Head of the Joint Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation colonel-general Yury Baluevsky takes part in the meeting of Leading Personnel of the Russian Armed Forces.
Photo: Dmitry Azarov
|
 |
No Carpet Bombings This Time
For a first time in post-Soviet period Moscow sent its armed forces to participate in such large-scale international maneuvers, which, speaking the military language, “would be conducted with participation of 10,000 Russian and Chinese military personnel with simultaneous deployment on the sea, air and land.” Right away there is a question: who are we going to fight against? According to Vladimir Moltensky, Deputy Commander of Land Forces of Russia and commander of Russian side in the maneuvers, this military exercise has clear anti-terrorist and anti-extremism character. Earlier, Moscow and Beijing had one common adversary – world imperialism. Now the main enemy is world terrorism. Compare with previous one, the current opponent is tricky and dangerous, but it is more amorphous. However, this fact does not confuse the generals. They are using their previous strategic and tactical plans changing only the name of the adversary.
This approach untied the military hands. If the military stopped liking somebody, this somebody automatically is put on the terrorist list. Washington has put on this list Afghanistan, Iraq and also Iran with North Korea. It took some time for Moscow to realize the danger coming from “color” revolutions in Ukraine and Georgia. And when the revolutionary wave reached Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan, it started to bother Beijing as well. One also cannot discount the fact that Bishkek and Tashkent are members of Shanghai Organization of Cooperation, which was founded by Russia and China.
According to General Yuri Baluevsky, chief of general staff of the Russian Armed Forces, the legend of the “Peace Mission-2005” maneuvers says that “China and Russia would be helping some third state to resolve the issues of elimination of unlawful bands of armed insurgents, which are undermining the state security.” “There will be carpet bombings,” Moltensky announced. Russian strategic bombers will carry on with surgical strikes that were so masterfully demonstrated by President Putin himself right before the maneuvers.
Both countries clearly show their intentions to create not only powerful military alliance, but also to demonstrate to entire world their desire to unite Moscow and Beijing military potentials. Russian general staff is sure that these military potentials can successfully complement each other. It is important to note that Moscow makes this move while it is fulfilling the agreement with the United States about the reduction of strategic attack potentials. And this fact should not prevent Russia to achieve its goal together with China – a creation of multi-polar world.
Beside this global strategic task, Russia also tries to resolve a tactical goal – to increase its weapons sales to China. So far, nobody can guess for how long Moscow and Beijing military-political ambitions would follow a one course.
Ivan Safronov, columnist
All the Article in Russian as of Aug. 18, 2005
|
|
|
