Barbarians At The Gate

By INVESTOR'S BUSINESS DAILY | Posted Friday, March 20, 2009 4:20 PM PT

Security: As Russia announces a massive rearmament plan, Defense Secretary Gates plays down the threat and suggests the U.S. may have to make do with less.

Russia pressed Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's "reset" button last week as President Dmitry Medvedev announced, despite his country's economic woes, a "comprehensive rearmament" program.

In a televised speech, Medvedev proclaimed the "most important task is to re-equip the (Russian) armed forces with the newest weapons systems." Despite falling oil and gas revenues, the Russian military budget could rise as much as 30% next year.

A day after Medvedev announced he was cranking up the arsenal of tyranny, Defense Secretary Robert Gates minimized the threat, saying Russia's modernization actually meant downsizing its forces.

"As I read between the lines, the first message that he was giving to the Russian military was: 'Don't expect any new equipment for two years,' " Gates told reporters at a Pentagon briefing. "My impression of what he was talking about was a Russian military that is more expeditionary and not so focused, as in the past, on taking on NATO."

To us, a more expeditionary Russian military is not a good thing.

As for NATO, Russia is quite determined to block U.S. missile defenses intended for Poland and the Czech Republic to the point of deploying SS-26 Iskander missiles in the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad targeting the ground-based interceptor sites in Poland. The expeditionary Russian military recently invaded NATO candidate Georgia.

In his speech, Medvedev specifically mentioned the threat of additional NATO expansion in places like Ukraine as a reason for this military buildup. Anatoly Serdyukov, the Russian defense minister, reportedly said last week that the buildup was needed to thwart a possible U.S.-NATO effort to grab the region's natural resources.

Of course, the buildup wouldn't hurt Russia's other major export industry — weapons sales to friendly places such as its ally China, as well as Syria, Venezuela and Iran. Russian news agencies confirmed last week that Russia signed a contract with Iran two years ago for the delivery of S-300 air defense missiles.

These missiles would be useful in protecting Iranian nuclear facilities from air and cruise missile attack. Such facilities include the uranium enrichment facility at Natanz or the country's first nuclear power plant at Bushehr, built by Russian contractors.

The direction Gates would take us was indicated by his remarks toward the end of his service with the Bush administration. The U.S., he said, "cannot expect to eliminate national security risks through higher defense budgets, to do everything and buy everything."

He suggested the next defense secretary, who turned out to be him, would have to eliminate costly hardware and invest instead in equipment to fight Third World insurgents.

The Boston Globe has reported that two defense officials have said Gates will soon announce up to a half-dozen major weapons cancellations later this month. Candidates include the new Zumwalt-class destroyer, the new Virginia-class attack submarine and the F-22 Raptor designed to replace an aging F-15 fleet that is older than the pilots who fly them and whose wings are almost literally falling off.

Gates also downplayed the recent incident in the South China Sea, where Chinese vessels tried to harass the anti-submarine ship Impeccable and hook its tracking sonar array. The incident took place 75 miles from the Chinese island of Hainan, where the Chinese have built a naval base to be home to its growing ballistic missile submarine fleet.

"I don't think they're trying to push the 7th fleet out of the area," said Gates. "And I hope, based on the diplomatic exchanges that have taken place since the aggressive acts against the Impeccable . . . that there won't be a repetition of this," he added.

We and our adversaries are clearly moving in opposite directions on defense. The best way to assure that both Russia and China make nice is not through diplomacy, but through a comprehensive military buildup of our own.