USA TODAY International Edition
AN ARMS RACE WE COULD LOSE
This is no Cold War: Russia, China and Iran are already striking back online
Thirty years ago, an officer in a Soviet armored battalion told me that some tank drivers were being issued sledgehammers to pound their rusting shift levers into first gear. Still, the Soviets had a lot of these tanks, and NATO’s principal fear back then was of vast hordes of these belching behemoths pouring through the Fulda Gap into West Germany and fanning out across Europe.
All that is history. But not the arms race. It’s still going on, though in a vastly different, expanded and far more expensive format that’s potentially even more threatening. And this time we may be losing.
All the old bets are off. This year’s Victory Day parade through Red Square showed off three new, utterly modern armored vehicles. They will join a Russian arsenal that includes a new MIG- 35 fighter, the advanced Pantsir mobile surface- toair battery that can bring down cruise missiles in flight, the Boraclass guided missile hovercraft, and even stealth submarines. In all, we are looking at a potent 845,000 troops, 22,550 tanks and 1,399 combat aircraft, with 70% of Russian equipment defined as “modern” in the next five years.
SANCTIONS BITE The question, of course, is how long Russian President Vladimir Putin can continue his buildup. Six months ago, he announced an additional 50 intercontinental ballistic missiles. Last week, he scaled back to 40. He’s still holding firm to his pledge of a $ 400 billion upgrade to Russia’s military over the next decade. Still, since he made that pledge, the nation’s economy is on the verge of a deep recession — under pressure from Western sanctions and plummeting oil prices.
Today’s new arms race is not just with Russia, but an integral part of today’s multipolar world. And certainly it’s more expensive, in part because of the multinational, multidimensional threats. Russia still spends more than all but two other nations — the United States and China. China already surged past Russia, with $ 216 billion in military spending last year, compared with Russia’s $ 84.5 billion. China now accounts for more than a third of all defense spending in Asia. All, of course, are still vastly outranked by the United States at more than $ 600 billion. But such numbers don’t tell the full story.
China has already launched its first, if primitive, aircraft carrier, with another more advanced vessel en route, forcing Japan to launch its own. Other Asian countries are hedging their bets about the United States as their sole guarantor.
At the same time, we must not be distracted from our greatest, potentially existential, threats: terrorism and its special warfare requirements, and the cyber arms race, with China and Russia matching us step for step. CYBER RACE “This is an arms race. Crime, espionage, subversion and sabotage are ... going on on the Internet,” Sir David Omand, one- time head of GCHQ ( Britain’s National Security Agency) told me at dinner last week. “You put sanctions on a country like Russia or Iran, why would they sit back and do nothing? They strike back. So I’d say that can get even worse.”
That might be something to consider, especially when we get around to the next round of debates over the U. S. defense budget. Last week, the Senate passed a $ 600 billion defense policy bill, then in a predictably partisan maneuver, voted down an appropriations bill to fund it. Indeed, President Obama has threatened to veto the spending bill entirely. And it was hardly a muscular effort to begin with, especially with much of the military still under sequestration, the blanket government spending freeze. So, while Russia has increased its spending by 97% this year and China by 167%, U. S. spending, even under the current, rejected measure, will drop by 0.4%.
If the United States and NATO are prepared to go toe- to- toe with Russia over its designs on Ukraine, and counter a host of other real or potential threats, theymust be ready to spend. Just two years ago, the United States pulled all its armor out of Europe. Now, it’s on the verge of deciding whether to put 220 vehicles back into Poland and the Baltic states, all NATO members directly on Russia’s frontiers.
None of this should suggest that any armed conflict is imminent. But it’s quite clear that on multiple fronts this time, we’re in a new arms race, with no clear winner. So we’d better start playing for keeps.