<tit>
PLAYING CARDS, AMERICAN WAY<aut>Victor Baranets
<src>Komsomolskaya Pravda, July 5, 2006, p. 5
<sum>Russia and America: time to reconsider the relations.</sum>
<cov>INSISTING THAT RUSSIA DISARM ITSELF, THE UNITED STATES RENEGES ON ITS OWN COMMITMENTS
When yours truly served in the Defense Ministry some years ago and witnessed clandestine talks between Russian and American generals every now and then, I got the impression that the Americans were treating us like experienced con men or guileless provincials.
When Boris Yeltsin was president, the Pentagon demanded from the Russian Defense Ministry to lodge its observers on the territory of the factory in Votkinsk where Russia assembles its ICBMs. The Defense Ministry played ball. When we asked the United States to settle our observers at the missile factory in Utah, we were advised to forget it. The Americans even threatened Russia that it would never see the promised money for alarm systems for its nuclear objects... In short, our observers only visit Utah from time to time.
This crooked arrangement became a system in the last fifteen years. Here are some facts. Russia and the United States are supposed to reduce nuclear warheads in their arsenals to 2,200 articles each under the Strategic Offensive Arms Reduction Treaty. Russia is dismantling its warheads, the Americans are storing theirs in arsenals. They even had the temerity to sneer not long ago that their nuclear potential is larger than Russia's.
Washington promised not to establish military bases in the former socialist countries provided Russia removed its missiles from Belarus and Kaliningrad. Russia removed them. The Americans established bases in Hungary, Bulgaria, Romania.
The Pentagon swore not to build a radar near the Russian borders (in Norway) as long as Russia withdrew from near the American territory (Cuba). The Cuban center was closed, the radar built.
The White House promised the Kremlin not to expand NATO into the zone of Russian strategic interests - Ukraine, Caucasus, Central Asia. As a result, Ukraine and Georgia are practically NATO countries, and there is an American military base in Kyrgyzstan.
America keeps urging Russia to aspire for "new horizons of disarmament" - and designing on small nuclear munitions. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov meekly "voiced Russia's concerns" over it. Instead of being meek, he should have reminded American politicians and generals what noise they made last year over the mere rumors that Russia had such weapons.
The other day, the United States decided to allocate $1.7 billion in 2007, for reduction of Russian nuclear weapons and control over them. Even some men in the US Congress do not think that America is being on the level with Russia. And Russia keeps accepting these "Trojan gifts".
That Russia itself has the money makes all of it all the more surprising. For some reason, we are not using it. We are keeping it in America - both the Central Bank's gold and hard currency reserves and the Stabilization Trust. In short, we entrust America with what we still have to take pride in - nuclear might and financial stability. We entrust it as the closest pal, and the pal in the meantime behaves like "Comrade Wolf" as Vladimir Putin said not long ago. What if it decides to dine on our missiles and Stabilization Trust one fine day?
RVR
