BERLIN, March 18 (UPI) -- President Dmitry Medvedev said Russia would modernize its armed forces and nuclear weapons to counter the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's eastward expansion, but experts say the West does not have to worry about a new crisis with Moscow.
The Russian armed forces, Medvedev Tuesday told top Russian generals, will be expanded starting in 2011. The president cited the "serious potential for conflict" in many regions, international terrorism and NATO's military eastward expansion as reasons for the move.
"The primary task is to increase the combat readiness of our forces, particularly our strategic nuclear forces," which are key to Russia's national security, the president said.
Medvedev's remarks come two weeks before he is due to meet for the first time with U.S. President Barack Obama in London, a gathering experts hope will start a new and more positive era in relations between the two powers.
Washington has been irritated by the war in Georgia, Russia's human-rights shortcomings and Moscow's blocking position regarding Kosovo's independence.
The Kremlin, on the other hand, deemed the Bush administration's push for NATO membership for Ukraine and Georgia and the plan to station a missile defense system in Eastern Europe as threats to Russia's national security.
Obama recently indicated he may bury the missile defense system for the sake of better relations with Russia, with Moscow reacting quite favorably; a recent meeting between U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov went remarkably well, spreading hope for better ties ahead. Before Medvedev met with the military leaders, the Russian media even speculated that he might announce a willingness to reduce the nuclear arsenal. The exact opposite has happened, and that may startle analysts in Washington, especially as Russia's top nuclear weapons official, Col. Gen. Nikolai Solovtsov, announced Tuesday that Moscow would deploy a regiment of RS-24 intercontinental missiles fitted with nuclear warheads after Dec. 5.
Experts in Europe, however, say Medvedev's comments don't mean a return to the old conflict days.
"You can see it as an attempt by Moscow to raise the stakes for the next U.S.-Russian negotiations by creating bargaining power," Susan Stewart, a Russia expert at the German Institute for International and Security Affairs, a Berlin-based think tank, told United Press International in a telephone interview Wednesday. "In Russia, the Kremlin's rhetoric often counteracts its actions, so I wouldn't overestimate Medvedev's remarks."
Medvedev and Obama are poised to find a successor agreement to the U.S.-Russian Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which runs out Dec. 5, and Medvedev simply may not be willing to enter these talks empty-handed.
Alexander Rahr, a leading Russia expert working at the German Council on Foreign Relations, has another idea.
The expert suggested that Medvedev with his comments wanted to please Russia's military elites, who have been irritated by recent budget cuts (think financial crisis) and Medvedev's military reform plans. The Russian president said he wanted to make Russia's 1.5 million-strong armed forces, a remnant of the Cold War, smaller and more mobile, and that means cutting jobs and breaking up old structures.
"The military in Russia has its own interests, and they have a strong lobby," Rahr told UPI in a telephone interview Wednesday. "Medvedev is not in control of the Russian armed forces yet. They still see (Prime Minister and former President Vladimir) Putin as their commander in chief."
It's Medvedev's attempt to emancipate himself from strongman Putin that has the president meandering through international diplomacy, requiring him to sometimes send conflicting messages, Rahr said.
"Medvedev wants to push through a more liberal domestic and foreign policy concept, and that's not easy in Russia."
