[new arms race] why? who?

The new homeland

Russia is expending its resources into putting down trade roots:

According to a study by the Moscow School of Management and the New York-based Columbia Program on International Investment, four oil and gas companies, led by Gazprom and Lukoil, and nine metals and mining firms, led by Rusal, the aluminium giant and Severstal, the steelmaker, together accounted for more than 78 per cent of total assets of $60bn held by Russian companies overseas at the end of 2006.

As I'm tangentially connected with the international trade area over here, I hear foreign policy everyday and there's no doubt that Russia sees its expanding influence in the world not unlike a tree's roots spreading far from the source.

There is great emphasis placed on the trade sector, not least the EU and the people who come in this door resemble a who's who. It's no secret that we're heavily involved with the EBRD and sundry other bodies and bilateral agreements are all the rage.

Massive resources are being expended in infrastructure so that Russia resumes its role as a major player and so the U.S. fuelled arms race is a major ploy to stymie this process. Thus, Putin says, admittedly coming up to elections:

“Nato itself is expanding. It's approaching our borders. We drew down our bases in Cuba and in Vietnam. What did we get? New American bases in Romania, Bulgaria. A new third missile defence region in Poland.

“It’s already clear that a new arms race is being unleashed across the world ... It’s not our fault, we didn’t start it,” he said. “We are categorically being told these actions aren't directed at Russia, and therefore our concerns are completely unfounded. That's not a constructive response.

The global arms race is something getting in the way of this and the ones to blame are the sources of money behind the scene but that's another issue not dealt with in this post. Clearly national and global interests are not necessarily compatible and Russia is a country with a strong sense of nation.

Mr Putin ... met Poland’s new prime minister, Donald Tusk, in the highest-level talks between the two countries since 2004. Both sides sought to mend relations frayed by US plans to deploy missile interceptors in Poland and by Warsaw’s veto under its previous prime minister of the start of talks between Russia and the EU.

Mr Tusk said after the meeting that it was clear “both sides were bored with the cold atmosphere”.

And this cold atmosphere is clearly being engendered by someone. Here are some of the things happening in the Asian sphere:

Since 2000, five of the six countries involved in the six-party talks in Asia have increased their military spending by 50% or more. The sixth, Japan, has maintained a steady, if sizeable military budget while nonetheless aspiring to keep pace.

The United States, China, Russia, and Japan - confront each other. Together, the countries participating in the six-party talks account for approximately 65% of world military expenditures, with the US responsible for roughly half the global total.

Japan's army is now larger than Britain's, and the country spends more on its military than all but four other nations. (China surpassed Japan in military spending for the first time in 2006.)

Thanks to Boeing, however, the first KC-767 tanker aircraft will arrive in Japan this year, providing government officials, who occasionally assert the country's right to launch preemptive strikes, with the means to do so.

A light aircraft carrier, which the government has coyly labeled a "destroyer", will be ready in 2009. The subs and missiles, however, will have to wait. So, too, will Tokyo's attempt to take a quantum leap forward in air-fighting capabilities by importing advanced US F-22 stealth planes.

Last month, Japan installed its third Patriot Advanced Capability-3 (PAC-3) surface-to-air interceptor and plans on nine more by 2011. The more ambitious part of the program, however, is based at sea. In December, Japan conducted its first sea-based interceptor test.

Between 1999 and 2006, South Korean military spending jumped more than 70%. In 2007, at the launching ceremony for a new Aegis-equipped destroyer, which brought South Korea into an elite club of just five countries with such technology, Roh declared, "At the present time, Northeast Asia is still in an arms race, and we cannot just sit back and watch."

South Korea has embarked on an ambitious $665 billion Defense Reform 2020 initiative, which will increase the military budget by roughly 10% a year until 2020. most of the extra money will go to a host of expensive, high-tech systems such as new F-15K fighters from Boeing, SM-6 ship-to-air missiles that can form a low-altitude missile shield, and Global Hawk unmanned aerial vehicles.

Beijing's spending, claim these sources, is really in the $100 billion range. With this money, China is pushing forward with an ambitious naval program that will include the addition to its naval forces of five new nuclear-powered attack subs, a mid-sized aircraft carrier, and - clandestinely - the supposed construction of a huge 93,000-ton nuclear-powered carrier by 2020.

The Pentagon can't use its big naval destroyers against al-Qaeda; Virginia-class subs can't do much to fight the Taliban or insurgents in Iraq. Yet these systems figure prominently in the Pentagon's long-range plans to build a 313-ship navy.

And the U.S. response?

Democratic Congressman John Murtha says: "We've got to be able to have a military that can deploy to stop China or Russia or any other country that challenges us," he recently told Reuters.

In addition to the $12.7 billion for new warships, there's $17 billion for new aircraft and over $10 billion for missile defense. The administration wants to increase the army from 482,400 to 547,400 troops by 2012.

And China? Separate question, separate post. That's the current scenario and the result is that:

The world put 37% more into military spending in 2006 than in 1997.