[A-List] Russia: export success story

["Michael Keaney" <michael.keaney@xxxxxx>]

Russia: Proliferation personified
By Stephen Blank
Asia Times, January 8 2003

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.