Putin’s Russia is continuing to breath life into old Cold War figures. In the space of a few weeks Russian submarines have planted flags under the north pole, claiming the territory as their own; soviet bombers have resumed Cold War face-offs with their old adversaries; the leader’s image has become an aggressive propaganda device; and the BBC news has been silenced.

Russia has staked an ownership claim on much of the North Pole - seizing the opportunity presented by global warming to access the mineral reserves that were inaccessible beneath the Arctic ice. Sergei Balyasnikov, of the Russian Arctic and Antarctic Institute, told the news agency, Ria-Novosti, that the mission was ‘risky and heroic’ and was ‘like putting a flag on the moon’ [Ria-Novosti via the BBC].

The propaganda effect of the mission was rather undermined when a Finnish teenager spotted that footage from the film, Titanic, was used by a Russian state TV station, Rossiya, to illustrate the Russian submarines under the North Pole [from The Guardian].

It looks like the approach to British airspace by Soviet bombers in June was an early example of the Soviet-style bomber patrols Russia has restarted [from the BBC].

Russian generals claimed that bombers approaching the American military base in Guam ‘exchanged smiles’ with American pilots [The Guardian]. The re-activation of flights by Russia’s ageing nuclear bomber forces has increased concerns that nuclear accidents are made far more likely as a result of the exercises.

Putin’s personal propaganda machine has moved up a few gears in recent weeks too. Photos of Putin on a fishing trip with Prince Albert II of Monaco have been circulating amongst the world’s media:

Meanwhile, The Telegraph has reported that the Russian state has revived yet another old Soviet spectre, the forced psychiatric treatment of dissidents.

BBC Radio has been forced of FM bands in Russia this week.

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A ghost from the cold war, in the form of a fighter-bomber dance just beyond the edge of the state, briefly appeared over the North Sea on Tuesday:

It was confirmed by the Ministry of Defence today that RAF jets were scrambled on Tuesday after two Russian aircraft were spotted heading towards British airspace.

“Two unidentified aircraft came towards British airspace. They turned round before there was an interception and before they entered British airspace,” an MoD spokesman said.

He confirmed that the two aircraft involved in Tuesday’s incident had been Russian, and said there was “nothing to suggest this was linked to any other issues”.[The Guardian]

According to the Telegraph:

As Moscow hesitated in its response to Britain’s expulsion of four Russian diplomats, two Tornado fighters raced to meet the Tu95 “Bear” bombers that had been dispatched from their base near the northern port city of Murmansk in the Arctic Circle. The planes turned back before they reached British airspace. [The Telegraph]

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The Guardian have reported on a decision by the Russian parliament to allow strategically important energy corporations to amass private armies:

Russia’s parliament voted yesterday to allow the country’s two biggest energy monopolies, Gazprom and the state oil pipeline company Transneft, to employ and arm private security units. Under the deal, Russia’s interior ministry will supply Gazprom with guns from its own armoury.

Supporters of the plan say that Russia’s oil and gas installations - which are key to the country’s boom and burgeoning economic revival - have to be protected from terrorist attack at all cost.

“A couple of terrorist acts and an ensuing ecological catastrophe would be enough to immediately declare Russia an unreliable partner and supplier of energy reserves,” said Alexander Gurov, one of 341 MPs who backed the new law in the country’s 450-seat Duma. [The Guardian]

The Russian government has wielded energy supplies as strategic weapons against its post-soviet neighbours in recent years, leading to nervousness in European governments about the long term stability of their energy supplies. The Guardian article conjures the spectacle of a corporate state in which Putin’s possible move from President to head of Gazprom would be a promotion:

Many observers regard the state-owned energy giant as a state within a state and also the Kremlin’s most brutally effective geopolitical weapon, as well as a tool for bludgeoning the neighbours.

Gazprom has a watertight grip on gas exports: it temporarily severed energy supplies to Belarus in January and to Ukraine last year following a row over prices.

The company has impeccable connections with Russia’s ruling elite, from which it is virtually indistinguishable. The chairman of the board is Dmitry Medvedev, Russia’s diminutive first deputy prime minister. There are rumours that Vladimir Putin may take over as head of Gazprom next year when he steps down as president. [The Guardian]

According to Reuters the relaxation in laws refers solely to the oil-pipeline monopoly, Transneft and energy giant Gazprom, which “has 430,000 employees, controls some of Russia’s biggest media outlets, has a firm grip on gas exports and owns the country’s third largest bank” [Reuters]. Putin already has ‘friends’ in Gazprom:

The chief executive of the pipeline consortium is Matthias Warnig, a German who heads Dresdner Bank’s arm in Russia and is a longtime friend of Putin’s. The Wall Street Journal reported this year that Warnig was an officer in the Stasi, the East German secret police, and met Putin during the late 1980s when the Russian president was based in East Germany as a Soviet KGB officer. [Washington Post]

The Washington Post article also reports on the appointment of the former German chancellor, Gerhardt Schroeder as board chairman at Gazprom.

Russian corporate culture (although it seem a little quaint to qualify the phrase with the name of a nation-state) is following an increasing popular corporate path towards militarisation. Walmart’s recent ascendency to the military-retail complex is only amongst the most recent examples of American corporate militarisation.

These latest steps in corporate evolution are an interesting contrast to to the growing privatisation of military functions and the attendant creep of military law. American legislators have, for some time, been concerned about the U.S. government’s deployment of private security contractors in military operations since there is less public accountability for the private organisations. These concerns were raised about the deployment of private contractors in Central America serving the U.S.’ “War on Drugs” and more recently we have seen these same concerns echoed in Iraq. Hasty legislation has been drafted to bring the operations of private security contractors under the uniform code of military justice [Wikipedia]. Some observers regard this legislation to have been so loosely drafted that it brings embedded journalists and other largely civilian functions under military jurisdiction, in which disobeying an order or disrespecting an officer become punishable offences.

The old cold war adversaries present us with an intriguing pincer movement on civil law. On the one hand the creep of military law into civil arenas where states remain strong, and on the other the creep of corporate law into military arenas where the state is weak.

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The former Indian diplomat, M K Bhadrakumar, has written an interesting article for The Asia Times on the recent escalating tensions between the US/Europe and the Russian Federation entitled, “In the trenches of the new cold war”¹. In it he attempts to disentagle the strategies emerging in post cold war europe, paricularly in the light of the US announcement of new anti-ballistic missile systems close to russian borders.

Ostensibly, the new “missile shield” is there to provide defense against ICBMs originating in rogue states. Iran and North Korea are often mentioned in this regard, and, clearly, China is pursuing massive military development. The U.S. published a “Fact-sheet” about the systems in order, partly to calm Russian fears. Seven “facts” are highlighted:

(a) the European missile shield is meant to counter possible attacks from Iran or North Korea; (b) the US is puzzled by Russia’s anxiety, since the rockets to be deployed in Central Europe are no match for Russia’s arsenal; (c) Russia itself should be worried about the missile threat from “rogue states”; (d) the US is prepared to cooperate with Russia on missile defense; (e) the US is open to the idea of merging the missile shield with the Russian system; (f) Washington would like Moscow to take part in research and development, though it is unlikely the Russians will consider such cooperation; and (g) the US has endeavored to be “transparent” and is prepared to hold consultations with Russia to explain its case for the deployments in Central Europe. [Asia Times]

However, as Bhadrakumar points out, the Russians are deeply suspicious about the strategic capabilities of the new deployments. After all, the oft-mentioned rogue states are very far from strategically deployable ICBMs (even if the west is very far from an effective missile shield technology). General Yury Baluyevsky, chief of the Russian General Staff was quoted as saying:

The real goal [of the US deployment] is to protect [the US] from Russian and Chinese nuclear-missile potential and to create exclusive conditions for the invulnerability of the United States. [Asia Times]

There has been mounting concern in Europe as the Russian government have demonstrated an increasing willingness to use energy supplies as strategic weapons. Many European countries are now very nervously dependent on Russian natural gas. In the UK concerns are mounting about Gazprom’s desire to move into the energy supply markets. The UK currently has one of the smallest proportions of domestic gas supplies coming from Russian fields. Indeed, one flashpoint of the new cold war seems to be Kazakhstan’s role in the

US$6 billion gas-pipeline project that is an extension of the South Caucasus pipeline, linking Azerbaijan, Georgia and Turkey, and which is expected to run from Turkey to Austria via Bulgaria, Romania and Hungary. The 3,400-kilometer pipeline across the Caspian bypassing Russia, which is to be built from early next year so as to go on stream in 2011, will have a capacity of 30 billion cubic meters and promises to be a rival to Russian Gazprom’s Blue Stream-2 (scheduled to be commissioned in 2012). [Asia Times]

One part of the european strategy for evading what seems like increasingly belligerent Russian energy strategy is to deepen economic cooperation with the US. Der Speigel has reported that a “confidential draft” of a new EU-US economic treaty has already been produced. Signatures are expected on the treaty next week. However, it would be wise to see this treaty as largely focused on the increasing economic significance of Asian states - Russia is increasingly looking like a potentially destrucive distraction in a bigger game.

The Americans seem to have decided that they need to put the mutually-assured destruction arrangement with Russia behind them in order to focus on a more important game. The only way to achieve this is to put the reciprocal stability of the cold war behind them and move to a position of strategic dominance. Bhadrakumar points out that this, at least, is how the Russians perceive the US strategy. Sergei Rogov of the USA and Canada Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences has proposed cost-effective ways the Russian military can counter the ongoing extensions to the US-European military capacity without getting involved in an economically damaging arms race.

Commentators on post-Soviet affairs are pointing to events in the Ukraine and Georgia as the hot spots of the new cold war. With Europe and the US attempting to undermine Russian influence in these strategically important states, Russia has no choice but to try to maintain its influence there by whatever means it can.

Tensions are increasing in the Baltic states where ethnic Russians are often sizeable minorities and are increasingly seen as vehicles for the continuation of Russia influence after the withdrawal of the Soviet state. Estonia is currently experiencing large scale rioting in the aftermath of the removal of a statue commemorating a soviet soldier’s involvement in the defeat of Nazism (BBC news item here). Estonians often regard such monuments as symbols of their occupation by the Soviets. Many commentators are claiming that the Russian state is participating in the escalation of Russian nationalist sentiment in this situation.

1. Bhadrakumar, M.K. (2007) “In the Trenches of the New Cold War”. Asia Times 28 April 2007 [Online] Internet: http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Central_Asia/ID28Ag01.html (Accessed 28 April 2007)

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