missile defense issue "a difficult area for our discussion," but suggested that the new openness between the two countries would help the discussions ahead.

Obama needs Russia's help chiefly in pressuring Iran and North Korea to give up their nuclear weapons ambitions, but also in tackling terrorism, global warming and the economy. But with Russia's public wary of America and ties frayed over Moscow's war in Georgia and the missile defense plan, Obama's desire to move forward is a huge test of his diplomatic skills.

"The president and I agreed that the relationship between Russia and the United States has suffered from a sense of drift," he said at Medvedev's side. "President Medvedev and I are committed to leaving behind the suspicion and rivalry of the past."

His host expressed similar good will.

"This is the first but very important step in improving full-scale cooperation between our two countries, which would go to the benefit of both states," the Russian leader said.

Obama said he and Medvedev have developed a strong working relationship during two direct meetings and numerous other contacts, and that he trusts the Russian leader to follow through on the agreements they struck.

The U.S. president refused to be drawn into a debate over who really holds the reigns of power in Russia, widely believed to be Medvedev's predecessor and mentor, Prime Minister Vladimir Putin. "My understanding is, President Medvedev is the president ... and Prime Minister Putin is the prime minister," Obama simply said.

Obama, who meets with Putin on Tuesday, caused a stir in Russia before his trip by telling The Associated Press that Putin has to learn that "the old Cold War approaches to U.S.-Russian relations is outdated."

The summit starts a weeklong trip for Obama that also features G-8 meetings and a visit with the pope in Italy, and a speech in Ghana.

After Obama landed in Moscow under drizzly gray skies, he introduced his wife, Michelle, and their two daughters to Russian officials waiting to greet them. The entourage then headed to a wreath-laying ceremony at Russia's Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

Having enjoyed adoring crowds in other parts of Europe, Obama will face a far more skeptical Russian population.

Just 15 percent of Russians say the U.S. is playing a positive role in the world; most said the United States abuses it power and makes Russia do what the U.S. wants, according to the University of Maryland's WorldPublicOpinion.org out Sunday.

Obama asks Russians to forge partnership with US

Associated Press
8 mins ago - July 7, 2009

MOSCOW – Working to turn Russia from antagonist to ally, President Barack Obama asked the Russian people Tuesday to "forge a lasting partnership" with the U.S., but he acknowledged after talks with Prime Minister Vladimir Putin that on divisive issues there won't be "a meeting of the minds anytime soon."

Obama was wrapping up a two-day stay in Russia, during which he and President Dmitry Medvedev said they were determined by year's end to negotiate a new nuclear arms treaty that would slash both country's arsenals by about one-third.

After breakfast at Putin's country home, Obama sped back to central Moscow to tell the graduating class of the prestigious New Economic School that the U.S. and Russia were not "destined to be antagonists."

Throughout his young presidency, Obama has hewed to a singular message about U.S.-Russian relations, insisting that both nations must get beyond the kind of thinking that gripped Moscow and Washington during the decades of the Cold War. He reprised that in his graduation speech.

"It is difficult to forge a lasting partnership between former adversaries," Obama said. "But I believe on the fundamental issues that will shape this century, Americans and Russians share common interests that form a basis for cooperation."

Before leaving for Russia, Obama had said that Putin had "one foot in the old ways of doing business and one foot in the new." After breakfast with the Russian leader, he told Fox News Channel: "I found him to be tough, smart, shrewd , very unsentimental, very pragmatic. And on areas where we disagree, like Georgia, I don't anticipate a meeting of the minds anytime soon."

Putin, the former Russian president, also spoke warmly of his country's hopes for improved U.S. ties with Obama in the White House.

"With you we link all our hopes for the furtherance of relations between our two countries," the former KGB official said, sitting next to Obama.

The White House had been hoping to reach a broader Russian audience with Obama's speech, but the address was not widely available on television. It was carried live on the 24-hour news channel Vesti, but not on any of the main, more widely watched Russian outlets such as First Channel, Rossiya, or NTV.

Obama used his speech to further define his view of the United States' place in the world and, specifically, to argue that the U.S. shares compelling interests with Russia.

"Let me be clear: America wants a strong, peaceful and prosperous Russia," he declared.

His upbeat comments showed Obama's determination to turn around public opinion in Russia, where polls show people are wary of the United States and take a skeptical view of Obama himself.

He said Russian and U.S. interests largely overlap in halting the spread of nuclear weapons, confronting violent extremists, ensuring economic prosperity, advancing the rights of people and fostering cooperation without jeopardizing sovereignty.

But he also sprinkled in challenges to Russia, particularly in the area of democracy. U.S. officials are wary of Russia's increasingly hard-line stand on dissent.

U.S., Russia Resume Military Relations

(Source: U.S Department of Defense; issued July 6, 2009)

WASHINGTON --- The United States and Russia today agreed to resume bilateral military cooperation, which has been on hold since the conflict between Russia and Georgia erupted in August.

In a strategic framework agreement signed by Navy Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and his Russian counterpart, the two countries pledged to engage in a range of military-to-military exchanges and also to restore a joint commission on prisoners of war and servicemembers missing in action.

“This provides a framework for improved cooperation and interoperability between our armed forces, so that we can better address the threats that we face, from terrorism to piracy,” President Barack Obama said during a news conference in Moscow today.

“We've also agreed to restore a joint commission on prisoners of war and missing in action, which will allow our governments to cooperate in our unwavering commitment to our missing servicemen and -women,” he added.

The framework of understanding signed today by Mullen and Russian Gen. Nikolai Makarov, chief of the General Staff, entails the following U.S.-Russian military-to-military operations:

-- Conducting nearly 20 exchanges and operational events before the end of 2009, including a strategic discussion between the U.S. Joint Staff and the Russian General Staff;

-- Orientation for Russian military cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y.;

-- Planning for a joint exercise to respond to a hijacked aircraft in national and international airspace;

-- Visiting of the faculty of the Russian Combined Arms Academy to the U.S. Army Combined Arms Center at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.; and

-- A naval war game conducted by the Kuznetsov Naval Academy and the U.S. Naval War College.

Additionally, U.S. European Command and the Russian Defense Ministry have agreed to meet to plan a robust and more ambitious work plan for 2010.

“As global powers, the United States and Russia have a special responsibility for ensuring peace and stability in the world,” a White House statement reads. “Re-establishing our military-to-military bonds will enhance transparency, establish clear paths of communication, and focus our collective efforts on today's global strategic challenges.”

Following their meeting, Obama told reporters that he and Russian President Dmitri Medvedev held frank discussions, which included topics where the two leaders’ views part.

“For instance, we had a frank discussion on Georgia, and I reiterated my firm belief that Georgia's sovereignty and territorial integrity must be respected,” Obama said, alluding to Moscow’s invasion of Georgia in August, which drew rebukes from the United States and NATO. “Yet even as we work through our disagreements on Georgia's borders, we do agree that no one has an interest in renewed military conflict.”

Both leaders also are committed to leaving behind the suspicion and rivalry of the past to advance the countries’ mutual interests, Obama said.

“Today, we've made meaningful progress in demonstrating through deeds and words what a more constructive U.S.-Russian relationship can look like in the 21st century,” he said.

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