Results of the week. What about bargaining?

The week turned out to be a real gift for a military observer. If you look at the Kremlin’s actions, it is not a full-scale economic crisis that threatens the Motherland, not the “green” crisis, which, damn it, is growing by leaps and bounds, turning public sector employees’ salaries and pensions into dust. No, it’s clear from everything: Russia is on the eve of a war with an insidious enemy, and it has thrown all its resources into defending itself against it.

It must be said that the Kremlin has succeeded a lot in this. He paid two billion dollars - and our faithful ally Alexander Grigorievich Lukashenko signed a meaningless piece of paper on the creation of a certain “Unified Air Defense System”. They gave another two billion, and now Kyrgyz President Bakiyev, with considerable difficulty, squeezes out phrases about the urgent need to close the American military base at Bishkek International Airport. It must be said that the Americans actually behaved simply outrageously in Kyrgyzstan. First of all, they paid a measly fifty million dollars a year. Which, you see, is simply not comparable to two billion. In addition, as a very popular newspaper has just reported, the graves of 37 young men have been discovered near the American base. And everyone's organs were removed! I'm curious if the damned Americans drank the blood of innocent Kyrgyz babies.

Next, little things - a little bit of Armenia, just a little bit of Tajikistan. And now the heads of state of the Collective Security Treaty Organization agree with the idea expressed several months ago by President Medvedev about creating a coalition force for rapid deployment. Which - when they are created, of course - will not be inferior to the corresponding NATO structures in anything, well, at all, as the Russian president is sure. Well, except that they will be almost half as many, and they actually do not have the means to transfer to the conflict area. However, these, as you understand, are mere trifles. The main thing is that we, like the vile Pindos, have our own multinational rapid deployment forces.

Well, then things went completely awry. The Americans (for nothing) made it clear that they are ready for what Moscow has been trying to achieve for the last seven years. The Times reported that the Obama administration (unlike the Bush administration) is ready to begin full-scale negotiations on nuclear weapons, while reducing the size of nuclear arsenals to 1,000 warheads. It would seem that we should rejoice. After all, over the past year, Russia has been testing the Bulava naval missile with all its might in order to maintain nuclear parity with the United States. And now you can breathe a sigh of relief. But the wrong ones were attacked. We don't need easy ways. Unnamed experts immediately said that the Americans should abandon plans for global missile defense and agree to limit not only nuclear warheads, but also their carriers. Which can automatically extend the negotiations for the next five years (after all, we need to agree on how many warheads to count for each intercontinental missile and how many cruise missiles for each strategic bomber). And without this, of course, there is no way. After all, the Americans, if we give up, will equip strategic carriers with conventional, non-nuclear warheads and gain strategic superiority over us.

And how not to be surprised that at the time of the economic crisis, Moscow is throwing away billions of dollars either on meaningless (a common air defense system with Belarus) or simply harmful (forcing Kyrgyzstan to close the American base) projects. As for the latest operation, presidential adviser Sergei Prikhodko just explained to journalists that the newly created operational deployment forces are intended to confront the Taliban. That is, to those forces against whom the Americans are fighting in Afghanistan, whose combat activities Moscow is trying to make as difficult as possible. And why is Russia bringing into negotiations on strategic arms issues that definitely cannot be resolved before December 31, the day when the START I Treaty expires?

However, everything falls into place if we keep in mind the most primitive interpretation of realpolitik, which underlies the Kremlin’s foreign policy. According to this theory, any large state must have obedient satellite countries, which are used as bargaining chips in a global game against other large states. In the current conditions, it is difficult to force Minsk or Bishkek to obey, you have to buy them. And all this so that overseas people know that in order to solve any problems with the CIS countries, it is necessary to negotiate not with them, but with Moscow. Negotiations on strategic weapons are also an excellent trump card. The longer they last, the higher Russia's international authority. After all, it turns out that the United States, the most powerful country in the world, is forced to recognize us as its equal in nuclear weapons. One problem is that it is possible that Russian “counter-partners” will soon get bored with these Kremlin games. And they will leave Moscow to finish them off alone.